A sociological study on the technocratic structure of decision-making in the issue of global warming: from the perspective of science, technology and society

本研究考察了环境决策的技术官僚结构：只有政府和政府相关专家决定环境政策，其他人只执行政策。在“再造纸虚假标签”的情况下，存在着100%再生复印纸是否环保的争议。两组人都用科学数据证明了自己的观点。然而，这些数据过于简单，缺乏背景，因此无法作为进一步讨论的基础。这些纠纷偏离了消费者、纸制品制造商和滥砍滥伐受害者的现实。本研究的另一个发现是，如果政府过分强调“来自世界各地的专家的共识”，而不愿提及政策中存在的不确定性，这可能会成为富有成果的讨论的障碍。

This study examined the technocratic structure of environmental decision-making: only the government and government-related experts determine environmental policy and other people only execute the policy. In the case of "false labeling of recycled paper", there existed a dispute about whether 100% recycled copy paper is environmentally effective or not. Both groups justified their opinions, using scientific data. However, these data were too simplified and lacked contexts, so it could not function as a basis of further discussion. The disputes diverged from the realities of consumers, makers of paper products, and victims of indiscriminate forest logging. Another finding in this study is that it can be an obstacle for fruitful discussion, when the government overemphasize "consensus of experts from all over the world" and hesitate to mention uncertainty existing in the policy.