Academic Essays

Structural Functionalism & Climate Change

Global warming is the large-scale shifts in weather patterns driven by human emissions of greenhouse gasses (MacMillan). Many people in the Marin community are seriously affected by severe storms and devastating fires as a result of climate change, and it affects millions more across the globe. All real scientists agree that climate change adversely affects human health, contributing to significant population displacement and growing malnutrition rates (Rettner). The World Health Organization estimates an increase of two hundred and fifty thousand deaths annually, however many researchers believe even that to be a conservative estimate (Haines and Ebi). Regardless, global warming is undoubtedly the social issue of the century.

Climate change isn't a new issue. Even the ancient Greeks proposed that humans could change temperatures and rainfall patterns by chopping down trees and irrigating fields. By the 1950s the scientific community adopted the theory as fact. But, its effects have been increasingly damaging for the global collective (HISTORY.com Editors). In recent years, we've experienced the most extreme fires, droughts, floods, and heat waves ever recorded in human history (Fountain). As prominent climate activist Greta Thunberg puts it, "we are at the beginning of a mass extinction. (Chasan and Wainer)"

The sociological theory of structural functionalism is the most valuable theory in interpreting the consequences global warming has on social systems. The abstract social institutions structural functionalism typically analyzes enables the creation of a general explanation that can be applied to each country. Other theories, like symbolic interactionism and conflict theory, can't emphasize the universality of this event like structural functionalism can. Furthermore, structural functionalism is the best theory to uniformly attack the ubiquitous effects climate change has on every establishment. Comparatively, symbolic interactionism and conflict theory divert attention to microcosms and pre existing power hierarchies respectively. While these are important tools, they don't address the necessary components of change global warming has on social systems, like structural functionalism does.

An institution that structural functionalism examines is crime. Structural functionalism can be used to interpret the influence climate change will have on crime rates. In Matthew Ranson's research paper, Crime Weather, and Climate Change, he discovered that temperature has a strong positive effect on criminal behavior. Ranson concluded that, under the IPCC's climate scenario, "the United States will experience an additional 35,000 murders, 216,000 cases of rape, 1.6 million aggravated assaults, 2.4 million simple assaults, 409,000 robberies, 3.1 million burglaries, 3.8 million cases of larceny, and 1.4 million cases of vehicle theft, compared to the total number of offenses that would have occurred between the years 2010 and 2099 in the absence of climate change." Although this data is specifically for the United States, Ranson expects similar patterns in every country. Structural functionalists use data on the correlation between crime and climate — like Ranson's— to conclude that one impact of climate change is, and will continue to be, an increase in crime rates. They predict that with an increase in crime, there will be public outrage and punishment.

Another institution that structural functionalism examines is the media. Structural functionalism says that the media mirrors the concerns of the audience. This means that, as the effects of climate change worsen and people's concerns grow, there will be more media coverage. The trend of increasing concern is reflected in a recent Pew Research Center report by Carroll Doherty, titled As Economic Concerns Recede, Environmental Protection Rises on Public's Policy Agenda. Doherty discovered that Americans' policy priorities have changed in recent years, now the emphasis on environmental protection is almost equal to that of economic and job concerns. Doherty writes that "for the first time in Pew Research Center surveys dating back nearly two decades, nearly as many Americans say protecting the environment should be a top policy priority (64%) as say this about strengthening the economy (67%)." According to Dr. Micheal Svobuda, the growing concern about the environment has influenced its increased coverage in the media. This data proves that the structural functionalist prediction that people's concerns are mirrored in media coverage applies to climate change coverage in America.