DOI: 10.1002/bewi.201701848 Dealing with Climate Change: A Conversation with Paul N. Edwards and Oliver Geden Isabell Schrickel, Christoph Engemann Over the course of March 2017 we posed a number of questions on the current develop- ments of climate research and politics to two of the most prominent authors in the field: Paul N. Edwards is a historian of science and technology who has worked at the intersec- tion of politics, computers and knowledge infrastructures. In his recent book, A Vast Ma- chine (2010), he has described the emergence of the global knowledge infrastructures of climate science in the historical context. He is actively involved in the debates on the An- thropocene – as an educator as well as a writer. Oliver Geden has a background in an- thropology and is head of the European Union research division of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (Stiftung für Wissenschaft und Politik, SWP), one of Europe’s largest foreign policy think tanks. Frequently called the ‘enfant terrible’ of German climate policy, Geden has developed a reputation for pointing out often over- looked strategic framings within climate science and policy discourses, and raises concern about their possible dynamics. The conversation took place via e-mails and a shared online document and was concluded on March 28, 2017. We made minor edits for clari- ty and readability, which were authorized by both authors. Isabell Schrickel & Christoph Engemann : In the past years we’ve seen on all levels a tre- mendous rise of awareness for anthropogenic environmental change, its economic costs, political impacts and the threatening extreme events it may cause. The adoption of the Paris Agreement (PA) in 2015 indicates that the broad consensus on climate change also entered the macro-level political sphere. But we have also seen the ascendency of right- wing and science skeptic movements, for now culminating in the election and inaugura- tion of the 45th US president. How would you draw a relationship between these events? Oliver Geden : It all depends on the way the Trump administration will deal with the PA. Will they simply not adhere to the national emissions reduction pledge made under the Obama administration? Or will they formally withdraw from the Agreement maybe even from the overarching United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), since that would be the faster route to quit the PA? With formal US withdrawal from the PA international climate policy would fall into deep crisis, and this would be hard to deny even for those countries willing to go on. We would certainly hear claims like “the global transformation is unstoppable” more often – but of course it is stoppable, it has not even really begun (with the exception of the elec- I. Schrickel, M.A., Leuphana Universität, CCP | Center for Global Sustainability and Cultural Transformation (CGSC), Scharnhorststr. 1, D-21335 Lüneburg, E-Mail: schrickel@leuphana.de C. Engemann, Dr., Fellow, Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS), Universitätsstr. 104, D-44799 Bochum, E-Mail: christophengemann@gmail.com  2017 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim 175 Ber. Wissenschaftsgesch. 40 (2017) 175 – 185 www.bwg.wiley-vch.de