30-ing

Communication, Controversies and Uncertainty Facing the

Scientific Consensus on Climate Change

José Luis Piñuel Raigada / Gemma Teso Alonso / James Painter / Anabela Carvalho / Mercedes Pardo Buendía / Asunción Lera St.

Edited by

José-Luis Piñuel-Raigada

Juan-Carlos Águila-Coghlan

Gemma Teso-Alonso

Miguel Vicente-Marino

Juan-Antonio Gaitán-Moya

Cuadernos Artesanos de Latina / 30

Cuadernos Artesanos de Latina - Comité Científico Presidencia: José Luis Piñuel Raigada (UCM) Secretaría: Concha Mateos (URJC) - Bernardo Díaz Nosty (Universidad de Málaga, UMA)

- Carlos Elías (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, UC3M)

- Javier Marzal (Universidad Jaume I, UJI)

- Juan José Igartua (Universidad de Salamanca, USAL)

- Julio Montero (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, UCM)

- Maria Luisa Humanes (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, URJC)

- Miguel Vicente (Universidad de Valladolid, UVA)

- Miquel Rodrigo Alsina (Universidad Pompeu Fabra, UPF)

- Núria Almiron (Universidad Pompeu Fabra, UPF)

- Ramón Reig (Universidad de Sevilla, US)

- Ramón Zallo (Universidad del País Vasco, UPV-EHU)

- Victoria Tur (Universidad de Alicante, UA)

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* La responsabilidad de cada texto es de su autor o autora.

Communication, Controversies and Uncertainty Facing the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change

José Luis Piñuel Raigada / Gemma Teso Alonso / James Painter / Anabela Carvalho / Mercedes Pardo Buendía / Asunción Lera St.

Edited by

Juan-Carlos Águila-Coghlan

Gemma Teso-Alonso

Miguel Vicente-Marino

Juan-Antonio Gaitán-Moya

Cuadernos Artesanos de Latina / 30

30º - Communication, Controversies and Uncertainty Facing the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change José Luis Piñuel Raigada et al.

Precio social: 6,65 € / Precio librería: 9.50 €

Editores: Concha Mateos Martín y Alberto Ardèvol Abreu Diseño: Juan Manuel Álvarez Ilustración de portada: Fragmento del cuadro “Mujer con jarrón”, de Murrieta Minauro, 2004 (México)

Imprime y distribuye: F. Drago. Andocopias S. L. c/ La Hornera, 41. La Laguna. Tenerife. Teléfono: 922 250 554 | fotocopiasdrago@telefonica.net

Edita: Sociedad Latina de Comunicación Social – edición no venal - La Laguna (Tenerife), 2012 – Creative Commons

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ISBN – 13: 978-84-15698-01-2

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D.L.: TF-823-2012

ÍNDEX

Prologue: José-Luis Piñuel-Raigada ………………………. 143

1. Reference topics addressed by Spanish news television programmes in their coverage of the climate change summits in Cancun and Durban José-Luis Piñuel-Raigada Gemma Teso-Alonso ………… 147 2 . Communicating Uncertainties: climate skeptics in the international media James Painter ……………………………………………….. 187 3. Climate change, the media and the knowledge-inaction paradox Anabela Carvalho ……………………………………… …. 219 4. Beyond Climate: Climate Change as Socio-Natural Risk Mercedes Pardo-Buendía ………………………………….. 247 5. Climatechange, uncertainty and human security Asuncion Lera-St.Clair …………………………………..… 259

Prologue

HIS BILINGUAL BOOK, in Spanish and English, presents a re-written version of the papers delivered in the panel entitled

“Communication, Controversies and Uncertainty Facing the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change” of the thematic section Communication Research Theories and Methods of the 3rd International Congress of the Spanish Association of Communication Researchers (AE-IC, according to its initials in Spanish), entitled Communication and Risk, which was held in Tarragona from 18 to 20 January, 2012.

The organization and conduction of the panel (invitations, funding and video recording by students from Tarragona‟s Institut Pere Martell) were possible thanks to the help provided by the MDCS research group (Mediación Dialectica de la Comunicación Social - Dialectical Mediation of Social Communication) of the Complutense University of Madrid. The MDCS group is responsible for the R&D project entitled “The media’s hegemonic discourse on climate change (Risk, Uncertainty and Conflict) and an experimental test with alternative discourses among young people” (reference number CSO2010-16936COMU).The edition of this collection was possible thanks to the collaboration between the MDSC research group and the Laboratory of Information Technologies and

Social Communication Analyses(Latina, according to its initials in Spanish) of the University of La Laguna. From the start, Latinaexpressed its desire to provide the scientific community with a bilingual edition of the texts presented in the aforementioned panel, through its book-like collections of academic papers entitled Cuadernos Artesanos de Latina.

The purpose of the panel “Communication, Controversies and Uncertainty Facing the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change” was the presentation, analysis and discussion of the technical, social, and cultural aspects of climate change that have received media attention and become part of the current public agenda. Theorganization of this panel was motivated by the UN‟s annual world summits on climate change and the reports of the UN‟s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which seeks to achieve scientific consensus on this subject matter and to reduce the disputes that are often encouraged by the media when reporting socio-economic and environmental emergencies related to global warming caused by greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions, which result from the uncontrolled energy consumption of our current production system. The aforementioned panel brought together renowned scientists in the field of climate change and encouraged a high-level debate about the implications and consequences of this phenomenon, but above all about the discoursesused by the media when reporting on the political, economic and social actions and projects that are undertaken to face this problem.

This volume presents the papers delivered in the panel,in a reviewed and rewritten version made by their authors. The volume also includes an introduction by José-Luis Piñuel and Gemma Teso, who provide a summary of the empirical data obtained from the thematic analysis of the coverage of the Cancun and Durban summits by the Spanish television news programmes, and a general reflection on this process, which is the object of analysis of the authors participating in the panel.

The author of the first text is JAMES PAINTER, head of the BBC for Latin America since 1992 and head of the BBC headquarters in Miami. He is currently part of the Reuters Institute for the Study of

Journalism of the University of Oxford. His area of research is media communications on climate change and the impact of global warming in the development of countries. He is the author of several books on climate change. His last two books are Summoned by Science (2010), which analyses in depth the media coverage of the Copenhagen climate change summit, and Poles Apart - The international reporting of climate scepticism, published in November 2011.

The second text was written by ANABELA CARVALHO (PhD by University College London). She is a professor at the Department of Communication Sciences of the University of Minho, Portugal, and a member of the Communication and Society Research Center. Her research focuses on environmental issues and the dissemination of science with a particular emphasis on climate change. She is the editor of Comunicación sobre el Cambio Climático: discursos, mediaciones y percepciones(Communication on climate change: discourses, mediations and perceptions),published in 2009.Sheis the former President and currentVice President of the “Communication, science and environment” sectionof the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA). She is also the associate editor of Comunicación Ambiental: un diario de la Naturaleza y la Cultura (Environmental Communication: a journal of Nature and Culture) (2011).

Sociologist MERCEDES PARDO BUENDÍA is the author of the third text. She coordinates the research programme for the creation of the Climate Change Research Institute, dependent of the Spanish Ministry of the Environment and Rural and Marine Affairs. She is also the President of the Spanish Research Committee on Global Change (CEICAG, according to its initials in Spanish). She currently teaches Sociology of climate change at the Carlos III University of Madrid.

The author of the fourth and last text is ASUNCIÓN LERA ST. CLAIR, a philosopher and sociologist. She is research director atthe Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research - Oslo (CICERO); associate researcher at the Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI); and sociology professor at the University of Bergen, Norway (on leave). She was the scientific director of the Comparative Research ProgrammeonPoverty (CROP), which is part of the International Social Sciences Council (ISSC). She is also the President

of the International Development Ethics Association (IDEA), as well as a member of other international and national organizations and editorial boards. Moreover, she has been one of the lead authors of the IPCC‟s Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), Working Group II:Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Her work is inter- and multidisciplinary, focused on ethical issues and the problems of knowledge creation in relation to poverty, climate change and development. Recently, she has been published bysuch journals asGlobal Governance, Global Social Policy, Globalizations, and Global Ethics. Her most recent publications include: Global Poverty, Ethics, and Human Rights: The Role of Multilateral Institutions (in co-authorship with Desmond McNeill);Development Ethics: A Reader(co-edited by Des Gasper), London: Ashgate (2010);and Climate Change, Ethics and Human Security(co-edited by Karen O'Brien and Berit Kristoffersen), Cambridge: University Press (2010), which contains the texts included in thiscollection: “Climate Change and Poverty: The Responsibility to Protect”; “The Framing of Climate Change: Why it Matters”; and “Towards a New Type of Science for Climate Change”.

To end this prologue, I just want to highlight that the aim of this bilingual collection of texts is to provide valid criteria to contextualize the discourses accompanying the news coverage of events related to climate change.

Madrid, June 2012

Reference topics addressed by Spanish news television programmes in their

coverage of the climate change summits in Cancun and Durban

José-Luis Piñuel-Raigada Gemma Teso-Alonso

Background

N 11 DECEMBER, 1997, the so-called "Kyoto Protocol" was signed in Kyoto, Japan. This protocol established the

commitments that signatory countries should take in order to control the emission of CO2and other greenhouse gases, which are supposedly responsible for the temperature increase in the planet. The protocol was signed by 84 countries, but other countries, including the United States, China and even Japan, declined to do so until the commitments and rules governing the agreement were clearer. After the celebration of this agreement, conventions and summits have been held annually to discuss issues related to climate change and to try to reach binding commitments among UN

memberstates to advance in the adoption of measures to mitigate the dangers caused by the emission and accumulation of harmful gases in the atmosphere. Since the production and accumulation of gases is an eminently technical and scientific problem, the perception that ordinary people have of this problem is very important. In this regard, people‟s main source of information is news broadcasts, especially television programmes, which haveproven to have the greatest impact in shaping public opinion.

Methods

To learn more about the role of television and its treatment of climate change, we monitored the Spanish television newsprogrammes covering the climate change summits in Cancun and Durban. The selected news items were recorded and subjected to content analysis based on a purpose-created protocol, which included a typology to classify news items into 10 related themes/topics:environmental conditions; access to or use of natural resources; maintenance of biodiversity; natural disasters; natural disasters resulting from human intervention; disasters resulting from social movements and confrontations; uncertainties and fears that hinder future plans to face anticipated natural changes; projects and actions aimed at tackling environmental risks; projects and actions aimed at tackling social conflicts and confrontations; and projects and actions on education environmental.

Results

The analysis showed that more than 60% of the news items on the Cancun Summit, and more than one third of the news items on the Durban Summit focused on projects and actions aimed at tackling environmental risks, which was atopic considered in the proposed classification. Other important topics on which television news programmes put emphasis when reporting on the Cancun Summit were those related “the uncertainties and fears that hinder future plans to face anticipated natural changes” and “projects and actions on environmental education”(e.g. education for responsible consumption, energy savings and waste treatment). However, during the Durban Summit, the second and the third most frequently

addressed themes were those related to “environmental conditions” and “natural disasters caused by human interventions”.

Topics included in the media’s agenda

Some background needs to be given on thecurrent agenda setting. Firstly, it is necessary to mention the so-called public media agenda. The concept of “agenda setting” (McCombs and Shaw, 1972) refers to a strategy of the media that aims to establish the salience and public hierarchy of the important social issues they present, through their circulation, dissemination and public discussion. Thus, as Noelle-Neumann (1974) points out, the agenda setting is based on individuals‟ perception of the state of public opinion: the crucial factor is the importance that individuals believe other people attribute to a certain issue.

The agenda-setting theory has synthesized a large number of the theoretical efforts made to describe the influence or effects of the media on the audiences. Going beyond the theories thatargue that the eventual influence of the media depends on the psychosocial conditions or dispositions of the public at the time of consumption (for example, the uses and gratifications theory of Katz, Blumler and Gurevitch, 1973), theagenda setting theory foregrounds the media‟s capacity toshape the attitudesthat have not been fully constituted as such in individuals. According to David H. Weaver (1981), the agenda-setting theory will be confirmedmainly in the case of topics on which individuals do not have alternative information to contrast their importance.

According to Luhmann (1998), the media‟s agenda-setting process is based on selection criteria, or what he has called “attention rules”. The existence of these rules prior to the agenda settingsuffice for this author to affirm that individuals, despite their possible preferences, can only choose between the thematic selections that have been previously established by the mass media. Luhmann proposes a new conception of the public opinion as a thematic structure that aims to reduce complexity in a “structurally complex” society like ours. Moreover, the agenda setting only works insofar asthe media presents the same themes (accumulation); these themes

convergence in different media (consonance); and their “omnipresence” generates a climate of opinion (see Neumann, 1980). Thus, the themes that are mentioned the most, have the largest audiences, and are given the most time and space in the media (e.g. in television or the press), offer the possibility of a more systematic expository diet (cultivation) and have the biggest possibility of creating a limited view of the world (see Gerbner, 1976): by sharing images, expectations, definitions, interpretations and values.

There is currently a broad consensus on the division that exists in the public opinion about the certainty/uncertainty of the global risks of climate change. As Carvalho, A. (2009) points out, in her analysis of the frameworks established by a large number of American newspapers and news agencies about the science of climate change, between March 2003 and February 2004 (Antilla,2005), it is clear that there is a contrast between the growing consensus in the scientific community and the image of controversy or uncertainty generated by the media due to the great attention paid to a few climate change “sceptics”. According to Carvalho:

"The media are key elements in the mediation of the “relations of definition” (Beck, 1992) between the scientific, public and political spheres. The notion of science as an “ivory tower”, free from the public exhibition and debate, is increasingly becoming more inadequate. Since our “risk society” (Beck, 1992) generates new problems that affect us all but require a scientific interpretation, scientists are required to get "out on the streets" and provide the basis for political decisions. Politicians often expect scientists to provide answers to the problems discussed in the media and other public venues, and make a variety of public uses of science to legitimise their action or inaction. Scientific knowledge is also used by a large number of social actors, including corporations and activists, to justify specific programmes. As new links between citizens, scientists, politicians and media professionals are established; the anchor of science and politics has become increasingly more public and science has been exposed to criticism, refutation, and deconstruction.”

The situation described by Carvalho is what justifiesour object of study: “Reference topics addressed by Spanish news television programmes in their coverage of the climate change summits in Cancun and Durban”, which is part of the R&D project “The media‟s hegemonic discourse onclimate change (Risk, Uncertainty and Conflict) and an experimental test with alternative discourses among young people” (reference number: CSO2010-19636COMU), directed by José-Luis Piñuel.

Background information on climate change summits

It was more than 20 years ago that the international scientific community reached a general consensus on the existence of climate change and its anthropogenic origin, caused by high concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. In November, 1990, 700 scientists from diverse disciplines gathered at the first World Climate Conference, held in Geneva, where they reviewed the first report issued by the IPCC. After this review, they made a scientific statement that made clear the scientific consensus on the estimates related to the temperature increase of the planet in the 21st century. This statement also urgednations to act immediately to control the risk of climate change.

In June 1992, the Earth Summit was held in Rio de Janeiro. For the first time, politician representing 160 countries signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNECCC), in which they promised to set a political agenda to combat global warming. Article 2 of the UNECCC demanded the stabilisation of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system. In article 4, the signatories of the document agreed to hold subsequent conferences and the Climate Summit in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan. Summits of the nations were later held in Buenos Aires, Nairobi, Bali, Copenhagen and Cancun and Durban. These summits sponsored by UNECCC had a priority objective that the noted French sociologist Edgar Morin called an earthlyeco-policy. “…This policy must establish the rules to preserve biodiversity and forests, to reduce agriculture and industrialized farms that contaminate soil,

water and food, to protect subsistence crops and propose responses to global warming”1.

And in this sense, the Copenhagen Summit held from 7 to 18 December, 2009, had the ambitious goal of establishing a global agreement to reduce greenhouse gases emissions (especially the CO2), that would replace the Kyoto Protocol from 2013 onwards. With 119 heads of state, 193 countries and 5,000 accredited journalists from around the world, the expectations for this summit were enormous. During the summit, and given the complexity of the negotiations in the midst of a global economic crisis that conditioned the economic commitments of the nations to invest in the necessary actions to mitigate climate change, the negotiations were divided between the developed and developing countries.

The protagonist role taken by China and the US during the agreement, despite the participation of dozens of countries, and the existence of private meetings organised by the US without taking the UN into consideration provoked the resentment of many nations.Obama‟s pledge to reduce GHG by 17% in comparison to 2005 (only 4% less than in 1990, which is the reference year laid down in the Kyoto Protocol) was considered insufficient by the EU, which pledged to reduce GHGemissions by 20%,expandable to 30%, in comparison to 1990. For its part, China pledged to reduce GHGemissions per unit of GDP by up to 45% by 2020 compared with that of2005, making clear that its commitment was voluntary.

During the last days of negotiations, many points remained unclear. As the days passed, negotiators continued discussing procedures, forms and technicalities but did not provide specific figures on emissions cuts, the temperaturesthat wereconsidered acceptable for the year 2100, or the cost of climate change in poor countries. There was neither progress on the specific formulas to finance these measures. However, the US Secretary of State affirmed that if China agreed to let the UN audit its emissions, theUS would

1 Edgar Morin 2011. La vía para el futuro de la Humanidad. Espasa libros, S.L.U., p. 82.

cooperate to the long term fund for poor countries with 70 billion euros per year from 2020, which helped advancing in the negotiations.

Reference topics in the Spanish TV’s coverage of the Cancun and Durban Summits

The analysis protocol applied to thenews items broadcast by Spanish television news programmes about the Cancun and Durban summits (170 and 140, respectively) considered two types of procedures: 1) the transcription and encoding of texts, on- and off-camera commentary and keywordsincluded in each news item,and 2) the classification of the references used in each news item. These proceduresprovided the results and conclusions offered in this article.

Contextualisation of the thematic analysis

The protocol given to analysts to examine each of the selected news items2included five stages and thus five chapters of variables:

Analysis of identification features (with variables for registration number, names of the network and news programme, type according to formal direction and production features, broadcasting date, duration, dimensions, etc.)

Analysis of off-camera commentary or voice-over. Focused on identifying the features of the off-camera speakers and discourses.

Analysis of on-camera discourses, delivered either in short participationsor interviews made by the presenter, reporter or special correspondent. As a single news item (or interview) can have several on-camera speakers, analysts were required to examine each of them separately, but only examining a maximum of three on-camera participations per speaker.

2 The protocol designed for the content analysis of the television news programmes is described in details by Teso Alonso, Gemma and Águila Coghlan, J.C. (2011).

Analysis of the discourse of the images. Focused on identifying the most relevant discursive features of thevideo images that accompany the off-camera commentary broadcast live and the pre-recorded news item.

Analysis of the narrative conclusion of the news item. This is the final part in the Excel data sheet.

The procedure followed in each of these previous stages wasvery similar and can be summarized as follows:

Choose the topic/theme that canbest represent the content of the discourse.

Establish the mode in which the discourse is delivered. The categories vary depending on whether the discourse is delivered off-camera, on-camera, through images, or through the narrative ending.

Determine the category of the speaker, which varies according to the levels of the enunciation that are considered below.

Establish all the points made by the discourse, first off-camera,secondly on-camera, if any, and then through pictures and the narrative ending.

Identify the represented subject matter in each form of discourse.

Identify the actors referred to in the discourse. The categories result from the combination of two variables: the relation of the actor with climate change risk and the social role attributed to theactor.

Typology to classify the theme of the discourse

There were 10 categories to classify the predominant theme of the discourse of the news items, and their perception by the audience:

1. Environmental conditions (e.g. temperature, air quality, light, etc.).

2. Access to or use of natural resources (e.g. water, food, energy, etc.).

3. Maintenance of biodiversity (e.g. ecological balance of the reproduction of species, pandemics and morbidity, etc.).

4. Natural disasters (e.g. earthquakes, floods, droughts, hurricanes, etc.).

5. Natural disasters resulting from human interventions on the territory (e.g. over-exploitation of natural resources, pollution, attacks on ecosystems, deforestation, desertification, etc.).

6. Disasters resulting from social movements and confrontations (e.g. migrations, wars, devastation, etc.).

7. Uncertainties and fears that hinder future plans to face anticipated natural changes (e.g. climatic and environmental disputes).

8. Projects and actions -official or spontaneous- aimed at tackling environmental risks (e.g. renewable energy, organic farming, energy savings, waste recycling, GHG emissions, etc.).

9. Projects and actions aimed at tackling risks of social conflicts and confrontations (e.g. pacifist movements, actions of solidarity, etc.).

10. Projects and actions on environmental education (e.g. education in responsible consumption, energy saving, waste treatment, etc.).

Discourse delivery mode

The categories to classify the discourse delivery mode vary depending on whether the discourseis delivered through off-camera voice, on-camera speaker, images, or narrative ending. The positionsof the discourse via voice-over in relation to the content will be classified intochallenging, confirmatory, orunclear. The positions of the on-cameraspeakers in relation to the theme will be classified intochallenging, confirmatory or neutral. The position of the images in relation to the voice-over discourse will also be classified intoconfirmatory, contradictory, or unclear. Images referring to the threats of climate change will be further classified into the following

categories: the derivative “fears, risks or dangers”, the "conflicts experienced when undertaking actions to tackle climate change", and“other alternatives”.Finally, the alternatives of the narrative endings will be classified into “offering a solution”, “declaring an impasse” or “not even presenting problems”. If the narrative ending offers solutions, they will be further classified depending on whether they refer to interactions in the social system, communicative interactions, or interactions with the environment. On the other hand, if an impasse is declared, it will be classified according to the system hold responsible for it: the social system, the communications systems, or the unsustainabilityof the environment itself.

Classification of speakers according to enunciation levels

Before describing this part of the protocol, it is worth remembering the words of González-Requena, J. (1988):

"All discourses talk about something -their hypothetical referent-, but they can also be conceived as the words of someone -someone who stands up and talks. …/… The televisualdiscourse, given its great complexity, should be understood as a macro discourse constituted by multiple lower-grade discourses with very varied characteristics”.

This concept of macro discourse leads us to set different levels of enunciation.

The first level includes the speakers that address us directly, i.e. the people delivering the message or information more or less directly, and can in turn mention or refer to other subjects/agents/actors and attribute or not a discourse to them. Our protocol has considered the following possible types of speakers, whichin the case of images-based discourses would be hypostatized by the type of climate change threats that the images transmit:

Table 1. First level of enunciation

Table 2. Second level of enunciation

At the second level are those actors referred to from the first level. These actors are classified according to the role they play in the news story. In order to identify the different types of actors referred to in the first level discourse, we identified a list of categories based on a combination of two variables: 1) their relation to climate change risk (there are six options: victim, accused, witness, expert, denier, or claimant), and 2) their relation to their social role (there are eight options: journalist, politician, activist, entrepreneur, scientist, citizen,

government or climate change expert). The following table presents the possible types of actors.

Since the boxes have been numbered based on a combination of social roles and narrative functions in relation to the theme of the discourse‟s agenda, these codes may result in the following categories of actors.

Table 3. Categories of actors referred to in the first-level of enunciation

The third level includes those actors whom the main speaker allows to talk in the news story, either through a live interview, ora pre-recorded on-camera participation inserted within the news item. These actors are also classified according to the previous categories but with their identity added in each case.

Finally, the fourth level includes the actors referred to from the third level, i.e. those actors mentioned by the people interviewed by

journalists. They are also classified according to the previous categories and their identity, when this is disclosed in the discourse.

Theme of the discourse delivered by the actors of the news story

After the identification of the theme of reference and the position taken towards it, both by the first and third levels of the enunciation, we focused on the discourses spoken on- and off-camera.

Table 4. Outline for the analysis of enunciation

In the case of the uncertainties of climate change, the speaker may refer to “something that has been said”, “something that has been

done” or “something that is happening” in relation to this theme. In this regard, the preparation of this section of the protocol is based on the knowledge obtained by the MDCS research group from its previous R&D research project entitled “Study of the hegemonic discourse about truth and communication in the media‟s self-referential information, based on the analysis of the Spanish press” (Piñuel-Raigada J.L. and Gaitán-Moya J.A. 2010). Table 4 shows the general schema to analyse on- and off-camera discourses.

Theme of the images playing a role in the discourse

The analysis of the images used in the news items firstly focuses on identifying their relation to the ten reference topics established in the protocol. The analysis then focuses on identifying the relationship between the content of the images and the discourses delivered in voice-over. It is common to find a complementarity or confirmation, but there are contradictions in significant cases. The question posed by the protocol to the analyst examining the images is as follows: “On the thematic category (1 to 10) the segment of images shows: ...”

The narrative conclusion of the audiovisual discourse

The final step of the content analysis was to identify the proposals made by the different actors of the discourse as possible solutions to the global conflict caused by the risk of climate change. For each unit of analysis, there are three possible outcome variables:

A solution is proposed

Impasse (no solution)

No problem or conflict is posed

When an impasse is declared, it is necessary to identify the fundamental frameworks that are hold responsible for the absence of solutions:

The Social system

The communication systems

The unsustainability of the environment itself

When a solution is proposed, it is necessary to summarise it in one clear sentence that allow us to identify the fundamental frameworks in which it can be based on:

Interactions in the Social system

Communicative interactions

Interactions with the environment The following table shows the outline for the analysis of the discourse of the images.

Table 5. Outline for the analysis of the discourse of the images

The agenda setting of the risk of climate changein the television news coverage of the Cancun and Durban summits

Before presenting the data obtained from the analysis of the thematic selection made in the television news coverage of the Cancun summit, it is necessary to briefly discuss the criteria used to develop the aforementioned 10 thematic categories to classify the news references about climate change.

Spheres of uncertainty and responses to disruptionsinthe expected course of events

The actions that can be planned by individuals are integrated in patterns of behaviour whose planned execution, routine or not, has spatio-temporal limits whose transgression can cause unexpected or extraordinary events. The “shells of life” (Moles, A. Psicología del espacio, Aguilera, Madrid, 1972), or the spheres of lived environment, where individuals can best avoid disruptionsto the expected course of events, are those areas whereindividuals can exercise their cognitive and effective dominion more easily, with a generalised lower effort, and imposing a more secure spatio-temporal order. If this order is not maintained, individuals will be “at the mercy of the course of events”, i.e. under the risk that the expected events get interrupted, do not occur, or get postponed. For this reason the order that people try to impose cognitively and effectively over thespatio-temporal environments constitutes a resistance to the unexpected change, i.e. an imposition of routines.

The imposition of routines and the resistance to change, by maintaining surveillance of the environments where the activity itself should develop,become weak when the cognitive and effective dominionof the spatio-temporal environment decreases, because thesize of the environments increases, the duration (or delay) of the planned activities becomes longer, and more people intervene in the course of events. In such circumstances individuals are forced to avoid the disruption of the expected course of eventsby trying to prevent the situations they can control the least. It is obvious that sometimes individuals cannot achieve this and it is the dominion of social life, which is continuously changing, what providesthe social resources to manage the spatio-temporal environments, where customs consolidate routines and social precautionsagainst the disruption of the expected course of events (Piñuel, J.L. 2008).

The disruption of the expected course of eventsis perceived differently depending on the margins of their precautions. If the margins are extreme, the perception of threats or risks associated with the disruption of the expected course of events disappears. If the precaution margin of individuals isintermediate, the disruptions of the

expected course of eventsare perceived as threats or risks. And this is the source of uncertainties for the meta-representations of the discourses, current or not, that circulatein individuals‟ interpersonal and social networks. However, individuals‟precaution margins always depend on thedifferent degrees of intensity with which individuals experience their personal involvement in the course of events and on the different intervals or delays of reflexivity between the stimuli and the reactions at stake.

In the following figure, “me”, “here” and “now” are in the point of origin in relation to thedisruptions in the expected course of eventsthat produce different reactions in individuals. The urgency of these reactions is different depending on the intensity with which they are triggered and the complexity with which they are undertaken. The more immediate the urgency of the reaction is, the lower the complexity is, and conversely, the higher the complexity in the construction of the response is, the least urgent the reaction appears to be. Otherwise, if the highest degree of complexity would correspond to the utmost urgency we would be doomed to be incapable to react to events.

Figure 1: Spheres of uncertainty and responses to disruptions in the expected course of events

Figure 1 establishes "urgency" and "complexity" in an inverse relation, by resorting to notions of “involvement” and “reflexivity”.

When the "urgency" in the reaction does not come from a cognitive capital that remains conscious, but from an unconscious organic reaction, we do not talk about “threat” but “fear”, which is an emotional reaction experienced only by living beings, such as mammals, whose brain development (in the limbic system) has instinctive behaviour settings (called fixed-action patterns, which are common to the species), which in contrast to other living beings with inherited fixed-action patterns already involve emotions.

Emotions serve precisely to improve organic reactions of urgency through discharges of neurotransmitter substances such as endorphins. Beyond the perceived "threats", the cognitive capital needed by individuals to build responses, according to the diagram in figure 1, acquires greater complexity from the mediations located between the reaction and the response of individuals, between the organism and the social construction ofbehaviour.

Thus, a "danger" is perceived when the cognitive capital uses "generic discourses" that categorise the traits associated to situations that have not been sufficiently anticipated(for example, the cultural reactions to weather emergencies, such as droughts). Historically, there have been discourses that have been imposedin a hegemonic manner, sometimes as a result of dominant ideologies and sometimes as a result of cultural habits that are adopted across human groups, etc.

When a discourse becomes hegemonic, the predictions ofdisruptions to the expected course of events serve to confirm the "vulnerability" that should be attended in order to avoid "risks", which are taken seriously only if the hegemonic discourse becomes an exemplary or "canonical discourse", to which society should adhere through the adoption of specific prediction or coping protocols.

For example, Al Gore‟s An Inconvenient Truth was a generic audiovisual discourse that achieved social hegemony when it won an Oscar and also achieved scientific canonicity in the 27th

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) session held in 2007 in Valencia. In all these intervals that go from lower to higher complexity, there is a growing mediation of previous communication

processes, of recursive social interactions that impose greater periods between involvement and reflexivity and cause greaterresponse delays.

As a result, the “involvement of other people”, which is indispensable to reach the perception and anticipation of "risks", increases significantly, as reflected in figure 1. The involvement, therefore, decreases as the reflexivity of the mediations and the necessary involvement of other people, groups, institutions and social formations increases. And conversely, the reflexivity of the mediations results minor as the urgency of the involvement is greater. Finally, we must mention that these new "spheres of uncertainty" become "spheres of survival" that, in our social dominion of life existence,resemble the layers of an onion: one can feel "fear" without perceiving a "threat", "danger", "vulnerability" or "risk"; but one cannot reflect on "risks" whose origins do not contain hetero-references to "vulnerability", self-references to "danger", perceptions of "threats", and emotional reactions of "fear".

Figure 2. Shells of learning routines: overcomingdependencies and becoming autonomous

It is obvious that the more that the news media present references "danger" and "threats" and provoke "fear" in the audience sectors that are most vulnerable to the complexity of their discourses (as it is the case of children), the more they intervene in the imposition of hegemonic discourses (by building the sense of "vulnerability") and canonical discourses (by contributing to the establishment of "risks" coping protocols).An illustrative example in this regard is the question asked by a child to his father after seeing a report about "climate change": "Dad, is it true that we are going to be burned by the heat?"

The available cognitive capital is not disconnected from its historical moment. This cognitive capital is provided by the performance mechanisms learned from the interaction with other subjects, according to various routines developed in a historically changing environment through a slow and complex evolution of the habitat, from life in nature to the current urbanization; and a slow and complex evolution of intervals that the measuring of time hasmade possible, from the recursion of the day and the seasons to the current atomic clocks. Moreover,in a same moment in time different cultures react differentlyinsimilar activities, whatever their type. The historic adoption of these routines changes throughout the life of individuals, who first learn routines associated with bodily functions (toilet training, biological rhythms of diet, activity and rest, posture and motor skills, etc.), then with places, times and scenariosthat can be present in the interaction schemes that children learn to anticipate when they recognise an actor(or vice versa, actors that can be present in the mind of children when they recognise an interaction scheme linked to a place, a time or a scene, and so on up until acquiringroutine performance skills linked to the construction of identity and difference), and finally routines associated to the performance of social roles (se Piñuel J. L. and Lozano A. Carlos. Ensayo general sobre la comunicación, Chapter 3, Paidós, Barcelona, 2006).

Therefore, there could also be a system of “learning spheres”that starts in the limits of corporeality and the immediacy of reflex responses up until reaching, in successive concentric layers, the spheres referring to the community environments and the

performance of action roles that are prescribed to be interpreted in institutional environments. Figure 2 represents the succession of these spheres by taking as the point of origin the initial and scarce genetic capital of responses to stimuli from the environment and by contemplating the acquisition of routines, from the most rigidand limited ones (linked to organic answers) to the most variable and flexible ones (linked to competition and social legitimation).

This figure depicts the relationship that can be established between the rigidity and variability of the routines that integrate the capital available to individuals to locate themselves in the aforementioned spatio-temporal spheres. If these routines fail when individuals are about to execute them, this provokes perceptions and assessments of the events that destabilise their behaviour.

In these failures, the margin of anticipation and the recovery of stability depend on the available capital. If this capital is just genetic (e.g. reflex arcs) the routines and the recovery of stability are very rigid and limited (e.g. learning by conditioning). As the routines become more flexible and varied they necessarily require the incorporation of the following skills to the genetic capital:

Schemes of interaction (e.g., reinforcement demands and imitations in children‟s gestures);

Expressive practices linked to community environments (e.g., jargon associated with games or relations with peers in adolescence);

Social practices based on the performance of roles (e.g., forms of treatment linked to hierarchies, as in the army); and, finally,

Protocols of social legitimation in institutional practices. For example, the formalities prescribed for the legitimate execution of ceremonies (like the “commitment of fidelity” in weddingscelebrated by many religions), which acquire a ritual validity that disappears if the celebration of the ceremony fails due to errors of protocol.

It is known that if the routines are based onphysical responses, theirfailure is successfully resolvedas individualscontrol their

responses by distancing them from stimuli andusing (positive or negative) reinforcements, and provided individuals consolidate the innovation that the conditioninginvolves.

This occurs in the early childhood (first six months of life) when individuals show an organicdependency in their learning. When the baby begins to develop interaction schemes, it progresses in its organic autonomy but shows a new dependence on the environmentswhere its interaction takes place: home, kindergarten, etc. With the slow learning of oral expression (for example, speaking turns) and later of written expression (for example, self-recognition when signing a text) individuals acquire the ability to become “subjects of enunciation”, and become independent from the actions in progress; for teenagers, the rupture between the discourse and the course of events are related to truth/falsehood (e.g. stating what happens), good/evil (e.g. what should be done in response to what is said) and attractiveness/repulsiveness (e.g. the way of explaining what is done).

Thereafter the social learning of routines to cope with the disruptions of the expected course of eventsoccurs through the mediation of socially available discourses that become hegemonic in some cases and, finally, canonical. The mass media contribute powerfully to this process which is always changing. The social practice of journalism, indispensable for the media, providesthrough its discourses the greatest social capital of knowledge and skills, which are used in the lifelong learning process that individualsundertake in order to be able to cope with the social environment.

We have shown how social learning provides individualswiththe cognitive resources (knowledge) and skills (competencies) that will allow them to engage in the social environment. Social life is structured according to the interactions that have historically been established in the form of unwritten rules (culture) which give place to more or less changing social habits and customs. The social practice of journalism provides social and cultural resources and skills to deal with the social environment and cope with the uncertainty of the disruption of the expected course of events. One of the most common concerns expressed by the most important personalities in

the current public arena provided by the mass media is the uncertainty that has been incorporated into people‟s culture by the media‟s permanent representations of risk. In the context of the information society, the paradigm of our time, citizens are permanently exposed to large volumes of information, particularly provided by the media, which are prone to emphasise situations of insecurity and risk, violent incidents and disasters. This accumulation of media information contributes to the social construction of an essential discourse about uncertainty, which citizens perceive as a fundamental social reality that subsequently generates a culture of insecurity and fear that needs to be analysed.

In this context, our purpose is to establish a relationship between the discourses of the media and the social construction of the uncertainty surrounding the disruptions of the expected course of events.

Today, many of our activities are scheduledbased on the information provided by the media. Based on this informationpeople adjust themselves to anticipated activities (routine or not) when the course of events is as expected; and if the course of event goes as expected, the certainty of knowledge is reaffirmed. On the other hand, uncertainty emerges when the course of events is unexpected or ignored in the media‟s agendas, and if this disrupts the expectations, the situation demands a readjustment of the activity. It is therefore very important to set the agenda, in this case about climate change, by taking into consideration the previous premises.

Televisual discourse and disruptions in the expected course of eventsin relation to climate change

The thematic categories related to climate change that have been used in the analysis of the television coverage of the Cancun and Durban Summits can be justified according to the spatio-temporal spheres of existence and the provision of coping routines shown in table 6.

Table 6. Thematic categories about climate change, according to spatio-temporal spheres of existence and the provision of coping routines

The first column in table 6 shows three initial areas of interaction: the social provisions towards the environment, which is permanently conditioned by the Social System [SS], in the short, medium and long terms; the disruptions of the expected course of events in the inhabited environment or Ecological System [ES], which may occur immediately and naturally or may be derived from human interventions over the territory, or from movements that alter the territory indirectly; and finally, the Preventive Action Agenda that includes projects that would never be possible without a Communication System of [CS] that communicates and prescribes them to the public, and may protect against immediate fears and uncertainties, or may build action plans against environmental risks directly caused by natural events or by conflicting human actions that impact the territory, or may provide environmental education plans likely to ensure, in the long term, the reduction of risks associated to unwanted climate change.

The second column of this table includes the 10 thematic categories created for the analysis and their relation to the initial areas of interaction previously described.

The third and fourth columns include those aspects that correspond to the spheres of existence that were previously described based on the heuristic proposed by Abraham Moles.

This way, the statistical analysis of the televisual coverage of the Cancun and Durban Summits provides new perspectives on the themes of reference presented in the news programmes.

Thematic categories addressedin the Spanish TV news coverage of the Cancun and Durban summits: results

The analysis of the prevalence of the different thematic categories in the coverage of Cancun and Durban summits by Spanish Television news programmes provided many and very significant findings. This section will only discuss the findings about the frequency of appearance and modes of expression of these thematic categories in the discoursesdelivered through voice-over, on-camera speakers and images.

Frequency of appearance of thematic categories in off-camera discourses, according to mode in which their content is addressed

As Diagram1 shows,the most common thematic category in the off-camera discoursesis the number 8,“Projects and actions -official or spontaneous- aimed at tackling environmental risks (e.g. renewable energy, organic farming, energy savings, waste recycling, GHG emissions, etc.)”, with more than 60% of appearances. This was expected given the informative objective of the coverage of the summit. The second most common category, by a great distance, was thenumber 7,“Uncertainties and fears that hinder future plans to face anticipated natural changes (e.g. climatic and environmental disputes)”, with 11% of appearances.

Diagram 1: Frequency of appearance of the thematic categories in off-

camera discourses (in the coverage of the Cancun Summit)

Now, considering the mode in whichthe existence of these issues were addressed, the categories that were presented positively, i.e. confirmed, the most were, in decreasing order, the categories 8 and 7. They were followed by the categories 10 (“Projects and actions on environmental education) and 9 (Projects and actions aimed at tackling risks of social conflicts and confrontations). Meanwhile, the existence of the issue number 3 (Maintenance of biodiversity) wasmainly challenged.

As the previous Diagram shows, in the coverage of the Durban Summit there were no references to the theme number 9 (“Projects and actions aimed at tackling risks of social conflicts and confrontations”). Meanwhile, the theme number 8 was once again the most referenced item. The second most referenced theme was the number 1 (“environmental conditions”), whose existence was mostly confirmed. This was followed, in third place, by the theme number 5: “Natural disasters resulting from human interventions on the territory”.

Diagram 2: Frequency of appearance of the thematic categories in off-

camera discourses (in the coverage of the Durban Summit)

Frequency of appearance of the thematic categories in discourses delivered by on-camera speakers, and classification according to the mode in which their content is addressed

As Diagram 3 shows, half of the analysed news items do not have on-camerastatements about any of the thematic categories,in neither live norpre-recordedform. More than 60% of the news items that did have at least oneon-camera speaker used it to talk refer to the theme number 8 (“Projects and actions -official or spontaneous- aimed at tackling environmental risks”). Meanwhile, only 20% of the news items with on-cameraactorsreferred to theme number 1 ("Environmental conditions”). Both of these themeswere presented from a challenging perspective. However, theme number 10 (“Projects and actions on environmental education”) was always presented from a confirmatory perspective.

Diagram 3: Coverage of the Cancun Summit: Frequency of appearance

of the thematic categories in discourses delivered by on-camera speakers (when there is only one) and classification according to the mode in

which their content is addressed (Total 1)

If we compare Diagram3 and 4 we can see that there are no significant differences in the coverage of the Cancun and Durban summits in terms of the frequency of appearance of the thematic categories in the discourses delivered by on-camera speakers and the mode of addressing these themes. In both cases, the most common themes were “Projects and actions -official or spontaneous- aimed at tackling environmental risks” (number 8) and “Environmental conditions” (number 1). Moreover, the most common perspective used in the coverage of these themes was confrontation (challenging)

The only significant difference in the thematic coverage of both summits is that there was more thematic diversity in the coverage of the Cancun Summit than in the Durban Summit.

Diagram4: Coverage of the Durban Summit: Frequency of appearance of the thematic categories in discourses delivered by on-camera speakers

(when there is only one) and classification according to the mode in which their content is addressed

The thematic categories included in the discourses delivered through images

Beyond the spoken discourse, TV news items are usually accompanied by sequences of images with or without sound or voice-over. Images can serve to illustrate or showthe "conflicts experienced when undertaking actions to tackle climate change", “fears, dangers, risks or disasters”, or alternative actions to such threatening circumstances.

In the television news items covering the Cancun Summit (see Diagram5) the theme illustrated the most by video images was the number 8, "projects and actions aimed at tackling the risk of climate change”. The images illustrating this topic showedboth the “conflicts experienced when undertaking actions to tackle climate change” and,

to a lesser degree, “the fears, dangers, or disasters”.Fears weremore associated with the representation of the theme number 5 (disasters derived from human interventions) than with the representation of theme number 1 (quality of “environmental conditions”).

Diagram 5: Themes represented with video images and what the images

show (Cancun Summit)

As we can see in the following Diagram (6), which shows the themes illustrated with video images, and the content of these images,in the news coverageof the Durban Summit, the theme number 8 (“projects and actions aimed at tacklingthe risks of climate change”)was also the most frequently represented with images. In the representation of this theme the images mostly showed “other alternatives”. Images about

“fears, dangers or disasters”were more predominant in the representation of the themesnumber 1 (quality of the “environmental conditions” of the immediate environment) and number 5 (“disasters derived from human interventions”), which also includes images of the "conflicts experienced when undertaking actions to tackle climate change".

Diagram 6: Themes represented with video images and what the images show (Durban Summit)

5.4. Predominant structure of all the on-camera discoursesabout climate change in TV news

Finally, table 7 shows the number of on-camera discourses included in the TV news coverage ofthe Cancun Summit, the types of on-camera SPEAKERS that make statements (either about what has been said, what has been done, or what is happening), the themes they address (what has been said, what has been done, or what is happening), the categories of actors they refer to, and theform of that chain of references.

Table 7: Content of the discourses used in the coverage of the Cancun Summit

Source: Gaitán-Moya, J.A. and Águila-Coghlan, J.C. (2011)

As table 7 shows, there are three types of discourses: the discourse of the political monologuethat involves the presence of a politician who has a pontificating attitude, is focused on outlining and diagnosing thestate of the problem, in such a way that describes what is being done and what is happening, without blaming the governmentsbut demanding their actions. This simple declarative discourse occupies more than a quarter of the on-camera discourses. The most common discourse is what we might call the controversial discourse, which makes use of two on-camera speakers to express the complexity of the problem that is taking place. Unlike the political monologue that is delivered by a single person, the controversial discourse involves the presence of two or more on-camera speakers which constitutes a display of a dialectical contrast of different positions. The last discourse, of intra-political criticism, combines the presence of politicians making statements, and activists whochallenge the politicians‟ statements and become the alter ego needed for a dialogic discoursecharacterised by the inclusion of opposing arguments and positions on a given topic. These usual opposing positions reveal a paradigmatic discourse about climate change: the controversial discoursethat has as protagonists two well-defined types of actors: politicians and activists. In this discoursethe actors almost always

express something that is said about what is/has been done. In other words, the discourse consists of criticism towards political actions. Of course, the object of criticism, for both politicians and activists, are the governments. Thus, the on-camera statements in the news programmes specify the responsibility of the governments in power (their own or others‟) in the existing problem and the danger it involves. Unlike the political monologue, these statements are characterised for blaming the governments rather than for demanding them to undertake the most convenient political actions to cope with the problem.

As table 8 shows, there are slight significant differencesinterms of the content and structure of the discourses used in the coverage of the Durban and Cancun summits. Table 8: Content of the discourse used in the coverage of the Cancun and

Durban Summits

Thus, in the Durban Summit there was an absence of the controversial discourse, which provided the politicians vs. activist’s debate in the Cancun Summit. In the Durban Summit there was protagonism of the political monologue discourse where politicians only had a single possible alternative intra-political criticism discourse (not counter-argumentative), that of the victims of environmental disasters. In the news coverage of the Durban Summit politicians talked about what other politicians said

about what has been done and/or what is happening/has happened in relation to climate change, without holding anyone as responsible, and only referring to and blaming the governments when there was an opportunity to talk about the victims of climate change.

In short, the transformation suffered by the discourse on climate change from Cancun to Durban is impoverishing: the discourse of the television news programmes became simpler, due to the lack of space and time: with fewer speakers, with the almost unique protagonism of politicians who onlyexpressed their own opinion, while activists disappeared as the counter-argumentative alter-ego, and the testimonial space was only given to the victims of climate change.

Conclusions

As stated at the beginning of this paper, the perception that the citizens may have of the problem of climate change supposedly originates from the contribution of the thematic agenda that the media develops day by day, being the news programmes the main source of information, particularly the television news programmes, which have the greatest impact in shaping public opinion on a given topic. Specifically, the perception that individuals haveof the state of public opinion is based on the importance that individuals believe others attribute to the certain issues. So it is theagenda-setting conducted by the media what leads individuals to choose, despite their possible preferences, between thematic selections that have been previously established by the mass media. Hence the importance of analysingthediscoursesused by television news programmes in their coverage of the annual summits on climate change.

The methodology of analysis applied to the universe of climate change news broadcast by Spanishtelevision news programmes during the last two climate change world summits has revealed certain aspects of the thematic selection of the problems related to climate change and certain structural features of its hegemonic discourse.

With regards to the thematic selection, in both summits the frequency of references to the “Projects and actions –official or

spontaneous– aimed at tacklingenvironmental risks (e.g. renewable energy, organic farming, energy savings, waste recycling, GHG emissions, etc.)” is outstanding, both in on and off camera discourses, as well as in video images that are used to illustrate them. Thepredominance of this thematic category, whose more relevant features is to assert, rather than question, confrontations and/or conflicts, responds to the dominant presence of politicians who, above all, talk about what is said among them, about what they do more than what is happening. The references of these politicians were almost exclusively directed to the governments and particularly were directed at demanding their action or involvement. During the Cancun Summit politicians made these demands and also blamed the governments, but in the Durban Summit these demands were not accompanied by criticism or replies, but only by a controversial or monologue discourse.

Thus, it can be said that the discourse that is becoming hegemonic on climate change in Spanish television news programmes stands out for its high degree of spectacularisation about the conflict, whose protagonists are politicians and governments and whose statements refer in turn to their own conflictive discourses. This discourse is then a meta-discourse centred particularly in political accusations rather than actions and projects. It will not be surprising that if thistype of production of meaning continues climate change will end up beingassociated to the political controversy. And that is just how it goes.

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Communicating Uncertainties:

climate skeptics in the international media

James Painter

HIS PAPER focuses on the prevalence of climate scepticism –

in its various forms– in the print media around the world. Most

previous academic research on climate scepticism has tended to focus

on the way it has been organised, and its impact on policy outputs,

rather on the types of scepticism and the individuals who represent

them. The paper lays out the different forms of scepticism, and gives

examples of the differences between them. It then draws on

extensive content analysis of a large data base of newspaper articles in

Brazil, China, France, India, the UK and the USA taken from two

separate three-month periods in 2007 and 2009/10. It shows the

country variations in the quantity, type and professional backgrounds

of sceptics quoted in the press. It concludes that climate scepticism is

largely an Anglo-Saxon phenomenon, found most frequently in the

US and British newspapers, and explores some of the reasons why

this may be so.

General background

In recent years climate change, and the science underpinning it, has

become a contested, polarised and politicised issue. This is

particularly true of the USA, UK and Australia, but the degree of

contestation has not been replicated in many other countries, and

particularly the global South. The roles which print and broadcast

media in these countries play in amplifying contestation has come

under increasing scrutiny from a wide variety of interested parties.

Politicians, lobby groups, climate scientists and academics,

representing both mainstream and sceptical climate viewpoints, have

often been very vocal in their criticism of the media either for giving

too much space to sceptics or too little.

The former US vice-president Al Gore is one prominent

example of a politician who has adopted a particularly high profile

stance in strongly attacking parts of the media in the USA for

promoting the views of sceptics. (Gore 2011) Many mainstream

climate scientists and academics have added their voices to the

criticism of the media. For example, in June 2011 a group of

prominent scientists in Australia gave a scathing assessment of the

media there (and particularly those outlets owned by Rupert

Murdoch‟s News Corp) as following erroneous presumptions about

the way science works. These ranged from „being utterly false to

dangerously ill-informed to overtly malicious and mendacious‟.

(Karoly et al, 2011). In not dissimilar fashion, a group of Australian

academics published a survey in December 2011 of the media‟s

coverage of the carbon policy debate in their country. Amongst their

many conclusions was that the „fossil fuel lobby and other big

business sources opposed to the policy were very strongly

represented, often without any critique or second source. Clean

energy and other businesses sources in favour of the tax received low

coverage.‟ (Australian Centre for Independent Journalism, 2011)

Both climate-sceptical and environmental lobby groups have

also been particularly keen to criticise the media. For example, the

popular US-based campaigning website Climate Progress regularly

publishes critiques of the mainstream US print and broadcast media

and blames them for misrepresenting the science.(Romm, 2011) On

the other hand, since its formation in November 2009, the London-

based Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has regularly

criticised parts of the mainstream British media for overzealously

following the mainstream consensus view on climate change, and for

not giving more space to climate sceptical viewpoints. In December

2011, the GWPF published a report authored by a prominent British

journalist and sceptic, Christopher Booker, which attacked the UK

public service broadcaster, the BBC, for what he saw as its failure to

report accurately and objectively on the issue of climate change.

(Booker, 2011)

The BBC for its part has subjected itself to scrutiny about its

climate change reporting. In 2011, the BBC Trust, which amongst

other things exists to monitor editorial standards across the BBC,

commissioned a report to look at its general coverage of science

topics, including climate science. The report included an independent

assessment by Professor Steve Jones, who broadly praised the BBC

for its science coverage, but criticised it for giving too much space to

climate sceptics. (BBC, July 2011)

The amplification of sceptical views on climate change in the

media has led to criticism, mostly from mainstream climate scientists

and academics, that editors and owners are aiding the process of

denial of human-caused global warming amongst politicians and the

public. In its most extreme form, they stand accused of helping to

create a climate of doubt which hinders or blocks robust government

action or legislation to tackle climate change. (Painter, 2011, and

Dunlap-McCright, 2011).

Research Context

Despite the salience and urgency of the theme, recent academic

studies on climate change and the media have tended not to focus

specifically on the role that named climate sceptics –in all their

manifestations– play in the broadcast or print media. There has been

even less research on the cross-country variations in the volume and

type of sceptical voices included.

Rather, several studies have concentrated on the way sceptical

voices are organised, their links with conservative think tanks, and

their overall objectives and methods of working. (Dunlap-McCright

2010, Greenpeace 2010, Hoggan 2009) A 2011 paper by two US

scholars describes in pictorial form the hierarchical links between

named fossil fuels industries, corporate organisations, conservative

foundations, conservative think tanks and front groups in the USA.

(Dunlap-McCright, 2011) At the bottom of their chart appear the so-

called „Astroturf campaigns and organisations‟ such as Americans for

Prosperity and Americans for Balanced Energy Choices. The same

paper stresses the important political impact that such organised

scepticism can have on national and international policy outcomes.

They argue that „<…>it is reasonable to conclude that climate change

denial campaigns in the U.S. have played a crucial role in blocking

domestic legislation and contributing to the U.S. becoming an

impediment to international policy-making(McCright and Dunlap

2003; Pooley 2010).‟

A 2011 UK study focuses on the presence of climate sceptic

voices in the UK broadcast media‟s coverage of the Copenhagen

summit in December 2009. (Gavin and Marshall, 2011) The study

found that contrarian discourse was present in three out of twenty

two bulletins on the BBC and the ITV‟s late evening bulletins,

accounting for just fewer than 14 per cent. The authors concluded

that this was a „potentially damaging dimension. And although their

messages did not figure prominently, it should be remembered that

sceptics rarely seek to dominate debate, merely cloud it.‟ This is a

view echoed in other studies of the objectives of organised climate

scepticism, which is often to „manufacture doubt or uncertainty‟ in

the minds of the public or policy makers (Oreskes- Conway, 2010;

Dunlap-McCright 2010)

Another 2011 study, this time of the US broadcast media,

looked at the nature of climate change coverage in 2007 and 2008 of

the three major cable news channels (Fox News, CNN and MSNBC).

(Feldman et al, 2011) Again, it did not focus specifically on the

presence of climate sceptics but rather on the tone of the coverage.

It concluded that „of the three networks Fox News was

simultaneously the least likely to be accepting and the most likely to

be dismissive of climate change.‟ Whereas nearly 60% of Fox News

broadcasts were dismissive, only 7% of CNN broadcasts were

dismissive and none of the MSNBC broadcasts.

Fox News forms part of the focus of a research paper

published by the Australian academic David McKnight, who looked

at the large numbers of media outlets owned by Rupert Murdoch‟s

News Corporation in Australia, the USA and the UK, and concluded

that the company‟s newspapers and television stations „ <..>based on

their editorials, columnists and commentators, largely denied the

science of climate change and dismissed those who were concerned

about it‟.(McKnight, 2010) He also noted important differences

between the three countries, stressing that scepticism was more

prominent in the USA and Australia than the UK.

One of the earliest attempts to identify named individual

sceptics in the media was a study by Liisa Antilla who included an

analysis of the presence of US climate sceptics in more than 500

newspaper articles in 2003-4. (Antilla, 2005) She concluded that

„some of the news outlets repeatedly used climate sceptics –with

known fossil fuel industry ties– as primary definers‟.

Australian academics have looked at the prominence of a

specific sceptic, the British Lord Christopher Monkton, in the

broadcast media during his 2010 visit. According their study, Lord

Monckton received saturation coverage on the various outlets of the

state broadcaster, ABC. (Chubb, Nash 2010) They found that much

of it was uncritical. They also pointed to the many fewer times Dr

James Hansen, director of NASA‟s Goddard Institute for Space

Studies and a strong advocate on taking action to slow down global

warming, appeared on ABC during his visit to Australia shortly

afterwards; 5 compared to the 47 for Monckton over a comparable

time period.

What there are in more plentiful supply in the academic

literature are studies of the more general nature of the content of

media coverage of climate change, and in particular the question of

„false balance‟. Much of it has focused historically more on the USA

than other countries. The methodology commonly applied aims to

capture the difference between those articles or reports which (1)

present the viewpoint that anthropogenic global warming (AGW)

accounts for all climate changes, (2) present multiple viewpoints, but

emphasise that anthropogenic contributions significantly contribute

to climate changes, (3) give a „balanced account ‟ surrounding the

existence and non-existence of AGW, and (4) present multiple

viewpoints but emphasise the claim that the anthropogenic

component contributes negligently to changes in the climate.

(Boykoff-Mansfield, 2008) Category (2) is regarded as best capturing

mainstream science, while category (3) captures those articles which

give roughly equal attention and emphasis to competing views.

Category (4) is where sceptic, denialist, or contrarian views would be

most represented. The three most common categories –i.e. (2) to (4)–

are often summarised as the „consensus view‟ (climate change is real

and human-caused), the „falsely balanced view‟ (we don‟t know if

climate change is real, or if humans are a cause), and the „dismissive

view‟ (climate change is not happening, or there is no role for

humans).

Such a methodology usually includes the employment of the

tools of Critical Discourse Analysis, which places the framing of

climate change stories in their socio-economic, spatial and temporal

context. (Boykoff, 2011) It goes beyond counting the frequency of

words, phrases, and viewpoints to include salience, tone, ideological

stances, tenor and other criteria which together give a more nuanced

set of results than merely assessing the prevalence of sceptical voices.

In particular, it has been used effectively by Boykoff and others

to assess the prevalence of „false balance‟ in the media‟s treatment of

climate science. The Boykoff brothers carried out a seminal piece of

research on this in 2004 which concluded that 53% of the articles in

four US prestige newspapers between 1998 and 2002 gave equal

coverage to views that global warming was due to humans or was

natural. This was famously described as „balance as bias‟, given the

overwhelming scientific consensus (usually described as being over

95%) of climate scientists who accept the evidence for the former.

(Boykoff-Boykoff, 2004) Further studies by Max Boykoff and others

suggested that this bias was considerably less prominent in US and

UK newspapers in subsequent years, although it remained prevalent

in US broadcast media and UK tabloid journalism. (Boykoff, 2007;

Boykoff 2008; Boykoff-Mansfield 2008)

A 2011 study of five examples of the US prestige media (New

York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Politico and CNN.com),

which used a similar methodology, suggested a similar trend. (Nisbet,

2011). The main conclusion of the study was that in their coverage of

climate change in 2009-10 these five media had generally moved past

the much-criticised „he-said, she said‟ mode of false balance. The

study prevalence of climate sceptic voices, although it did note a

decline in most of the media studied in the „consensus view‟ (namely

that „climate change is real and human-caused‟) between the pre- and

post-Copenhagen periods. The Wall Street Journal, and particularly its

opinion pages, was an exception, but in general the reporting

reflected the consensus science. A critique of the Nisbet study

questioned the decline in sceptical voices in some newspapers, and

pointed to the prominence of such voices on US television, and

particularly Fox News which is highly influential amongst US

Republican voters and politicians.3 Many authors argue that „false

balance‟ is still a serious issue to be addressed in many parts of the

English-speaking media, although they accept the picture is very

varied. Max Boykoff for example has most recently written that that

„the journalistic norm of „balance‟ has served to amplify outlier views

on anthropogenic climate change, and concurrently engendered an

appearance of increased uncertainty regarding anthropogenic climate

science‟. 4

Types of skepticism

Considerable intellectual effort has gone into the discussion about the

need to differentiate clearly between the types of sceptical voices.

(Painter 2011) There has been a heightened debate about the correct

terminology to describe them. Saffron O‟Neill and Max Boykoff for

example criticise those who do not pay enough attention to the

3 „What kind of media analysis could possibly conclude the Washington Post covered climate well in 2009?‟, Climate Progress, 6 May 2011, quoted in James Painter, Poles Apart: the international reporting of climate scepticism, Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, 2011, p. 38.

4 Max Boykoff, Who Speaks for the Climate? Making Sense of Media Reporting on Climate Change, Cambridge University Press, 2011, p. 141.

nuances in defining the terms „deniers‟, „sceptics‟ and „contrarians‟,

which they say can „increase polarisation within the climate debate‟.

(O‟Neill-Boykoff, 2010) Even the word „sceptic‟ is contested.

Mainstream climate scientists and those who question the science

both want to hold onto, or seize, the word as their own, as scepticism

is usually something scientists seek, practice and approve of.

Many in the debate prefer the word „denier‟. McCright and

Dunlap for example have argued that „the actions of those who

consistently seek to deny the seriousness of climate change make the

terms “denial” and “denier” more accurate than “skepticism” and

“skeptic,” particularly since all scientists tend to be skeptics.‟

(Dunlap-McCright, 2011) This view that it is more accurate to call

some climate sceptics „deniers‟ or even „denialists‟ is countered by

those who see it as rather a Stalinist term, with echoes of those who

deny the Holocaust. In other words, it has a moralistic tone and is

almost a term of abuse.

„Contrarians‟ have also been suggested instead of „sceptics‟.

„Contrarian‟ has the advantage of making it clear that an individual or

group is standing against the mainstream, but it is not an expression

in common usage. McCright for example uses the epithet to describe

climate contrarians as „those who vocally challenge what they see as a

false consensus of mainstream climate science through critical attacks

on climate science and eminent climate scientists, often with

substantial financial support from fossil fuels industry organizations

and conservative think tanks‟. (McCright, 2007) This is helpful, but

one drawback is that as we shall see, some of the most prominent

questioners of mainstream climate science do not seem to have such

financial support.

A useful way forward is to try and describe what individuals or

groups are sceptical about. For example, many people labelled

„sceptics‟ are not in fact deniers. Often they don‟t deny that global

warming is happening or that it is essentially human-caused. Rather,

they are sceptical about whether human-driven warming is dangerous

or catastrophic, or whether it requires large-scale policies to tackle it.

They can argue any one or combination of the following: that climate

models are essentially flawed or inaccurate and/or it is not known

with enough certainty what the impacts will be; that urgent action by

governments and/or substantial government spending on all or some

aspects of mitigation or adaptation to counter global warming is not

necessary (for example, short-term costs are too high, some parts of

the world could benefit, the response is disproportionate to the

threat, the impacts are too uncertain, and so on).

There are several benefits to sticking with the label „sceptics‟

even while being aware of the differences between them. First it is

what they call themselves; second, it is what the public and journalists

are most used to; and thirdly, the alternatives feel clumsy or have

other drawbacks.

A helpful taxonomy can be reduced to four main types of sceptics:

Trend sceptics (who deny the global warming trend)

Attribution sceptics (who accept the trend, but either question the

anthropogenic contribution saying it overstated, negligent or non-

existent compared to other factors like natural variation, or say it is

not known with any or sufficient certainty what the main causes

Impact sceptics (who accept human causation, but claim impacts

may be benign or beneficial, or the models are not robust enough)

Policy sceptics (who usually disagree with strong regulatory

policies or interventions for the reasons described above)

Such a relatively simple taxonomy has the added advantage of

bringing more clarity to journalists (who often don‟t make the

distinctions) and the public (which is often confused about where

there is scientific consensus and where there is not). (Butler-Pidgeon

2009) For example, a survey carried out by Gallup in July 2007 of a

sample of US citizens found that 40% of those asked believed that

there was a lot of disagreement amongst scientists about whether or

not global warming was happening. (Yale-Gallup-Clear Vision

Institute 2007) However, a description of what individuals or

organisations are sceptical about does not of course capture the

differences between them in terms of their funding, motivations,

ideology and political links, all of which are of crucial importance in

some contexts.

A selection of four media-prominent sceptics, of different types

according to the taxonomy above, illustrates the problem:

Dr. Patrick Michaels, who was a research professor in

environmental science at the University of Virginia for 30 years, is

currently a senior research fellow at the George Mason University. He

has an academic background in climatology, and does not contend

the basic science of global warming but argues the impacts will be

minor or even beneficial. His links to the fossil fuel industry have

been highlighted in the media.5 Dr. Michaels is illustrative of one

type of climate skeptic often appearing in the media on both sides of

the Atlantic who has strong links both with fossil fuel sources of

funding and with a right-wing think tank whose position on climate

change is consistent with an ideological opposition to regulation of

the market. He is an example of „organised scepticism‟.

In contrast stand the Canadian blogger Steve McIntyre and the

British Lord, Christopher Monckton. McIntyre was one of the key

5 Dr. Michaels told CNN in an interview in August 2010 that „about 40 per cent‟ of his funding came from the fossil fuel industry. For a transcript the interview, see www.desmogblog.com/climate-skeptic-pat-michaels-admits-cnn-forty-percent-his-funding-comes-oil-industry.

figures behind the „Climategate‟ episode which broke in late 2009,

and raised questions about the conduct, but not the science, of

climate scientists at the University of East Anglia in the UK.

McIntyre has no apparent links with the fossil fuel industry or think

tanks and no aggressively right-wing ideology, but seems to be more

of an amateur sleuth. Lord Monckton has also published no peer-

reviewed scientific papers, but is known for his anti-communist

ideology and activism in UK politics. Finally, Bjorn Lomborg has a very

high profile in newspapers around the world, and is best known for

questioning the need to rush into hugely expensive and rapid

government responses to counter global warming. 6

These brief profiles clearly illustrate the considerable variation

not only in what skeptics can be skeptical about, but also their

sources of funding, their links (or lack of them) with organised

climate scepticism, their motivations and their political ideology.

However, it does seem important to distinguish between organised

scepticism linked to well-funded bodies, and individual skeptic with

no such links. But even then, the impact of individual skeptics in the

media (for instance Lord Monckton in the Australian media) can be

just as significant as the impact of individuals with strong financial

and organisational support.

Methodology

We applied the basic four-type taxonomy of sceptics to our

examination of the prevalence of different types of climate sceptic in

6 For a full discussion of Bjorn Lomborg, see Hoggan, Climate Cover-Up, 118ff.; Washington and Cook, Climate Change Denial, ch. 4; Christina Larson and Joshua Keating, „The FP Guide to Climate Skeptics‟, Foreign Policy, 26 Feb. 2010, and Michael Svoboda, „A Critical Review of Bjorn Lomborg‟s Cool It … and of Media “Complicity” in Climate Contrarianism‟, Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media, 12 May 2011.

the print media in six countries, namely Brazil, China, France, India,

the United Kingdom and the USA. The periods monitored were

three months in early 2007 to include the launch of the first two very

influential IPCC reports that year (known as WG-1 and WG-2 AR4),

and a second period of three months in late 2009/early 2010 to

include „Climategate‟, the Copenhagen summit, the controversies

surrounding errors in the IPCC reports, a cold winter in many parts

of the northern hemisphere, and in the case of the UK, the formation

of the sceptical lobby group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation

(GWPF).

The newspapers chosen for scrutiny were Folha de São Paulo and

Estado de São Paulo in Brazil, People’s Daily and Beijing Evening News in

China, Le Monde and Le Figaro in France, the Times of India andThe

Hindu in India, the Guardian/Observer and the Daily/Sunday Telegraph in

the UK, and the New York Times and Wall Street Journal in the USA.

Where possible, we chose a left-leaning or liberal newspaper and

right-leaning newspaper, although for obvious reasons this was not

possible in the case of China. In most cases, we were only looking at

the articles that appeared in the print versions of the newspapers, and

did not include the online versions. This was to be regretted because

the symbiotic relationship between new and old media prompts all

sorts of questions, including whether new/social media provide more

space for sceptic views to circulate and gain more traction than they

might do if restricted to traditional newspapers. We included news

reports, features, opinion or comment pieces, editorials, and reviews.

The inclusion of opinion pieces and editorials was considered an

essential corrective to the omission of such pieces from other

academic studies, a practice which has been criticised as much of the

sceptical sentiment can be found here rather than in the news

reporting. (Ward, 2009)

As part of the content analysis, we listed the names of

individual sceptics where they were directly or indirectly quoted in the

news reports, and separately the names of those who authored

sceptical opinion pieces as invited columnists or who were quoted or

briefly described in the opinion pieces of regular columnists writing

on the newspapers. A total was given for the number of times these

sceptics appeared. These names were then assigned to different types

of scepticism broadly along the four categories outlined above.

Finally, we classified each of the named sceptics according to their

main professional background or affiliation. There were nine

categories: university scientist, an academic tied to university but not

a scientist, a non-university-based research organisation, a think tank

or lobbying group, an „amateur‟ scientist with no affiliation to the

previous four options, a newspaper columnist or media personality, a

politician or diplomat, the business sector, and „other‟.

Some scholars are critical of an approach that assembles such

taxonomy of the different forms of sceptics, and then uses it to trace

the amount of media coverage such voices, individual or generic,

achieve. For example, as Boykoff writes, „this approach risks under

considering context and by excessively focusing on individual

personalities at the expense of political, economic, social and cultural

forces‟.7 However, including individual voices does have some

advantages; firstly, the media often seek personalisation,

dramatisation and authority as journalistic norms (Boykoff-Boykoff

2007), so measuring the presence of the „personalities‟ the media

choose to quote in some ways reflects common journalistic practice;

secondly, it is possible to include some of the contextualisation or

socio-economic forces behind the personalities by both describing

some of them and dividing them according to their professional

background or affiliation; thirdly, measuring the presence of

individual sceptical voices is a good indicator of how much presence

–and therefore arguably traction and credibility– they acquired over

7 Boykoff, Who Speaks for the Climate, p. 161.

the periods in question; and finally, the focus of our content analysis

was to bring out cross-country differences. The coding chosen does

not undermine the validity of within country and cross-country

comparisons as the same criteria were applied across all the sample

articles.

Research results

The three main research aims of the content analysis were to map the

differences in the amount of sceptical voices between the six

countries chosen; to look at where the sceptical voices appeared most

within each newspaper; and to examine any correspondence between

the political perspective of a newspaper and the prevalence of

sceptical voices. However, a number of subsidiary questions were

addressed which highlighted the marked differences in the number

and types of sceptical voices included in the print media in the six

countries chosen.

More than 3,000 newspaper articles were examined across the

six countries. The UK had the most at 941, followed by Brazil (873)

and India (649). This is not surprising given the high interest in the

UK media in „Climategate‟, which was partly due to the fact the

University of East Anglia is situated in the UK. The high volume of

coverage of global warming in the media in Brazil and India fits a

general picture found in other surveys (Painter, 2010).

As can be seen from Figure 1, when measured by the number

of articles containing sceptical voices, there was a sharp contrast

between the USA and the UK on the one hand, and the remaining

four countries, particularly in the second period of study. Figure 2

represents the number of articles with mentions of sceptics as a

percentage of the total number of articles covering climate change or

global warming

Figure 1: The Number of Articles Containing Sceptical Voices in Six

Countries, 2007 and 2009/10

Figure 2: The number of articles containing sceptical voices as a % of the

total number of all the articles covering climate change, in the six

countries.

This is a better measure of the prevalence of sceptics than counting

the absolute numbers of articles, partly because we did not make any

adjustment for the total news „hole‟ available for articles on climate

change in each of the newspapers examined. In other words, The

Hindu for example would have had far less space available (24–8

pages on a weekday) for articles about climate change than the New

York Times (100 pages plus).

The Brazilian and Indian newspapers have the lowest

percentage of articles with climate sceptical voices within them,

followed by France. The China figures, while still low, were relatively

high in the period of sampling due to the low base. The two countries

with the highest range were clearly the UK and the USA, which had

the highest range of between 13 and 40% for the two newspapers

sampled there.

In general the UK and the US print media quoted or mentioned

significantly more sceptical voices than the other four countries.

Together they represented more than 80% of the times such voices

were quoted across all six countries, suggesting that scepticism about

climate change is to some extent an „Anglo-Saxon‟ or English-

speaking phenomenon.

Just counting the number of sceptical voices did not capture how

they were quoted. However, we looked at whether the voices were

left unchallenged in the editorial pages, including the opinion pieces.

Usually, the left-leaning newspapers included sceptical voices in their

opinion pieces or editorials to be refuted. The right-leaning Telegraph

and Wall Street Journal had considerably more uncontested sceptical

opinion pieces and/or editorials than the Guardian and the New York

Times. The difference in the USA is particularly marked as the New

York Times ran 10 editorials over the two periods, all of which were

dismissive of sceptic arguments, whereas the Wall Street Journal ran 12,

only one of which seemed to be dismissive.

44% of the articles where sceptical voices were included were to

be found in the opinion pages and editorials as compared to the news

pages. But the print media in Brazil, China, India, and France had

many fewer such pieces than those in the UK and the USA.

Together the eight newspapers there accounted for 34 such pieces in

our sample (24% of the total).

Which types of sceptics get quoted?

Individual sceptics were mentioned or quoted 260 times in the articles

surveyed. Again, they were far more present in the UK and US

newspapers than in those in Brazil, China, France and India. Of the

non-English-speaking countries, the Times of India had the most at 19,

followed by Le Monde (12). But these figures contrast sharply with

The Guardian (60), The Telegraph (48), The New York Times (19) and The

Wall Street Journal (18), just in the second period of analysis.

Of the 260 times sceptics were mentioned, 20 of them were

„type 1‟ sceptics (outright deniers that global temperatures are

warming) – most of these were quotes from, or descriptions of, the

Republican senator in the USA, James Inhofe, who is known to have

espoused this view. 164 of these were quotes or mentions from the

type ii) sceptics who question the anthropogenic contribution

(equivalent to 63%), more than twice the 73 (or 28%) from those

who accept it is happening but for different reasons question its

impacts or the need to do something about it.

It was interesting to note that type (ii) sceptics were much more

common in the print media in Brazil, China, India, and France,

representing 45 out of the 51 times sceptics were quoted or

mentioned, or 88%. In the Anglo-Saxon countries, for type (ii)

sceptics, the percentage figure was lower (57%). Of the 73 times type

(iii) sceptics were quoted or mentioned in all six countries, only 4

were in the non-Anglo-Saxon media. It was a particular phenomenon

of the UK print media that sceptics from outside the country received

considerable attention, whereas in France, Brazil, India, and China it

is the (reduced number of) sceptics in their own countries who are

predominately quoted or given space.

The largest category of sceptics was politicians or diplomats (88

times or 34%), followed by university climate scientists (55 or 21%)

and „amateurs‟ (32 times or 12%). Next comes other academics (9%),

lobby groups (8%), research groups (5%), columnists and other

media (3%), business (3%), and other (3%). Another way of

expressing this is that sceptical voices who were not scientists

attached to a university represented nearly 80% of all the sceptical

voices mentioned.

The four newspapers in the USA and the UK accounted for 76

of the 88 times politicians were mentioned, equivalent to 86%. The

two US newspapers accounted for 23 times and the UK 53 times,

which were swollen by the high presence of Lord Lawson of the

GWPF (23 times). It is interesting to note that, in the USA,

politicians represented 35% of all sceptics, the largest category by

some margin. They were also the largest category in the UK (37%).

The Chinese newspapers quoted or mentioned no politicians, the

Brazilians one (Joe Barton from the USA), the French two national

(Claude Allègre and Jean-Marie Le Pen) and two foreign, and the

Indians no national and four foreign. Indeed, of the seven sceptical

voices of different types quoted in The Hindu over the two periods, all

seven were international, while for The Times of India over the same

period 16 out of the 19 were international.

These figures corroborate a rather obvious point that

journalists frequently use politicians as sources, and of course will

quote them if they are there to be quoted. It is illustrative from a

study of the December 2009 Copenhagen summit that politicians

were by far the largest group quoted at the end of the summit

compared to NGOs and scientists.8 If there are no, or few, sceptical

politicians to be quoted in India, Brazil and China, then of course it is

highly likely that they will not figure much in journalists‟ coverage of

climate change.

Drivers

The main conclusion of the content analysis that climate scepticism in

its various forms is more an Anglo-Saxon phenomenon both in the

media and wider society raises some obvious questions for further

research, and in particular an examination of what are the main

drivers behind it. For some, the presence or absence of climate

sceptic voices is best explained by the presence or absence of a fossil

fuel lobby. Prima facie, there is plenty of empirical evidence to suggest

that this would be a major factor in explaining its prevalence in the

USA. But is it the main explanatory factor in the UK or Australia?

In the UK at least, major oil and gas companies like BP and Shell are,

as far as we know, not funding lobby groups. The GWPF does not

publish its funders, but it would be surprising if these were found to

be corporate interests rather than rich individuals.

A more nuanced approach would be to argue that outcomes are

driven by a complex mix of processes within newspapers (such as

political ideology, journalistic practices, editorial culture, or the

influence of editors and proprietors) and external societal forces –

political, cultural, economic: (in particular the presence of sceptical

political parties, the power of sceptical lobbying groups, the public

profile of sceptical scientists, a country‟s energy matrix, the presence

of web-based scepticism, or even a country‟s direct experience of a

changing climate).

8 James Painter, Summoned by Science: Reporting Climate Change at Copenhagen and Beyond, Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, 2010, p 43.

In India for example, it is probably instructive to examine

several factors in explaining the relative absence of climate

scepticism: the absence of business-linked interest groups or strong

right-wing think tanks; the presence of strong NGOs; the dominant

framing of climate change in the media as a nationalistic „us-versus-

them‟ narrative; and the paucity of climate sceptical scientists in India

or indeed, throughout all South Asia.

Likewise, in the case of Brazil, a country where there is

significant coverage of climate change and high levels of public

concern, it may be fruitful to examine the journalistic culture of

having strong science units within newspapers, such as the one at

Folha de Sao Paulo; the absence of interest group lobbying; the state

sector‟s ownership of the oil sector; an energy matrix which depends

on hydro-electricity and bio fuels; the reduced presence of strongly

sceptical voices in the elite scientific, political, and business

community; and a country with a strong direct experience of a

changing climate and the Amazon on its doorstep.

In the USA, climate scepticism obviously forms a very

significant part of the ideology of one of the two main political

parties, the Republicans, but there are reasons to view it as another

example of „USA exceptionalism‟. Four factors are worth examining:

The historical trajectory of climate scepticism in the USA is

linked to other scientific issues beyond climate science. The US

scholars Oreskes and Conway have mapped the way in which

starting at the end of the 1970s a small number of scientists,

some linked to the conservative George C. Marshall Institute in

Washington, joined up with US think thanks and private

corporations to challenge scientific evidence on a host of

contemporary issues, including the link between smoking and

cancer. (Oreskes-Conway, 2010)

Much of the momentum behind climate scepticism in the USA

comes from conservative think tanks, a practice which is not as

prevalent in other countries. Some of their funding comes from

fossil fuel companies. According to leaked documents quoted

in a February 2012 article in the Guardian, the Chicago-based

Heartland Institute, which is at the forefront of discrediting

established climate science, raises several million dollars a year

from wealthy individuals such as the Koch brothers who are oil

billionaires.9 The documents suggest that 2012 was expected to

be a bumper year, with funding expected to rise by 70% in

2012, to US$7.7 million.

The climate blogosphere is probably more active in the USA

(and Canada) than in other countries, with sites such as Climate

Audit and WattsUpWiththat.com. Some of this is probably

strongly motivated by political ideology, but much of it is driven

in part by a desire to pick holes in some aspect of the

mainstream science.

The funding of politicians by industry groups and the pervasive

practice and power of lobbying are common in other countries

but the extent of them is probably unique to American political

culture. To quote just one statistic, according to the Center for

Public Integrity, the number of climate lobbyists (on both sides

of the debate) had increased to 2,340 in 2009 – an increase of

300% over the previous five years. This meant Washington had

more than four climate lobbyists for every member of

Congress.10

9 Suzanne Goldenberg, „Leak exposes how Heartland Institute works to undermine climate science‟, The Guardian, 15 February 2012, available at

10 www.publicintegrity.org/investigations/climate_change/articles/entry/1171/.

In the UK the presence of a semi-campaigning, ideologically-driven

tabloid press is hugely significant. In contrast there is no real tabloid

press in France, China, India, and Brazil. An examination of nearly

3,000 articles in the ten UK national newspapers over the same two

periods as in the study of the international press showed that much of

the scepticism was found in the right-wing tabloid press. For

example, in the three-month period of 2009/10, two right-wing

newspapers with a combined daily circulation of 2.7m (the Express

and the Mail), showed a very high percentage of articles with sceptical

voices within them: in the Express 50% of all the articles in both the

news and opinion pages included sceptical voices, whilst the figure

for the Mail was 48%.

The Express in particular stood out: in the post-„Climategate‟

period, it had the highest percentage of all ten national UK

newspapers for articles which included sceptical voices, the highest

number of sceptical voices included in its news reporting (more than

any broadsheet), the highest number of direct quotes from sceptics,

the highest number of editorials questioning the mainstream

consensus, and the highest number of sceptical opinion pieces of any

tabloid.

Again it would be tempting to think that this was as a result of

the dominant political ideology of the newspapers, and this clearly

plays a strong role. However, all sorts of factors other than political

orientation impinge on why, how, and where newspapers and

journalists decide to include sceptical voices. In interviews with

editors and journalists (or former correspondents) from seven of the

ten UK newspapers included in the survey, different interviewees

offered very different perceptions of what shaped their, and their

newspapers‟, decisions on the inclusion of sceptics. These ranged

from the strong influence of a newspaper editor (in the case of the

Express and Financial Times), the views of the proprietor (the Sun), a

heightened awareness of the views and profile of their readers (the

Sun, Express), the popularity of columnists (the Sun), the relevance of

sceptics to the particular story they were covering (nearly all of them),

to the overarching ideological position of the paper (Guardian, Mirror,

and Independent).

Finally, media ownership is of course a central driver of

journalistic outcomes. But again, a nuanced picture emerges. It is a

commonly-held view that the Murdoch-owned media around the

world are involved in a conscious campaign to discredit climate

science and dismiss those who are concerned about it. As the Climate

Progress blog wrote in January 2012, „The entire global Murdoch

enterprise is designed to advance the pollutocrat do-nothing

agenda‟.11It is clear that the Murdoch-owned Fox News and Wall

Street Journal in the USA give plenty of air time and column inches

to different types of climate sceptic voices. In Australia recent

studies suggest that Murdoch-owned media (which represent 70% of

the country‟s print media including the Australian (national), Telegraph

(Sydney), and Herald Sun (Melbourne) has a similar agenda.

(McKnight 2011, Australian Centre for Independent Journalism,

However, the Murdoch-owned The Sun and The Times in the UK

are clearly right-leaning, but by some of the measures used in our

content analysis they are more akin to left-leaning newspapers than

right-leaning in the prevalence they give to sceptical voices. This

clearly marks them out from the media coverage of other parts of the

Murdoch media empire in Australia and the USA. This may be partly

a result of the influence of James Murdoch, son of Rupert Murdoch,

who has studied environmental sciences, and took over the papers in

11 Panic Attack: Murdoch‟s Wall Street Journal Finds 16 Scientists to Push Pollutocrat Agenda With Long-Debunked Climate Lies‟, Climate Progress, 29 January 2012, available at http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/decadal.gif

2007 and appointed the papers‟ first environment editors. But other

factors clearly come into play such as the presence of experienced

science/environment editors or correspondents, a clear distinction

between opinion and news pages, the papers‟ readership profile and

where their ideology stands within the spectrum of right-wing

opinion.

We would also agree with those scholars who stress the

difference between the news pages and reporting on the one hand,

and the editorials and opinion pieces on the other. As David

McKnight has found, „newspapers and television stations owned by

News Corporation, based on their editorials, columnists and

commentators(my emphasis), largely denied the science of climate

change and dismissed those who were concerned about it‟. 12

Likewise, in the Sun in the UK, it is mostly in the columns of

commentators like Jeremy Clarkson and Kelvin MacKenzie where

climate-sceptic sentiments are most forcefully expressed.13

In conclusion, there is considerable evidence from our content

analysis to support the view that climate scepticism in its different

forms is primarily a phenomenon of the English-speaking world.

More research would be needed to examine if this is the case in

Canada and New Zealand, and also to examine why it is absent in

most countries of continental Europe and the developing world.

Norway and some countries in Central Eastern Europe like the Czech

Republic, Hungary, and Poland are important exceptions and need to

be studied further. Norway for example is interesting because of the

12 David McKnight, „A Change in the Climate?‟ Journalism, 11/6 (2010), 693.

13 James Painter, „Poles Apart’, pp. 97 ff.

presence of a large political party, the right-wing Progress Party,

which espouses climate scepticism.14

Our preliminary conclusion as to why it appears to be a

predominately Anglo-Saxon phenomenon is that out of the wide

range of factors that could explain it, the presence of politicians

espousing some variation of climate scepticism, the existence of

organised interests that informs sceptical coverage, and partisan

media receptive to this message all play a particularly significant role.

14 On 31 January 2010, the Progress Party leader Siv Jensen was emboldened to criticise the IPCC in an article in the leading newspaper Aftenposten under the headline „No More Talk about Global Warming‟.

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Climate change, the media and the

knowledge-inaction paradox

Anabela Carvalho

Introduction

HE HISTORICAL era in which we live has been designated as

the Anthropocene such is the degree of human intervention on

the planet. At a time when the world population has reached 7 billion,

we are witnessing a rapid environmental degradation, as suggested by

indicators of biodiversity loss, habitat destruction, water scarcity and

distribution of pollutants. As a systemic and multi-dimensional

problem, climate change stands as a strong symbol of human impact

on the environment. Scientific research has shown unambiguously

both the anthropogenic nature and the severity of the problem (e.g.,

IPCC, 2007a), and several recent studies suggest that its impacts

could be more devastating than what is indicated by the projections

of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, with the

possibility of approaching irreversible „tipping points‟ (e.g. Hansen,

2007; Kiehl, 2011; Shakhova et al., 2010). While the likelihood of

large-scale negative impacts of climate change continues to rise and

consensus increases around this, various social forces, and policy-

makers in particular, continue to stall effective transformations to

abate GHG emissions.

The starting point for this chapter is the realization that while

there are increasing signs that climate change presents enormous

threats to life as we know it very little is (or has been) done about it.

For a number of years, there has been a significantly high level of

awareness around the world regarding the fact that we are faced with

a series of environmental problems. Most people consider that

climate change is the most serious of those (e.g.

BBC/PIPA/GlobeScan, 2007; European Commission, 2011).

Tackling climate change would require fundamental transformations

and substantial cuts in modes of energy generation and use. It is

known that this transition should begin as soon as possible to avoid

the worst impacts of the enhanced greenhouse effect. However,

despite the increasing availability of information, the world has not

been making progress towards putting in place effective responses to

climate change. How do we reconcile awareness of the problem with

acceptance of the system of social, economic and political practices

and relations that generate that problem? This chapter aims to

contribute to understanding this knowledge-inaction paradoxby focusing

on the media, a privileged space for negotiation of the meaning of

social problems, and examining the extent to which the media may

contribute to political immobilism and the continuation of business-

as-usual.

Notwithstanding (occasional) earlier references to the issue,

climate change has been under the media spotlight in many countries

since the late 1980s (cf. Carvalho and Burgess, 2005; Carvalho et al.,

2011; Mazur, 1998). This prolonged mediatization has certainly

influenced social representations of climate change and of climate

change politics. Contributing to understand the ways in which the

media have socially constructed climate change and the implications

this may have for the choices that are (to be) made is an important

goal for communication scholars. In this chapter, I argue that

mainstream media discourses have generated a symbolic terrain that

promotes inaction, reinforcing the current socio-economic-political

system and the habitual practices of energy use and GHG emissions.

Three themes will be analyzed: remaining denialism towards the

scientific consensus (i.e., the continuous expression of skepticism and

the organized rejection of the growing scientific consensus regarding

the need to act on climate change); alarming climate change and

alarmist - optimistic media discourses (i.e. the media-created image of

climate change being split between over-dramatization and

unfounded optimistic); and the hegemony of techno-managerial

practices and of sustainable development discourses (i.e. the

prevalence of technical and managerial „solutions‟ to climate change

and of ambiguous discourses on sustainable development). All these

aspects shed light on the knowledge-inaction paradox that has been

referred above and the roles of the media.

Remaining denialism towards the scientific consensus

In its latest Assessment Report, the Intergovernmental Panel on

Climate Change (IPCC) maintained that „warming of the climate

system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of

increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread

melting of snow and ice and rising global average sea level.‟ (2007a:

2). In reviewing the research conducted on climate change in multiple

scientific disciplines, the IPCC regularly produces a summary of the

state of scientific knowledge, which is carefully examined and

thoroughly discussed until it meets the approval of representatives of

all participating governments. Reflecting the accumulation of

knowledge over the last three decades, with each Assessment Report,

the IPCC has offered a graver image of climate change infused of a

growing degree of certainty.

The First IPCC Assessment Report (1990: 2) claimed that

„[n]atural terrestrial ecosystems could face significant consequences as

a result of the global increases in the atmospheric concentrations of

greenhouse gases and the associated climatic changes‟ (my emphasis).

It employed a similarly cautious language regarding impacts on

oceans and coastal zones, human settlements and several other

domains. Since then, the IPCC has successively increased its

confidence in the detection of impacts of climate change. In the

Fourth Assessment Report, it stated that it had high to very high

confidence of significant impacts of climate change on natural

systems, hydrological systems and biological systems (IPCC, 2007b).

High confidence is defined as „about 8 out of 10 chance of being correct‟

and very high confidence as „at least 9 out of 10 chance‟ (p. 21).

Anthropogenic contribution to climate change has also been

asserted in increasingly certain terms. The Second Assessment Report

asserted in 1996 that the „balance of evidence suggest[ed] a

discernible human influence on global climate.‟ (IPCC, 1996: 4) The

latest Assessment Report maintains that „most of the observed

increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is

very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse

gas concentrations.‟ (IPCC, 2007a: 5) (emphasis in original). In this

document, „very likely‟ refers to a „>90% probability of occurrence‟

(p.3) of an outcome or result. Moreover, based on thousands of data

series and increasingly sophisticated scenarios, the IPCC has

successively raised the upper limits of projected warming in the 21st

century, which is 6.4 °C in the Fourth Assessment Report.

There are other indications of a significant consensus on

climate change and anthropogenic warming. In a well-known review

published in 2004, Naomi Oreskes analyzed the abstracts of 928

articles on climate change published in refereed scientific journals and

found that none contradicted the claims of the IPCC on

anthropogenic climate change. Moreover, Oreskes stated that „all

major scientific bodies in the United States whose members‟ expertise

bears directly on the matter have issued similar statements‟ to those

of the IPCC (2004: 1686).

Against this background, mainstream media in several countries

have created a picture of divisiveness and contention in the scientific

community regarding anthropogenic climate change. This is the case

of the USA, Australia and the United Kingdom (e.g. Boykoff and

Boykoff, 2004; McKewon, 2012; Carvalho, 2007), all of which have

important contributions to the global greenhouse effect. Probably the

most important case, given its contribution to global GHG emissions,

the United States‟ media have repeatedly been shown to over-

represent the claims of the so-called „skeptics‟, who argue that climate

change is not taking place or that it is due to natural factors. Climate

„skeptics‟, often also called „denialists‟ or „contrarians‟, tend to have

no relevant professional credentials nor produce research that is

recognized as valid by the scientific community. However, Antilla

(2005) found that both US newspapers and news wire services, such

as the Associated Press, gave them a large visibility. News wires have

a key role in propagating ways of reporting across all types of news

media, which adds to the seriousness of these findings. In a widely

cited study, Boykoff and Boykoff (2004: 129) showed that in 52,65%

of stories in the US prestige press between 1988-2002 „balanced

accounts prevailed; these accounts gave „„roughly equal attention‟‟ to

the view that humans were contributing to global warming, and the

other view that exclusively natural fluctuations could explain the

earth‟s temperature increase.‟ Boykoff (2008) found that over the

period 1995-2004 the same trend was present in 70% of US television

news segments across four of the most watched networks. These

researchers claimed that this was due to journalists following the

professional norm of balance in reporting. In this case, balance meant

bias as it significantly deviated from the scientific consensus. In

another study, Boykoff and Boykoff (2007) argued that the weight of

skepticism in the US media was also due other journalistic norms,

such as dramatization, personalization and novelty, that pushed

journalists to award a disproportionate attention to „skeptics‟.

Several studies have looked at factors that are external to the

media and pointed to an extraordinary pro-activity of social actors

that are hostile to climate policy in attempting to shape the public

debate. McCright and Dunlap (2000; 2003) have described the ways

in which conservative institutions promote doubt on climate change

through policy studies, books, press releases, opinion-editorial essays,

and advertisements. Numerous conservative think tanks have aligned

with climate skeptics, often affiliated with the fossil fuel industry, to

block the passage of any significant climate policy. Skeptical books

were the focus of a study by Jacques, Dunlap and Freeman (2008):

they showed that 92 per cent of those books published in the USA

since 1992 were linked to conservative think tanks, which

overwhelmingly espoused environmental skepticism. They concluded

that these think tanks have contributed to weaken the US

commitment to environmental protection. Oreskes and Conway

(2010) compared denialism of climate change with the long

campaigns carried out by industry to spread doubt and confusion

regarding research that linked smoking to lung cancer, coal to acid

rain and chlorofluorocarbons to stratospheric ozone depletion. By

undermining public confidence in the scientific consensus and

„keeping the controversy alive‟ business interests and conservative

think tanks succeeded, with the compliance of the mainstream media,

to stall action for a long time.

In Australia, research has also shown that climate skeptics tend

to get their claims extensively reproduced in the media (e.g.

McKewon, 2012). In some cases, the distortion in the representation

of scientific knowledge reaches extreme levels as in the case of The

Australian newspaper where, of 880 items published between 2004

and 2011, 700 items rejected the scientific consensus and the need for

action on climate change (Manne, 2011 cit. by McKewon, 2012).

McKewon (2012) has shown how a neoliberal think tank, the

Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), which is strongly opposed to action

on climate change, has acted as a powerful news source in Australia.

This think tank conducts various activities aimed at the media,

including publishing op-ed comments in the press, inviting journalists

and editors to its lectures and seminars, and publishing books and a

magazine. The analysis of articles from the IPA magazine and op-eds

published in Australian newspapers by IPA staff, together with the

analysis of newspaper editorials and opinion columns that gave

positive coverage to a well-known Australian skeptic, indicates that

conservative media very often offer a stage for IPA‟s „fantasy themes‟,

such as the notion that the environmental movement is a new form

of religion that is intolerant and irrational.

In the USA or Australia not all the media followed the

dominant trends described above. As McKewon (2012: 3) notes, the

ideology espoused by each news organ is often a differentiating factor

in discourses on climate change with denialism typically coming from

those that „promote core values of the political Right - free market

capitalism, anti-socialism, privatisation, small government and

deregulation‟ including „opposition to industry oversight and

environmental regulations‟. In an extensive study of the British press,

I have argued that the representation of scientific knowledge has been

shaped by ideological cultures, i.e. shared values and worldviews that

were dominant in different newsrooms (Carvalho, 2007). I found that

the aspects of scientific progress that were selected for news reports,

the kind of readings of climate change that they came to support,

how forecasts were interpreted, and how uncertainty was represented

were all associated with the ideological positions of newspapers.

Hence, while the Guardian and the Independent most of the time

promoted the reliability of research that showed that climate change

was taking place, the Times,which espouses a conservative ideology,

often used uncertainty or disagreement to undermine the authority of

science, to discursively dismiss the risks associated to climate change

and, thereby, to de-legitimise or refute political actions that might

alter the economic and lifestyle status quo (especially during the

1990s). The ideological divide in the British press has been recently

confirmed in Painter‟s (2011) extensive study. Focusing on public

views, Whitmarsh (2009) in turn reported strong variations in climate

skepticism between voters in different British parties: Conservative,

Liberal Democrats, Labour and Green in decreasing order.

Ideological factors are also at play in the USA where there is an

association between political-ideological standings of citizens and

concern for climate change (Zia and Todd, 2010), as well as a

growing gap between Republicans and Democrats regarding the

belief that the seriousness of climate change is exaggerated in the

news (Dunlap and McCright, 2008). Feldman et al. (2012) compared

climate change coverage in Fox News, CNN and MSNBC and found

that in the first network doubters were more frequently interviewed

than believers. They cite survey data that shows that Fox viewership

is negatively associated with acceptance of climate change.

Significantly, Republicans are more susceptible than Democrats to

influence by television coverage of climate change, independent of

how well a channel aligns with their views. This has a positive

implication for the possibility of consensus-building as „at least some

Republicans, who as a group tend to be predisposed toward global

warming skepticism, are less skeptical when exposed to information

on the reality and urgency of climate change.‟ (p. 24)

It is also positive to notice that, just as there are important

differences between media, so there are between countries. For

instance, in Germany (Peters and Heinrichs, 2008), Portugal

(Carvalho et al., 2011), France, India, China and Brazil (Painter, 2011)

skeptical views occupy very little media space. It is likely that a

combination of socio-cultural, political and media-related factors

(Painter, 2011) contribute to these international differences.

Nevertheless, the fact that skepticism continues to imprint a large

part of the media depictions in the countries examined in this section

–United States, United Kingdom and Australia, all of which are key

to the international politics of climate change– is likely to impede or

slow down the adoption of effective responses to climate change.

The confusion that results from this persistent denialism is well

exemplified in the results of a US survey conducted in 2007. People

were asked „what comes closer to your own view - most scientists

think global warming is happening, (or) most scientists think global

warming is not happening, or there is a lot of disagreement among

scientists about whether or not global warming is happening, or do

you not know enough to say?‟. Only 3% said „it is not happening‟ and

48% said „it is happening‟. Most significantly, however, at a time

when the IPCC had announced the conclusions presented above,

40% of the US public answered „there is a lot of disagreement‟ (Yale,

Gallup, ClearVision Institute, 2007).

Alarming climate change and alarmist - optimistic media

discourses

Climate change is a domain where forecasting is crucial. Unlike other

domains where what matters is knowing how things are, in climate

change it is essential to have an idea of how things will be. Futurology

necessarily involves a degree of uncertainty. This has opened the way

to very different media representations of the future. In their analysis

of the British press, Ereaut and Segnit (2006) found that there were

two dominant „linguistic repertoires‟ – an alarmist one and an

optimistic one. The alarmist repertoire suggested that the world is

inevitably lost due to climate change and that it is too late to do

anything. The logical consequence is that we should just continue

with life-as-we-know-it and all the usual GHG emitting practices. The

optimistic repertoire has two main variations. The first one promises

that everything will be fine without any need to act, either because

climate change claims are false, because the free market will solve

climate change or because of some similarly „passive‟ way of getting

out of the problem. The second variation points to a happy ending if

we act on climate change and suggests that technological options,

small corporate actions or small behavioral changes can deliver the

solution to climate change.

Although Ereaut and Segnit‟s (2006) proposal is simplistic, it

calls attention to two opposing tendencies that can be found in the

media. On the one hand, the media often disseminate optimistic

views of climate change. Many –although by no means all– are linked

to the denialist discourses discussed above that reject the scientific

grounds for acting on climate change. On the other hand, there is an

over-dramatization of climate change (and especially of its impacts) in

many media reports. By over-dramatization I mean the depiction of

extreme impacts of climate change as inevitable (when in fact we are

talking about forecasts and there is a possibility that those impacts do

not materialize if concerted mitigating action is put in place) and a

distortion of the temporal scale (making extreme impacts seem much

closer in time than what is likely to happen). Although the IPCC

scenarios point to a global mean temperature rise of up to 6.4 C,

such level and the worst impacts of climate change can still be

avoided if aggressive mitigation measures are implemented;

moreover, those impacts are not likely to occur in the next few years

but in the space of several decades.

Media representations of climate change often suggest that we

are faced with an eminent catastrophe and that there is nothing that

can be done about it.

„The alarmist repertoire is typified by an inflated or extreme

lexicon. It incorporates an urgent tone („we have to act. Now.

Today!‟) and cinematic codes, with images and ways of speaking

that are familiar from horror and disaster films („astonishing

scenes that might have come straight from Hollywood‟ (Catt

2005).

It employs a quasi-religious register of doom, death, judgement,

heaven and hell, using words such as „catastrophe‟, „chaos‟ and

„havoc‟. It uses a language of acceleration, increase, intractability,

irreversibility and momentum („temperatures shot up‟, „process of

change… surged ahead‟, „a tipping point beyond which break-up is

explosively rapid‟ (Leake and Milne 2006)). It allows for no

complexity or middle ground –it is simply extreme.‟ (Ereaut and

Segnit, 2006: 13)

Some have referred to these kinds of media reports as „climate

porn‟ (Lowe, 2006; Hulme, 2009). They have an important position in

the media-constructed images that circulate in various societies.

Weingart et al. (2000) traced the evolution of meanings of climate

change in Germany for two decades and pointed out that the term

„climate catastrophe‟ originated in the mid-1980s; it was first

disseminated by Der Spiegel magazine and had an extensive influence

on discourses on climate change. Doulton and Brown (2009)

examined the British coverage of climate change and development

and found that it was clearly dominated by a discourse of „potential

catastrophe‟, with developing countries appearing „defenceless

without the help of the West‟ (p. 191). In the USA, Foust and

Murphy (2009) also found ample evidence of an „apocalyptic‟ portrait

of climate change (we will return to their analysis further down in this

chapter).

Alarmist discourses are likely to have important implications for

public understanding of and engagement with climate change. Studies

in the US, the UK and other countries have shown that the dominant

imagery that people associate with climate change includes things

such as melting ice caps, storms, floods, heat waves and other

impacts that they classify as negative or very negative (Leiserowitz,

2005; Lorenzoni et al., 2006). In free word association exercises

conducted in Portugal, people predominantly referred to notions of

pollution, destruction, diseases, droughts and forest fires, as well as to

the issues mentioned for the other countries (Cabecinhas, Lázaro and

Carvalho, 2006; 2008). There were no mentions of things that people

can do to address climate change, such as cycling, installing solar

panels or turning down the heating. This was interpreted as meaning

that people view themselves as (potential) victims of climate change

but not as agents of resolution of the problem.

Perceived lack of agency was also identified in another study in

association with common visual representations of climate change

such as polar bears, industrial smoke stacks, flooded areas, and

starving children and dried up lakes with dead fish (O‟Neill and

Nicholson-Cole, 2009). While these are often chosen by the media to

convey the gravity of climate change, they were amongst the images

that participants said made them feel least able to do something about

climate change. Still, participants considered that those images (with

the exception of polar bears) were the ones that made climate change

feel the most important to them. In contrast, participants said that

images of a low energy light bulb, a cyclist and a thermostat were the

ones that made them feel most able to act.

O‟Neill and Nicholson-Cole (2009) conclude that:

„dramatic, sensational, fearful, shocking, and other climate

change representations of a similar ilk can successfully capture

people‟s attention to the issue of climate change and drive a

general sense of the importance of the issue. However, they are

also likely to distance or disengage individuals from climate

change, tending to render them feeling helpless and

overwhelmed when they try to comprehend their own

relationship with the issue‟ (p. 375)

They make the case against using „fear appeals‟ because of the

difficulties of sustaining fear in the long term; the fact that individuals

may become desensitized to fear appeals; that fear may damage trust

in the communicating organization; and that fear appeals may

generate unintended consequences, such as denial or apathy. Hulme

(2008) has also spoken of a „discourse of fear‟ associated with the idea

of „climate as catastrophe‟ and has argued that this kind of media

coverage may be counterproductive for involving the public (2007).

Moser and Dilling (2007) make similar arguments.

Swyngedouw (2010) takes the implications of this form of

depicting climate change further: by being presented in apocalyptic

terms and reduced to a problem of CO2 emissions, he argues, climate

change has given rise to a hegemonic populist proposal that promises

solutions within the structures of capitalism and the market economy.

In this reading, alarmist discourses create favourable conditions for

the emergence of optimistic discourses centered on the promises of a

„green economy‟. As discussed in the next section, this helps the

reproduction of the economic-political system.

One variety of optimistic discourses is centered on high-tech

solutions such as geoengineering. These can also gain symbolic value

due to apocalyptic visions of climate-altered futures: these `ultimate

solutions‟ (…) are enlivened by the dramatizations of apocalyptic

futures in which the only way to act seems to be to adopt spectacular

techniques of/for control.‟ (de Goede and Randalls, 2009: 871).

Journalistic norms may play a role in the construction of

alarmist images of climate change. Dramatization, for instance, is a

known tendency in news making as a way of appealing to audiences

(Boykoff and Boykoff, 2007); moreover, the media tend to look for

certainty rather than „fuzzy‟ probabilities and often overemphasize

that certainty (e.g. Smith, 2005). However, this kind of discourse also

stems from other sources, such as non-governmental organizations

and official agencies whose campaigns often overdramatize climate

forecasts. Therefore, they are quite widespread and keep being

promoted by different social actors. The research perspectives

discussed above suggest that these alarmist messages are not

conducive to action on climate change, something that the optimistic

discourses do not require either, therefore keeping us stuck in the

knowledge-inaction paradox.

One important question is whether all apocalyptic images of

climate-altered futures should be abandoned. Several researchers

argue in favour of investing on forms of communication that work as

motivators of the public using meaningful, locally relevant and

empowering symbols instead (e.g. O‟Neill and Nicholson-Cole, 2009;

O‟Neill and Hulme, 2009). Others postulate that the dangers that

climate change may bring onto the planet should be kept in citizens‟

sight. Based on existing scientific knowledge, Risbey (2008) maintains

that there are grounds for alarming (rather than alarmist) discourses

that point to the seriousness of the problem but also to possibilities

of action. While noting that the „apocalyptic tone of climate change

rhetoric may not only encourage a feeling of despair in the face of

impending disaster, but also contributes to skeptics‟ ability to

discredit climate scientists as alarmists‟, Foust and Murphy (2009:

154) also remark that „environmental advocates like Rachel Carson

have successfully relied upon dire predictions of the world‟s end to

provoke necessary action‟. They identify two variations of the

apocalyptic frame: „a tragic apocalypse, characterized by „„resignation‟‟

(Burke, 1984, p. 37) to a foretold ending; and a comic apocalypse,

discernible through its more forgiving outlook on humanity „„not as

vicious, but mistaken‟‟ (Burke, 1984, p. 41).‟ The two frames differ in

their constructions of agency, temporality, and telos. While in tragic

apocalypse, a catastrophic telos is unavoidable and outside of the

scope of human agency, in the comic perspective humans are

responsible for a course of action and can influence their future,

which is more open-ended than in the tragic version. Foust and

Murphy (2009) recommend that communication on climate change

employ this second frame and is directed towards promoting human

agency for correcting a mistaken path that leads to disaster.

Hegemony of techno-managerial practices and of Sustainable

Development discourses

In the discourses that circulate in the public sphere –and particularly

in mainstream media– climate change has recurrently been viewed

through a techno-managerial lens, that is, as an issue that is amenable

to technical solutions and management options. In many political and

media discourses there appears to be a belief in science-based techno-

fixes that would „solve‟ climate change and allow for the maintenance

of current lifestyles and forms of consumption. We are „sold‟ fuel

cells, solar-powered planes or mega-projects for wind energy, and

told that these technological innovations will disseminate rapidly and

substitute old forms of energy production and use, thereby creating a

new „low carbon world‟ (cf. Nerlich, 2012) where climate change is no

longer a problem. In these discourses, the „market‟ is offered as the

key for the uptake of those solutions: sates can play a role in initiating

the process of dissemination of technological innovations through

financial and fiscal stimuli but it will be the free market who will

determine their success or failure. With appropriate regulatory

measures and other instruments for controlling emissions and

managing climate change, we are told, climate change can be

prevented and continuous economic growth can be promoted.

The primacy of the economy has marked international climate

politics since its inception. It is in fact inscribed in the founding

document, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate

Change (UNFCCC), which states that its aim is to achieve

stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere

„within a time-frame sufficient to (…) enable economic development to

proceed in a sustainable manner‟ (my emphasis). However, the main drive

for the development of market-based approaches to climate change

was the Kyoto Protocol, signed in 1997. The Protocol created the so-

called „flexibility mechanisms‟, namely Emissions Trading (the

possibility of selling and buying GHG emissions quotas), the Clean

Development Mechanism (which refers to emission-reduction

projects in developing countries carried out by countries committed

to reduce or control their emissions) and Joint Implementation

(which refers to emission-reduction projects in other countries

committed to reducing or controlling emissions). These are market-

based forms of managing a country‟s GHG emissions.

Kyoto‟s „flexibility mechanisms‟ have opened the way to

financial speculation and inappropriate implementation, and their

efficacy has been severely criticized by several non-governmental

organizations and other analysts. Yet, the language that is found in

most public discourses still privileges market-based solutions. In the

last few years, the main focus has been on the notion of „green

growth‟, an idea strongly promoted by political leaders and

international agencies. „Green growth‟ advances a new economic

optimism that suggests the possibility of large financial gains from

investments in „environmentally-friendly‟ areas, such as renewable

energies. This fits in with a discourse that has been labelled as

Ecological Modernization and that draws on the discourse of

Sustainable Development, both of which are discussed below.

Sustainable Development, explicitly inscribed in the UNFCCC,

became the default option in mainstream „greenspeak‟ (Harré,

Brockmeier and Mühlhäusler, 1999) in the last couple of decades. As

formulated by the World Commission on Environment and

Development (1987), the discourse of Sustainable Development

advocated balancing three aspects: environmental protection,

economic growth and social justice. However, as the notion of

Sustainable Development spread and came to be employed by many

different social actors in many different contexts, its original meaning

was often diluted and it acquired a variety of nuances: ecologically

sustainable, socially sustainable, economically sustainable, sustained

economic growth, etc. Oels (2011: 8) has argued that in the last few

years Sustainable Development has been „redefined as „climate-

proofing‟ economic development‟. In short, Sustainable

Development became a rather ambiguous concept. It has been widely

used by well-meaning progressive organizations but it has also often

been used to „greenwash‟ (Greer and Bruno, 1996) the image of faulty

corporations and by everyone else between these two extremes.

Ambiguity is in fact part of the strength of the notion of Sustainable

Development as consensus thrives in relation to ambiguous, open-

ended ideas.

Ecological Modernisation, a variant of Sustainable

Development, converts environmental problems into economic

opportunities. As Hajer (1996: 249) puts it: Ecological Modernisation

„makes the „ecological deficiency‟ of industrial society into the driving

force for a new round of industrial innovation. (...) Remedying

environmental damage is seen as a „positive sum game‟:

environmental damage is not an impediment for growth; quite the

contrary, it is the new impetus for growth.‟ Science and technology

are presented as the source of solutions to „fix‟ the environment while

providing economic gains. This is a highly attractive prospect and it is

not surprising that „consensual‟ Sustainable Development and

Ecological Modernisation have become hegemonic. Together with

Luke (1995), I have previously argued that these ideas have a

disciplinary rolein relation to more radical forms of environmental

discourse and mobilization: because they are integrative and

conciliatory, these discourses annihilate any possibility of opposition

(Carvalho, 2005). In Swyngedouw‟s words (2010: 228): „the

sustainability argument has evacuated the politics of the possible, the

radical contestation of alternative future socio-environmental

possibilities and socio-natural arrangements, and has silenced the

antagonisms and conflicts that are constitutive of our socio-natural

orders by externalizing conflict.‟

Most media have strengthened the discourses of Sustainable

Development and Ecological Modernisation as they naturalize and

neutralize them. Any discussion about the viability of the promises of

those discourses or of alternative ways of framing responses to

climate change, including decreases in energy use through legislation,

behavioural change and transformation of economic and political

structures, is very rarely present in mainstream media. Sustainable

Development and Ecological Modernisation thus appear „natural‟, the

only („sensible‟) solutions to the problem of climate change.

Moreover, the values that are inscribed in these discourses are

suppressed making them appear neutral.

Based on an analysis of international press coverage since 1985,

Nerlich (2012: 43) has observed a clear reproduction of the

Ecological Modernization discourse: „low-carbon technologies and

low-carbon economies are now increasingly touted as roadmaps to a

brave new low carbon world or low carbon future. (…) The strategic use of

low carbon as a compound in industry and policy making (…) has

created discursive frames linked to expectations of great future riches

to be made and of technological fixes to climate change that can be

„bought‟.‟ (emphasis in original) Carvalho et al. (2011) found a similar

pattern in the Portuguese press, which has tended to amplify

governmental promotion of renewable energies as the solution to

climate change (and to the country‟s economic troubles). Koteyko

(2012) speaks of a „market-driven sustainability‟ regarding British

media discourses on carbon emissions. She found that in recent years,

the media have often set up…

„… equivalences between the application of the marketplace

instruments of carbon trading and investment and sustainability

practices. Such reporting promotes recontextualisation

(Calsamiglia and Van Dijk, 2004) of sustainability within the

confines of corporate discourse through the use of carbon

compounds and accompanying finance terms. Drawing on the

environmental values on the one hand and the language of

finance and accounting on the other, such newspaper stories

reproduce neoliberal logics as a legitimate methodology for

addressing the issue of global warming.‟ (p. 33)

This suggests that the media have helped the appropriation (some

would say hijacking) of the discourse of Sustainable Development by

business.

Yet, evidence of the failure of these approaches to deal with

climate change is accumulating. Mitchell (2012: 24) has noted that

„scientific and political debates are dominated by a “technophilic

optimism” that projects emission reductions from technological

improvement that are not supported by the evidence‟ and pointed out

the need for substantive measures to constrain population, affluence

and consumption. A recent report of the United Nations Conference

on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has similarly offered a very

critical view of the hype around „green growth‟. Noting that many

„economists and policy makers advocate a fundamental shift towards

“green growth” as the new, qualitatively-different growth paradigm,

based on enhanced material/resource/energy efficiency and drastic

changes in the energy mix‟, the report argues that „growth,

technological, population-expansion and governance constraints as

well as some key systemic issues cast a very long shadow on the

“green growth” hopes and points out that it „may rather give much

false hope and excuses to do nothing really fundamental that can

bring about a U-turn of global GHG emissions‟ (Hoffmann, 2011: 1).

„What is required‟, the author continues, „is not a relative, but an

absolute decoupling of economic growth from MRE

[material/resource/energy] throughput, and that at an unprecedented

scale in a historically very short period of time‟ (p. 2). The

transformations needed to achieve this are, predictably, extremely

large and fundamental and include, according to this report

„democratization of the economy and cultural change‟ in respect for

„global equality of opportunity for prosperity‟ (p. 1).

When the media overwhelmingly sideline these aspects and

reduce climate change to a Sustainable Development/Ecological

Modernization frame they may be trapping citizens into false beliefs

and preventing other forms of individual and collective engagement

with the issue of social and political significance.

Closing remarks

The media are a space of confluence and negotiation of multiple

understandings. Both the media and a variety of other social actors

have attempted to determine the meaning of climate change from

different political and ideological standpoints. Media(ted) discourses

have helped create systems of intelligibility for interpreting and

making decisions on climate change that tend to appear natural and

neutral. This chapter has attempted to expose the arbitrary nature of

dominant discourses and to understand their contribution to inaction

despite growing awareness and knowledge of the risks associated with

climate change.

In face of growing scientific consensus, a number of

organizations continue to spread doubt and in several countries

mainstream media continue to host those voices and to propagate

denialism of climate change, thus building the symbolic grounds for

inaction. Ironically, through overdramatization of risks and/or the

dissemination of unfounded optimistic discourses, many media

reports have contributed to apathy, denial and/or inaction towards

climate change. Moreover, by amplifying techno-managerial solutions

and helping turn the discourses of Sustainable Development and

Ecological Modernization hegemonic the media have helped produce

a „post-political‟ consensus where „free market environmentalism‟ is

the only discursive possibility. The governance of climate change has

excluded democratic debate and decision-making. By failing to

consider alternative views on the relation between humans and

nature, and on relevant social arrangements, most mainstream media

have legitimated and reinforced the existing social and political order.

Our common future depends on „opening up new spaces to

critical political imaginaries and debates‟ (De Goede and Randals,

2009: 874) that may counter the dominant (consensual) framing for

addressing climate change. In the last few years, some climate

activists, some social movements and some alternative media have

distanced themselves from such framing and rejected the idea that

solutions can be found within the existing structures. These are

hopeful –albeit extremely feeble– signs towards rethinking the politics

of climate change.

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Beyond Climate: Climate Change

as Socio-Natural Risk

Mercedes Pardo-Buendía

LTHOUGH most risks are conceptually uncontrollable, as

there is no way of knowing all the antagonisms or synergies that

could arise in the short, medium or long term, or whether enough is

being done to prevent a damage (Pardo, 2009), they are socially

manageable, through what the sociologist Anthony Giddens (1995)

calls “the colonising of the future”.

This phrase is a metaphor adapted to the subject of climate

change, and is particularly interesting to contextualise the relevance of

the social aspects (society) with regards to climate change. For this

reason this article aims to examine climate change as a socialproblem

and its risks as largely produced by the action of societies15.

15 “„Climate change‟ means a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global

To start this analysis it is necessary to make some conceptual

distinctions. The first one is related to risk. Scholars tend to

distinguish between danger and risk (Luhmann, 1992), and this

distinction is not trivial, but very relevant. Thus, danger refers to a

threat to people and to things that people value (including nature) -in

this case climate change- whereas risk refers to the probability16 that

the threat will occur (often measured in statistical terms) and the

losses associated with the phenomenon in question, in this case the

effects and impacts of climate change.

Applying these concepts to the question of climate change, its

threats or dangers can be defined as, for example, an increase of more

than 2° C in the average temperature of the planet (the increase was

of 0.8° C in the 20th century) (IPCC, 2007)17. However, the risk (or

potential effects, impacts and consequences) of this global warming

cannot be predicted –or even projected in more accurate

terminology– directly from such threat or danger, instead they will

depend on the actions of the “receiving environment” of this

temperature increase: in this case society, which can act or do

nothing.

In other words, the relation between danger and impact is not

linear nor necessarily a direct cause-effect type of relation. Their

interaction is conditioned by such issues as the vulnerability, resilience

or strength of the affected party, in this case, society, its institutions,

atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods” (definition contained in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, held in May 1992 in New York).

16 This work has avoided the epistemological realism/constructivism debate on risk and accepts the relevance of both perspectives in the case of climate change.

17 2° C is the threshold for the planet‟s global temperature increase, on which the agreements to fight climate change are based, specifically the Kyoto Protocol.

lifestyles, production and consumption systems, active policies, etc.

Put differently, the “social fabric” stands between danger and its

results.

This point can be illustrated with the following example. A

dramatic consequence of the heat wave that hit Europe in the

summer of 2003 (the highest temperature was 47.8° C in Denia,

Alicante, Spain) was the death of thousands of people (although there

is controversy, deaths were estimated at around 10,400 in France,

6,500 in Spain, 1,300 in Portugal, and 20,000 in Italy, to name but a

few countries). This event taught the governmental institutions, the

medical services, the media and the population how to react in similar

situations, which significantly decreased the mortality rate provoked

by the heat wave of July 2006. Hence the importance of capacity

building when addressing climate change mitigation and adaptation.

From the previous example it is worth noting that the risk, or

its expected effects and resulting impacts, do not depend only on the

nature of the phenomenon in question, but also on the “receiving

environment”, in this case, the strength (or resilience18) or vulnerability

of society (its institutions -the health system-, citizens, etc.).

Therefore, the social management of risk is presented as key to its

prevention and/or harm minimisation. But, an adequate management

of the risk of climate change must be based, among other things, on

rigorous knowledge of the interconnection between the climate and

social systems. Therefore, the term management is by no means

18 The term 'resilience' is used in ecology to refer to the ability of natural communities to withstand perturbations and return to their previous state, and is also used for the analysis of the impact of climate change on society. However, we prefer to use the term 'strength', because in the fight against climate change the aims is not to return to the previous state of society, but to develop social changes to prevent the occurrence of the problem.

confined to a more or less technocratic activity, and applies mainly to

the governance of risk, in this case of climate change.

In this sense, the dangers of global warming and climate change

are being increasingly identified and verified by vast biogeophysical

research: the average temperature increases of 0.8° C; average sea

level rise of 3.1 mm/year since 1993; the melting of the poles (since

1978 the annual average Arctic sea ice extent has shrunk by 2.7% per

decade, with larger decreases in summer of 7.4% per decade); the

increase in extreme weather phenomena, e.g. increase in precipitation

in eastern parts of North and South America, northern Europe, and

northern and central Asia, decline of precipitation in the Sahel, the

Mediterranean, southern Africa and parts of southern Asia, and an

increase in intense tropical cyclone activity in the North Atlantic

(IPCC, 2007).

Such dangers and their corresponding biogeophysical risks

present potential social threats that are still insufficiently identified in

the scientific research of the social sciences on the different spheres

that make up societies.

In any case it is important to remember, as Leggett (2011: 2) has

pointed out, that “Normal scientific methods aim at disproving a

hypothesis; if evidence cannot disprove a hypothesis, it generally

buttresses confidence in that hypothesis. The more a hypothesis has

been challenged and remains standing in the face of growing

evidence, the greater the scientific confidence in it. For policy-makers

seeking certainty about whether climate change is occurring and how

“bad” it may be, understanding that science will not provide them

now or later with “proof” may be an important concept. Decisions to

act or not to act will be made in the context of accumulated and

debated evidence of risks and uncertainties”.

In conclusion, in the words of German sociologist Ulrich

Beck19, it can be affirmed that the irony of risk is that it expresses the

aversion to a danger that cannot be verified. Ultimately, what is

essential about risk, then, is not that something harmful is really going

to happen so much as the idea that something might happen. Thus, a

substantial part of the scientific analysis has to be the social

construction of risk by a given historical society, i.e. the analysis of

the risk of climate change as a social problem.

Despite these intrinsic uncertainties in the concept of risk, the

“magnitude” of the danger is a key variable that influences the

resulting risk. Thus, even with the considerations made about the

relevance of the “receiving” environment -which varies across

societies- it can be affirmed that the greater the magnitude and speed

in the creation of danger, the greater the negative impact it will have

on societies (IPCC, 2007).

Therefore, the question is whether we are capable of socially

qualifying the degree of risk that societies are prepared to take, accept

and/or manage. This circumstance takes us back to the progress

made in our understanding of multiple issues, the sine qua non being

the development of social awareness of the danger in hand. If this

awareness does not exist, the risk does not exist for society. But that

does not necessarily mean that the risk does not exist; what probably

happens is that the risk is transferred from places that are legally or

socially controlled to others where there is less awareness (or less

conflict) and less social control (and therefore the risk is more likely

to increase) (Pardo, 2009).

19 Available athttp://www.cidob.org/en/noticias/dinamicas_interculturales/la_construccion_politica_y_social_del_riesgo_segun_ulrich_beck. Accessed on 11 January, 2012.

But this need for awareness is not just an individual matter, but

mainly a collective one, corresponding to the level of reflectivity

(Lamo de Espinosa, 1990) of societies. So when we talk of risk, in its

most basic sense, we are referring to cultural adaptations (or non-

adaptations; risk can also be conceptualised as inaction), or social

changes, in the broad sense of the term, to “control” the natural

dangers and disasters. In essence, the idea is to establish how social

systems are or should be (Pardo, 2009).

Risk has another important feature: it is variable and relative. In

other words, it does not affect all societies or all individuals equally.

The concept of 'vulnerability' is important in this analysis. According to

the Spanish Real Academy20, vulnerability refers to the susceptibility

of a society, institution, social group or person to physical or

emotional injury or attack. It refers to the fragility of a society or a

part of it to counteract an existing danger or threat, in this case

climate change. This concept expresses “the multidimensionality of

disasters by focusing attention on the totality of relationships in a

given social situation which constitute a condition that, in

combination with environmental forces, produces a disaster”

(Bankoff, Greg et al., 2004).

On the other hand, the concept of 'resilience' is often used in the

analysis of the impact of climate change, by both the natural and

social sciences. Resilience refers to the ability of a system (or

individual) to cope with disturbances, to reorganise itself while

changes are occurring, and preserve its function, structure and

identity. This concept is probably valid for the biogeophysical

ecosystems, but is static for social systems, as it connotes a return to

the previous state. In the case of societies, the use of the psychology

meaning of resilience and the term 'strength' are probably more

20 Real Academia Española (RAE)

accurate. By strength we mean the capacity of a society, or a part of it,

to anticipate, survive, resist and recover from the impact of a threat,

which is a more accurate concept to address climate change

mitigation and adaptation.

Climate change mitigation and adaptation are established

scientific, political and sociological areas. The Intergovernmental

Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007) and the policies to counteract

climate change21 have addressed both areas to a greater or lesser

extent. Thus, mitigation refers to actions aimed at decreasing the

causes (for example, change of the energy model towards greater

participation of renewable energy), and adaptation refers to actions

aimed at tolerating the consequences (for example, the preparation of

health systems to face the heat waves).

It is important to remark that adaptation to climate change in

no way means passivity or resignation. On the contrary, in its Anglo-

Saxon definition, adaptation means proactivity, i.e. preparation in the

broadest sense of the word (diagnosis, prediction, social capacity

building and search for alternatives, among others). The different

scope of the policies and activities on climate change mitigation and

adaptation reflect the differences in climate change risks across the

variety of contemporary societies and social groups.

Therefore, it is necessary to consider the distributive aspects of

risk to gain a full understanding of the phenomenon and its social

control. With respect to this, the term “environmental classes” has

been coined (Murphy, 1994). Paradoxically, risk analyses do not tend

to take into account the reciprocal relations between the

technological impact and the social systems, or the symbolic

constructs (e.g. images and conceptions) that people develop in their

daily lives regarding the dangers they are exposed to or the social

21 For example, the Spanish Strategy Against Climate Change.

distribution of risk. In some cases, risks to human life, health, and

economic values are considered, but other valuable and necessary

aspects of human existence, such as the impact of social institutions

and collective systems on networks, are ignored. Risk specialisation -

particularly technocratic risk management- tends to cloud this aspect

(Pardo, 2009).

The uncertainty over risk must be made conceptually and

practically intelligible, as it goes beyond the rationalities and

techniques of risk analysis, which are normally based on „objective‟

statistics. There are important differences between the opinions of

experts and the non-expert population. Generally speaking, experts

measure risk in terms of probability. For the affected population

sectors, on the other hand, the perception of risk is broader and more

difficult to explain in statistical terms, which is what experts demand.

This divide between the two sectors calls for important changes like,

for example, improving the translation of scientific knowledge to the

everyday language of public opinion and politics to make risk

evaluation part of the common sense of every citizen. And the

opposite is also true; translation of the values of citizenship to the

field of experts needs to be improved. When we speak of risk,

security, uncertainty and acceptability, what we are speaking about is

the best way to organise society (Pardo, 2009).

„Organized irresponsibility‟ refers to the fact that despite the

extensive bureaucratic organisation that characterises contemporary

societies, whose purpose is precisely to guarantee the “normal”

operation of everyday life, it is not possible to offer this guarantee

because it is impossible to locate clear responsibility for the risk, due

to the very nature of the risks (this is the case of climate change). In

addition, the complexity of the system of responsibilities allows that

none of the parties may have full responsibility (or responsibility in all

matters) and allows the tendency to externalise responsibility to

another subsystem (which may not be the one with least risk, but very

probably the one receiving least attention). To sum up, risk and

responsibility are intrinsically related.

One alternative could be “organised corresponsibility”.

Although with different levels of responsibility (between those who

cause problems and those who suffer them; between those who

should solve the problems and those who can solve them, or between

those who intervene so that the problems can be solved, etc.),

everybody has the right and duty to contribute, with the aim of

maximising resources and creating positive synergy.

Organised corresponsibility tries to foment, support and create

permanent social networks that go deep in content and take on

actions. These networks are the basis for coordination policies

between the different public and private institutions, as it is important

for the various social agents to assume responsibility, though not in

isolation, but through coordinated action.

Democracy and transparency are indispensable conditions for

developing corresponsibility processes. Because of all this, public

participation in risk management involves such matters as consensus

planning, the development of participative policies, the establishment

of social management networks, and the management of the

configuration of the risk governance system. This is a question of

creating majorities for a better definition and management of the

policies to be developed. Social risk management requires a

priori acceptance and social agreement, which takes us back to its

treatment which uses an integral approach that applies precautionary

principles and encourages social democratic participation.

It is necessary to advance in the understanding of the social risk

of climate change in all the spheres that make up society, and

particularly in (Pardo, 2007):

The population as a demographic base and its settlement

structures. The objective is to establish the extent to what climate

change can affect people‟s health and life expectancy (according to

their socio-demographic characteristics) in the countries differently

affected by climate change, as well as the territorial settlement that

takes place while the areas with major climate-based habitability

problems are being identified. In this line, human migration is

another relevant area of research, with all the aspects that migration

involves.

The economy, as an area highly valued by societies, is also

subject of research in relation to the potential negative impact of

climate change. The Stern Review22, diagnosed that the stabilisation

of greenhouse gases at 500-550 ppm levels (the current level is 430

ppm, in comparison to 280 ppm prior to the industrial revolution)

would cost approximately 1% of the global annual GDP up to the

year 2050. If nothing is done now damages are estimated to cost 5-

20% of GDP. However, more specific knowledge is needed on the

ways climate change can affect the economy of certain impoverished

societies. Of course, the differential aspects between countries and

social classes are areas of analytical work and policy development.

The positive results include the benefits of all the technological

transformations produced by the change of energy model, for

example.

Culture in its broad (anthropological) meaning, i.e. patterns of

societal organisation and the material and non-material cultural

achievements (for example, technological and symbolic

22Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change (30/10/2006), commissioned by the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. Available at: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.UK/+/http://www.HM-Treasury.gov.UK/stern_review_report.htm Accessed on 13 January, 2012.

developments, respectively). Relevant areas include the impact on the

social structure, the education of the population, the social support

networks, the political and social organisation, governance and

democracy systems, social norms and values, levels of social unrest

and/or social cohesion, security of human populations, cultural

heritage, etc.

As we can see, all the problems related to climate change are

complex and difficult to communicate to society because climate is

not the only problem; climate change is a socio-natural risk. Perhaps

this is the reason why, despite climate change is widely “discussed”

across societies, it has not yet been possible for people or institutions

to make the connection between climate change and their daily life,

which indicates an area for improvement.

References

Bankoff, Greg et al. (2004). Mapping Vulnerability: Disasters, Development

and People. London: Earthscan.

Giddens, A. (1995). Modernidad e identidad del yo. El yo y la sociedad en la

época contemporánea. Barcelona: Península.

Lamo de Espinosa, E. (1990). La sociedad reflexiva. Sujeto y objeto del

conocimiento sociológico. Madrid: Centro de Investigaciones

Sociológicas.

Leggett, Jane A. (August 29, 2011).Climate Change: Conceptual

Approaches and Policy Tools. Congressional Research Service,

R41973.

Luhmann, N. (1992). Sociología del riesgo. Guadalajara: Universidad

Iberoamericana / Universidad de Guadalajara.

Murphy, R. (1994). Rationality and Nature. Boulder, CO: Westview

Press.

Pardo, M. (2007). “El impacto social del Cambio Climático”.

Panorama Social nº 5: 22-35.

- (2009). “El Cambio Climático como riesgo sociocultural”.

Ciudades, Energía y Cambio Climático. Metrópolis: Revista de

Información y Pensamiento Urbanos, nº 75: 94-95.

Climatechange, uncertainty

and human security

Asunción Lera-St.Clair

Introduction

NE of the most important characteristics in the public debate

on climate change is the emphasis on scientific uncertainty.

Two types of uncertainty dominate the public debate: scientific

uncertainties associated to the identification of greenhouse gases as

the cause of global warming, and the current and future impacts of

climate change in ecological systems and their consequences in

human systems. This emphasis on the scientific aspects distracts the

attention from other more important matters for which scientific

uncertainty is quite irrelevant. Issues related to human security are

dismissed and ignored by the tendency of the public debate to limit

the definition of climate change to a problem related to carbon-

dioxide emissions that has to be exclusively addressed by the hard

sciences.

This article suggests that the dissemination of research that

addresses climate change from a perspective that goes beyond issues

related to carbon-dioxide and takes into account the human contexts

and discusses the socioeconomic development systems that have

caused the climate crisis would contribute more effectively to

spreading awareness about the real risks and possible solutions.

The lack of research from the social sciences and humanities

creates the false impression that the problem of climate change is

incomprehensible and, by association, distant for the ordinary

population. In fact, the causes of this crisis that we do not see,

understand, or try to solve are actually the lifestyles of ordinary

people, the institutions in which we are all submerged, and the

economic systems and social practices that govern our everyday life.

Collective and institutional solutions are obviously needed, but

they will not emerge until there is a personal awareness of the risks

that climate change presents. The second decade of this century must

be the time for citizens to become aware of a problem that affects us

all, otherwise it will be the time for which our generation will be

judged for failing to act to prevent its potentially catastrophic risks.

The media can become an ally for the first option, or become an

accomplice for the second option. Instead of replicating and

publicising the messages of the sceptics, the media should

communicate a balanced human perspective on climate change that

could contribute to the generation of a public debate that is currently

non-existent and urgently needed.

Science has discovered a problem it cannot resolve

Recent data show that it is very possible that in the near future the

temperature will increase more than two degrees centigrade in

Eurasia, Canada and parts of Africa, and that it is very possible that

during the second half of this century a similar temperature increase

will occur in the whole world (Joshiet al., 2011). Others believe that

we must begin to imagine how our planet will be like with an average

increase of more than four degrees, as the lack of action to mitigate

greenhouse gases leads to higher concentrations and complex

processes of interaction between the affected parts of the planet

(New et al., 2011; Stafford Smith et al., 2011). But these changes are

not easy to notice as climate change is an invisible reality to the

human eye. We only notice changes in time but not climate changes,

which can be identified only through historical analyses of climate

change over the past millennia and in the long term.

Without the ability to measure temperature fluctuations over

the centuries, the data collected and analysed by climatologists, and

the knowledge developed through super computers and information

technologies, it would be impossible to confirm that climate is

radically changing in comparison to fluctuations occurred over the

past centuries. The discovery of climate change has been a slow and

gradual process, with an increasingly sophisticated development in

the identification of factors that influence the earth system (Edwards

2011). This discovery is in itself the result of the innovation in the

way the natural sciences operate. In the field of earth system science,

the collaboration between several branches of the natural sciences

provides a holistic view of the natural world and of course of its

climate. For example, the term “planetary boundaries” reflects a

science that has learned to view the planet Earth in a holistic manner,

but of course this holistic scientific view is complex and not easy to

communicate.

Some of the most important instruments to promote the

understanding of the Earth as a system have been the reports

published every five or six years by the Intergovernmental Panel on

Climate Change (IPCC). These reports, the last one published in

2007, only summarise evidence published by scientists from around

the world and present data in a coherent and concise ways. Part of

the process generated in the IPCC is a process of dialogue with

scientists, government representatives, and politicians through

extensive and systematically organised reports. Although the amount

of this type of scientific work has grown in recent years and an

increasing number of social scientists are starting to study the

problems generated by climate change and their solutions, the study

of climate change remains primarily a responsibility of the natural

sciences.

From these scientific discoveries we can draw two conclusions.

Firstly, the dissemination of scientific results that predict a completely

uncertain future for human life with a high degree of uncertainty in

their data is a disastrous action. This action easily leads people to

believe the problem is incomprehensible or made up by scientists

who do not completely agree with their research results, and

therefore leads to the degeneration and denigration of this science,

which subsequently contributes to the lack of action. As it will be

explained later, the linear conceptions of science facilitate this

misunderstanding. Secondly, and most importantly, the sciences that

have discovered the problem of climate change do not have solutions

or ideas to tackle it. The study of the lifestyles, societies and

institutions that have led to this great environmental problem is not

the responsibility of the natural sciences but of the social sciences and

humanities, but they are still secondary in the study of climate change.

With regards to the first point, it should be noted that the

hegemonic conception of climate change is dominated by the “hard

sciences”, which present the challenge as a matter of knowing and

dominating the environment. This view interacts with a political

system that has short-term objectives and is unable to address an

issue for more than a few years. And this techno-optimistic view is

dominated by the North and a socioeconomic and political global

system interested in carbon use and consumerist models that are

incompatible with sustainability and transformation.

Thus there is a lack of balance. The emphasis on climate change

as a primarily scientific matter that is very difficult to communicate

and the simplistic view of the economic and technological solutions

encourage a lack of action and responsibility. At the same time

people‟s conception of science as objective and apolitical harms the

conditions to conduct a balanced debate. Traditional science

understands the relations that exist between its discoveries, the

policies, and the public as linear relations, where knowledge is

developed objectively, and separated from society and politics. Once

theorised, knowledge is presented as a final product that must be

disseminated. This linear scientific conception of knowledge tends to

deny the political and social aspects involved in its creation, but at the

same time requires a specificity that is not realistic in many cases

(St.Clair, 2006a, 2006b). Cognitive dissonance is generated by the

combination of the complexity of the science behind climate change,

the challenges that put social welfare and development and very

important economic political interests behind the carbon-based

industries, and the conception of science as neutral and apolitical.

This cognitive dissonance, which is encouraged by an

unprecedented issue with disastrous consequences that require

changes at all levels, translates into an unequal and unjust

communication. Communication becomes distorted, and focuses on

uncertainty as a central theme, which generates more paralysis and

more cognitive dissonance. This creates the vicious circle in which we

find ourselves, but also promotes certain optimism with regards to

the possible risks we are facing.

But this optimistic view, based on the hard sciences and the

extraordinary faith on the power of the economy and technology,

does not delve into the social, cultural and human contexts that

explain how climate change is experienced, the causes that lead to the

ecological crisis, or the actions that could solve it. These are the

crucial factors that are not being communicated, which prevents the

understanding of the risks presented by climate change and prevents

the public debate about the possible solutions. Once again, science

has discovered a problem that it cannot solve. The solutions include

discovering the role of human behavior as cause and solution. And

many of the answers will be beyond the scope of science; in particular

they will be related to ethical and political decisions to establish the

risks and their likelihood in different aspects. These questions lead us

to a definition of climate change not as a scientific discovery but as

the discovery that human societies have reached the limit where they

must question the models of progress, development and quality of

life that are based on consumerism and the possession of material

goods. This question is profoundly social and human. Perhaps one of

the most important questions that should be answered is actually

philosophical: what does it mean to be human in the Anthropocene

era23, in the time of the planetary boundaries, which were previously

unknown by all thinkers on whom the philosophy of modernity is

based?

Towards sustainable societies: climate change and human

security

Therefore, a human perspective is needed to discover what is at stake,

which are the risks, and how to make a transition towards sustainable

societies. This perspective is not intended to replace the hard sciences

but to complement it. Climate change and human security should be

the basis to produce a new science that not only understands the

ecological and systemic processes of the planet but also contextualises

them in human societies, institutions and power relations and

addresses them as part of systems of values, beliefs and views of the

23 The term Anthropocene refers to the new geological era in which human actions determine the ecological circumstances of the planet Earth. It is therefore the human era, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene

present and the future. These are questions that neither science nor

politics can answer unilaterally. The risks presented by climate change

and the solutions that are already underway lead and will lead to

unequal situations, in which there will be winners and losers. Many of

these questions are to be answered by such disciplines as ethics and

law. But they are also questions that no science will be able to answer,

for instance, the idea that we should adapt or perish (Parry et al.,

2009).

My previous work on human security suggested that the

philosophical society-nature dualism of modern thought is the basis

of the conception of climate change as an exclusively environmental

problem which promotes a strong sense of control (O'Brien et al.,

2010). This discourse holds the bureaucratic and political systems as

responsible for this problem (as they have failed to stop it), and takes

away the ideological and personal responsibility in which we all are

submerged. And this orthodox approach fails to acknowledge the

institutional basis, including philosophy, language, values and culture,

which are in fact the roots of a conception of progress that depends

on the use of carbon, and even blinds the inequalities that it has

produced. This means that the dualism between nature and society is

reproduced rather than questioned.

Equality is another important issue that is not addressed in the

technocratic and environmental perspective, which only contends a

trivial and obvious truth: that climate change disproportionately

affects developing countries and that developed countries are

responsible for the past and present emissions (Müller, 2002; Roberts

and Parks, 2006). This conception deals less with how the

development models that led to the climate crisis have also failed to

promote an egalitarian and just global society and on many occasions

have been the cause of poverty and marginalisation (O'Brien and

Leichenko, 2006; St.Clair, 2010). Inequalities in terms of race, gender,

caste, ethnicity or class in developed countries and within national

borders are neither theorised in relation to climate change. Issues of

inequality must be seen as part of the processes and factors that

contribute to an unjust world, where wealth is concentrated in few

hands.

The analysis of climate change should be extended to what has

happened in the relations between the north and the south, and to

examine how the lack of development departs from historical

processes such as colonialism and the conflicts between European

nations and later North America focuses on the use of natural

resources from Africa, Asia and also partly from Latin America and

the Caribbean. Responses given so far to the problems caused by

climate change in developing countries are also treated with an

economic and technologic logic, which assumes that the aid for

development is already doing as much as it can to reduce poverty, and

the only thing left to do is simply to give more help for adaptation

(Klein et al., 2006). I argue that these efforts perpetuate an unjust

global system and will lead to an even more unfair situation when the

impacts of global warming really begin to endanger whole societies in

some parts of Africa and lead to famines and possibly to conflicts.

The technological and technocratic science has led to the

definition of poverty as a matter of statistics that is unrelated to local,

regional and global social, economic and political relations, and is

ignorant of the real problems faced by poor groups (Lawson and

St.Clair, 2009). If we go deeper into this analogy, the role played by

the social sciences in studies of poverty, we can see that there has

been a dominant knowledge that has not been able to theorise the

causes of and possible solutions to poverty except in a technocratic

and bureaucratic way. Poverty was defined as a problem that occurs

mainly in distant lands and is disassociated from global economic and

neoliberal processes. There is evidence that the reasons that continue

to divide the world into few rich people and many poor people are

related to political and economic processes that benefit minorities

with power and resources. The critical view of poverty has been

dismissed by politicians and the majority of citizens as a problem of

others. And this view is related to the belief that a developed society

is a society with more resources, even if this ignores the vulnerable

groups (Lawson and St.Clair, 2009).

The view of human security presents an opportunity to explore

these and other issues, because it sees climate change as part of a

global system where the relationship between human rights, values,

beliefs, culture, and environmental uses are theorised in a holistic way

and contextualised in the experiences of individuals and their

communities. The term human security has been defined from a

perspective of norms and capabilities by Amartya Sen in the UN‟s

Human Security Commission (2001). According to him:

Human security means protecting fundamental freedoms -

freedoms that are the essence of life. It means protecting people from

critical (severe) and pervasive (widespread) threats and situations. It

means using processes that build on people‟s strengths and

aspirations. It means creating political, social, environmental,

economic, military and cultural systems that together give people the

building blocks of survival, livelihood and dignity. (Human Security

Commission, 2003: 4).

Although this definition does not focus on environmental issues

and does not mention the issue of climate change, we argue that it

serves to re-frame the contemporary debate on the definition of

climate change and the actions that can be taken to tackle it. This

view help us to understand that the causes and negative impacts of

climate change are related to economic and financial policies;

perverse economic incentives; a lack of self-reflection and solidarity

with others, especially the poor people around the world; and,

obviously, a dominant culture where having more means being better.

This conception is also based on freedoms (and corresponding

rights and obligations) that encourage self-reflection about the

models of progress and well-being and modernity that have led to the

crisis. Therefore this conception opens up spaces to contextualise the

meaning of global warming at personal, social and systemic levels,

and spaces for a public debate on alternative models of progress.

Communication on climate change as part of our humanity

From this human perspective, communication on climate change

acquires a very different dimension. Evidently it leads us to

acknowledge very difficult issues and to deal with the aforementioned

cognitive dissonance. Moreover, the theme of scientific uncertainty

becomes less central once the media begins to investigate climate

change not as an environmental crisis, but as the result of the actions

of people, policies, institutions, and business, and as having

consequences that raise very deep questions about ethics and justice.

There are clear examples of risks that are not completely known

in everyday life but are, nonetheless, seriously acknowledged and

tackled individually and collectively. For example, any citizen who

owns a piece of real state property pays for fire or flood insurance.

Obviously, it is not known with certainty whether this risk will

materialise at some point. However, it is considered normal to accept

the risk.

This type of approach should be discussed in public spaces.

What risks, and for whom, are provoked by a conception of progress

and lifestyles that are based on a type of pollution that has

catastrophic consequences even if they are not perfectly known?

What are the human dimensions of the causes, consequences and

solutions of this problem? What is the meaning of this problem for

citizens and public bureaucracies? What type of leadership does it

demand from the political class? And how can we start to envision a

sustainable society that is fair and equal to our generation, those that

are living in distant countries but are connected through an endless

number of global processes, and the future generations?

I suggest that the media could not only begin to address these

issues, but could also open up spaces for self-reflection. The opening

of this space should at least show what happens when instead of

highlighting scientific uncertainty the media emphasises the

uncertainty of the human future, including the future of welfare

societies that are based on democratic principles, and recognises a

series of individual and collective responsibilities. Self-reflection

should also reach the media. If the crisis presented by global warming

is a crisis of values, justice, inequality; a crisis of conscience and

principles that forces us to change how we see the world and

ourselves as part of the world, the crisis also includes the media

institutions. Therefore, there is a professional responsibility that

should also be applied by educational institutions and scientific

journalists.

References

Edwards, P. N. 2011. “History of climate modeling”, Wiley

Interdisciplinary

Reviews: Climate Change, Volume 2, Issue 1, pp. 128–139.

Joshi, M., Hawkins, E., Sutton, R., Lowe, J. & Frame, D. 2011.

Projections of when temperature change will exceed 2°C above

pre-industrial levels. Nature Climate Change, 1 (8), pp. 407-412.

Klein, R., J., T., Eriksen, S., E., H., Næss, L., O., Hammill, A.,

Robledo, C.,

O'Brien, K., L., and Tanner, T., M. 2007. Portfolio Screening to

Support the Mainstreaming of Adaptation to Climate Change

into Development Assistance. Climatic Change 84(1): 1573-

Lawson, Victoria and Asuncion Lera St.Clair. 2009. "The Relevance

of Critical Global Poverty Studies in the Re-framing of

Environmental Change as an issue of Human Security," IHDP

Update 2009/2: pp. 25-29.

Leichenko, R., M., and O‟Brien, K., L. 2008. Environmental Change

and Globalization: Double Exposures. New York: Oxford

University Press.

Müller, B. 2002. Equity in Climate Change: The Great Divide.

Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, with support of Shell

Foundation: Oxford.

New, M., Liverman, D., Schroeder, H. & Anderson, K. 2011. Four

degrees and beyond: The potential for a global temperature

increase of four degrees and its implications. Philosophical

Transactions of the Royal Society of London A, 369, pp. 6-19.

O'Brien, K., St.Clair, A. L. & Kristoffersen, B. (eds.) 2010. Climate

Change, Ethics and Human Security, New York: Cambridge

University Press.

Parry, M., Lowe, J., and Hanson, C. 2009. “Overshoot, Adapt and

Recover,” Nature 458 (30), pp. 1102-1103.

Roberts, T., J., and Parks, B., C. 2006. A Climate of Injustice: Global

Inequality, North-South Politics, and Climate Policy.

Cambridge: MIT Press.

Stafford Smith, M., Horrocks, L., Harvey, A. & Hamilton, C. 2011.

Rethinking adaptation for a 4o C world. Philosophical

Transactions of the Royal Society of London A, 369, pp. 196-

St. Clair, Asuncion Lera. 2006a. "Global Poverty: The Co-Production

of Knowledge and Politics," Journal of Global Social Policy

6(1), pp. 57-77.

St. Clair, Asuncion Lera. 2006b. "Global Poverty: Development

Ethics Meets Global Justice" Journal Globalizations 3 (2), pp.

139-157.

St.Clair, A.L. (2010) “Climate change and global poverty: The

responsibility to protect,” in O'Brien, K., St.Clair, A. L. &

Kristoffersen, B. (eds.) 2010. Climate Change, Ethics and

Human Security, New York: Cambridge University Press.

UN Commission on Human Security, 2003 available at

http://ochaonline.un.org/Default.aspx?alias=ochaonline.un.org

/humansecurity

UNDP (United Nations Development Programme). 2008. Human

Development Report 2007/2008 Fighting climate change:

Human solidarity in a divided world. New York: United

Nations Development Programme.

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