Aesthetic practices in the climate crisis: Intervening in consensual frameworks of the sensible through images

Abstract Previous research has shown that Western visual journalism has represented climate change through certain repetitive and stereotypical imagery mainly consisting of catastrophic images of climate change impacts, images depicting technological causes and solutions, and images of politicians and activists. This imagery has proven to be distant, abstract, and ineffective in motivating personal engagement with climate change. In this article, we claim that visual journalism's representations of climate change are rooted in the consensual frameworks of human-centredness and consumption-centredness. Leaning on Jacques Ranciére's notion of “the politics of aesthetics”, we aim to challenge these frameworks. We suggest, with examples from visual arts, four aesthetic practices which could intervene in these frameworks: 1) revealing connectedness, 2) recognising agency, 3) compromising the attractions of consumerism, and 4) illuminating alternatives. We propose that visual representations, renewed through these aesthetic practices, could have an effect on how people connect to climate issues and imagine possibilities for agency in the climate crisis. Implementing these aesthetic practices would entail shifts in the sphere of visual journalism.

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Changing Climate, Changing Terrain: The Stasis Metaphor and the Climate Crisis

Journal of Technical Writing and Communication ◽

10.1177/0047281620966988 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 004728162096698

Author(s):

Shelton Weech

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Rhetorical Analysis ◽

Climate Change Impacts ◽

Rhetorical Theory ◽

Changing Climate ◽

Technical Communicators ◽

Issue Definition ◽

Climate Crisis

Rhetorical theory has frequently relied on metaphors of place and positioning as heuristics to build better arguments. This article utilizes one such metaphor, that of stasis theory, as a method by which we might change the terrain of the conversation surrounding the climate crisis. As an example, the author does a rhetorical analysis of a recent agricultural report from the Indiana Climate Change Impacts Assessment and finds that, rather than using traditional questions of conjecture and quality, the authors of the report focus on questions of procedure and definition to reframe the discussion surrounding the climate crisis. Drawing from the rhetoric in this report, the author suggests that technical communicators might similarly produce more fruitful conversations around the climate crisis if they focus on what to do (procedure) and redefining the crisis as a local issue (definition).

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Beyond the vulnerability/resilience dichotomy: Perceptions of and responses to the climate crisis on Emau, Vanuatu

Island Studies Journal ◽

10.24043/isj.151 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Sophie Ruehr

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Emotional Labor ◽

Climate Adaptation ◽

Climate Change Impacts ◽

Environmental Knowledge ◽

Cash Income ◽

International Borders ◽

Vulnerability Framework ◽

Climate Crisis ◽

Hybrid Forms

In Vanuatu, a South Pacific island nation, the effects of climate change pose new challenges for low-lying coastal communities. This study explores how one village on Emau, an island offshore of capital island Efate, has developed several overlapping strategies to manage climate change impacts, including drought and sea level rise. Informants reveal their perceptions of changing environmental baselines and how socio-economic processes, including population growth, cultural loss, and limited access to cash incomes, have shaped the community’s response. Informants describe four climate adaptation strategies: 1) expanding access to cash income through seasonal or urban labor migration; 2) leveraging international expertise and funding to meet their goals; 3) developing hybrid forms of traditional practices and contemporary ideology to preserve environmental knowledge; and 4) performing physical and emotional labor to preserve and remain on their land. These strategies span oceans and cross international borders, refuting narratives of islands’ being ‘isolated’ from the rest of the world and passive ‘victims’ of climate change. Contextualizing perceptions of and responses to environmental change provides critical nuance to the resilience/vulnerability framework, which alone obscures ongoing political, social and economic processes on islands.

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Three Faces of Climate Justice

Annual Review of Political Science ◽

10.1146/annurev-polisci-051120-125514 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 25 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Nives Dolšak ◽

Aseem Prakash

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Climate Change Impacts ◽

Climate Justice ◽

Annual Review ◽

Publication Date ◽

Climate Politics ◽

Disadvantaged Communities ◽

Mitigation And Adaptation ◽

Change Climate ◽

Climate Crisis

There is overwhelming consensus about the science of climate change. Climate politics, however, remains volatile, driven by perceptions of injustice, which motivate policy resistance and undermine policy legitimacy. We identify three types of injustice. The first pertains to the uneven exposure to climate change impacts across countries and communities within a country. Socially, politically, and economically disadvantaged communities that have contributed the least to the climate crisis tend to be affected the most. To address climate change and its impacts, countries and subnational units have enacted a range of policies. But even carefully designed mitigation and adaptation policies distribute costs (the second justice dimension) and benefits (the third justice dimension) unevenly across sectors and communities, often reproducing existing inequalities. Climate justice requires paying careful attention to who bears the costs and who gets the benefits of both climate inaction and action. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Political Science, Volume 25 is May 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

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Climate Change and Unalakleet: A Deep Analysis

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13179971 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (17) ◽

pp. 9971

Author(s):

Tero Mustonen ◽

Brie Van Dam

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Pacific Salmon ◽

Historical Context ◽

Keystone Species ◽

Historical Review ◽

Climate Change Impacts ◽

Climate Impacts ◽

Community Based ◽

Current State ◽

Climate Crisis

This multi-disciplinary science and Indigenous knowledge assessment paper reviews over 20 years of research materials, oral histories and Indigenous views on climate change affecting Unalakleet, Alaska, USA and Norton Sound. It brings a historical review, statistical analysis, community-based observations and wisdom from Unalakleet Iñupiaq knowledge holders into a critical reading of the current state of climate change impacts in the region. Through this process, two keystone species, Pacific salmon and caribou, are explored as indicators of change to convey the significance of climate impacts. We rely on this historical context to analyse the root causes of the climate crisis as experienced in Alaska, and as a result we position Indigenous resurgence, restoration and wisdom as answers.

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What we can learn from the parallels between the COVID-19 and the future climate change crises

10.32942/osf.io/eg6hr ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Rubén D. Manzanedo ◽

Peter Manning

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Global Economy ◽

Global Climate ◽

Future Climate Change ◽

Substantial Portion ◽

Preventative Measures ◽

The Future ◽

Behavioral Norm ◽

Climate Crisis ◽

Global Population

The ongoing COVID-19 outbreak pandemic is now a global crisis. It has caused 1.6+ million confirmed cases and 100 000+ deaths at the time of writing and triggered unprecedented preventative measures that have put a substantial portion of the global population under confinement, imposed isolation, and established ‘social distancing’ as a new global behavioral norm. The COVID-19 crisis has affected all aspects of everyday life and work, while also threatening the health of the global economy. This crisis offers also an unprecedented view of what the global climate crisis may look like. In fact, some of the parallels between the COVID-19 crisis and what we expect from the looming global climate emergency are remarkable. Reflecting upon the most challenging aspects of today’s crisis and how they compare with those expected from the climate change emergency may help us better prepare for the future.

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