scholarly journals Transformative Frames for Climate Threat in the Anthropocene

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margot Hurlbert

This is a mini review of literature surrounding new inter and transdisciplinary frames of the threat of climate change including “Anthropocene,” linked with “climate crisis,” “climate emergency,” and “climate catastrophe”. The specific meanings and consequences of these frames are discussed and an argument why these frames are needed and risk is not enough. Ultimately, this article concludes these new framings assist transformative change by opening up climate change science, citizen engagement, and policy response. However, no one frame and no one associated policy is supported, but a plurality, dependent on context, and culture.

Daedalus ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 149 (4) ◽  
pp. 180-191
Author(s):  
Carolyn Kormann

Reportage and essays are the first and most immediate way that citizens learn about climate change science, its causes and consequences, and the impacts that industry and consumerism have on ecosystems. For fifteen years, I have been reporting and writing stories on these topics. Growing up, I was drawn to the environment because I was fascinated by the diversity, the endless variety, of life on Earth. But early in my career, in my first reporting job for a newspaper in the Caribbean, I also saw the disastrous toll that contemporary civilization was taking on the natural world – specifically on coral reefs. And yet, the climate crisis was not widely reported as such in those days. That experience, and the dearth of mainstream climate reporting at the time, led me to seek out some of the leading thinkers on the subject, and made climate one of the central subjects of my work. Most often, in the field of journalism, the phrase “bearing witness” refers to war journalism, while my work, for years, had often felt like science translation, connection, and storytelling. But more recently, as the ecological and societal impacts of a changing climate have grown more extreme, widespread, and apparent, while greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, climate journalism has, too, become a form of bearing witness.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rubén D. Manzanedo ◽  
Peter Manning

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.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Morrissey

Abstract This paper is a response Ferris (2020), specifically to the call for coalescence around a single term by which to talk about people migrating in response to climate change. While sympathetic to the imperative behind Ferris’ (2020) call, my overall argument is to reject this proposal. Instead I argue for less of focus on what we call people migrating in response to climate change, and more of a focus on how we talk about them. To justify this, I argue that a single term is inherently reductive and likely to play upon anti-immigrant sentiment due to the need to portray ‘migration as a problem’. At best this will result in a policy focus with limited capacity to address the challenge of migration in a context of climate change. At worst it will drive a policy response that is overtly counter-productive. As an alternative, I propose embracing a multitude of discourses, informed by principals that I argue will drive a humane climate agenda, and allow for a flexible approach that can account for the variety of concerns at the nexus of climate change and human migration.


Author(s):  
Emily D Ryalls ◽  
Sharon R Mazzarella

Abstract In the 16 months before TIME magazine naming Greta Thunberg its Person of the Year, as her influence grew, so too did the news media’s attempts to make sense of her. This project analyzes profiles of Greta Thunberg to understand how journalists constructed the persona that has become “Greta.” We argue the paradoxical framing of Thunberg as exceptional and fierce and childlike contributes to an alternative construction of girlhood grounded in the positive portrayal of her Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) diagnosis. While featuring ASD as her “superpower” is potentially progressive, we argue foregrounding Thunberg’s whiteness and age cements her construction as the iconic voice of the climate crisis movement, potentially downplaying the need for collective action to end climate change.


Author(s):  
Robert C. Schmidt

AbstractIn this short paper, I look back at the early stages of the Corona crisis, around early February 2020, and compare the situation with the climate crisis. Although these two problems unfold on a completely different timescale (weeks in the case of Corona, decades in the case of climate change), I find some rather striking similarities between these two problems, related with issues such as uncertainty, free-rider incentives, and disincentives of politicians to adequately address the respective issue with early, farsighted and possibly harsh policy measures. I then argue that for complex problems with certain characteristics, it may be necessary to establish novel political decision procedures that sidestep the normal, day-to-day political proceedings. These would be procedures that actively involve experts, and lower the involvement of political parties as far as possible to minimize the decision-makers’ disincentives.


2020 ◽  
pp. 096366252097601
Author(s):  
Nicole Kay ◽  
Sandrine Gaymard

Climate change is a global environmental issue and its outcome will affect societies around the world. In recent years, we have seen a growing literature on media coverage of climate change, but, to date, no study has assessed the situation in Cameroon, although it is considered to be one of the world’s most affected and vulnerable regions. This study attempted to address this deficit by analysing how climate change is represented in the Cameroonian media. A similarity analysis was performed on three newspapers published in 2013–2016. Results showed that climate coverage focused on politics and international involvement. It seems disconnected from local realities, potentially opening up a spatial and social psychological distance. The relationship between the representation of climate change and that of poverty is an area for further exploration.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document