As the climate emergency creeps closer to the top of the political agenda, where it belongs, an argument is raging over communication. Exactly what to say about the environmental crisis, and how, is an important question for all sorts of people and organizations, including governments.
It is particularly pressing for journalists, authors and broadcasters. For us, communication is not an adjunct to other activities such as policymaking or campaigning. It is our main job.
People need to know what is happening to glaciers, forests and endangered species, but information requires interpretation. While editorial judgements influence the way that all subjects are covered, storytelling about the climate emergency is particularly fraught.
These tensions are nothing new. For several decades, a disinformation campaign led by fossil fuel companies and their allies meant that the overwhelming scientific consensus about the risks of global warming was obscured. The BBC, among other organizations, mistakenly attempted to “balance” the warnings about humanity’s worsening predicament with lies. Greens of all shades were rightly enraged.
This phase of climate communication led to enormously harmful delays, but the disagreements did not end when the global warming deniers were forced to retreat. Instead, new divisions have either appeared or become more obvious. While those on the left back strong action by governments, those on the right put more emphasis on markets and individuals.
Yet there is another dimension to the controversy over climate communication. It is an argument as much about mood as about content. At its heart is the question: How depressed or hopeful should we be?
One version of this conflict has played out in the contrasting approaches of two of the UK’s most influential environmental communicators. In a 2018 article, the campaigning Guardian columnist George Monbiot attacked environmental broadcaster David Attenborough and the BBC for presenting images of pristine ecosystems in the Dynasties nature television series while playing down the true extent of ecological destruction they are enduring.
Attenborough has become more outspoken, telling a British parliamentary committee two years ago that “we cannot be radical enough” on carbon emissions. Though for many years, the alarm bells in his programs were drowned out by animal noises and wonderment. Ten years ago, he told me that the BBC impartiality drummed into him as a young man made him “uneasy” about political statements long after he became convinced that global heating was taking place. Instead, he aimed to cultivate love of the natural world in the hope that this would motivate people to protect it.
A more recent spat illustrates similar tensions from a different angle. Michael Mann is a US climate scientist whose latest book, The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet, takes aim at the latest efforts of climate deniers. He describes the new, “softer” tactics adopted by the fossil fuel lobby and its techno-utopian enablers. These include downplaying the dangers of global heating and trying to delay regulatory action.
Mann criticizes a number of writers for engaging in what he calls “doomism” or “despair-mongering.” One of his targets is journalist David Wallace-Wells, author of the influential The Uninhabitable Earth. Another is academic Jem Bendell, who advocates an approach he describes as “deep adaptation” to an anticipated “societal collapse.”
While Mann praises environmental advocate Greta Thunberg, who famously told world leaders “I want you to panic,” in general he thinks the word “panic” should be avoided.
While this debate could be seen as a distraction from the more important story of what is actually going on and what needs to be done, the argument about how to talk and think about the climate crisis is increasingly central.
Divisions should not be exaggerated.
Mann said in a recent interview that he falls victim to “doomism” himself at times.
On an emotional level, he recognizes that fear is a natural reaction to what is happening to the environment. In an important sense, he, Bendell, Wallace-Wells and Thunberg are on the same side — they all recognize global heating as an existential threat.
However, major differences of philosophy and strategy also need to be reckoned with, even among those who see themselves as on the same side against global heating.
The deals struck by governments at the COP26 UN climate talks talks in November are to determine what climate progress the world can make over the next decade. Compared with this, the question of how cheerful or miserable you or I or anyone else feels about the situation might seem trivial, but it is important.
Socialist writer Raymond Williams used the term “structure of feeling” to describe the way that the cultural life of a democracy could be shaped, from the bottom up. What is the “structure of feeling” about the climate at the moment?
A UN poll of 1.2 million people globally found that two-thirds believe global heating is an “emergency.” In the UK, the figure was 81 percent. What lies beneath such headlines is hard to know. Do most people believe that things are going to work out in the end? That the warnings of disaster are being exaggerated? Or are millions, even billions of us, living in terror that they are not?
Mann is far from alone in his hostility to gloominess. Others, too, see it as a gateway to nihilism, and fear that those who anticipate a grim spiral of chaos and scarcity could push reactionary policies focused on controlling borders and resources.
Others, including me, think that while it is right to be hopeful about the post-carbon emissions future, to embrace the prospect of green jobs and cleaner air, too much optimism also carries risks. The situation is sad and extremely dangerous.
Like a person with a serious illness, we first need to admit this, and then do every single thing we can to preserve life.
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