By Anton Botha
As the seriousness of global warming has become clearer, scientists, environmental activists, civil society, and even politicians have taken to informing, and warning, people about this crisis. Although this campaign has been informative by all accounts, it does not seem to have been effective. Knowledge of global warming and its effects is considered to be general knowledge, with several surveys by Wutter in 2005, Harding, Thorn, and Wallace in 2009 indicating that among the general public, between 70% and 80% agree that global warming is a reality. However, despite these high levels of awareness, only 9% of those surveyed who thought global warning was a reality were willing to make drastic changes to lower their environmental impact.
This of course invites the question: “Why, despite all the knowledge in our possession, are we as individuals so unwilling to take action if there is even a remote chance that we might avert global disaster?”
I believe part of the answer to this complex problem resides in a study conducted by Kellstadt, Zahran, and Vedlitz (2008) who surprisingly found that the more awareness people had of the climate-change problem, the less likely they were to take action to prevent it. It would seem that increased information about global warming and its effects resulted in a diminished sense of personal responsibly. This in turn was accompanied by increased confidence that scientists would be able to solve the problem.
This leads straight to another question: “Why would people place the very survival of the planet, themselves, and future generations in the hands of scientists when they themselves are at once the cause of, and the solution to, the problem?”
The answer to this question, like all those relating to complex phenomena, is multi-dimensional. However, one element, it could be argued, plays a disproportionate role in shaping people’s attitudes and behaviour toward this crisis. That element is discourse. Many discourses including, but probably not limited to, consumerism, neo-liberal capitalism, modernity, and post-modernism, have played their part in sculpting our minds, shaping the human mindset in the direction of apathy and environmental impotence. In this article, however, I would like to focus on a particular discourse that I believe has played a major role in the counterintuitive findings of Kellstadt. That is the discourse we have constructed concerning our relationship with the ontological realm, which includes the domains of nature and our relationship with the environment. This discourse is characterised by our belief that we have dominion over nature.
For clarity’s sake, discourse can be thought of as a complex system of thoughts, ideas, images, and other symbolic practices that constitute a net of shared meaning that serves to influence, direct, and prohibit the behaviour of those who operate within its bounds. Given this definition, though, how does discourse specifically influence the attitudes found in the study by Kellstadt et al (2009) on our mindset toward the environmental crisis?
Our current predominant ontological discourse is one characterised by the belief that the universe operates according to the laws of “determinism”. One could speculate that this discourse is as the result of the hangover left by modernity and the “natural” laws described by Newton and Einstein’s formula e = mc2. Both these scientific breakthroughs gave humanity unprecedented power and control over nature since we were suddenly able to control the then-smallest building blocks of nature. As explained by Foucault, however, in any discourse there are those with authority and those who are prohibited from speaking. In the newly formed Newtonian ontological discourse it was science and technology, and by extension those who called themselves scientists, that held this power. After all these were the people who split the atom and as a result could literally move mountains or put men on the moon. The average person, instead of resolving problems autonomously, started looking to science and technology for solutions to everyday problems. This ontological discourse, however, resulted in us placing the power to take action in the hands of scientists.
The current environmental crisis is no exception. People believe we live in a causal, linear Newtonian universe and that which can be explained can ultimately be predicted and controlled. Since we know what is causing global warming (scientists have told us) and science has demonstrated itself the most capable of all competing discourses to “control” nature, people have placed the responsibility of solving the current environmental problem in the hand of scientists.
This thesis, I believe, goes some way toward explaining the findings of Kellstadt. The more people know about the current environmental crisis the less they feel responsible as they believe this to be a problem with nature. As scientists have control over nature, the resolution of the problem resides with scientists. Insofar as Hollywood films are a barometer of the prevailing discourses, a series of films released in the 1990s and 2000s provides further support for the abovementioned thesis. Films, like Mimi Leder’s Deep Impact, Michael Bay’s Armageddon, Jon Amiel’s The Core, and Mick Jackson’s Volcano, to mention a few, tell the story of how nature launches a “surprise attack” on humankind and how the hero(es), with the aid of scientists (usually in white lab coats) fights back to overcome nature and avert disaster. These films, insofar as they turn nature into the villain that needs to be “taught a lesson”, are thus symptomatic of our ontological discourse, which sees humans as separate from nature and emphasises man’s ability to control and “conquer” it.
There is no denying the power of discourse. It has a substantial effect on the way people think and act. It is so powerful, in fact, that it channels people into patterns of behaviour that seem to defy all that is rational. History of course provides plenty of examples to back up such a statement: think only of the Salem witch trials, the Spanish Inquisition, and Nazi Germany, to mention a few.
However, as Foucault mentions in his observation about discourse, no discourse is stagnant. This is once again backed up by history. We know that discourses have changed in the past; therefore discourses are also likely to change in the future. However, the time limit imposed on us by our current environmental crisis does not afford us the luxury of waiting for an organic transition into a new more sustainable ontological discourse. If one, however, knows how the mechanisms that shape and drive discourse work, it should be theoretically possible to intentionally alter the course of any discourse if the proper resources were made available.
In his book Discipline and Punish, Foucault mentions some of these specific mechanisms. In particular he makes mention of “examination” and “ranking”. Examination is a kind of probation as it is premised on the idea that there is a correct and incorrect way of doing something. Ranking also tells people what behaviours are “referred” or discouraged by a particular discourse. In light of this, would it not be fruitful to start using these tools to shift our prevailing discourse?
Instead of the “Forbes 100 rich list” perhaps we can have the “Forbes 100 Green list” consisting of 100 people who have made the greatest contribution toward addressing our environmental crisis. Also, this process can be used in reverse — one could compile a list naming the “100 greatest environmental villains”. No company or individual, I would hazard to guess, would welcome an appearance on such a list. Furthermore, organisations and individuals who engage in manufacturing, development or other activities that could potentially harm the environment could be examined and issued licences. Only after they have shown the necessary knowledge in issues related to environmental management or ways of minimising greenhouse emissions would they be allowed to carry on their operations.
Of course in small ways this is happening already. Once again, if Hollywood is taken as a measure of the prevailing discourse, one can see a slow shift in attitudes, evident in the messages that underpin movies like James Cameron’s Avatar, and Roland Emmerich’s The Day After Tomorrow. These films paint a very different picture from the films mentioned previously.
In Emmerich’s film, the story is told of how weather patterns can shift in a matter of days to transform the world as we know it into something unrecognisable. This of course resonates with the idea of “tipping points” in complex systems, where small gradual changes can result in sudden dramatic outcomes in the system.
Cameron’s Avatar, on the other hand, attempts to demonstrate the interconnected relationship living beings have with the environment in very overt ways. The creatures that inhabit the fictional orb called Pandora actually have the ability to plug into a richly interconnected network of which all life on the planet is a part. The message here: “We are all part of one eco-system and cannot transcend or exist separately from nature.” Perhaps, and in line of our original goal of willingly influencing the dominant discourse, films of this nature can be encouraged or even actively scripted.
In conclusion, then, it would seem that in discourse reside the seeds of both our destruction and salvation. Now that some of the tools of discourse have been illuminated, we merely need somebody with resources and the will to guide the prevailing discourses in the right direction. Ironically, though, those in power have been put there by the very discourses they now need to challenge in order to save humankind. This is of course a most unfortunate turn of events …
Anton Botha is a lecturer at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University and agrees with Douglas Adams that “there is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.” By my own estimations this has happened a number of times.
Thought-provoking piece Anton.
I think, like the HIV/AIDs agenda, global warming has become a diluted discourse… white noise that rarely (if ever) commands conspicuous mainstream media attention (which is a key vehicle of discourse transmission).
To our peril, global warming just aint a hot topic anymore.
You put too much faith in the majority of humans being capable of rational behaviour.
As James Lovelock said: humans are simply too stupid to survive in the long run.
Anton,
I imagine you may be very interested in some of the Ecolaw 101 aspects of the Amicus Curiae currently before the Constitutional Court, that argues taht environment/ecolaws are the sine qua non for all other rights.
PDF here if interested: http://www.scribd.com/doc/35890826
Probably because global warming is a sympton, not the real problem. It’s a red herring that is distracting people from the real issue – our destruction of the earth and our relentless use of it’s natural resources. Stop the destruction and consumption and you’ll stop global warming.
It’s a hoax, that’s why and it’s coming off the rails so much even Obama is pushing it to the back burner.
http://www.climatechangefraud.com/climate-reports/7491-official-satellite-failure-means-decade-of-global-warming-data-doubtful
An interesting piece on human behaviour. As far as your topic (global warming) is concerned, I believe you need to do a lot more research. Many scientists (who don’t get much media attention)are telling us that global warming (and cooling) is directly the result of well established solar cycles and that man increasing or decreasing his carbon footprint will make very little difference. The big money (govt. research grants etc)is of course in green technology and although I believe that many are beginning to doubt man’s impact on climate change, nobody of significant importance is going to rock the boat. Have a look at Iceagenow.com for some serious alternative views and don’t sell your woollies in a rush!!
As a scientist, without polling, it seems to me that the numbers that believe in global warming are much smaller, though the evidence is there. It may be that green thinking may have a delaying function in human impact on the planet, but if current trends hold, particularly in the developing world, it won’t be for long. The population in the next 40 years will top 9 billion, up from the current 7. Energy use is skyrocketing beyond what all forms of current energy generation can possibly provide. China is now the worlds largest consumer of oil and building one coal fired plant per day. And, it is not just China, but worldwide. I just heard a world leading Chemist say that if we build one nuclear plant a day, and use all of the coal and oil reserves as well as all possible wind generation sites, as well as geothermal, it will not come close to meeting needs, and only around 5 nuclear plants per year are being produced. Interesting problem, because affordable green technologies are essentially at their infancy in development. It seems the overwhelming need for ‘development’ and out of control procreation are the driving forces. Technologies may be developing now or soon, but essentially now is the only time to radically change, and that seems against human nature. And the belief that man can solve any problem so often has lead to even worse problems.
What do you expect people to do about global warming? The planet warms and cools. We can do no more than the people living in the Medieval Warm Period did when their planet cooled. Nothing, just move or adapt. In case you are talking about the hypothesis of Co2 induced warming, we can shut down everything, No electicity, no gas, no oil. That means no transportation, no A/C, no heating, no refrigeration, no stove, no computers, no police, no hospitals and no food. That should cut the population by 3/4′s and in 100 years, farmland and cities will revert to woodlands and forests. That might make a change in the climate or it might not.
A cap and trade will do nothing except kill more people in the winter and make money for the carbon traders.
Concrete over all those pretty wetland swamps — they belch ozone-wrecking methane at a rate that makes the combined output of CO2 made by all the world’s motor vehicles look benign.
Cap all the world’s volcanoes and geothermal vents and geysers. Have you any idea of the greenhouse gases they belch?
But why mess with nature? Because global warming (and global cooling) has been cyclical events since millions of years before homo sapiens trod on this earth, and it will continue cycling for millions of years after we’ve all vanished off the planet.
If we want to stop global warming, we won’t even achieve it by wiping out the entire human race in one cataclysmic day. We might as well try to stop the law of gravity from applying to us.
Your question hinges on the notion that there is something that can be done about global warming, with the implied assumption that it is anthropogenic, therefore the solution must be anthropogenic too.
Sure the “scientists have told us”, but there’s still that elephant in the room. The very scientists to which you ascribe, have been found wanting in the honesty stakes. It has been proven that their arguments have been weighted with false data and ignored and discarded valid data.
Meanwhile…..back in the real world, the majority of people are more concerned with the present, to wit, feeding and clothing themselves rather than the proclaiming scientists.
Whilst there are others who have seen the folly of those scientists (who have told us) and have decided “Well there’s much around here to be done then”, and have carried on with their lives.
Climactic change over time is inevitable and historically proven. I won’t be around when my great-great grandchildren arrive, but I’m sure they’ll be faced with the same type of headline and discussion when their great-great children are expecting their children.
I’m glad I won’t be around then, but then that has nothing to do with the weather. There are more pressing social issues that need attention.
I will start taking global warming seriously when the people that tell me that there is a problem start acting like there is a problem.
In this post I will not mention the fraudster academics at CRU at East Anglia.
Al Gore’s one house use 220 000 KWh of electricity a year. My own use is 11 000 kWh a year.
You only write this Foucault & Kellstadt cr@p, because otherwise you will not get paid. Will this scholarship have paid you if you wrote an expose about this whole global warming fraud? No.
You don’t need to appeal to fatuous mystifiers like Foucault.
There’s a simple reason: it would cost the ruling class money to do anything about global warming. Therefore, nothing is going to be done about global warming.
Same reason nothing was done about prison reform after Foucault published Discipline and Punish.
Wow, the denialists are busy today…Don’t you guys have an echo chamber to climb back inside, or at least some new spin?
Aragorn, until the truth is recognized and your head’s no longer in the sand (I’m being polite), people will continue to stand up against a fallacious proclamation.
Show me accurate, impartial and empirical data from all aspects of this globe over an extended period of time. If it holds up to scrutiny, I may be swayed. However thusfar it hasn’t happened. We’ve seen fraud, much grand-standing and far too many hands out for money trying to prove it.
Hey growing up in the late ’60s & ’70s, my biggest fear was the coming ‘Ice Age’. The threat made headlines and even featured in “Look and Learn”, so it had to be true.
And Dave, the issues in the snippets of data that you allude to are of greater concern. Anthropogenic Global Warming doesn’t really rate as a factor there.
As we speak scientists are working on giant greenhouse gas eating cockroaches to solve the problem – there you go, we can all sleep better now.
“Al Gore’s one house use 220 000 KWh of electricity a year. My own use is 11 000 kWh a year.”
Al Gore’s “one house” is the headquarters of his political operation, and is thus more accurately referred to as an office. Of course, that would dilute the soundbite, no?
And that’s why we’re not really doing anything – people are dumb, think in soundbites, and let paid-for pundits do their thinking for them. To put it bluntly, we’re fucked; I hope whatever evolves to replace us has more sense than we do.
As I said, the numbers of warming believers is likely a lot smaller. Natural cycles were in vogue fifteen years ago, including solar cycles. However, in the context of the rate of warming and the numerous human effects, current climatology regards, after much analysis and hesitation in light of natural cycles, such thinking as fringe. As well, recent media sensations about false data turned out to be essentially untrue. Never the less, it is far easier for the ignorant to latch onto this fringe science, often funded or publicized by industry, or say that what is happening in the blink of a geological eye is some sort of cycle. Beats reading scientific journals. It is something current generations will be witnessing in what normally might take thousands of years in decades, and not much is going to stop it. Grab a chair. Haven’t found that Climate Change for Dummies Reference book yet, but one is needed. Even industry, though funding any and all PR against warming, is now admitting that it is occurring and man made. It is kind of like admitting getting old, you notice it, but it is so gradual, denial is natural.
Maybe it’s more simple for us simple people than your complex analysis would suggest. If you’re at the bottom of a mountain with a crook leg, a beautiful, enthusiastic maiden; your car ran out of petrol and there’s an almighty avalanche heading straight down hill towards you both … does it do any good to start running … or would it be better to keep sha***ng your way to eternity?.
Sorry… that should have read simpler for us dof people than your complex analysis would suggest…
I don’t know if Global Warming is a hoax or not, but what is definitely NOT a hoax is the population explosion. And this is at the root of all our problems on this planet. The reason nobody’s doing anything about it though, is that, unfortunately, population control is a taboo subject.
I’m very intrigued by the assumption that when “people know they act”! Global worming has now joined the HIV and Poverty campaigns on this premise.
Probably one can help me appreciate current trends on knowledge and action in humans.
There are a number of obvious reasons:-
Current proposals to address the problem will be totally ineffective within anything resembling a politically relevant timeframe.
The targets which have been proposed are both arbitrary and not practically achievable, representing symbolic political posturing.
The economic and hence political consequences of any proposals which might conceivably achieve anything concrete in relation to ‘global climate regulation’ greatly exceed any measurable benefit.
People grow weary of throwing tax revenue at pork barrel programs which produce no accountable improvement in ‘the climate’ as such, and rightly question the cost/benefit ratio when such resources are allocated.
This has necessitated the emergence of progressively more sensationalist and apocalyptic ‘discourse’ to justify the assertion that no price, no price whatsoever is too high, and in so doing, move further and further from both science and credibility.
Much of the “ontological discourse”
surrounding global warming ‘solutions’ is rooted in magical thinking.
While billions of dollars have been spent upon pretext of ‘tackling global warming’, global ‘emissions’ continue to rise at between 2% and 3% annually, roughly in step with population growth.
Developing nations which are indeed developing, (particularly China and India) do so due to the expansion of their available energy base, and consequently exhibit growth in emissions higher than the global average.
These nations are not environmental miscreants with no vision, they are people striving for greater prosperity, and for that they need more energy, not ideology and magic.
@Perry Curling-Hope
Spot on!
Interesting theory and solution, it sounded like one of Prof Olivier’s. I have a simpler theory which is rooted in cladistics, which is that human beings have more genes in common with sharks, lemmings and ostriches than with monkeys. The more of us their are, the more we want breed and consume, if the world out there looks unpleasant, we close our eyes and if all else fails, we take a dramatic sprint to the cliff edge. Centuries of training in obedience to the high priests of course is not helping. I think you should stick with Adams for a solution and forget Foucalt. Remember the goat?
@Perry Curling-Hope – Yes, that would be the realistic analysis. It would be interesting to see if the global emission increase is more directly related to an increase in internal combustion engines, which I suspect is the chief culprit in this matter.
@Carla Bauer:
“I don’t know if Global Warming is a hoax or not, but what is definitely NOT a hoax is the population explosion. And this is at the root of all our problems on this planet. The reason nobody’s doing anything about it though, is that, unfortunately, population control is a taboo subject.”
This is because generally, “population control” is code for “prevent brown people and the poor from breeding”. That well is tainted.