Climate Change Politics: Communication and Public Engagement By ...

Peterson, 1997). It has a disciplinary role in relation to more radical forms of environmental discourse and mobilization, annihilating the possibility of opposition. Several studies have demonstrated that the related discourses of sustainable development and ecological modernization have been naturalized and neutralized by the media, a key element of contemporary public spheres (Carvalho, 2005b; Carvalho & Pereira, 2008), excluding more socially transformative discourses.

Swyngedouw maintained that a similarly hegemonic approach to climate change has contributed to the already ongoing depoliticization of public life. Dissent and disagreement have no space in a managerial framework that claims to “solve the problem” while leaving comfortable lifestyles untouched. Instead, a series of mechanisms have been put in place to regulate and trade emissions of greenhouse gases through institutional arrangements and voluntary measures. This can be viewed as a form of governmentality (Dean, 1999; Foucault, 1991; Rose, 1999) that spans multiple scales and involves different agents through techniques of domination and technologies of subjectification.

Looking at a range of texts from international organizations, Methmann (2010) has argued that climate protection has been transformed into an empty signifier (a concept employed by Laclau & Mouffe, 1985) that is employed by a multitude of bodies to justify their continuation of practices that have, paradoxically, contributed to the problem. Thus the World Trade Organization (WTO), for instance, frames climate change as a trade problem and promotes further liberalization to address it. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) promotes a green fund as a technical solution to the problem that it argues would be more effective than political negotiations. Both bodies, together with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the World Bank, construct economic growth as the priority in any climate-oriented policies, which are therefore expected to promote growth. Climate protection is thus integrated into “the global hegemonic order without changing the basic social structures of the world economy” (Methmann,