| Chapter 1: | Reinventing the Political |
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protest groups such as Plane Stupid to community-based projects such as Transition, a range of social initiatives has emerged and expanded significantly, both within single countries and internationally. There is also a growing public involvement with what has been termed “clickactivism,” Internet-mediated forms of political expression and participation. Despite these developments, however, polls show that most people feel powerless to address climate change and feel disengaged from climate politics (Yale Project on Climate Change & the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication, 2009). The locus of climate politics is perceived as removed from individuals’ sphere of influence, and the global scale of the problem deters social mobilization and action. Discursive practices, especially those that dominate mass media, may play a role in the development of this form of political subjectivity (Carvalho, 2010).
This book offers a critical yet hopeful examination of opposing signs of political vitality in the politics of climate change and discusses how people use various forms of critique, contestation, and alternative thinking to challenge the hegemonic technomanagerial approach. Because the meanings of climate change and of the numerous aspects of reality associated with it are constructed through communication, we offer an analysis of communication practices and structures as constitutive of climate change politics. The options considered and the choices made result from social interaction based on communication, whereby people play out different values and worldviews. The roles and identities of participants in those processes, such as the state and citizens, are also defined and redefined in communication.
Communication and public engagement in the politics of climate change
Given the nature and the scale of climate change, there is a widespread acknowledgment that citizen engagement is indispensable to