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Abstract
The ‘disappearing islands’ is a distinct idea that emerged out of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report to describe the vulnerability of small island states in the Pacific to sea-level rise as a result of climate change. In this article I deploy the ‘disappearing islands’ to map the complex politics of climate change governance. Through various governmental rationalities the ‘disappearing islands’ are operationalized as proof of climate catastrophe; as a means of concretizing climate science's statistical abstractions and as a signifier of the urgency and uneven impacts of global climate change.
Drawing on focus group research from the Australian Research Council Linkage project Hot science, global citizens: The agency of the museum sector in climate change interventions, I juxtapose these multifarious governmental perspectives with the views of ordinary citizens in Australia and the United States in relation to the fate of the disappearing islands as a result of developed world consumption choices and carbon-burning practices. I conclude that rhetorical gestures made towards mobilizing a moral and ethical ecological citizenry charged with the responsibility of saving the ‘disappearing islands’ are too simplistic and more difficult to achieve than imagined.
Acknowledgements
This article is an output from the Australian Research Council funded Linkage project, Hot science, global citizens: The agency of the museum sector in climate change interventions, led by the author. The article began as a joint writing project with Dr Carol Farbotko while Carol was employed as a researcher on the Hot science project, but she was unable to see the project to completion. I would like to acknowledge Carol's input into this article as one of the leading cultural geography scholars in the field of climate change and small island states. I would also like to thank Dr Ben Dibley for his analysis of the focus group data in the HSGC Report 5, Global Citizens.
Notes
1. The focus groups comprised 12 groups in Sydney (28 and 29 September 2009), Melbourne (5 and 6 October 2009) and Jersey City, New Jersey (15–18 November 2009), convened on the basis of six groups of older and younger families and six groups of adults. The six groups of adults comprised three groups aged between 25 and 30 years old, and three groups aged between 35 and 60 years old. The recruitment profile for these six groups was individuals from single-income and double-income households, with no children.
4. CitationHSGC focus group transcript MV#4.
5. HSGC focus group transcript LSC#2.
6. HSGC focus group transcript AM#3.
7. HSGC focus group transcript AM#1.
8. HSGC focus group transcript AM#1.
9. HSGC focus group transcript AM#2.
10. HSGC focus group transcript AM#1.
11. HSGC focus group transcript LSC#2.
12. HSGC focus group transcript AM#1.
13. HSGC focus group transcript AM#1.
14. HSGC focus group transcript LSC#2.
15. HSGC focus group transcript LSC#2.
16. HSGC focus group transcript AM#4.
17. HSGC focus group transcript AM#4.
18. HSGC focus group transcript AM#4.
19. HSGC focus group transcript LSC#1.
20. HSGC interview transcript AM#4.
21. HSGC focus group transcript LSC#1.
22. HSGC focus group transcript LSC#2.
23. HSGC focus group transcript AM#2.
24. HSGC focus group transcript AM#3.
25. HSGC focus group transcript AM#2.