‘MORAL OFFSET’

Abstract

A critical discourse analysis (CDA) of three pro-environmental behaviour (PEB) initiatives promoting low-carbon lifestyles in the UK showcased on BBC Radio 4 illustrates the discursive struggles over meaning involved in the various framings of climate change mitigation policies. Climate change mitigation policies are framed in various competing and coalescing ways in political circles, most commonly as economic opportunities but in some instances as an ethical obligation. While the ‘win-win’ framing associated with the ecological modernisation and green consumption discourses is the most dominant in official UK climate change mitigation policy, PEB initiatives seem to draw on a more diverse, sometimes normative, set of framings to induce behavioural change.

Keywords:

• critical discourse analysis
• climate change
• mitigation
• pro-environmental behaviour
• low-carbon lifestyles
• social change
• UK

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Dr Peter Sercombe, Newcastle University, UK, for his comments on an earlier draft of the article. The author is also grateful to the reviewers and editors for their comments and suggestions. During her studies at Newcastle University, where the research for this article was largely conducted, the author was the grateful recipient of a full Chevening Scholarship from the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Notes

1. Available online at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00y92mn (Jenkins, 2011).

2. Since the focus of this article is PEB initiatives that attempt to convince people to live low-carbon lifestyles.

3. This particular grouping is largely my own, but the general distinction is one that is used in other literature (e.g. Vihersalo, 2008). It is worth noting that, particularly in international political debates, the first framing, of manageable economic tools, is largely associated with the discourses of developed countries, while the second framing, of responsibility and global justice, is most often associated with developing countries (Vihersalo, 2008), possibly because of the policy implications when taking each of these considerations into view, such as the policy options discussed by Roberts and Parks (2008).

4. In fact, in personal communication (17 April 2012) with the author, Jenkins stated that he finalised the script for the programme on 22 December 2010.

5. In the USA, on the other hand, successive administrations also expressed concern over economic impacts, refusing to commit to reduction targets and advocating economic efficiency and market mechanisms as the legitimate path for addressing climate change (Cass, 2007).

6. Naturalization is the ‘process of transforming contingent propositions about the world into … something “natural” and “inevitable”’ (Carvalho, 2005, p. 12).

7. This ideology of economic opportunity and gain was also quite prominent in New Labour theorist Anthony Giddens' The Politics of Climate Change: National Responses to the Challenge of Global Warming (2009). Seemingly echoing the Death of Environmentalism (Shellenberger & Nordhaus, 2004) which argues that the environmental community in the USA is largely to blame for their failure to inspire the American public and mobilise political and their lack of political savvy, Giddens argues that green framings of climate change policy are ineffective and argues against the precautionary principle and non-interference with nature (2009). However, Giddens can be said to be advocating a return to the green governmentality discourse: he talks of ‘planning’, ‘state intervention’, ‘multilayered governance’, and even ‘subsidies’ (2009). He sets out the formula for successful mitigation policies as political and economic convergence, where the political benefits and economic opportunities of environmental policies are maximised, tapping into the ecological modernisation argument, and proposes the use of taxation, incentive or punitive, to change behaviour (Giddens, 2009). Applied to the individual's level, his reframing idea advocates promoting environmentally friendly policies as energy, and therefore money, saving (Giddens, 2009).

8. See also Note 7 on Giddens (2009) and Shellenberger and Nordhaus (2004).

9. Perhaps this is not surprising: Futerra published an earlier report on communicating climate change called The Rules of the Game (2005), produced in conjunction with the UK Department for Environment of the day, with very similar messages to those of their Sell the Sizzle campaign.

10. The WWF has several studies and reports on the subject (e.g. Crompton & Kasser, 2009; WWF, 2009).

11. Louise Macdonald is introduced on the programme as the Chief Executive of a prominent Scottish youth charity Young Scot, implying at least some degree of civic-mindedness and social awareness on her part to begin with. However, more interestingly, her public LinkedIn profile states that her participation in this project prompted her to become more interested in sustainability issues and that she later joined Scotland's 2020 Leadership Climate Group (LinkedIn, 2012), an organisation that ‘aims to consider how Scotland's business, voluntary and public sectors can work together to help achieve Scotland's targets and the transformational changes required in the Scottish Government's Climate Change Delivery Plan’ (Scotland's 2020 Climate Group, 2012).

12. In this sense, GCNS takes on some of the normalising tactics of other community-based carbon reduction initiatives that make groups and individuals accountable to each other, as well as those of carbon dieting advocates linking self-denial with virtue (Paterson & Stripple, 2010).

13. In adversarial blog posts, Crompton and Townsend's attempts to discredit each other's ideas have sometimes taken on more vicious and surprisingly personal tones (e.g. Crompton, 2009).

Additional information

Mayar Sabet is an Egyptian doctoral student at the Department of Communication, University of Massachusetts – Amherst. Prior to that she had amassed almost 10 years of professional experience in environmental reporting and capacity building at the Cairo-based Centre for Environment and Development for the Arab Region and Europe (CEDARE), including contributing to, and serving on the editorial boards of, several regional policy-relevant United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) reports. The research for this paper is derived from her MA thesis in Cross-Cultural Communication and International Relations, awarded with a distinction from Newcastle University, UK, in 2011. Her current research interests include environmental discourses, pro-environmental behaviour change and sustainability communication.