Communication Strategies for Engaging Climate Skeptics: Religion and the Environment by Emma Frances Bloomfield

Author:Emma Frances Bloomfield [Bloomfield, Emma Frances]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Public Policy, Religion; Politics & State, Religion, Political Science, Religion & Science, Environmental Policy
ISBN: 9780429998355
Google: J3-YDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 43970040
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-05-10T00:00:00+00:00

Conclusion

The discourse of bargainers shares rhetorical patterns that stretch standards of climate science, and science in general, to blend with Christian values. Oftentimes, bargainers strategically substitute economics as a proxy for their religious views to enter conversations and anchor their climate skepticism in a more accessible and communal concern. As bargainers, they appeal to open debate and view themselves as revolutionists hoping to alter mainstream understanding of climate science from within. Bargainers engage in a tragicomic frame which predicts mainstream science will eventually correct their misconceptions after figureheads of the movement are debunked and corrected. After this paradigm shift where previous conceptions and interpretations of climate science are refuted, true climate scientists, who are skeptical of the danger and severity of climate change, will become the reigning standard. As an exemplar bargainer, the AI’s discourse challenges environmentally-focused science as the sole resource on which to base policy and offers a blended religious and economic framework from which to argue. Driven by a contemporary Protestant ethic that turns to financial autonomy as a sign of spiritual piety, bargainers use more varied argumentative resources than do the separators. While the separators eschew climate science and make enemies of scientific institutions, the bargainers shield themselves from critique that they perceive to be rational, well-researched, and legitimate contributions to climate deliberation. From their minority position, the bargainers see themselves as David appealing to the few others who share their opinion against the Goliath of other environmental groups, cherry-picking data, interpretations, and champions who continue the conversation long after the technical community has reached consensus.

Bargainers have discursive similarities with the separators and the harmonizers, but also differ from them in stark ways, making them a sort of middle ground among the categories. They share with the separators the overt climate change denial and ultimately seek to oppose environmental action. They share with the harmonizers a less aggressive, more comic frame and the view that climate science is valuable, can provide insight into reality (at least when tempered by religion). But, bargainers uniquely portray skepticism of environmental science’s conclusions within a tragicomic narrative of revolution. This narrative identifies people and institutions as obstacles to the Christian, economic truth about climate change, but does not call for their elimination or sacrifice. Instead, most are simply to be set right, refuted through dialogue, and out-reasoned with competing interpretations.

As a coping mechanism against the rise of science, bargainers create an organizing framework that minimizes science’s legitimate challenges to their Christian loyalties. Burke (1984: 23) argued, “As a given historical frame nears the point of cracking, strained by the rise of new factors it had not originally taken into account, its adherents employ its genius casuistically to extend it as far as possible.” To blend mainstream climate science to their religious worldviews, bargainers appear to have stretched science near the point of becoming something wholly unrecognizable. Although they appear to appeal to scientific standards, scholars have pointed out such positions’ similarities with archaic notions of science that do not align

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