Warming Critiques
Notes
Aff answers to these arguments can be found in the BFJR lab’s Mexico Renewables
Wave 2 and Aff K Toolbox files.
Apocalyptic Rhetoric
Neg
Apocalyptic warming representations cause serial policy failure
Buell 10 (Frederick, Professor of English at Queens College, "A Short History of Environmental Apocalypse," 2010, slim_)
By placing a notion like 'apocalypse' back on the table, anthropogenic global warming exposes a
very old fault line in scholarship. Ever since Aristotle, academe has evolved mostly in a departmentalized, disciplinary
direction. But the earliest philosophers had a penchant not just for the rational, but also for the
mythopoetic. They were able to be more at ease employing meta-constructs to make sense of their observations. For example,
both Plato`s (`rilia.r and The Lunar interweave accounts of prehistoric Greek climate change or natural
disasters with a mythology that sets them in a socially instructive context. Put briefly; Plato`s message was that hubris in
human affairs eventually meets its nemesis in ecocide. But modern academia runs more in the footsteps of Aristotle than as footnotes to Plato. We are more hamstrung, because our disciplinary specialization tarnishes fruitful attention to detail. but
often at the expense of the wider grounding necessary to develop a generalist overview. Our strengths are many, but their downside
is to be tripped up by a limited capacity to discern `meaning` and to translate this into
policy that shapes how we collectively live. Because climate change is such a multi-faceted and far- reaching
phenomenon this shortcoming is becoming more and more apparent. The science both derives from and has
implications for the human condition. Potentially these are very severe. The otherwise quaintly melodramatic term,
'apocalypse', has therefore pushed its way back into informed discourse. For example, a researcher
whose normal comfort zone is, say, atmospheric modeling, or the latitude of an electorate to countenance social
change, may suddenly find their work casts them into the perceived or actual role of a latter-day
apocalyptic prophet. Having been trained to pursue tightly defined constructs, they now have to field balls of a meta-
constructual nature with implications that may overstep their reach - especially when spun by the media. The position that
climate change places scholars in can therefore he likened to a group of specialized doctors investigating
a sickness that permeates the patient’s body One tests the liver. Another wires up the heart. A third probes this or
that structure in the brain and, on finding nothing obvious, wonders if the whole hoo-hah might just be a delusion. But the
actual cause of the problem is bigger than any of these parts it runs in the blood. It
underpins the functioning of everything else because it is the very ‘oil’ that lubricates and
energizes the engine of our society But nobody really wants to look at that. Everybody knows that the haematologist,
notwithstanding his sweet-talk of a pain- less green new deal transition. is an old-fashioned blood-letter. The body of the rich world
has got used to running on a full eight pints of blood. The blood-letter’s remedy would have that reduced to just one pint; or perhaps
two il` the patient is well blessed with fossil fuel alternatives. Quite apart from the question of electoral will, we also have to
ask whether cuts in greenhouse gas emissions o|` 80 percent or 90 percent for the rich world are even doable. We have only become a planet of nearly seven billion people, half ol' us urban. because oil or other fossil fuels lubricate a
globalized trading system that interlocks rich and poor alike. Oil helps to produce. transport and process increasingly vast quantities
of "˜stufl" from distant hinterlands The system only stacks up thanks to the competitive economics of comparative advantage that
degrades biodiversity and mines natural capital. But to cut away radically at this would entail questioning the
very basis by which social cohesion at such a high population level is sustained. Many of us have, of
course, have been advocating precisely such questioning for years, and exploring alternative patterns and examples in our own lives
But now that the carbon crunch is hitting mainstream consciousness, those politicians who seek re-election know that they must be
very careful about how lo acl upon the urgency with which scientific advice indicates cold turkey. The global financial crisis of 2008
has raised awareness that only so much sudden braking of the economic system can be sustained without apocalyptically
compounding injury. Had bankers` lines of credit frozen up. as they very nearly did. our globally interlinked just-in-time food
supply system would have gridlocked. Panic buying would have completed the chaos. Social unrest and resultant
national emergency are only days away because we`ve lost the resilience that local sourcing of much of our food and energy gave us
until the post-World War ll years.
Their methodology fails – apocalyptic rhetoric necessitates abandoning scientific
models in favor of a message of vulnerability
Manzo 10 (Kate, Senior Lecturer in International Development at Newcastle University, "Imaging vulnerability: the
iconography of climate change," March 2010, Royal Geographical Society, Vol. 42 No. 1, pp. 96-107, slim_)
A complementary method of consciousness-raising is to reinforce conceptions of danger. As the
quote above suggests, this approach is inherently political as it exceeds the limits of natural science models (see
also Oppenheimer 2005; Pielke Jr 2005). A case in point is the scientific debates about thresholds of danger. A threshold is a
point (such as a temperature increase of 2°C) ‘beyond which many believe substantial damage would occur’
(Schneider 2001, 3).3 Defi- nitions of danger are common in climate science even if people’s subjective
perceptions are ‘underresearched’ (Dessai et al. 2004, 15). Some scientists measure danger through thresholds
in physical vulnerability (such as loss of coral reef), while others do so via thresholds in social vulnerability (e.g.
greater numbers at risk from such denotations of global warming as water shortages, disease, hunger and coastal flooding). There
are thus varying definitions of danger, even if a common assumption is that danger can be objectively measured. Furthermore,
there is controversy over the likelihood of some thresholds, with scientists being asked to ‘justify the threshold
they choose for predicting “dangerous” climate change’ (Schneider 2001, 3). Even if science cannot provide a universal definition of
dangerous climate change, the standard measurements show an inseparable link between danger and
vulnerability. It is this link that has been woven into campaigns that (like ‘Sisters on the Planet’) send the
message that dangerous climate change is already here. A commonly used vehicle for that message is the
iconography of disaster. An exemplary illustration is Christian Aid’s ‘Climate changed’ advertisements – the public
awareness wing of a two-year strategic campaign initiated in 2006. While lobbying (with other SCCC members) for the emissions
reduction targets4 now contained in the UK Climate Change Act (2008), Christian Aid redeployed stock images5 of ‘suffering with
dignity’ (such as those in the Plates below)6 to advertise ‘the already seen effects of climate change’ (Doyle 2007, 129; emphasis in
the original). As with Oxfam’s Sisters, the overall aim is to ‘move the UK public on from the notion that polar bears are the face of
climate change’7 while promoting the
message that climate change is ‘a justice issue’ and therefore
political.8,9 Other campaign images of flood-related loss and displacement are more deliberately global in scope. Comparative
photography features, for example, in a Friends of the Earth ‘Big Ask’ campaign pamphlet, which juxtaposes a British man and a
woman from an unspecified ‘tropical region’ (Friends of the Earth 2008). Equally illustrative is ‘Drowned Worlds’, a photo essay of
flood victims in England and India commissioned by Action Aid (Mendel 2007). Vulnerability is often conceived as ‘a
“threat” or “exposure” to a hazard’ (Manyena 2006, 441). The people in the aforementioned campaigns are
therefore fairly conventional icons of vulnerability. Another notable example is the photograph of 600 naked
bodies on a Swiss glacier commissioned by Greenpeace (see The Observer 2007, 30). Even if the iconic glacier is obviously melting,
the presence of bare humans connotes an immediate sense of exposure to hazard (i.e. the prospect of freezing to death). That,
indeed, is
the stated aim of the photographer, who wants viewers ‘to feel the vulnerability of their existence and
how it relates closely to the sensitivity of the world’s glaciers’ (Spencer Tunick, quoted in The Observer 2007,
30).
Apocalyptic framing of warming denies human agency – turns solvency
Foust & Murphy, 9 – *Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Communication Studies at the
University of Denver AND **doctoral student in the Department of Human Communication Studies at the University of Denver
(Christina R. & William O’Shannon, “Revealing and Reframing Apocalyptic Tragedy in Global Warming Discourse,” Environmental
Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture, Vol. 3 No. 2, July 2009, pp. 151 – 167, Taylor & Francis)//BI
A number of discursive features constitute global warming tragically: verbs which express the
certainty of catastrophic effects, a lack of perspective or shortening of time from beginning to telos, and
analogies which equate global warming with foretold apocalyptic outcomes. Each feature forecloses human agency or frames climate
change as a matter of Fate. Within the tragic variation of apocalypse, global warming (not other ‘‘natural’’ or
divinely ordained events or processes, such as a steady decline to extinction which inevitably befalls all earthly species) is
viewed
as the demise of humanity. A close reading of the discourse reveals important differences in the verbs, ‘‘is,’’ ‘‘will,’’ and
‘‘could,’’ which call attention to variations in human agency. Predicting global warming through the word could frees space for
human action, including adaptation and mitigation. Asserting that the catastrophic telos of climate change
is
happening or will occur, however, may reduce the potential for human intervention. As Revkin (2006a)
quotes British chemist James E. Lovelock, a 14-degree temperature rise ‘‘means roughly that most of life on
the planet will have to move up to the Arctic basin, to the few islands that are still habitable and to oases on the
continent. It will be a much-diminished world’’ (p. F2). Declaring with certainty that these negative impacts of global warming will
happen suggests that a cosmic, extra-human force determines the outcome of events. Tragic discourse may even
describe predicted events through present-tense verbs, heightening the deterministic effect: ‘‘As the Arctic ice
melts and ice shelves collapse in the Southern Ocean, vast areas of open water are exposed. The water absorbs heat from the sun that
until now was reflected by the ice’’ (Struck, 2007, p. A10). Struck (2007) qualifies that a warmer ocean ‘‘is expected’’ to reduce ocean
circulation; but he concludes with a tragic analogy: ‘‘The previous time’’ the oceanic conveyor-belt current stopped ‘‘15,000 years
ago, the Northern Hemisphere was plunged into a brief but brutal ice age, apparently within decades’’ (p. A10). Importantly, many
fragments exhibit a sense of uncertainty about whether the telos is fated comically or tragically, through the mix of is,
will, and could. One of the more complex constructions we discovered is an ‘‘if-will/would,’’ which pairs the hope for human agency
(if) with the preordained tragic outcome (will/would): Several climatologists believe that it is likely that the ice sheet will begin
melting uncontrollably if global temperatures climb more than 3.6 [degrees Fahrenheit]. A rapid meltdown in Greenland would
quickly raise sea levels around the world and flood coastal cities and farms. As well as sending large icebergs down the coast, the
infusion of cold, fresh water could disrupt ocean currents such as the Gulf Stream, which help to keep weather in the Northern
Hemisphere regulated. ‘‘If that feedback kicks in,’’ says [climatologist Konrad] Steffen, ‘‘then the average person will worry.’’ (Clynes,
2007, p. 52) The end-points of human-animal displacements and migrations ‘‘could’’ set in, following an ice sheet melt that ‘‘will
begin’’ ‘‘if ’’ a 3.6-degree rise in temperatures occurs. The ‘‘if/would’’ and ‘‘if/could’’ constructions imply hope for human
intervention. However, this hope is quickly diminished, as tragic texts conclude that humans are unlikely to, or are incapable of,
acting. The climatologist above suggests that the average person does not begin to worry until after a self-reinforcing feedback loop
kicks in, suggesting that human involvement in a potentially comic narrative will not come until it is too late—rendering the
narrative tragic. The shorter the time frame is from beginning to telos, the less likely humans are to have
agency over the effects of global warming. Tragic apocalyptic discourse posits a quickened pace
for global warming: ‘‘Global warming has the feel of breaking news these days. Polar bears are drowning; an American city is
underwater; ice sheets are crumbling’’ (Revkin, 2006b, p. 1). To promote a feeling of immediacy for global warming may not, by
itself, hinder human agency. Warning readers that we currently feel some effects of global warming may promote a sense of urgency
while retaining the potential for human action. To suggest that ‘‘the fastest warming in the history of
civilization [is] already under way’’ (Herbert, 2000, p. A23), however, may thoroughly discourage readers
from active participation by minimizing human agency. Moreover, it is possible to read signs of climate change
as a catastrophic telos which is already in process: ‘‘the oceans are rising, mountain glaciers are shrinking, low-lying coastal areas are
eroding, and the very timing of the seasons is changing’’ (Herbert, 2000, p. A23). Global warming thus appears impervious to
human intervention in the current moment. The tragic acceleration of time may also occur when reporters or
scientists give no perspective for readers concerning temporality. Following early estimates that ‘‘if no action is
taken, the average surface temperature of the globe will rise by two to six degrees Fahrenheit by [2100],’’ Stevens (1997) concludes,
‘‘It would mean more warming, coming more rapidly, than the planet has experienced in the last 10,000 years’’ (p. F1). With no
sense of time scale, readers are left to experience the global warming narrative as though
happening overnight or over a season, in the same way they may have witnessed floods or droughts. The accelerated
time places the catastrophic telos outside human influence: ‘‘Since the warming would be unusually rapid,
many natural ecosystems might be unable to adjust, and whole forest types could disappear’’ (p. F1). The combination of tragic
telos, deterministic linear temporality, and an extrahuman force guiding history appear most
dramatically in discussions of feedback loops, self-perpetuating cycles that exacerbate warming and its effects.
Homer-Dixon (2007b) describes feedback loops as ‘‘a vicious circle . . . in our global climate [that] could determine humankind’s
future prosperity and even survival’’ (p. A29). Here, the end-point of global climate change is cast completely
outside of human agency, for ‘‘nature takes over.’’ Though Herbert (2002) mixes a variety of caveats and verbs (for
example, in the above excerpt he uses ‘‘could,’’ rather than ‘‘would’’ or ‘‘will’’) in his discussion of feedback loops, the tragic
implication is clear: It is likely that surface temperature will rise ‘‘between 3 and 10.5 degrees Fahrenheit.
That is a level of warming that could initiate the disintegration of the ice sheet. And stopping
that disintegration, once the planet gets that warm, may be impossible’’ (p. A25). With the loss of the West Antarctic
Ice Sheet, ‘‘Tremendous amounts of housing, wetlands and farming areas around the world would vanish. Large portions of a
country like Bangladesh . . . would disappear’’ (p. A25). Once a feedback loop becomes instantiated, there is little (if anything)
humans can do but witness the (apparently rapid) disappearance of entire nations.
Aff
Only tragic framing of warming as inevitable causes inaction – the aff’s comic
framing allows for agency
Foust & Murphy, 9 – *Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Communication Studies at the
University of Denver AND **doctoral student in the Department of Human Communication Studies at the University of Denver
(Christina R. & William O’Shannon, “Revealing and Reframing Apocalyptic Tragedy in Global Warming Discourse,” Environmental
Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture, Vol. 3 No. 2, July 2009, pp. 151 – 167, Taylor & Francis)//BI
A comic apocalyptic frame suggests that human beings have agency at different points within
the global warming narrative. Comically framed discourse posits that humans may mitigate the worst
effects of climate change, or that they may adapt to the unchangeable telos. For instance, Kristof (2005)
identifies relatively inexpensive ‘‘initial steps we can take to reduce carbon emissions . . . like encouraging mass transit, hybrid
vehicles, better insulation and energy-efficient light bulbs,’’ which ‘‘could reduce global emissions by one-third’’ (p. A25). At the
same time it leaves open the possibility that humans may influence the future, apocalyptic rhetoric from a
comic frame casts global warming as a material reality, (more or less) ordained and thus constraining human choices.
Empowerment within the comic variation of apocalypse is not a trivial matter, however. It requires humans to make
the right decisions from a limited set of choices: ‘‘Nature commands humans to adapt or die. The natural world keeps
erupting, shifting, storming, collapsing, whirling. It refuses, despite our entreaties, to become something dependable and
constrained and rational’’ (Achenbach, 2004, p. C1). In other words, a comic apocalypse does not suggest that events are controllable
through any or all human actions. Using the comic frame permits humans to miss the fully tragic telos (which would, presumably,
end all time and humanity): In [climatologist Roger Pulwaty’s] view, a crisis is a point in a story, a moment in a narrative that
presents an opportunity for characters to think their way through a problem. A catastrophe . . . is one of several possible outcomes
that follows from a crisis. ‘‘We’re at the point of crisis . . . ’’ Pulwaty concluded. (Gertner, 2007, p. 68) By distinguishing between
‘‘crisis’’ and ‘‘catastrophe,’’ the comic variation suggests that the tragic telos is only one potential ending to the climate change
narrative, contingent upon whether humans alter their behavior in an appropriate manner. Human beings can assume
responsibility within a comically constructed apocalypse, even if the narrative begins tragically.
Eilperin (2007) reports that ‘‘the warming of the climate system is unequivocal . . . even in the best-case scenario, temperatures are
on track to cross a threshold to an unsustainable level’’ which ‘‘could’’ produce effects ‘‘irreversible within a human lifetime’’ (p. A1).
What begins as a tragically ordained story takes a comedic turn, as humans have an opportunity to realize that they are mistaken.
Eilperin interviews climate scientist Gerald Meehl, who concludes ‘‘that a sharp cut in greenhouse gas emissions could still keep
catastrophic consequences from occurring: ‘The message is, it does make a difference what we do’’’ (p. A1). Comically, the
telos does not overshadow the significance of human choice, which may stave off total
catastrophe. While mitigation is one potential source for human agency, another is adaptation. As
Revkin (2007) quotes Dr. Mike Hulme: ‘‘Climate change is not a problem waiting for a solution . . . but a powerful idea that will
transform the way we develop’’ (p. A16). The emphasis on transformation suggests that humans can adapt
the apocalyptic telos of global warming, even though the telos is, implicitly, foretold. The comic telos thus requires
to
humans to rethink their choices, sometimes after the worst effects of global warming have taken place. Such effects may be forecast
as though they will (most likely) occur, maintaining the apocalyptic structure (even in the comic variation): If the scientists are right
about an apocalyptic future of floods, droughts, dead coral reefs, rising sea levels and advancing deserts, global warming is an
existential threat that should affect our approach to just about every issue. To take it seriously, we would have to change the way we
think about transportation, agriculture, development, water resources, natural disasters, foreign relations, and more. (Grunwald,
2006, p. B1) Though the ending of global warming is foretold, climate change provides a comic challenge from which people may
learn, grow, and adapt. While the tragic variation would end the narrative with humans and all other
species as victims of the catastrophic effects of global warming, the comic version is more openended. Furthermore, comic variations often present the apocalyptic telos in a nontotalizing way, again with the effect of
amplifying human agency. Comic versions of the global warming narrative posit localized effects, as Clynes (2007) suggests: ‘‘A onemeter rise in sea levels over the next 93 years would have enormous consequences, flooding low-lying coastal areas and megadeltas,
such as the Nile and Brahmaputra in Bangladesh, where millions of people live’’ (p. 52). Though Northern industrialized nations
could adapt to flooding, developing coastal countries likely could not: ‘‘the dramatic effects of climate change could push the number
of displaced people globally to at least one billion’’ (Clynes, 2007, p. 52). Discourse such as this takes seriously global
warming’s threat, while emphasizing a non-total telos. As exemplary of the comic variation, it reinforces
responsibility for
making ethical choices, rather than resigning oneself to the foretold, total catastrophe. In addition,
comic discourse indicates a time frame (93 years in the previous example) over which global warming will occur, rendering the
temporality comic. While a tragic temporality might predict an exact date after which human agency is impossible; or, leave time to
be experienced as rapid through its portrayal of catastrophic events; a comic framing allows readers to experience a
more manageable time period across which effects may occur. In comic temporality, the effects
of global warming do not happen all at once: ‘‘while widespread permanent inundation . . . is possible, it isn’t likely
to occur in [New York City] in our grandchildren’s lifetimes, or even their grandchildren’s. And an extra 5 to 10 inches of water over
the next few decades,’’ Rogers (2007) concludes, is manageable for residents (p. 1). While such temporality may make the issue of
climate change appear less pressing to crass readers unconcerned with their families’ or communities’ futures, it
permits
human action on climate change, rather than limiting possible expressions of human agency to
total resignation.
Otherization
Apocalyptic climate rhetoric is rooted in an otherizing xenophobia
Hulme 8 (Mike, Professor of Climate Change in the University of East Anglia School of Environmental Sciences, “The
conquering of climate: discourses of fear and their dissolution,” The Geographical Journal, Vol. 174, No. 1, March 2008, pp. 5–16
slim_)
Climate as pathology The sustained European encounter with the tropics started in the sixteenth century and
grew steadily during the imperial adventures of the nineteenth century. The experience of climates novel to
Europeans was central to this encounter. Whilst these experiences laid to rest the classical fears of the torrid zone inducing human
mutations, a new climatic pathology – a sense of the abnormal – was substituted. This pathology has been
most clearly articulated using the lens of Victorian Britain and Empire by the cultural geographer David Livingstone in a series of
articles over the last 20 years. Livingstone argues that the novel tropical climates encountered through
European exploration and settlement, exactly because of their novelty and ‘otherness’, took on a
pathological form (Livingstone 1987 1999 2002a 2002b). Attachments of fear, danger and foreboding to
these climates easily followed, sentiments which had both physical and moral dimensions. In contrast to earlier preEnlightenment narratives of fear about climate which arose from unknown causes, this new mentality was promoted
through a fear of unknown climatic places. But the nineteenth century imperial discourse of climate as
pathology wove together many earlier ideological and philosophical strands; it did not simply arise through the
immediate colonial encounter with the physical climates of the tropics. The lingering climatic determinism of the Greeks
was easily recast as racist ideology, echoing Hippocratus from the fourth century BC and the early Enlightenment thinkers
of Montesquieu, Kant and Hegel, each of whom casually associated the languid and humid climates of the
equator with a moral and mental torpor amongst the native races (Livingstone 2002a). It was out of this
long tradition of attaching racial hierarchies to climate that Ellsworth Huntington’s study ‘Civilisation and climate’
(1915/2001) was written and which provided the quasi-scientific evidence base for statements such as: ‘We
know that the denizens of the torrid zone are slow and backward, and we almost universally
agree that this is connected with the damp, steady heat’ (Huntington 1915/2001, 2), ‘knowledge’ which had
infused nineteenth century imperial discourse. Descriptions of tropical climates became the carrier not just for
racial ideology, but for prevailing notions of general moral and social superiority. Thus the early climate
classification developed by Humboldt in the nineteenth century, and refined by Köppen early in the twentieth century, was
paralleled by a Victorian moral classification of climate. Temperate climates were categorised as ‘bracing’
and
‘invigorating’ and tropical climates as ‘lethargic’ and ‘debilitating’ (Livingstone 2002a). Stronger pejorative
vocabulary was also introduced. Tropical climates were frequently described as being ‘dangerous’ and ‘deceptive’ (McKee 2002, 53,
151) and as presenting ‘great risk to life’ (Hooker and Thomson 1855, 144). This classification of tropical
climates as dangerous and threatening was tightly bound up in the discourse around
acclimatisation – could white Europeans settle, survive and rule in ‘hostile’ climates? (Livingstone
1999). For example, it was widely regarded that sustainable colonization of India by Europeans required periodic escape by the
settlers to the cooler climates of the Indian hills, driving the construction of hill stations as white enclaves (Harrison 1999). Here
again, the association of (tropical) climate with fear, danger and anxiety was as much a function of the imperial ideology of the day,
as it was a function of detached physical or medical diagnosis. Opinion became polarised in the later Victorian period about whether
or not the unknown and forbidding climates of the tropics were to be feared, and thus were in need of ‘conquering’ (Sambon 1897).
Whether or not climate was dangerous was a function of one’s imperial outlook and one’s belief
in the physical, mental and moral superiority of the settler race over the indigenous inhabitants.
The moralisation of tropical climate also extended its reach in other, more literal ways. As shown by Livingstone (1999) in his
dissection of the writings of Dr Luigi Sambon (1865–1931), the pathology of tropical climate directly connected with the sexual
mores of the age: Personal habits are of the utmost importance; temperance and morality are powerful weapons in the struggle for
life . . . sexual immorality under the influence of a tropical climate, and in the presence of a native servile and morally undeveloped
population, raises to a climax unknown amid the restraints of home life, and becomes one of the most potent causes of physical
prostration. Sambon (1897, 66) Danger, therefore, surrounded the Victorian conception of tropical climates.
Whether due to degeneracy, depravity or debility, the encounter
with the unknown climates of south Asia, Africa and
America by white settlers invoked fears and anxieties about climate – and demanded the
language of moral categorisation – that emerged from the imperial ideology of the time. As with the pre-Enlightenment
South
discourse of climate as judgement, climate again took on the role ascribed to it by the prevailing and dominant culture.
Doomsday rhetoric is geographically-situated – climate hierarchies are implicit in
Eurocentric thinking
Hulme 8 (Mike, Professor of Climate Change in the University of East Anglia School of Environmental Sciences, “The
conquering of climate: discourses of fear and their dissolution,” The Geographical Journal, Vol. 174, No. 1, March 2008, pp. 5–16
slim_)
As the European imperial adventure lost its way in the twentieth century, and as new ways of understanding race, physiology and
morality gained ground, the psychological hold on the European mind of the pathology of tropical
climates was dissipated. Climate was again conquered, although here in literal senses as well as metaphorical
ones. Thus improvements in tropical medicine and air-conditioning technologies removed some of the direct
physical fears which tropical climates presented to non-indigenous populations, an outcome
foreshadowed by Huntington in 1915 using the idiom of the era: ‘in the future we can scarcely doubt that this method of overcoming
the evil effects of a tropical climate will be resorted to on a vast scale, not only by foreigners, but by the more intelligent portion of
the natives’ (Huntington 1915/2001, 291). Yet traces of this pathology, of this implicit hierarchy of climates,
remain today in Western culture, traces which might still have a weakened lineage back to the determinism of
Huntington, Kant and the Greeks. Faint echoes of this can be found in some of the synthesised judgements of
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments. For example, in the reporting of Working Group 2 of
the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, attention was highlighted on the differentiation in the consequences
of climate change linked to geography: Climate takes aim: attention is now turning to the developing world,
where those last equipped to handle it will bear the brunt of global warming . . . One of the cruel ironies
is that among the few set to gain . . . from agricultural benefits conferred by global warming are those [developed nations] with the
highest greenhouse-gas emissions. Hopkin (2007, 706–7) The prospective climates of the tropics, and of the
developing world in general, are once again envisaged to be deliverers of danger and death, although not
this time for European settler races but for the indigenous inhabitants. Most of the claimed ‘millions
at risk’ from future climate change in the Parry et al. (2001) study are located in these regions. Climate as catastrophe
This brings us to an examination of our third discourse of fear and danger surrounding climate – the increasingly
dominant portrayal of anthropogenic global climate change, or its avatar ‘global warming’, as global
catastrophe. The early identification of the prospective human warming of global climate through releases of greenhouse gases
into the atmosphere was rarely viewed as dangerous but, predominantly, as benign or beneficial. Thus, Arrhenius, writing in 1906,
was able to state that global warming would allow future populations: to enjoy ages with more equable and better climates,
especially as regards the colder regions of the earth, ages when the earth will bring forth much more abundant crops than at present
for the benefit of rapidly propagating mankind. Arrhenius (1906/1908, 61–3) Similarly, Guy Callendar in his classic 1938 paper,
which first associated a global warming trend with rising carbon dioxide levels, claimed that: the warming is likely to prove
beneficial to mankind in several ways; besides the provision of heat and power . . . it would allow for greater agricultural production
and indefinitely delay the return of the deadly glaciers. Callendar (1938) Further, in the early 1950s, popular magazine
interpretations of putative global warming were able to caricature the social and environmental impacts through jocular cartoons in
which Russian farmers enjoyed new agricultural opportunity and American workers basked lazily in benign warmth (Baxter 1953,
cited in Fleming 1998, 120). One of the first associations of anthropogenic climate warming with notions
of significant ‘danger’ was in a 1963 conference of scientists convened by the Conservation Foundation of New York
which warned of a ‘potentially dangerous atmospheric increase of carbon dioxide’ (cited in Weart
1997, 353). Yet the science claims about prospective global warming were still forming through the 1970s and the early 1980s, and
remained ambiguous throughout this period (Fleming 1998). Concerns about ‘dangerous’ warmer climates were
diluted by some rather tentative and mild expressions of the social risks of climate warming emerging
from parts of the scientific community – thus ‘some of the effects of a global warming (caused by CO 2
increases or for any other reason) may well be beneficial’ (Wigley et al. 1980, 21) – and by a parallel discourse of
fear around global cooling. For example, Gordon Rattray Taylor’s book The Doomsday book: can the world survive
(1971) contrasted ‘ice age’ with ‘heat death’, Newsweek magazine cited the ominous signs of a cooling in the
world’s weather and an impending ‘drastic decline in food production’ (Gwynne 1975), and Nigel Calder asked
‘Are we heading for an ice age?’ in the Sunday Telegraph Magazine (Calder 1979). The imagined cataclysm of the
‘nuclear winter’ scenario (Crutzen and Birks 1982) in the early 1980s also stayed the hand of the warming
catastrophists for a while longer.
Renewables
Their discussion of renewables reduces nature to pure energy – this ensures its
perpetual regeneration to serve the needs of the market
Luke 97 (Timothy W., Professor of Political Science at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, “Ecocritique,” pp. 7880)
The work of the Worldwatch Institute rearticulates the instrumental rationality of resource managerialism on a global scale in a
transnationalized register. Resource managerialism is one very particular articulation of ecology. This is “ecology”
it has been constructed by modern nation-states, corporate capital, and scientific professional organizations.
as
Although voices in favor of conservation can be found in Europe early in the nineteenth century, the real establishment of this
particular approach to Nature as actual policy comes into being, first, with the closing of the open frontier in the American West
during the 1880s and 1890s in the United States and, second, with the advent of the Second Industrial Revolution from the 1880s
through the 1920s.11 Whether one looks at John Muir’s preservationist programs or Gifford Pinchot’s conservationist codes, an
awareness of modern industry’s power to deplete natural resources, and hence the need for new protective arrangements for conserving resources or slowing their rate of exploitation, is well established by the early 1900s. President Theodore Roosevelt made
these policies a cornerstone of his presidency. In 1907, for example, he organized the Governor’s Conference to address this concern
at the federal and state levels, inviting the participants to recognize that the natural endowments upon which “the welfare of this
nation rests are becoming depleted, and in not a few cases, are already exhausted.”12 Over the past nine decades, the
fundamental premises of resource managerialism have changed significantly. On one level, they have become
more formalized in bureaucratic applications and legal interpretations. Keying off of the managerial logic
of the Second Industrial Revolution, which empowered technical experts (or engineers and scientists) on the shop floor, and
professional managers (or corporate executives and financial officers) in the main office, resource managerialism has
imposed corporate administrative frameworks on Nature in order to supply the world economy or
provision national society with more natural resources through centralized state conservation
programs. To even construct the managerial problem in this fashion, Nature is reduced to a
system of systems that can be dismantled, redesigned, and assembled anew to produce its many
“resources” efficiently and in adequate amounts when and where needed in the modern
marketplace. On a second level, during the 1970s and 1980s, resource managerialism transcended simple strategies
of merely conserving available quantities of nonrenewable resources by moving toward more expansive
programs of protecting various types of environmental quality and providing for new systems of renewable resource
generation. Still, these shifts are not a major departure from the original premises of
conservation. They only broaden the conceptual definitions of resources either being created
from or conserved within Nature, while expanding the prerogatives of managerial authority to
renew as well as conserve resources. By envisioning it as an elaborate system of systems, Nature
can be continually tinkered with in this fashion to find new fields within its systematcities to
rationalize, control, and exploit for the benefit of human beings in wealthy, powerful nationstates. Beautiful vistas, clean air, and fresh water are redefined as “resources” that should not be overconsumed or underproduced,
and the managerial impulse easily can rise to this challenge by creating recreational settings, scenery, and ecosystem services as
entitlements to be administered by the state for multiple use in the economy, society, and culture.
Development of renewable energy engages in managerial domination – this
reduces nature to a resource to be exploited for human desires.
Luke 3 (Timothy W., Professor of Political Science at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Spring 2003, Aurora
Online, http://aurora.icaap.org/2003Interviews/luke.html)
So to conclude, each of these wrinkles in the record of eco-managerialism should give its supporters pause. The more adaptive
and collaborative dimensions of eco-managerial practice suggest its advocates truly are seeking to develop some post extractive
approach to ecosystem management that might respect the worth and value of the survival of non-human life in its
environments, and indeed some are. Nonetheless, it would appear that the commitments of eco-
managerialism to sustainability maybe are not that far removed from older programs for
sustained yield, espoused under classical industrial regimes. Even rehabilitation and restoration
managerialism may not be as much post extractive in their managerial stance, as much as
they are instead proving to be a more attractive form of ecological exploitation.
Therefore, the newer iterations of eco-managerialism may only kick into a new register, one in
which a concern for environmental renewability or ecological restoration just opens new
domains for the eco-managerialists to operate within. To even construct the problem in this
fashion, however, nature still must be reduced to the encirclement of space and matter in
national as well as global economies - to a system of systems, where flows of material and energy can
be dismantled, redesigned, and assembled anew to produce resources efficiently, when and
where needed, in the modern marketplace. As an essentially self contained system of
biophysical systems, nature seen this way is energies, materials, in sites that are repositioned
by eco-managerialism as stocks of manageable resources. Human beings, supposedly all human beings,
can realize great material goods for sizeable numbers of people if the eco-managerialists succeed. Nonetheless, ecomanagerialism fails miserably with regard to the political. Instead, its work ensures that greater material and immaterial bads
will also be inflicted upon even larger numbers of other people, who do not reside in or benefit from the advanced national
economies that basically have monopolized the use of the world's resources. This continues because eco-managerialism lets
those remarkable material benefits accrue at only a handful of highly developed regional municipal and national sites. Those
who do not benefit, in turn are left living on one dollar or two dollars a day, not able, of course, at that rate of pay, to pay for ecomanagerialism. So I'll stop there.
Discourse
Discourse shapes reality – cultural portrayal of climate change is socially- and
geographically-constructed
Hulme 8 (Mike, Professor of Climate Change in the University of East Anglia School of Environmental Sciences, “The
conquering of climate: discourses of fear and their dissolution,” The Geographical Journal, Vol. 174, No. 1, March 2008, pp. 5–16
slim_)
Climate change discourses Cultural discourses around climate change also have a history, a genealogy that can
be traced (von Storch and Stehr 2006). Aristotle’s student, Theophrastus, in the third century BC, observed local changes in climate
induced by human agency (Glacken 1967), while a later Greek discourse of climate change was constructed around experiencing
changes in climate through mobility – for example, Mediterranean travellers turning black at the Equator (Boia 2005). Early
modern discourses were constructed around settler communities and deforestation, inducing
deterioration in regional climate through desiccation (Thompson 1981). One dominant Victorian discourse –
acclimatisation – also centred around changes in climate experienced through mobility, in this case
through migration and imperial expansion (Livingstone 1999). The post-nineteenth century discourse about
anthropogenic global climate change driven by changes in greenhouse gases has moved through various
phases. Its early emergence through the work of Svante Arrhenius in the 1900s and Guy Callandar in the 1930s was
generally associated with positive or benign consequences for society. This contrasts strongly with the
dominant tone of the current discourse around such climate change which is one of danger and catastrophe
(Lovelock 2006; Risbey 2008) and whose origins Killingworth and Palmer (1996) – using the label of ‘apocalyptic’ –
have traced back to the environmental awakening of the early 1960s. This latter climate discourse of fear,
constructed around looming and apocalyptic changes in future climate, therefore finds resonance
throughout the past. Human cultures have always been capable of constructing narratives of fear around their direct or
vicarious experience of ‘strange’, unknown or portended climates: ‘The history of humanity is characterised by
an endemic anxiety . . . it is as if something or someone is remorselessly trying to sabotage the world’s driving force – and
particularly its climate’ (Boia 2005, 149). Yet these discourses are always situated – geographically,
historically and culturally. They are not imposed by nature, they are created through culture. Neither do they
endure. They form, transform and dissolve. Sometimes they return in a different wrapping. They are unstable.
Environmental discourse shapes reality – technocratic approaches fail – only
interrogating discourses of fear solves
Hulme 8 (Mike, Professor of Climate Change in the University of East Anglia School of Environmental Sciences, “The
conquering of climate: discourses of fear and their dissolution,” The Geographical Journal, Vol. 174, No. 1, March 2008, pp. 5–16
slim_)
Purpose and approach This paper suggests that to
understand the present post-modern anxiety about climate
change (Ross 1991; Glover 2006) we need a deeper cultural and historical reading of climate and its
meaning for human society (e.g. Rayner and Malone 1998), than is usually offered by scientific assessments
such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It also suggests we need to appreciate the fragility
and transience of environmental discourses. I adopt the definition of Dryzek (1997, 8) in which a discourse is: a
shared way of apprehending the world. Embedded in language it enables subscribers to
interpret bits of information and put them together into coherent stories or accounts. Each discourse
rests on assumptions, judgements and contentions that provide the basic terms for analysis,
debates, agreements and disagreements. Dryzek elaborates four dominant environmental discourses in the modern era –
survivalism, sustainability, environmental problem-solving and green radicalism. In this paper, I take a longer viewpoint and
suggest that it is possible to take the essence of Killingworth and Palmer’s (1996) contemporary apocalyptic
narrative of ecology, environment and climate change – namely, fear – and connect this with
discourses about extreme weather and climate from earlier eras. By examining three (mostly European) discourses of fear
in relation to climate, this paper demonstrates ways in which our reading of climate and climate change has been,
and continues to be, culturally conditioned and historically situated. These three discourses are selected
from, respectively, the pre-modern, modern and post-modern eras . . . ‘climate as judgement’ (a fear of unknown
causes), ‘climate as pathology’ (a fear of unknown places) and ‘climate as catastrophe’ (a fear of unknown futures). The main
elements of the first two discourses, including the wider cultural contexts in which they arose, are summarised and the way in which
these discourses of fear were (partially) dissolved – in a sense how climate was conquered – is suggested. The outlines of the
contemporary discourse of ‘climate as catastrophe’ are then traced, as well as three elements of conventional
approaches for defusing these fearful prospects – mastering future climate through geoengineering, political engineering or social engineering. The paper concludes by suggesting an alternative
way of viewing the climatic future, one which sees the contemporary discourse of fear deeply
conditioned by (different readings of) culture, and that, consequently, will find its dissolution through
(uncontrollable) changes in culture rather than through an engineered mastery of the future.