The Language of Climate Change - Podcast

Analyzing the Rhetoric of the News Media

This is a podcast project I did for one of my classes in college! Transcription below:

Various news clips cut together:

“Irreversible damage to the planet”

“Climate change is made up”

“A warning to humanity”

“Climate change take its toll on”

“The big thing is climate change”

“Climate change skepticism”

“Are frequent and more intense”

“All of this with the global warming under that and a lot of it's a hoax. It's a hoax.”

“Dire warning about climate change”

“Climate is changing in certain ways”

“Climate change is a hoax”

“Climate change is real”

“Sounding an alarm about climate change”

Sara Naz: Anthropogenic climate change may just be one of the most life threatening, yet controversial changes to impact human life and civilization the way we know it. With the status quo of global carbon emissions, the globe is expected to warm at least 3.2 degrees Celsius, ensuing a wide variety of consequences. Despite this scientific fact, there is an apparent disconnect between the truth and climate change conceptions.

News clip: “So Obama is talking about all of this with a global warming and uh that and a lot of it's a hoax. It's a hoax. I mean, it's a moneymaking industry, okay? It's a hoax.”

Sara Naz: Even among the acceptance and acknowledgement of climate change, there's a spectrum of voices.

News: “There will be irreversible damage

“to protect the environment It is not that anymore”

Sara Naz: So how does this happen?

We seem to occupy different rhetoric on climate change. There's no doubt that there's a spectrum of opinions. But what role does our language specifically play in creating those? How does our news Media's language reinforce climate ideology, myths, panic or truths?

And, how do we make it better?

Let's take a step back.

Is language that important?

Linguistic anthropologists have studied the connection between language, cognition, and culture. Specifically, they've noticed a correlation between habits of thinking and habits of speaking. The theory of linguistic relativity, also known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, sates that language determines thought and linguistic categories limit and determine cognitive categories.

Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. So what does this mean?

It means that the words we use can be a larger display of our thought patterns. Likewise, the ideas we hold are created and reproduced by our language. Our language use and structure directly inform our ideologies. So, if we look at our language on climate change, we can examine the way we think about climate change.

According to linguistic anthropologist Edward Sapir, smaller acts of communication over time create institutions and ideologies. So let's apply this to climate myths. Climate myths didn't start overnight. They certainly didn't gain traction overnight either. Yet throughout a span of time, discourse on skepticism of climate change has accumulated, shaped, and created climate myths.

Okay, so speech acts have created climate myths, but they're myths. How have they turned into alternative facts? According to philosopher Bruno Latour, it's not about truth. Facts hold value on the condition of their construction, so who makes them, what institutions support them, and how it's visible? The media is a perfect example of an institution that can validate these facts. It's a no brainer that news media influences our opinions. But taking it a step further the media has the power to construct our ideas of fact and truth. Climate myths are an obvious example, but by looking at the language of the news media, we can observe what other ideologies are being conveyed and transferred to the public as fact or fiction. After all, climate change is not black and white. There are plenty of climate ideologies that support the existence of climate change but hinder progress.

So let's dive in.

I scavenged the Internet and found a bunch of different news clips from various news sources. I have some NPR, some Fox News, some CNN, all talking about some aspect of climate change. I delved deep into the transcripts and audios of these videos, taking a look at sentence structure, pronouns, tense, and word choice, and dug out some common trends.

First, the passive voice.

If you've ever taken an English class, then you've probably seen the familiar scribble of passive voice or PV somewhere on your paper.

And maybe you didn't think anything was really wrong with your paper. To be honest, nothing was probably really wrong. But English teachers advise students to stray away from the passive voice for good reason. The passive voice is when the noun that would typically be the subject of the sentence is placed as the object.

For example, take the sentence she ate bread. Now we could write that as the bread was eaten by her, and that would be in the passive voice. The passive voice tends to be unclear and vague, de-emphasizing the subject of the sentence and removing the action.

In the sentence, the bread was eaten by her. The woman is the person eating the bread, but by making the bread the subject, the whole sentence turns into a discussion of the bread being eaten rather than the action of her eating the bread. And it turns out we see this a lot when talking about greenhouse gas emissions.

News clip: “New research shows emissions are getting worse”

Sara Naz: In this sentence, we see the passive voice with the phrase Emissions are getting worse. It's a perfectly good sentence. It's a perfectly good phrase. But there's no mention of who is emitting or how it's getting worse. Emissions are getting worse. It's just happening. Let's look at another.

News clip: “A newly released federal climate report suggests it's extremely likely that rising temperatures are caused by humans”

Sara Naz: Rising temperatures are caused by humans. Here, the passive voice makes the subject rising temperatures and deemphasizes the role of humans taking away the action of the verb. Beyond the passive voice, there are moments where language deemphasized the process of emitting greenhouse gases.

News clip: “In Poland, climate negotiators from around the world are meeting to figure out how to keep greenhouse gasses out of the atmosphere”

Sara Naz: Keep greenhouse gasses out of the atmosphere.

This may not be directly passive, but the word choice of keep out completely evades the fact that greenhouse gasses are produced. Greenhouse gasses aren't something you let in or keep out. They’re gases that corporations, nations, and people actively create. Furthermore, the word keep implies holding on, promoting the idea that greenhouse gasses are something to be held onto.

These sentence structures make it seem like greenhouse gasses are just appearing, evading the responsibility of who is creating them and how they're being created. And that's shaping the way we think about emissions as an occurrence, rather than something that individuals, institutions, nations, and corporations cause.

Even when news media uses active language about emissions, the sentences have a tendency to use the pronoun “we”.

We can be ambiguous. It means you and me, it can mean the collective humanity, it can mean Americans. And in many ways this ambiguity can be really powerful.

Let's look at a clip.

News clip: “Jackson notes that Americans are using way less coal now, but like most everyone else in the world, they're using a lot more of another kind of fossil fuel. It's cheap gasoline. We're buying bigger cars and we're driving more miles per vehicle.”

Sara Naz: Given the sentence, before we can assume that “we” are referring to the American people, The American people are buying bigger cars, driving more miles, and that's being equated to using a lot more of another kind of fossil fuel.

News clip: “It actually makes these storms bigger and more intense.

How? Well, we all of us burn fossil fuels.”

Sara Naz: Again, we all of us burn fossil fuels.

News clip: Human beings are causing global warming, and that's happening because we're burning dangerous fuels like oil, gas, and coal.

Sara Naz: Again, we're burning dangerous fuels like oil and gas.

Let's unpack this.

Who is really burning the most fossil fuels? Newsflash, it's not individuals.

In 2015, a study by the carbon disclosure project found that the emissions of 100 companies produced 71% of all greenhouse gas emissions since 1988. In fact, 25 of these companies are responsible for half of the emissions during this time period. 25 companies does not sound like “we the American people.” And even among we the American people, it’s not all of us that are driving and buying cars.

A study in 2015 found that 19. 71% of black households don't have access to a vehicle. 6.51% of white households didn't have access. That's a big discrepancy. And cars are expensive. It's a socioeconomic privilege to buy a car. It's not all Americans that are buying bigger cars driving more miles, burning fossil fuels. It's rich white Americans. And so using “we” as a blanket makes a mission seem like it's everyone's problem and everyone is to blame when in reality it's the companies to blame, and it's those who have privileges to blame.

The language of “we” detracts accountability from who actually is emitting. Making climate change seem like an issue of individual choices rather than a capitalistic system. And as a result, we don't normally think about the effect of industry and capitalism in the scope of climate change. Climate change is pushed onto us as individual problems. Individual emissions.

Another trend I noticed was word choice that implied uncertainty. News media often used modifiers such as “likely” or “pretty certain” when referring to climate change. Some proven facts were prefaced with phrases such as “scientists believe” or “scientists predict”. Here are some examples.

News clip: But Pilke says state law favors property development interests and assumes the sea will rise only inches when scientists predict sea level rise measured in feet.

Sara Naz: Yet, sea level rise isn't a prediction. It's inevitable and it's happening.

News clip: Some aspects of climate change are pretty certain. The planet is getting warmer, rainstorms are getting more severe. So are heat waves.

Sara Naz: In this clip, the anchor States that the aspects are “pretty certain”, but then goes on to list things that are fully proved as certain.

News clip: According to the report, this sort of record -reaking weather is linked to human caused climate change, and we will likely see more of it.

Sara Naz: Similarly, in this clip, the modifier “likely” allows for the chance that we won't see more again when it's the fact that this will continue.

News clip: Climate change makes this kind of extreme weather more common, and that trend is expected to continue as the planet keeps warming.

Sara Naz: Here the word choice is “expected”, implying that there's a chance they won't continue. This contradicts the proven knowledge that the extreme weather is going to continue.

News clip: We're really seeing the signal of climate change emerge within our day to day, week to week, and season to season weather.

Sara Naz: The language of “the signal of climate change” makes it seem like it's partially climate change or an indication of climate change within our weather, when in actuality climate change is the direct cause of the variability in our weather.

This language not only infers an element of uncertainty and proven facts, but it also positions facts as opinions of scientists rather than knowledge. This is unique to climate change. Other scientific facts are never modified to be uncertain or posed as a scientist's thoughts. And the language creates room for facts to be disproved, promoting the possibility that climate science is fake.

Another trend was the use of future tense when referring to climate change. Let's take a look

News clip: “and whether or not it's prepared to adapt to a change in climate going into the future”

Sara Naz:  Going into the future

News clip: “It's going to be exponential. Cities need to prepare for what is inevitably going to happen.”

Sara Naz: Going to happen.

So what? It is true that climate change will happen in the future, but the use of future tense perpetuates the idea that it's not happening now, and climate change is distant.

It turns out the literature on climate change language has also proved this. A study published in the Journal of Comparative Economics has concluded that the presence of the future tense in a language can determine environmental behavior. In their study, countries with language that had no future tense marker cared more about climate change and took on stricter action than countries without future tense markers. Therefore, future tense can further confirm feelings that climate change isn't urgent, or action isn't immediately necessary promoting this inactivity.

The final trend I noticed was some media, most notably Fox News, used word choice and parallel structure to delegitimize the climate change movement.

News clip: “The campaign against global warming seems to have gone bust. It started as an effort to protect the environment. It is not that anymore.”

Sara Naz: This positions the campaign as contrary to its core belief and thus delegitimizes the climate activism movement.

News clip: “Detailing how the movement has been hijacked by obsessions with race and gender. Worries about carbon and rising sea levels have turned into speeches about fighting misogyny”

Sara Naz: Obsessions with race and gender in that tone implies that engagement with race and gender is negative and illegitimate.

News clip: “Even if you think that climate justice is real, or even if you can explain what it is, I've never met anyone who can. Or if you think that gender equality is an important part of this, what does that have to do with science? That's not science, is it? Isn't it amazing how everything seems to get reduced to race and justice these days? Well, yeah, but it's especially amazing when topics that have no conceivable connection to race and gender get pulled in. How did that happen?”

Sara Naz: Race, gender, and climate justice are big, recognized aspects of climate change in the climate change movement. Arguing that there is no connection to race, and gender invalidates part of climate change's concerns, but also equates the whole climate change movement with a pre-established illegitimate concern, thus questioning the authority of the whole movement.

News clip: “Well, it's a boutique issue for rich people, obviously”

Sara Naz: the phrasing of boutique issue for rich people implies that climate change is a concern for those who can afford to care or don't have real problems to care about. In this sense, it also positions climate change as less important than the problems of everyday people, in effect also creating a false dichotomy between climate change and the problems of the poor.

Even if this new story is not denying climate change, the overarching implication of this language is that climate change is not a cohesive movement to get behind, and that the causes it supports are perhaps invalid and unimportant. This delegitimizing language furthers the uncertainty of climate change, in addition to promoting inactivity in climate change activism.

So, these were the findings of the media. All of these aspects come together and shape a narrative of uncertainty, potential delegitimacy, and vague happenings with no acknowledgement of any actors. And overall, this narrative is a problem, because climate change is now, and it requires action. As a society, we need to change the way we think about climate change, to be more productive, to take more action, and to truly try to mitigate and adapt.

These media examples bleed into real life too. This is how we as a culture think of climate change and thus talk about it in our everyday conversations. And likewise, how we as a culture talk about climate change and thus think about it. Yet, if our language shapes our thoughts, there is potential to promote a more productive, factual narrative.

Literature in climate change communication suggests approaching climate change at an effective, emotional level rather than shouting facts and expecting rational behavior. Mobilizing people to care is important, but it's a fine balance between stressing urgency and extreme alarm speech. When educating people on climate change, the literature suggests approaching it through personal values and experiences.

Through this podcast, we can also make some conclusions on good language from today's discoveries. One conclusion that we can make is that our language should be encompassing the whole story. Properly assigning responsibility.

Our language shouldn't leave room for uncertainty. It's time that we stop using modifiers to describe facts.

We should talk in the present. We should be real with what's really happening now rather than projecting it onto the future.

And we should be careful and mindful with our word choice. Our words can open room for misunderstanding and it's important that we think critically about what they imply.

We use language every day. Our words have power. It's on us, our word choices, and our speech acts to create a more accurate and more productive narrative on climate change.

This podcast was made for a final project in Environmental studies 212 Climate Change at Hamilton College. The music from this podcast was from the platform hook. Sound songs included acoustic inspiring, hope rewarded, and time for something new.