Framing: We can solve it.
Recently on 'It's getting hot in here', one of my favourite climate-movement blogs, there has been some discussion on language and framing in the climate debate, as well a surprisingly long debate on "whether renewables can solve it" in the comments of my last blog on the site.
In response to both these things, and after a long hiatus from posting on the Climate Justice Fast site, I have been prompted to share this extract from "Beyond Yes We Can" - a piece that I wrote this time last year, in a period of post-Poznan reflection.
Post-Copenhagen, much of what I wrote then still applies.
“The Language of Certainty”
The choice on whether or not to speak with certainty and faith about ‘winning’ and ’success’ on climate change is similar to our choices of language around the effects of climate change. Consider, for example, the difference between the two sentences:
‘As a result of climate change, the Great Barrier Reef will be irreversibly destroyed.’
or,
‘If we fail to solve climate change, the Great Barrier Reef would be irreversibly destroyed.’
The first sentence implies that climate change, and the Reef’s loss, is a certainty, whereas the second still holds within it the power of human choice, bringing human agency into the equation. Most climate communicators over the last two years have learnt to be very careful to use the language of agency, rather than the language of imminent destruction beyond our control. This subtle change results in empowering and motivating language, and encourages the audience to make a choice between alternative futures, rather than accepting fate.
Science without movement theory embedded in its communication is depressing and disempowering. When communication resigns someone to accept inevitability, we lose the opportunity to engage them with the movement, and so the movement is weaker than it could otherwise have been, and becomes more likely to fail. Choosing such ‘inevitability’ in communication thus becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Knowing that language holds the power to bring different futures into being, our choices about communicating whether we will win or not are similarly crucial. On solutions to climate change, it is rare to see language couched in certain terms, but this is a conscious choice that we can make. Should we choose to say:
‘Over the coming decades, we need to move to a low-carbon society, transforming our energy systems, our production systems, and our consumption habits,’
or,
‘Over the coming decades, as we move towards a low-carbon society, we will transform our energy systems, our production systems, and our consumption habits.’
The first, in the language of need, implies a daunting, formidable task. The second, however, is an invitation to be involved, to learn more, and to prepare for the transition. Hope and a vision for the future is embedded and the (r)evolution becomes inevitable, an irresistible, political, force.
Whether we choose the language of need or the language of certainty has the power to bring about transformation. But if we don’t personally have certainty and belief in change, we cannot use such language with integrity and honesty. I feel ready to use the language of certainty, and I encourage everyone to explore these beliefs for themselves.
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I also wanted to add an ‘afterword’ on this extract, and support the sentiment of the recent post by Juliana Williams. She wrote:
Hope is passive. Hope is what you have when you have exhausted all other options. As Derreck Jensen writes, “To hope for some result means you have given up any agency concerning it.” By placing our Hope in Obama, in Congress, in the UN, we tacitly resign ourselves to the idea that the outcomes are out of our hands.
I agree – but only if you define ‘Hope’ as a ‘passive’ thing.
If you instead define hope in ‘active’ terms, as does David Orr in this wonderful interview, you can reclaim the word ‘hope’ from its superficial campaign branding, and then discover a much truer definition of ‘hope’ – hope through action, and hope in the movement. It is when you understand deeply this definition of hope – as distinct from naive, passive optimism and faith – that you can truthfully use the ‘language of certainty’.
I suggest that deep in his heart, even Derrick Jensen shares this ‘hope’ in the movement:
“And when you quit relying on hope, and instead begin to protect the people, things, and places you love, you become very dangerous indeed to those in power.”
