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Eco Security Kritik Aff Responses

AT: Warming Disaster Reps Cause Apathy

Apathy is the product of misinformation campaigns – our catastrophic representations spark widespread movements to stop warming

Ian Angus, editor of the online journal Climate & Capitalism, 2013, “The Myth of ‘Environmental Catastrophism’,” Monthly Review, http://monthlyreview.org/2013/09/01/myth-environmental-catastrophism

Another study, published in the journal Climatic Change, used seventy-four independent surveys conducted between 2002 and 2011 to create a Climate Change Threat Index (CCTI)—a measure of public concern about climate change—and showed how it changed in response to public events. It found that public concern about climate change reached an all-time high in 2006–2007, when the Al Gore documentary An Inconvenient Truth was seen in theaters by millions of people and won an Academy Award. The authors conclude: “Our results…show that advocacy efforts produce substantial changes in public perceptions related to climate change. Specifically, the film An Inconvenient Truth and the publicity surrounding its release produced a significant positive jump in the CCTI.”16 This directly contradicts Yuen’s view that more information about climate change causes Americans to become more apathetic. There is no evidence of a long-term increase in apathy or decrease in concern—and when scientific information about climate change reached millions of people, the result was not apathy but a substantial increase in support for action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. ‘The Two Greatest Myths’ Yuen says environmentalists have deluged Americans with catastrophic warnings, and this strategy has produced apathy, not action. Writing of establishment politicians who make exactly the same claim, noted climate change analyst Joseph Romm says, “The two greatest myths about global warming communications are 1) constant repetition of doomsday messages has been a major, ongoing strategy and 2) that strategy doesn’t work and indeed is actually counterproductive!” Contrary to liberal mythology, the North American public has not been exposed to anything even resembling the first claim. Romm writes, The broad American public is exposed to virtually no doomsday messages, let alone constant ones, on climate change in popular culture (TV and the movies and even online)…. The major energy companies bombard the airwaves with millions and millions of dollars of repetitious pro-fossil-fuel ads. The environmentalists spend far, far less money…. Environmentalists when they do appear in popular culture, especially TV, are routinely mocked….

Critiques of warming reps are elitist – they rest on the idea that the public is too stupid to react to warming

Ian Angus, editor of the online journal Climate & Capitalism, 2013, “The Myth of ‘Environmental Catastrophism’,” Monthly Review, http://monthlyreview.org/2013/09/01/myth-environmental-catastrophism

Yuen’s argument against publicizing the scientific consensus on climate change echoes the myth that liberal politicians and journalists use to justify their failure to challenge the crimes of the fossil-fuel industry. People are tired of all that doom and gloom, they say. It is time for positive messages! Or, to use Yuen’s vocabulary, environmentalists need to end “apocalyptic rhetoric” and find better “narrative strategies.” This is fundamentally an elitist position: the people cannot handle the truth, so a knowledgeable minority must sugarcoat it, to make the necessary changes palatable. David Spratt of the Australian organization Climate Code Red calls that approach “bright-siding,” a reference to the bitterly satirical Monty Python song, “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.” The problem is, Spratt writes: “If you avoid including an honest assessment of climate science and impacts in your narrative, it’s pretty difficult to give people a grasp about where the climate system is heading and what needs to be done to create the conditions for living in climate safety, rather than increasing and eventually catastrophic harm.”23 Joe Romm makes the same point: “You’d think it would be pretty obvious that the public is not going to be concerned about an issue unless one explains why they should be concerned.”24

AT: Environmental Disaster Reps Cause Militarism/Authoritarianism

The environmentalist movement can counter moves towards militarism – our representations aid the left not the right

Ian Angus, editor of the online journal Climate & Capitalism, 2013, “The Myth of ‘Environmental Catastrophism’,” Monthly Review, http://monthlyreview.org/2013/09/01/myth-environmental-catastrophism

What needs to be proved is Yuen’s view that warning about environmental disasters and campaigning to prevent them has “damaging and rightward-leaning effects” that are so severe that radicals cannot overcome them. But no proof is offered. What is particularly disturbing about his argument is that he devotes pages to describing the efforts of reactionaries to misdirect concern about climate change—and none to the efforts of radical environmentalists to counter those forces. Earlier in his essay, he mentioned that “environmental and climate justice perspectives are steadily gaining traction in internal environmental debates,” but those thirteen words are all he has to say on the subject. He says nothing about the historic 2010 Cochabamba Conference, where 30,000 environmental activists from 140 countries warned that if greenhouse gas emissions are not stopped, “the damages caused to our Mother Earth will be completely irreversible”—a statement Yuen would doubtless label “catastrophist.” Far from succumbing to apathy or reactionary policies, the participants explicitly rejected market solutions, identified capitalism as the cause of the crisis, and outlined a radical program to transform the global economy. He is equally silent about the campaign against the fraudulent “green economy” plan adopted at last year’s Rio+20 conference. One of the principal organizers of that opposition is La Via Campesina, the world’s largest organization of peasants and farmers, which warns that the world’s governments are “propagating the same capitalist model that caused climate chaos and other deep social and environmental crises.” His essay contains not a word about Idle No More, or Occupy, or the Indigenous-led fight against Canada’s tar sands, or the anti-fracking and anti-coal movements. By omitting them, Yuen leaves the false impression that the climate movement is helpless to resist reactionary forces. Contrary to Yuen’s title, the effort to build a movement to save the planet has not failed. Indeed, Catastrophism was published just four months before the largest U.S. climate change demonstration ever! The question before radicals is not what “narrative strategy” to adopt, but rather, how will we relate to the growing environmental movement? How will we support its goals while strengthening the forces that see the need for more radical solutions?