The Language of Climate Politics

Speaker: Genevieve Guenther

Fossil fascism is rising in the United States. To build a permission structure for its actions, the Trump regime is suppressing science, taking control of the news media, and silencing communities harmed by extreme weather. Yet at the same time, it does not exactly deny that climate change is real. Rather, while spreading falsehoods about clean energy, the regime advances a more nuanced propaganda that goes something like this: “Yes, climate change is real, but calling it an existential threat is alarmist. And, anyway, phasing out coal, oil, and gas would cost us too much. Human flourishing relies on the economic growth enabled by fossil fuels, which enable innovation and increase our resilience.”

This story has power because it articulates the ideological matrix of fossil capitalism — the overlapping consensus shared by both the fascist right and the liberal centre — that we can keep using coal, oil, and methane and still deal with climate change anyway. Yet climate propaganda is also powerful because it is skillfully manufactured by fossil-fuel interests. These interests appropriate discourse from science, economics, and even activism, exploiting the literary qualities of language such as ambiguity or implicature, so as to normalise disinformation. My talk will ultimately explore the ways this appropriation works and offer strategies to combat it.

Genevieve Guenther is the founding director of End Climate Silence and the author of the acclaimed The Language of Climate Politics: Fossil-Fuel Propaganda and How to Fight It. While writing for both scholarly and popular audiences, Dr Guenther advises NGOs, researchers, and policymakers on climate communication and disinformation, and she serves as an expert reviewer for the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. She lives in New York City with her family.