The Language of Climate Politics: Fossil-Fuel Propaganda and How to Fight It

The Language of Climate Politics offers a groundbreaking investigation into the propaganda justifying the fossil-fuel economy, providing readers with powerful new ways to talk about the climate crisis and create transformative change. It challenges the notion of a polarized climate debate and reveals how fossil-fuel interests weaponize climate language to greenwash their plans for ongoing extraction. By exposing this dynamic, the book equips readers with new terms to fight for a livable future.

Format: Hardback
Length: 280 pages
Publication date: 31 October 2024
Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc

The Language of Climate Politics is a groundbreaking investigation into the propaganda justifying the fossil-fuel economy. It offers readers powerful new ways to talk about the climate crisis that will help create transformative change. If you want to understand the climate crisis and you only have time to read one book, this should be it.

In an illuminating analysis, Dr. Genevieve Guenther shows that the climate debate is not, in fact, neatly polarized, with Republicans obstructing climate action and Democrats advancing climate solutions. Partisans on the right and the left often repeat the same fossil-fuel talking points, and this repetition produces a centrist consensus upholding the status quo, even as global heating accelerates.

Weaving this analysis through fascinating critical histories of the terms that dominate the language of climate politics—the words we, alarmist, cost, growth, India and China, innovation, and resilience—Dr. Guenther shows how this consensus is established. Fossil-fuel interests weaponize the discourses of science, economics, and activism, co-opting and twisting climate language to help greenwash their plans for ongoing extraction. But all too often climate scientists, economists, and even advocates will unwittingly echo the false and dangerous assumptions of their supposed political opponents. This apparent agreement between foes, filtered through the news media, not only influences our common-sense yet mistaken views about the climate crisis but also enables powerful decisionmakers to justify the corporate and policy actions that threaten us all.

Revealing this dynamic, Guenther shows how to transform it. Ultimately, The Language of Climate Politics is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the climate crisis and take action to address it.

Weight: 556g
Dimension: 242 x 165 x 23 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780197642238