Bill McKibben’s Influence on U.S. Climate Change Discourse: Shifting Field-Level Debates Through Radical Flank Effects

Abstract

This article examines the influence of radical flank actors in shifting field-level debates by increasing the legitimacy of preexisting but peripheral issues. Using network text analysis, we apply this conceptual model to the climate change debate in the United States and the efforts of Bill McKibben and 350.org to pressure major universities to “divest” their fossil fuel assets. What we find is that, as these new actors and issue entered the debate, liberal policy ideas (such as a carbon tax), which had previously been marginalized in the U.S. debate, gained increased attention and legitimacy while the divestment effort itself gained limited traction. This result expands theory on indirect pathways to institutional change through a discursive radical flank mechanism, and suggests that the actual influence of Bill McKibben on the U.S. climate debate goes beyond the precise number of schools that divest to include a shift in the social and political discourse.

Anti-fossil fuel norms

“…Case studies indicate the potential for proposed fossil fuel infrastructure to generate strong local opposition, conflict among opponents and proponents/supporters, and wider media attention (Bomberg 2017;Cheon and Urpelainen 2018;Connor 2016;Connor et al 2009, 501-3;Ordner 2017). The divestment movement, with its moralized anti-fossil fuel frame, has in a very short time, enhanced public discourse on climate change, increasing the traction of both anti-fossil fuel messages and more mainstream, liberal climate policy responses in public debate (Schifeling and Hoffman 2017; see also Ayling and Gunningham 2017;Gunningham 2017a, 317-19;Seidman 2015Seidman , 1030.…”

“…They have mostly originated from individuals and organizations within civil society in the years following the failed Copenhagen climate conference (see Online Resource 1). An example is the prominent environmental activist, Bill McKibben (see Schifeling and Hoffman 2017). Motivated by a conviction that building a social movement by mobilizing moral outrage against fossil fuel companies is likely to be more politically effective than previous climate efforts (McKibben 2012), McKibben sparked the social movement campaigning for fossil fuel divestment and has championed protest action against new fossil fuel infrastructure.…”

Fueling Climate (In)Action: How organizations engage in hegemonization to avoid transformational action on climate change

“…This way of coalescing around a specific discourse by a diverse set of actorsparticularly when organized through the formation of coalitions and alliances as illustrated above-alludes to establishing, to borrow Gramsci's term, an emerging 'historical bloc'. In our case, this "climate regime" (Levy & Newell, 2005) had not dissipated as dissident voices continued to challenge BP's approach to climate change, even long after this attempt (see Schifeling & Hoffman, 2017). However, more importantly, BP and many of its adversaries-all of whom belong to the same blocincreasingly propagate the same ideology, which has particular implications for BP's avoidance of transformational climate action, as discussed next.…”

Activists as Moral Entrepreneurs: How Shareholder Activists Brought Active Ownership To Switzerland

“…Bringing about change and new ideas of morality to corporations and the economy is difficult. Novel ideas of what constitutes morally appropriate corporate conduct are often first pushed by moral entrepreneurs situated at the periphery of an existing moral order, such as activists or other secondary stakeholders (Baron, Neale, & Rao, 2016;Schifeling & Hoffman, 2017). These peripheral actors are less bound to the status quo and thus more likely to question it.…”