Metaphors We Die By? Geoengineering, Metaphors, and the Argument From Catastrophe

Abstract

Acknowledgements:We would like to thank James Fleming who first suggested to us the idea of writing something about geoengineering under the title 'metaphors we die by' back in December 2010. Holly Buck, Adam Corner, Nelya Koteyko and Amanda Porter provided useful and constructive comments on earlier versions of the paper. We are grateful to the ESRC for their financial support of project RES-360-25-0068. ABSTRACT:Geoeengineering the climate by reflecting sunlight or extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere has attracted increasing attention from natural scientists, social scientists, policy makers and the media. This article examines promotional discourse related to geoengineering from the 1980s to 2010. It asks in particular how this option for dealing with the problems posed by climate change were framed through the use of conceptual and discourse metaphors and whether one can argue that these are metaphors we 'live by' or metaphors we might 'die by'. Findings show that an overarching argument from catastrophe was bolstered by three conceptual master-metaphors, namely The Planet is a body, The Planet is a machine and The planet is a patient/addict, linked to a variety of discourse metaphors, older conceptual metaphors and clichés. This metaphorical landscape began to shift while the article was being written and will have to be closely monitored in the future.

Battling Promethean dreams and Trojan horses: Revealing the critical discourses of geoengineering

“…Frames, discourses, metaphors, and storylines are concepts that have been applied to systematize, describe, and explain this material [11,12,13,14,15,16]. The present paper advances this research by scrutinizing the global public debate, predominantly the previously ignored critical discourse, but is unlike previous research in applying qualitative text analysis.…”

“…In the forthcoming debate, these new risks were also openly acknowledged and treated as relevant problems in the advocacy discourse [4] The problem of maintaining long-term continuity in geoengineering management is one of several critical concerns acknowledged in both discourses. The problem was recognized in the advocacy discourse and has been investigated, or at least debated, for some years (i.e., [11,14]). A common position in the discourse critical of geoengineering is that geoengineering, and, in particular, sufficient knowledge of its full-scale consequences, is constrained by inherent knowledge gaps unless the technologies are implemented at large scale.…”

“…In mass media research into geoengineering, Scholte et al [11] and Nehrlich and Jaspal [14] have emphasized investigating whether or not the geoengineering debate is opening up, i.e., whether the coverage of geoengineering is becoming wider-ranging and more diverse over time, and have reached opposite conclusions. Although we support Scholte et al's [11] conclusion that the debate is opening up, we argue that this matter is not of primary importance.…”

Like artificial trees? The effect of framing by natural analogy on public perceptions of geoengineering

“…Early media coverage is of particular interest, as initial media frames are sometimes described as 'sticky', meaning that after a dominant framing of the issue has settled, further framings are more difficult to introduce (Nisbet et al 2003). Nerlich and Jaspal (2012) analysed a large corpus of news coverage from the 1980s to 2010, and found that it was dominated by three overarching metaphors: the planet as a body that might be repaired, fixed or healed; the planet as a machine; and the planet as a patient/addict. Within each of these metaphors are assumptions-or social 'imaginaries'-that speak to the way in which humans and the natural world are related.…”

Evoking equity as a rationale for solar geoengineering research? Scrutinizing emerging expert visions of equity

“…(Keith and Irvine 2016: 549) Early justifications for research on solar geoengineering tended to center on the need to be prepared for its use in the event of a potential climate emergency. Several studies have analyzed the prominence of this framing (Markusson et al 2014;Bellamy et al 2012;Nerlich and Jaspal 2012;Gardiner 2013;Cairns and Stirling 2014). More recently, however, ''climate risk management'' has become a prominent frame for evaluating the pros and cons of solar geoengineering research among technical experts and advocates of research, as well as by prominent science advisory bodies (NAS 2015: 2; Keith 2017; Long 2016).…”