Picturing the Clima(c)tic: Greenpeace and the Representational Politics of Climate Change Communication

Abstract

Images of melting glaciers have come to dominate the pictorial language of climate change. This paper argues that photographs of melting glaciers engender a representational problem in the communication of climate change as they depict the already seen effects of climate change. Given the dominance of the photograph within Greenpeace campaigns, the paper examines this adherence to visual immediacy by analysing Greenpeace climate change campaign literature since 1994. Identifying five representational phases over the last decade, the analysis shows how a symbolic pictorial language of climate change was being created, and the ways in which risks were communicated as actual rather than potential. Understood retrospectively however, this visualisation calls attention to the problems of communicating environmental issues of a temporal (long term) and unseen nature through a medium of representation which privileges the ‘here and now’

The first climate refugees? Contesting global narratives of climate change in Tuvalu

“…Apparently graspable concepts and visible entities have become crucial ways to help lay publics engaging with the climate change debate. Journalists and ENGOs have undertaken the translation of complex climate change phenomena into event--based, visualisable narratives (Doyle, 2007). Melting glaciers, stranded polar bears and disappearing islands seem to provide tangible signifiers through which climate change can be made knowable to those unfamiliar with scientific climate models.…”

Images of Extreme Weather: Symbolising Human Responses to Climate Change

“…At a social level, images can come to constitute culturally shared symbols of abstract issues, such as climate change, in particular cultural settings (Moscovici and Hewstone, 1983). There is evidence for this effect in the widespread societal recognition of the cross as a cultural symbol of Christianity, the white dove as a symbol of peace, the Twin Towers as symbols of terrorism or, indeed, resilience, and the polar bear as a symbol of climate change (Turner, 1967;Doyle, 2007). In her work on images of HIV/AIDS, Kitzinger (1995) has convincingly argued that the widespread use of particular images by the media results in the adoption of these images by the public, highlighting a correlation between media representation and cultural understanding.…”

A sociology of environmental representation

“…For example, images have been used to emphasize the fragility of the Earth and the severity of environmental threats (Doyle 2007;Uggla 2008). Since the first picture of the Earth from outer space was captured in 1968, the image of the globe has become an icon for its 'unlimited finitude' and the common fate of humanity (Szerszynski and Urry 2006).…”

“…The idea behind this metaphor was to establish a relationship between people's everyday activities and global climate change (Uggla and Uggla 2016). A way to represent the risk of global climate change as 'real', for example as employed by Greenpeace, is to use photos of glacial retreat as a visible sign (Doyle 2007). Melting ice was also a common theme in British press (Smith and Joffe 2009) and in a study of media reception participants in focus groups spontaneously recalled imagery of suffering polar bears and flooding as evidence of ongoing climate change (Olausson 2011).…”