Manufacturing Consent: Rereading News on Four Climate Summits (2000-2012)

Techno-Optimism, Regulatory Skepticism

This discursive construction consistently serves the aim of delegitimizing binding, regulatory emission reduction targets while (implicitly) advocating (market-driven) technological innovation to mitigate climate change risks. In doing so, it is found to rely on the discursive strategies of economization and scientization and infrequently on moralization.

The strategy of economization serves to distinguish the “unaffordable,” “costly,” “extreme,” and “unrealistic” demands for anticipatory regulation by “irresponsible” actors, such as the IPCC, from the “affordable,” “cost-effective,” and “economical” policy responses by “responsible” actors, such as business associations. These policy responses include a shift from taxation on labor to pollution through carbon markets with the aim of championing energy efficiency (e.g., Wouters, “Greenhouse effect creates jobs,” De Standaard, November 9, 2000), and a focus on nuclear energy (e.g., Bogaerts, “Federation of Enterprises in Belgium makes a plea for new nuclear plants,” De Morgen, November 13, 2000), and geoengineering (e.g., Bogaerts, “Swelling storms threaten insurance industries,” October 31, 2000). By shifting the site of struggle to a matter of (inter)national competitiveness and business profitability, this strategy of economization evaluates policy strategies from the perspective of potential costs and profits for business.

Second, a discursive strategy of scientization is relied upon to deproblematize climate change, which is illustrated by the following quote from the lead of an article with the title “Tossing a Coin” (November 20, 2000) by foreign affairs journalist Antoon Wouters, who is the leading journalist in De Standaard during COP6 with 18 out of 24 articles: “It remains tossing a coin with the climate, because nothing is as unpredictable. The scientific evidence that the emission of greenhouse gases is changing the climate is worth billions. No scientist has ever won this price.” Further within the article, climate change is labeled just a “belief” or “theory.” This amplification of scientific uncertainty serves to de-authorize the UNFCCC and legitimize a policy shift away from the global regulation of greenhouse gases.

Moralization is found in the depiction of politicians as self-interested, power-hungry, and dishonest agents, who time after time fail to come to an agreement to take the “right” decisions (e.g., Wouters, “A lot of hypocrisy at climate conference,” November 15, 2000). The climate negotiations, and the UNFCCC in particular, are put forward as an arena of power politics between blocs of nation states (in this case, the United States and its Anglo-Saxon allies vs. the European Union) that pursue their self-interest first and foremost, rather than as an effective institutional framework to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Remarkably, in “Green ministers swallow disarmed Kyoto Protocol” (July 24, 2001), Wouters represents the European position (which was influenced at the time by various Green Party environment ministers) as an irresponsible obstruction to agreement, because it disengages the United States from the process: “The many Green ministers that are co-governing Europe today talk about a ‘historical compromise.’ Not out of ecological, but political reasons: the isolation of the United States and strengthening of European leadership.” This accusation of “political” motives serves to question their honesty and integrity as well as their capacity to deliver an outcome that reflects anything other than their self-interest, which is a desire to control the international community, rather than saving the environment. At the same time, this framing legitimizes the United States’ preference for equal responsibilities, also referred to as a level playing field between poor and rich countries, which allows to preserve national competitiveness by reducing emissions at an equal cost.

This discursive construction figures in both De Standaard and De Morgen. However, while it is central in the reporting by De Standaard, it only figures in the reporting of one particular journalist in De Morgen: Dirk Bogaert, a science journalist, who is the leading journalist on climate change during COP6 with 17 out of 27 articles (but slowly disappears from the picture from COP6bis on). In these articles, he draws only on the above discursive strategy of economization but not on scientization or moralization. For Bogaert, policy options such as nuclear energy, carbon trading, or geoengineering provide a rational middle path to survival, between catastrophic climate changes (which he does not deny or deproblematize), on one hand, and an economic crisis (that would result from the unilateral regulation of greenhouse gases by industrialized, Western countries), on the other.

Consensus-Oriented, Regulatory Optimism

This discursive construction is found to consistently advocate a binding multilateral agreement about anticipatory mitigation through the UNFCCC, and more specifically, the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. This discursive construction, which is only found in De Morgen, is positive and optimistic about the effectiveness of such a global framework. In contrast to its counterpart, it dramatizes climate change as an actual and urgent problem, linking it to anthropogenic causes and various extreme weather events, and assessing climate science as consensual, certain, and authoritative (e.g., Serneels, “Greenhouse effect will make Belgium shiver,” October 25, 2000). It is sustained primarily by the (generally entwined) discursive strategies of scientization and moralization. It is characterized by a leading narrative in which the “scientific” and “moral” demands of those “responsible” actors, who contribute to a binding multilateral agreement, are continuously distinguished from the “unscientific” and “immoral” demands of those “irresponsible” actors, who are found to obstruct such an agreement (mainly the United States, climate sceptics, and fossil fuel lobbies). This mechanism of exclusion is based on a presumed scientific and moral consensus about what climate change is and what should be done about it. In doing so, UNFCCC’s Kyoto Protocol is naturalized as the inevitable and necessary framework for climate policy, while other views and options are excluded. This leading narrative is illustrated by the following excerpt from an article about the summary for policy makers of the IPCC’s 3rd assessment report (Carpentier, “Mankind stokes the earth,” July 13, 2001):

The report puts pressure on countries to ratify the Kyoto-protocol during the climate conference in Bonn next week. This extensive publication of the cream of the crop of the scientific world means an obvious reprimand to Bush’ attitude and states clearly that nobody can ignore this phenomenon anymore.

The scientization of climate change is exemplified by putting science forward as a normative basis for policy, thereby implying that debate is unnecessary, as we find “the cream of the crop of the scientific world” being positioned against the epistemically vacuous demands of the American government and climate sceptics. This scientization is sustained by moralization, as climate policy through the Kyoto Protocol is transformed from a political decision into a moral responsibility that stands above debate, implying that anyone who disagrees is ethically wrong. Meanwhile, the U.S. government (and its allies) is consistently depicted as “the obstructionist,” “the boogieman,” “the irresponsible climate criminals,” and “ethically completely reprehensible” (Carpentier, “Green hope against all odds,” July 18, 2001). On the other hand, framing power is awarded to a variety of actors, including climate scientists, representatives from environmental NGOs, and delegations from developing countries. The Belgian federal environment ministers from the Green Party, in particular, are represented as the “green hope” and as examples of moderation, compromise, and feasibility. Furthermore, the responsibility for emission reduction is attributed to Western, rich countries and the principle of common, but differentiated, responsibility is supported: “The West must come to a reduction of greenhouse gases. . . . In the end, the rich countries are at the root of the greenhouse effect, which mainly threatens the Third World” (Van Scharen, “Conference president Pronk pleas for Realpolitik,” November 14, 2000). In other words, agreeing on the Kyoto Protocol is the right thing to do, both morally and rationally.

Techno-Optimism, Regulatory Skepticism

By 2006, both Bogaert and Wouters have left their respective newspaper. As a result, this discursive construction has vanished from De Morgen but continues to be central in De Standaard. The most significant difference with regard to COP6(bis) is that arguments about scientific uncertainty have largely disappeared. In the editorial “Suddenly everybody sees the impending apocalypse” (November 2, 2006), Karel Verhoeven (coeditor of the newspaper) and Dominique Minten (foreign affairs journalist who is now the leading reporter on climate change) explicitly link this discursive shift to recent scientific findings:

It rained reports and warnings about the environment last week. The reports sketch a portrait of an impending apocalypse and they are coming from authoritative institutions. They signify the turn in the minds that has happened across the globe. Doubt or soothing debate is out of the question.

It is interesting to note that this changed assessment of climate science is represented as corresponding with a worldwide “turn in the minds” rather than a deliberate journalistic choice, implying that scientific consensus is a recent phenomenon and that the newspaper has always been in tune with evolutions in science. Resultantly, climate change is now also represented as a potentially catastrophic problem through a frame of scientific certainty and consensus. At the same time, pessimism about attempts to mitigate climate risks through political negotiations on an international level continues to be combined with optimism about the possibilities of market mechanisms to decouple economic growth from pollution. However, this is now legitimized by different interpretations of scientization and economization.

For instance, the coverage of the influential Stern Review published just before the summit puts forward a novel understanding of economization that highlights the costs of global warming: “Apocalyptic, that will be the cost of global warming if the world does not interfere” (Hinsliff, “Global warming can cost the world economy up to 5.5 trillion euro,” October 30, 2006). It legitimizes “interference” in the form of price mechanisms and investments in technology by both developing and industrialized countries. Likewise, the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook 2006 report is interpreted as a call for techno-optimism: In “IEA portrays a clean energy future” (Sertyn, November 8, 2006), it is suggested that combining energy efficiency with nuclear and renewable energy production will allow us the solve climate change without drastic, transformative changes. Similarly, Verhoeven and Mintens’ editorial separates ineffective political attempts to set binding emission reduction targets (“Kyoto, which is a consensus model and has the disadvantage of going very slow”) from effective progress through science and technology (“Scientists show that big changes will have to come from ambitious, technological innovation projects,” see also Minten, “Technology must save the world,” November 8, 2006), which does not interfere with markets or national competitiveness. This reveals a particular understanding of scientization that differentiates policy responses as either rational, when based on technology, and irrational, when not, thereby implicitly delegitimizing regulation as antitechnology while legitimizing a deregulatory approach as technological.

A discursive strategy of moralization continues to be used to represent politicians as self-interested, quarreling actors, thereby feeding further skepticism about regulation. Furthermore, the adherence to equal responsibilities for developing and developed countries is repeated in combination with a rejection of unilateral Belgian regulation. This is illustrated by the consistent delegitimization of “big polluters” China and India who refuse to take on the same regulatory targets as the European Union and the United States, on one hand, and the minimization of any potential impact of further unilateral regulation of emissions in Belgium (“Belgium means nothing on a world scale”), on the other (e.g., Verhoeven & Minten, “Suddenly everybody sees the impending apocalypse,” November 2, 2006), thus ignoring Belgians’ historic contribution to the issue. ⁶ In 2006, the climate change debate is no longer represented as a matter of the European Union versus the United States, or between “believers” and “disbelievers” of climate science, but rather as one between developing and developed countries, while taking sides with the latter. At the root of this lies a disagreement about choosing for the most cost-effective way to reduce greenhouse gases (the underlying preference of this discursive construction) or choosing for taking (historic) carbon (consumption) per capita emissions into account (more in line with its counterpart). However, this disagreement about alternative interests, perspectives, values, and policy choices is never made explicit.

Consensus-Oriented, Regulatory Optimism

There are no substantive differences for this discursive construction compared with 2000-2001. The need for a binding multilateral climate agreement, this time in the form of a follow-up to the Kyoto Protocol, which includes the United States, China, and India, is still represented in De Morgen’s reporting as the product of a presumed scientific and moral consensus about what should be done. Resultantly, different conclusions are drawn from both the Stern Review and the IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2006. The former is addressed in “Kyoto cannot wait anymore” (Vuylsteke, October 30, 2006), in which further engagement through Kyoto is legitimized by means of a strategy of economization (“it is cheaper to mitigate greenhouse gases now than to adapt to the consequences later”). From the World Energy Outlook, a similar conclusion is drawn based on a strategy of scientization, as the headline “Even Kyoto does not save the climate” (Decoo, November 8, 2006) compares the insufficiency of the existent policy framework with “what science demands.”

At the start of the summit, more multilateral regulation is presented as the summit’s goal (Delputte, “Nairobi must pave way for post Kyoto-framework,” November 6, 2006) and the relevant actors are differentiated in the following terms: either as (a) ethically responsible heroes who are perceived to contribute to an agreement (“the climate-engaged EU and 35 other countries”); (b) ethically, irresponsible villains who seem to obstruct a consensus (“the renowned polluters such as Australia and the US” and climate skeptics); (c) passive victims (“the African continent that threatens to suffer the most from global warming and is the least prepared for it”); or as (4) “new” players (“fast growing new economies such as China, India, and Brazil which need to be convinced to engage in the struggle against global warming”). During the summit, China is increasingly put in the category of the villains.

Despite also minimizing and criticizing the outcome of the summit (Serneels, “After the summit in Nairobi: the disillusionment,” November 20, 2006), this discursive construction refrains from questioning the entire process (like its counterpart does) but blames particular actors instead (“China and the U.S. let their self-interest prevail over the general interest”) who are held responsible for the lack of “a working program to halt global warming after 2012.” These lexical choices demonstrate that the climate debate is not represented as an ideological disagreement but is framed in terms of a presumed consensus about what the “struggle against global warming” or “saving the climate” means, to which one can be engaged and collaborative, or disengaged and obstructing.

Techno-Optimism, Regulatory Skepticism

By 2012, De Standaard’s earlier technological optimism about the prospects of mitigation has turned into fatalism: Authorized by referring to various scientific reports, climate change is now presented as an inevitable and in many ways already irreversible process. Consequently, a multilateral framework for further reducing emissions is now put forward as both unfeasible and insufficient at the same time. This is illustrated by science journalist Steven Stroeykens’ article “Is it already too late for the climate?” (November 25, 2012), published a few days before the summit, in which he juxtaposes the dire predictions of climate science with the failing responses of politicians:

Last week American scientists published a comparative study of climate models from which appeared that the most pessimistic ones are the most reliable [ . . . ] The most obvious idea, reducing emissions quickly and drastically, is at this moment completely politically unrealistic. Even if the climate summit in Doha runs smooth, the agreed measures won’t be more than mere eyewash.

This pessimism about both climate change and climate politics serves to legitimize a focus on investments in adaptation, about which De Standaard remains optimistic, assuming that technologies such as dikes can control the worst consequences: “What remains, is to keep on muddling through with half measures and meanwhile prepare us as good as possible on the coming heat and its consequences.” This discursive construction is perpetuated by Minten, still the leading journalist, in “Fiddling at the margins” (November 26, 2012), published on the first day of the conference. De Standaard’s pessimism and fatalism is also apparent from the low number of articles published during this summit (23 compared with 89 in De Morgen).

This negative framing of attempts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions is sustained by a strategy of economization that starts from the assumption that mitigation is only rational if all major countries participate, or what has previously been referred to as the principle of a “level playing field,” which business organizations in Belgium consistently advocate. For instance, when Minten argues that “A Kyoto II actually comes down to setting up a non-smokers table in a bar where everybody continues to smoke,” he distinguishes the “big polluters” China, the United States, and India, who refuse to participate (to preserve their economic interests), from “the climate friendly” and therefore “isolated” European Union, whose efforts toward regulating greenhouse gas emissions are put forward as ineffective and therefore irrational.

Furthermore, the increasing prevalence of the 2°C threshold and the epistemic discussion about whether it is attainable or not reveals the further scientization of climate change (e.g., Minten, “Climate summit is a flop again,” December 8, 2012). Such temperature targets, which indicate the threshold for dangerous climate change, make use of the metaphor of climate policy as a global thermostat. In this way, the language of science is used to represent political goals and value-laden choices as objective, rational, and neutral, while concealing the potentially divisive, and inherently ideological, choices that have to be made in order to limit the rise of temperatures. By focusing on that goal, rather than on the economic and social conditions that go hand-in-hand with it, climate politics is reduced to the process of translating science into policy (Hulme, 2009).

Consensus-Oriented, Regulatory Optimism

In contrast, there are no substantive shifts or differences here: A binding multilateral climate agreement about emission reduction targets is still advocated based on a presumed moral, scientific, and economic consensus. What is remarkable, however, is how De Morgen’s now leading science and environment journalist Barbara Debusschere’s reporting on various scientific reports before the summit, for instance, by the World Bank (e.g., “World Bank expects warming of four degrees,” November 20, 2012), creates a sense of urgency regarding the necessity of climate action, while at the same time neither of these articles specifies how emissions should be reduced. Climate policy is not linked to specific policy instruments such as carbon-trading, or wider ideological preferences and interests, but is simply depicted as “action,” implying that there is only one rational way to reduce greenhouse gases (see also her editorial by the title “Rational,” November 24, 2012). At the same time, it is important to note that an institution like the World Bank has been a longtime supporter of carbon trading-mechanisms.

Furthermore, Debusschere also increasingly relies on a strategy of economization to legitimize a shift toward a green, low-carbon (market) economy (e.g., “Greening economy must happen six times faster,” November 19, 2006). However, this green economy is not represented as an alternative ideological project to the existent socioecological model but as a matter of neutral and necessary technocratic management and investment in which one can be a leader (Germany) or a laggard (Belgium or the United States). This is increasingly authorized by referring to claims by various powerful, economic actors, as the following headline shows: “Investors are now joining the struggle against global warming” (Debusschere, November 21, 2012). Furthermore, it is interesting to note that 9 out of 24 pages of De Morgen’s climate supplement, published 2 days before the summit, are devoted to green advertisements about products and services ranging from ethical banking to recycled paper. In other words, “Consensus-Oriented, Regulatory Optimism” has embraced market mechanisms as an answer to climate change.

The eventual outcome of the summit is slated in several articles for failing to achieve a binding climate agreement. In “Climate summit ends in big disappointment” (Persson, December 10, 2012), all governments are held responsible for the standstill: “The divided Europe which was not able to make a stand and lost the goodwill from developing countries,” “China, which avoided making any kind of sacrifice,” and especially the “passive,” “stubborn,” “obstructionist” United States. Coverage blames the failure to the irrationality and immorality of world leaders. The editorial “The predictable flop of Doha” (Eeckhout, December 10, 2012) goes even a step further and argues that maybe democracy in itself, and short-term thinking of voters and consumers in particular, is what stands in the way of an ethical and rational response to climate change.

Policy Struggle, Climate Justice

In the reporting on COP18, another discursive construction emerges, one that also consistently advocates a binding multilateral agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but at the same time actively delegitimizes the existent marketization of climate policy. It represents the prevailing policy framework as the outcome of a political struggle over the ideological direction of climate policy. This discursive construction is central in the reporting by DeWereldMorgen but can also be found in the opinionated sections of De Morgen where its journalists are not the main writers, with multiple interviews, opinion pieces, and columns involving activists (e.g., Van de Perre, “The myth of the green economy,” November 24, 2012; Balthazar, “When does the doctor come?” December 6, 2012; Kenis, “The naïve ones of the climate,” December 8, 2012).

This discursive construction is characterized by discursive strategies whose primary aim is to expose and challenge the interests, exclusions, values, and choices underlying the existent ideological direction of climate policy. This can be illustrated by the following quote from “Climate summit in Qatar: What is there to expect?” (Lievens, DeWereldMorgen, November 21, 2012):

Even if decisions are reached at the summits, their direction is not that interesting. In Cancun in 2010 a choice was made for voluntary instead of binding agreements, the role of emissions trading and carbon offsetting was emphasized, and the World Bank was given a primary role in the management of the Green Climate Fund [ . . . ] Insofar as action was taken, it went into the direction of the “green economy” in its most liberal sense. As a result, the world was on its course to warm by 4 or 5 degrees [ . . . ] For those still in doubt: climate change will increasingly become the social issue of the 21st century. If we want change, this will imply grass-roots organizing, instead of obsessing over the impasse in the climate negotiations created by global elites.

This discursive construction represents the climate debate as a conflict between global civil society, grass-roots activists, youth organizations, concerned citizens, and governments from the Global South, on one hand, and global elites, industrial lobbies and Western governments, on the other, with both sides involved in an ideological struggle to push climate policy in different directions. It exposes the dominant direction of climate policy and expands the debate by putting forward strategies for action (grass-roots organizing). Framing power is generally achieved by the first group of actors who use it to problematize “Rich industrial countries [ . . . ] developed countries [ . . . ] big economies like the United States, Canada, Japan, and the European Union” (Leahy, “Anger and frustration at climate summit in Doha,” DeWereldMorgen, December 7, 2012), and the financial and fossil fuel sectors (Leahy, “Oil industry hampers Doha,” DeWereldMorgen, December 6, 2012), for their role in the marketization of climate policy: both in the field of emission reductions through the expansion of cap-and-trade mechanisms (e.g., Kenis & Lievens, “From carbon bubble to emission speculation?” DeWereldMorgen, December 6, 2012) and in the assistance to developing countries through the use of private instead of public finance (e.g., Lenferna, “Climate summit COP18 in Doha: negotiating about a Green Climate Fund or Green Corporate Fund?” DeWereldMorgen, November 26, 2012). This marketization is exposed as part of a particular ideological project: the “green economy” project, which is criticized for re-appropriating climate change for the agenda of continuous economic growth, thus promoting nothing more than “green capitalism.” Repeatedly, it is emphasized that a choice between the ideological projects of the “fossil fuel economy” and the emerging “green economy” is a false choice, since both leave the existent social structures intact. Accordingly, the real choice we are confronted with is a choice between either continuing with existing socioeconomic and techno-environmental logics or expanding our choices by making a fundamental break with both and devise a climate policy based on climate justice (e.g., Kenis, “The naïve ones of the climate,” De Morgen, December 8, 2012).

For DeWereldMorgen, which relies primarily on the international alternative news agency Inter Press Agency for its news, this implies that climate change and policy are approached from the perspective of the existent asymmetries and inequalities between developing and developed countries and that the devastating consequences for people in developing countries are repeatedly highlighted (e.g., “Europe, North-America and Japan must do more efforts than developing countries with similar CO2 emissions” in Ockerman, “Is the climate broke?” DeWereldMorgen, November 22, 2012; Leahy, “China and Brazil demand 100 billion dollar climate aid,” DeWereldMorgen, November 28, 2012). In other words, this discursive construction openly endorses and highlights the principle of common but differentiated responsibility. The summit itself is also evaluated from the perspective of developing countries, constantly arguing that industrialized countries should implement higher and stricter emission reduction targets and provide adequate climate funding.