Climate Change and the Rhetorics of Disaster Anticipation

The Case of An Inconvenient Truth

The Most Famous Power-Point Presentation in the World

• A film by Davis Guggenheim, 2006

• Al Gore, US Presidential hopeful 2000

• Winner, with the International Panel on Climate Change, of Nobel Peace Prize, 2007.

How We View the Environment• Image of the earth from

space (Apollo 8) was “Earthrise”, published in December 1968

• Changed our perception of the world and of the environment

• It is argued that this image spawned the environmental movement

• "Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives," Carl Sagan, 1996.

Metonym of Climate Change

• Where part stands in for the whole

• The polar bear is the “poster child” of climate change

• Central to the visual rhetoric of climate change

Views of the Environment

• As vulnerable• As forgiving• As threatening• As an object • Others?

Rhetoric

• Ethos• Pathos• Logos• Inductive/Deductive

reasoning• Syllogisms

Ethos

• Appeal based on the character of the speaker.

• An ethos-driven document relies on the reputation of the author.

Pathos• Appeal based on emotion. • Advertisements tend to

be pathos-driven. • Metonym: Where part

stands in for the whole• The polar bear is the

“poster child” of climate change

• Central to the visual rhetoric of climate change

Logos

• Appeal based on logic or reason.

• Scholarly documents are often logos-driven.

• Appeals to scientific rationality

Deductive Reasoning

• Deductive reasoning works from the more general to the more specific.

• Sometimes called the “top-down” method

• Theory, Hypothesis, Observation, Confirmation

Inductive Reasoning

• Inductive reasoning works the other way, moving from specific observations to broader generalizations and theories.

• Sometimes called a "bottom up" approach

Rhetorics of Climate Change

• Who is the speaker?• Who is the audience?• What is the subject?• What is the speakers

assertion?• What is the tone?• What kind of language

does the speaker use?

• What supporting evidence does the speaker use?

• How do images work to support the argument?

Critique of AIT

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_21b7mdJz2M

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXXczLhzlHA

Exercise

• Break into groups of 4 to work at separate tables

• Each group will explore the web presence of an assigned Climate Change group to look at how the rhetoric of their campaigns work

• 1) World Wildlife Federation, 2) Greenpeace International, 3) Tck Tck Tck: Global Campaign for Climate Action, 4) Oxfam International, and 5)Earth Hour

Identify who the group is and who makes up the intended audience for the message. Explain how you have determined this

Identify their central message and the desired outcome of it (NB: this may be implicitly rather than explicitly stated)

Find at least 2 examples of each of ethos, pathos, logos, and inductive or deductive reasoning in the campaigns

Be prepared to show the class these examples and to explain how they work toward achieving the desired outcome