CLIMATE OF CHANGE MISREPRESENTED AS CLIMATE CHANGE

COMMENTARY ARCHIVES, 19 Nov 2008

Anthony Judge

Introduction

This is a summary of ways in which the focus on climate change, understood as a problem, is being used, deliberately or inadvertently, to reframe the climate of change. The latter was previously associated with the innovative potentials of a new century, openness to new "thinking", the possibility of a "paradigm shift", and new ways of doing things.

Essentially, it is argued here, these creative, remedial possibilities for a spectrum of challenges are being transformed into a particular understanding of problematic climate change — to which conventional strategic responses are then considered appropriate within the old mindset. The significance of "climate change" is being conflated with that of "climate of change" — to the disadvantage of the latter and its associated expectations.

It might be said that those focused on the tangible specifics of climate change have successively appropriated the potential previously associated with the intangibles to which climate of change referred — including issues of social justice and response to the underprivileged. Reference to climate of change is increasingly used only to imply that previous denial regarding climate change is being overcome — in the new climate of change. For this reason, reports on climate change often now use the phrase climate of change in their title.

This summary serves primarily to point to more extensive arguments elaborated in earlier papers (with appropriate references) regarding the issues of which preoccupation with climate change is a symptom — notably the issue of population growth, previously recognized as a driver of climate change.

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This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 19 Nov 2008.

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