For many Americans, popular politics seems to have acquired an Orwellian air in the past weeks. Between the series of mutations that rapidly depleted the phrase “fake news” of any substantive meaning and Presidential Advisor Kellyanne Conway’s recent invocation of the term “alternative facts”, it’s clear how politicians and media figures have instrumentalized language to influence the way in which people conceptualize and respond to political developments.
And sustainability is by no means out of the reach of politicized language. In spite of the overwhelming amount of scientific, peer-reviewed evidence in support of the existence of manmade climate change, politicians have regularly employed language to alter the dialogue on environmental policy. However, due to the inherently scientific nature of the discussion, politicians are generally unable to outright dispute the validity of climate change as scientific fact in public.
So, aside from making unsubstantiated claims that there exists ongoing debate within the scientific community over whether global warming truly exists (it does, and 97% of scientists think so too), politicians largely resort to using language to shape the discourse – or lack thereof – surrounding climate change. They accomplish this by avoiding any mention of climate change at all. By omitting reference to climate change, they can effectively remove the topic from the scope of concern of regular citizens.
Perhaps, simple omission is the most ubiquitous tool employed by politicians opposed to acknowledging the threat of global climate change. The inauguration of 45th US President Donald Trump was heralded by a political blanching of the whitehouse.gov page, as administrators removed all references to climate change and sustainability. This action certainly sends the message that climate change is not a concern of the White House, and that it shouldn’t be a concern of yours either.
One can see frequent use of this same agenda-setting-by-omission technique on local levels, such as in municipal and state polities. In constructing a gauge of agenda setting, I visited the official website of each state’s highest jurisdiction environmental agency, and recorded whether the home page included any reference or provided any link toward climate change.
State government provides an important example of agenda setting through omission. This is because, in all likelihood, the workers who form the department ‘people who choose to work for both the government and for environmental protection’ most likely believe in the existence of climate change, even if they live in a red state. However, intuition would dictate that as a state agency, the given department would follow standard protocol of respecting the agenda of the elected governor (and his/her appointees).
And this appears to be overwhelmingly the case.
Based on this home-experiment, states with Democratic governors were 47% more likely to explicitly feature the term “climate change” on their primary environmental department’s website than those with Republican governors.
This disparity decreases for different phrases that are less politically loaded. For example, environment departments under Republican governors are only 20% less likely to mention “sustainability” than those with Democratic governors. If “sustainability” is indeed a less partisan phrase, then this observation is evidence of how state politicians use language to influence the dialogue on climate change. Indeed, other phrases like “resilience”, and “conservation” may also operate as less politicized sustainability buzzwords.
Figures 1 and 2 illustrate which states environmental departments deviate from their governor’s party in terms of whether their website makes explicit reference to climate change. Of the 16 states with Democratic governors, 6 of their primary environmental department’s websites do not reference climate change.
Among the 33 states with Republican governors, only 5 respective official websites make reference to climate change. In a sense, these maps provide a visualization of the extent to which climate change policy is subject to partisan agenda setting through language and omission. Including Alaska with its Independent governor, only 12 states environmental departments deviate from their governor’s party in terms of climate change reference. Most notably, assuming Republican states actively strive to avoid mention of climate change on their respective environmental departments’ websites (and vice versa), state environmental departments are 26% more likely to adhere to partisan lines under Republican governorships than under Democratic governorships, serving to confirm how partisan merely mentioning climate change truly is.
Amidst the frequent controversies that mar the new administration, we need to demonstrate broader vigilance toward what politicians don’t say and don’t do. Perhaps the constant string of controversies only serves to distract citizens from the real issues.
Orwell himself stated, “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act”. This is certainly the case for the national park twitter accounts that have resorted to tweeting global warming facts. Perhaps we, too, can help influence the discussion agenda by bringing climate change to the surface of our own conversations.
If anything, citizens have the greatest voice in participating in local politics. Ask your state environmental department – why don’t they have anything to say about climate change? Ask your governor’s office. By raising our voices and rejecting language control that silences climate change discourse, we can establish our own dialogue.
Figure 1: Democratic Climate Change References
Source: Author
Figure 2: Republican Climate Change References
Source: Author