Communicating Environmental Arguments: Insights from a Rhetorical Approach

Political scientists, and especially those who study policy, have a growing interest in, and concern for, the ways in which expert (scientific and technical) evidence and argument is used and misused in public political discourse. Especially with regard to climate change, it is evident that the urgency adopted and promoted by the majority of the scientific community is not translated into policies that could address environmental problems timely and effectively. Even in Europe, the place that according to experts “is warming faster than many other places in the world”, leaders seem to have “vacillated” (Stern, 2015) The purpose of this paper is to put this inconsistency between science and policy in scrutiny. Drawing on the methodology of rhetorical analysis, this paper presents the outcome of the study of certain scientific as well as policy papers and offers insights with regard to the emergence and communication of concepts that have been established as key components of environmental discourse and politics in the last 20 years. As part of a three-year project that studies scientific discourse and political persuasion with regard to environmental politics, this paper focuses on how ideas such as sustainability, mitigation, adaptation and resilience have dominated our imaginary as the desirable aims or means to address our environmental predicament. The value of mapping the usage and communication of these ideas is that it enables us to explore continuity and transformation in environmental policy disputes, as well as the rhetorical reconfiguration of green and anti-green ideologies. The paper, then, demonstrates how certain aspects of scientific discourse have been strategically used to create and enhance political consensus. Our failure to respond effectively to climate change and its challenges, the paper suggests, is not irrelevant to our failure to invent and mobilise more creative and assertive ways of arguing about the environment.