Redescribing fossil-fuel investments: How hegemony challengers invert arguments in the Norwegian public discourse on climate risk

After 50 years of fossil-fuel production and hegemony, the profitability of fossil-fuel investments is increasingly challenged in Norwegian public discourse though the concept of ‘climate risk’. By inverting the image of fossil-fuel dependency from one of growth and success to one of loss and stagnation, those who challenge the hegemonic pro-fossil fuel-investments system pave the way for an alternative description of an ideal welfare state based on a low-carbon economy. This paper analyses the public discourse on fossil fuels and climate risk in Norwegian news articles, from 2013-2019. By combining post-structural discourse theory and the rhetorical-political analysis, the paper contributes with a novel conceptualisation of “inversion” as a form of rhetorical redescription – to pinpoint a phenomenon found in the empirical material. This concept may help us understand the strategic manoeuvring of the environmental movements as counter-hegemonic forces, and their relationship to – and influence on – parties’, candidates’, and representatives’ positions on climate change.