Don't intimidate, don't paralyse, gently motivate: How does the environmental movement cope with the dominant type of expertise?

Direct actions by new climate movements such as Extinction Rebellion or Just Stop Oil have greatly revived debates about effectively communicating the climate crisis to the public. Some praise these movements for their ability to draw attention to the urgency of the climate crisis. Even louder, however, have been voices criticising (based on scientific evidence) their tactics as divisive, counterproductive, and potentially harmful. Specifically, in the Czech setting, which is unanimously considered by activists as somewhat conservative and reserved towards activism, these civil disobedience actions can, according to some, threaten the work of other activists since the Czech public does not distinguish between different types of environmental movements. Based on a critical, argumentative discourse analysis approach, the paper shows the two main narrative patterns, dominant and its counterpart - within the climate movement that address how climate change should be communicated. The paper mainly focuses on how the dominant narrative can be identified in the actors' accounts (analysing, especially emphasis and mitigation, expressing emotions, recalling different types of expert argumentation, etc.). Then, the dominant narrative is explained in detail, as well as its oppositional narratives within the activists' accounts. The paper argues that the identified narratives are based on different kinds of expertise, emotions, coping strategies and moralities. These principles are examined in detail, showing, for instance, that the borderline of the dominant and opposite narrative does not correspond to the division between old and new movements. Among the representatives of the counter-narrative, we can also find members of old, long-established environmental movements.