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Further implications
Radical climate change activists stress the difficulty and the importance of drawing attention to the climate crisis.These activists claim that more moderate action, such as simple street marches or even more radical actions performed away from the public eye have failed to attract media interest. They have justified their disruptions of sporting events, their blockading of public roads and their daubing of famous artworks by referring to the 'millions of eyeballs' that will be turned toward these demonstrations.
This argument suggests the importance of the media in shaping the type of action that many climate activists take. Whatever they do must be headline-worthy. Unfortunately, many media outlets seem interested only in the sensationalist value of climate activists' demonstrations and have a poor record overall in dealing with the scientific reality of the climate crisis. On March 17, 2021, Mark Hertzgaard, writing for the Columbia Journalism Review, noted, 'Media coverage of the climate crisis has long lagged behind warnings from scientists and other experts - especially in the US, where coverage was sporadic at best, and often descended into a scientifically indefensible bothsidesism that portrayed corporate flaks and real scientists as equally credible.'
Rather than provide informed and credible treatments of the climate emergency, many media outlets seem interested in presenting a confrontation narrative, initially between climate protesters and polluters and more recently between climate protesters and the general public. Any representation of climate activists as at war with the average person is problematic in terms of advancing acceptance of the measures that will need to be taken by governments and individuals to reduce the serious threats associated with the climate crisis. Some social commentators have pointed out that there are many roles to be played in the worldwide effort to contain climate change within manageable parameters. Some theorists like to present radical climate activists as the shock troops who heighten awareness so that the general public and governments can then accept the advice of other more moderate-seeming climate advisers who come in as the clean-up brigade.
There are problems with this theory, as both the obviously radical and less obviously radical advice on what is needed to address climate change are generally very similar. As Jack Shenker noted in an opinion piece published in The Guardian on March 6, 2023, 'In truth, few believe that when it comes to the climate emergency there is a binary choice between radical protests and less confrontational forms of activism.' Different groups may wrap the package differently, but the contents is essentially the same - to address the climate crisis, many aspects of human life will need to change in significant and not always pleasant ways. What the world is going to need is a style of presentation that will help populations accept the measures they need to adopt. We require a different narrative. In an opinion piece published in The Guardian on January 12, 2023, Rebecca Smidt stated, 'Every crisis is in part a storytelling crisis. This is as true of climate chaos as anything else. We are hemmed in by stories that prevent us from seeing, or believing in, or acting on the possibilities for change. Some are habits of mind; some are industry propaganda. Sometimes, the situation has changed but the stories haven't, and people follow the old versions, like outdated maps, into dead ends.'
Both climate activists and the media have a role in changing our narrative. Perhaps, for a while, there will remain a role for radical climate activists to keep sounding a strident note of alarm. But someone is going to need to come in behind with a more positive message. Not just, this is what we must do, but also, this is how we can do it. Clearly, the media has a role to play here in disseminating another message, but while they remain obsessed with scripting conflicts and casting villains, they will not be able to perform that role.