Page 167 - Carbon Capitalism and Communication Confronting Climate Crisis

158 B. BREVINI AND T. WORONOV

proponents of fossil fuels. The second is to detail how a regime of
‘truthiness’ is constructed in public debates.
Focusing on the political and media debates around the proposed
greenfield Carmichael megamine in the Galilee Basin in central
Queensland, we found examples of the three key strategies that construct
‘truthiness’ regimes.
First, mine proponents in Australia rely heavily on affective themes,
building on pre-existing cultural tropes that cast mining as the nation’s
backbone, and coal as utterly essential to Australian safety, prosperity, and
future. ‘Gut feelings’ rather than empirical facts drive arguments about
Australia’s destiny as a resource-extraction economy, allowing little space
to mine opponents arguing that alternative economic paths may exist.
Second, following Benson and Kirsch’s (2010) adaptation of George
Orwell, we highlighted the specific use of oxymorons in public discourse,
to show how newly minted terms such as ‘sustainable mining,’‘clean coal’
and ‘terrorist activist’ disarm opponents by generating euphemisms that
mean almost exactly the opposite of what they appear to mean.
Third, employing these complex discourse narratives (Boykoff 2017)
does not, however, preclude politicians and the sympathetic media from
promulgating outright falsehoods. ‘Truthiness’ also depends on manipu-
lation and endless repetition of ‘facts’ with no basis in reality to make
political points. In the case of the Carmichael mine, two instances stand
out. First, figures for job creation, economic growth and value to the
Queensland economy have been wildly overblown, yet through sheer
repetition false economic data has been taken as fact by the media and
political classes. Second is insisting that the mine will cause no damage to
the already endangered Great Barrier Reef.
Our main point in dissecting the arguments in favour of the Carmichael
mine is to demonstrate the complexity of ‘truthiness’ regimes. None of
these discursive forms—‘gut feelings,’ spin and politicization of unwanted
facts or even outright lies—are enough on their own. Rather, these
strategies overlap, intersect and reinforce each other, to create an overar-
ching truthiness regime that posits new megamines as desireable, inevi-
table, and essential to maintaining Australia’s national destiny.
The challenge for mine opponents is therefore formidable. Demanding
that pundits and politicians replace ‘lies’ with ‘truth’ is not enough to
topple this ‘truthiness’ regime. A more complex and multi-pronged
approach will be necessary to convince the voting public that mining is not