Page 19 - Carbon Capitalism and Communication Confronting Climate Crisis

CHAPTER 1

Carbon, Capitalism, Communication

Graham Murdock and Benedetta Brevini

CARBON
Despite being written almost 200 years ago, Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel
Frankenstein remains the best known cautionary tale of the risks and
damage that may follow from human intervention in fundamental natural
processes. It opens with a series of letters home from a ship’s captain whose
vessel is trapped in the Arctic. Looking out from the deck he sees “stret-
ched out in every direction, vast and irregular plains of ice, which seemed
to have no end” (Shelley 1992: 25 [1818]). The next day the crew rescues
the forlorn figure of Frankenstein, who is pursuing the man-monster he has
created in order to kill him. Almost 200 years later, the story has retained a
central place in the popular imagination. But Mary Shelley’s vision of an
endless sheet of white stretching to the horizon has been replaced by iconic
photographs of polar bears clinging to small slivers of ice, surrounded by
dark ocean, anchoring the impact of climate change in a powerfully reso-
nant image.

G. Murdock
Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK
B. Brevini (&)
University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
e-mail: benedetta.brevini@sydney.edu.au

© The Author(s) 2017 1
B. Brevini and G. Murdock (eds.), Carbon Capitalism and Communication,
Palgrave Studies in Media and Environmental Communication,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-57876-7_1