Page 29 - Carbon Capitalism and Communication Confronting Climate Crisis

1 CARBON, CAPITALISM, COMMUNICATION 11

endorsement in the struggle over the exploitation of the tar sands in
Canada. As well as drawing on recent research, we have asked a number of
prominent activists involved in combating climate crisis to reflect on their
communication strategies.
The pivotal role of communication systems in sifting and presenting
information, orchestrating public debate, crafting resonant images and
engaging stories that frame public anxieties and concerns, apportion
responsibility, and advocate action is a key link in the chain connecting the
operation of communications under capitalism to the climate crisis. These
resources for understanding, and misunderstanding, are displayed in full
public view and the work of journalists and other media professionals, and
the corporations and institutions that employ them, are often newsworthy
in their own right. But, there is a second, equally pivotal, link between the
organisation of communication and climate crisis, which is less visible but
no less important that has received far less attention. One of the main aims
of this present volume is to bring these two connecting links together.
The production and consumption of public information and imagery
depends on a dense array of communication infrastructures and machines,
from underground cables and satellites to widescreen television sets, lap-
tops, tablets and smart phones. Up until comparatively recently, the
implications of the very obvious fact that media systems and equipment are
assembled from a range of natural and synthetic materials, consume energy,
produce emissions in their production and use and contribute to problems
of pollution and waste in their disposal has attracted surprisingly little
comment or analysis. “In communication and media scholarship, the
overwhelming focus has been on texts, the industry that produces them,
and the viewers that consume them; the materiality of devices and net-
works has been consistently overlooked” (Gillespie et al. 2014: 1). The
material presence of media constitutes a backstory that has remained
mostly untold, a hinterland that has remained largely unmapped until very
recently. Two contributors to this volume, Rick Maxwell and Tony Miller,
have been in the forefront of efforts to provide a map, and their contri-
bution here summarises the present debate. Recognising the material
presence of communication systems alongside their central role as key
spaces of advertising and pivotal arenas for constructing and contesting
public understandings is essential to a complete account of the intersec-
tions between developments in media, transformations in capitalism and
the escalation of the climate crisis.