Page 37 - Carbon Capitalism and Communication Confronting Climate Crisis

1 CARBON, CAPITALISM, COMMUNICATION 19

In Chap. 11, Benedetta Brevini and Terry Woronov return to Australia,
a country with one of the highest rates of emission per head of population
in the world, and detail the adoption of ‘post-truth’ politics in public
discourses employed to promote the opening of a huge new open cast coal
mine, the Adani Carmichael, in Queensland. Defined as ‘relating to or
denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in
shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’
(Oxford Dictionary 2016), post-truth politics has recently been identified
as a hallmark of the current era in which forms of political communication
and spin that favour feelings and emotions over policy are spreading
globally. To explore some of the ways that post truth politics and
‘truthiness’ operate this chapter explores the way in which politicians and
the media in Australia have dubbed the construction of the Adan mine as
not only economically necessary but as central to the country’s sense of
itself and its future.

Section Four: Communication and Campaigning:
Oppositions and Refusals
The chapters in the final section explore the strategies employed by protest
movements and campaigns in their struggles for visibility and legitimacy,
and examine how journalism can contribute to raising awareness and
prompting action.
In Chap. 12, Jodi Dean argues that dominant constructions of “the
immensity of calamity of the changing climate-with attendant desertifica-
tion, ocean acidification, and species loss seemingly forces us into seeing all
or nothing”, and are creating a pervasive climate of anxiety that is fuelling
resignation rather than resistance. Countering this, she explains, requires us
to move beyond the totalising construction of the Anthropocene and view
contemporary conditions from the side, anamorphically, in search of points
that allow us entry into other ways of looking, ways that move us towards
collective action and strategic engagement. One powerful route to securing
these openings, she argues, is through public art and performance that
dramatizes issues in immediately accessible and memorable images. She
offers Liberate Tate’s performances protesting the museum’s acceptance of
sponsorship by British Petroleum as an example.