Communication Difficulties- Denying, Astroturfing and Teabagging (CR #2)

I have noticed a recurrent theme throughout all of our discussions thus far; communication is central. How do we effectively communicate the values and ideas inseparable from our visions for a hopeful future beyond the triumphant, end-of-history discourse of the neoliberal growth machine?  As Saul Alinsky wrote in Rules for Radicals, no progressive movement can succeed without the broad-based support of the middle-classes, the dominant constituent of the North American population. And indeed, many of our discussions seem to be derailed as soon as one of us asks “how realistic is to expect the [insert stereotype of SUV driving, overweight North American here] … to understand and change their lifestyle?” Alinsky noted that the middle-classes are a difficult bunch to organize with mass change in mind, for they have just enough economic security to stave off the desperation which usually coincides with unrelenting and passionate movements for change in a capitalist system dominated by short-term economic interest. In this response I would like to outline some of the defining communication issues that pervade the interconnected debates around energy and climate change, specifically in the US political landscape.

In considering the very important question of how to effectively communicate the possibilities for alternative systems (steady-state economies being one), I would rather spotlight some of recent, alarming tactics used by those out to convince the public that there is in fact no reason to seek out, debate, and initiate alternatives. This is evident in the strategies to delegitimize the international consensus on climate-science and undermine the transition to renewable energy used by the shared forces of free-market capitalists, oil barons, and right-wing ideologues.

The first tactic, used primarily by right-wing political strategists, has been to co-opt a wide range of theories associated with the “post-positivist left” about scientific uncertainty (Wyly, 315). Frank Lutz, a well known Republican strategist, advised Bush and others to deploy the “lack of scientific certainty” as the primary issue when deflecting calls to adopt GHG-emission targets (Wyly, 311). Bruno Latour, a pioneer in the philosophy of science, reacted to this strategy in the following way,

“Entire Ph.D. programs are still running to make sure that good American kids are learning the hard way that facts are made up, that there is no such thing as natural, unmediated, unbiased access to truth, that we always speak from a particular standpoint, and so on, while dangerous extremists are using the very same argument of social construction to destroy hard-won evidence that could save our lives” (Wyly, 312).

What was born as a radical critique of the power structures embedded in industrialized practices of science, popularized by thinkers  such as Michel Foucault and Donna Haraway, has now become the ammunition with which power strengthens its will to ignorance.

The second tactic has been the appropriation of organizing strategies emanating from Alinksy and other 1960s era radicals. Rules for Radicals has even been assigned as bed time reading for the Tea-Partiers across the US. Alinsky’s manifesto was born out of his experiences organizing marginalized populations across the US to take back power from elites. However, the Tea-partiers are not simply a grassroots collection of ‘have-nots’ seeking power from the ‘haves’; the movement has little to say about marginalization, exclusion, or inequality. Rather, many linkages have been drawn financial and organizational support coming from, among others, oil companies.

This brings me to the third tactic, astroturfing; the attempt to artificially produce what on the surface looks like a grass-roots movement.

This New York Times article, among others, links the finances of the Koch Industries (today’s equivalent of Standard Oil) to Americans for Prosperity, a key organizing force of the Tea Party Movement.

Not only does the movement stand for further neoliberalization, tea partiers also have an agenda to halt progress on federal legislation regarding climate-change mitigation. It should come as no surprise that Koch Industries has significant economic stakes in seeing no slow-down of the Alberta’s tar sands given their ownership of pipeline and refinery facilities across America. The Koch Industries’ astro-turfing is not limited to the protection of the oil-industry’s profits. The Koch Family is noted for providing the start-up funds for the Cato Institute in 1977 which “consistently pushed for corporate tax cuts, reductions in social services, and laissez-faire environmental policies”, and continue to donate to “nonprofit groups that criticize environmental regulation and support lower taxes for industry”. The NY Times article reads,

“When President Obama, in a 2008 speech, described the science on global warming as “beyond dispute,” the Cato Institute took out a full-page ad in the Times to contradict him. Cato’s resident scholars have relentlessly criticized political attempts to stop global warming as expensive, ineffective, and unnecessary. Ed Crane, the Cato Institute’s founder and president, told me that “global-warming theories give the government more control of the economy.””

If our group is to critically interrogate the collective imagination of energy, we must speak truth to power, and recognize there is nothing natural about our relationship with energy and the practices which reproduce the conditions for “crisis”. Rather, our practices are highly political, and the tactics outlined above attest to the traditional energy sectors influence on not only our present political agendas, but also on the vocabulary with which to imagine future alternatives.

Since the 1960s, Shell has practiced what is called scenario planning, or the act of telling stories about possible future events in order to strategize effectively. The acronym “TINA” (There is No Alternative) has come to organize all of their scenarios since the 1990s and represents to them the triumph of globalization and liberalization. The massive capital already invested by Shell and other companies in existing infrastructure makes it near impossible for them to envision their own proactive role in a future beyond oil, even if they may be cognizant of peak-oil and climate change. Rather than aid the transition, members of the traditional energy sector wield their political influence to distort the public discourse on climate change.

Although the tactics described above are at the extreme end of the spectrum and most prevalent in the US, they nonetheless give insight into the ways in which discourses are shot through with power. How the middle classes are communicated to and how they vote will play a central role in an energy-mode shift. What we should realize is that these dirtiest of tactics are having real  consequences, with the overwhelming majority of congressional republicans who ran in the midterm elections all sharing a denial of climate change.

While this response does not give a positive answer to the question of ‘how realistic it is to ask people to change’, it details some of the mechanisms used to foreclose the possibility that these questions may even be seriously considered. Knowing is have the battle right?

Works Cited:

Alinsky, Saul Rules for Radicals: A practical primer for realistic radicals, New York, Random House 1971

Wyly, Elvin “Strategic Positivism” in The Professional Geographer, 61(3) 2009