Global Sustainability Discourses of climate delay cambridge.org/sus William F. Lamb1,2 , Giulio Mattioli3, Sebastian Levi1,4,5, J. Timmons Roberts6, Stuart Capstick7, Felix Creutzig1,8 , Jan C. Minx1,2, Finn Müller-Hansen1,9, Trevor Culhane6 and Julia K. Steinberger2 Intelligence Briefing 1Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change, Torgauer Straße 12–15, EUREF Campus 2 Cite this article: Lamb WF et al. (2020). #19, 10829 Berlin, Germany; School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK; Discourses of climate delay. Global 3Department of Transport Planning, Faculty of Planning, TU Dortmund University, August-Schmidt-Straße 10, Sustainability 3, e17, 1–5. https://doi.org/ 44227 Dortmund, Germany; 4Freie Universität Berlin, Kaiserswerther Str. 16–18, 14195 Berlin, Germany; 5Hertie 10.1017/sus.2020.13 School of Governance, Friedrichstraße 180, 10117 Berlin, Germany; 6Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA; 7Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations and Received: 24 March 2020 Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK; 8Technical Revised: 6 June 2020 9 Accepted: 8 June 2020 University Berlin, Straße des 17. Junis 135, 10623 Berlin, Germany and Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Member of the Leibniz Association, PO Box 60 12 03, D-14412 Potsdam, Germany Keywords: climate delay; climate denial; counter- Non-technical summary movement; discourses ‘Discourses of climate delay’ pervade current debates on climate action. These discourses Author for correspondence: accept the existence of climate change, but justify inaction or inadequate efforts. In contem- Dr William F. Lamb, porary discussions on what actions should be taken, by whom and how fast, proponents of E-mail: [email protected] climate delay would argue for minimal action or action taken by others. They focus attention on the negative social effects of climate policies and raise doubt that mitigation is possible. Here, we outline the common features of climate delay discourses and provide a guide to iden- tifying them. Technical summary Through our collective observations as social scientists studying climate change, we describe 12 climate delay discourses and develop a typology based on their underlying logic. Delay dis- courses can be grouped into those that: (1) redirect responsibility; (2) push non-transforma- tive solutions; (3) emphasize the downsides of climate policies; or (4) surrender to climate change. These discourses are distinct from climate denialism, climate-impact scepticism and ad hominem attacks, but are often used in combination to erode public and political sup- port for climate policies. A deeper investigation of climate delay discourses is necessary in order to understand their prevalence and to develop inoculation strategies that protect the public from their intended effects. Our typology enables scientists, climate advocates and pol- icymakers to recognize and counter these arguments when they are used. We urge all propo- nents of climate action to address these common misrepresentations of the climate crisis and to better communicate the dramatic pace of global warming, the gravity of its impacts and the possibility of effective and just mitigation policies. Social media summary Discourses of climate delay: redirect responsibility, push non-transformative solutions, emphasize downsides, surrender. 1. Introduction As the public conversation on climate change evolves, so too does the sophistication and range of arguments used to downplay or discount the need for action (McKie, 2019; Norgaard, 2011). A mainstay of this counter-movement has been outright denial of the reality or © The Author(s), 2020. Published by human causation of climate change (Farrell et al., 2019), supplemented by climate-impact Cambridge University Press. This is an Open scepticism (Harvey et al., 2018) and ad hominem attacks on scientists and the scientific con- Access article, distributed under the terms of sensus (Oreskes & Conway, 2011). A fourth strategy has received relatively little attention to the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), date: policy-focused discourses that exploit contemporary discussions on what action should which permits unrestricted re-use, be taken, how fast, who bears responsibility and where costs and benefits should be allocated distribution, and reproduction in any medium, (Bohr, 2016; Jacques & Knox, 2016; McKie, 2019). We call these ‘climate delay’ discourses, provided the original work is properly cited. since they often lead to deadlock or a sense that there are intractable obstacles to taking action. Climate delay discourses comprise many separate strategies, some of which have already been identified, such as individualism (Maniates, 2001), technological optimism (Peeters et al., 2016), fossil fuel greenwashing (Sheehan, 2018) and appeals to social justice and eco- nomic costs (Bohr, 2016; Jacques & Knox, 2016). They have been examined in surveys and Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.35.76, on 23 Sep 2021 at 19:54:21, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2020.13 2 William F. Lamb et al. Fig. 1. A typology of climate delay discourses. community workshops (Bickerstaff & Walker, 2002; Norgaard, co-authors, and then we refine these categories by drawing from 2011), in media sources and advertisements (Bohr, 2016; a wide range of sources. These include a systematically collected Jacques & Knox, 2016; Peeters et al., 2016; Sheehan, 2018) and sample of written testimony (submitted to Massachusetts legisla- in lobbying activities and political discourses (Bache et al., ture on climate and clean energy legislation in the period 2015; Gillard, 2016; McKie, 2019), using methods such as content 2013–2018), as well as selected news articles and media content analysis (Bohr, 2016; Jacques & Knox, 2016), grounded theory on climate policies in Germany, the UK, Norway and the USA. (Bickerstaff & Walker, 2002) and the analysis of social deviance Refer to the Supplementary Materials for a more detailed explan- (McKie, 2019). Many delay arguments are documented in key ation of our methods and sources. works tracing the history of environmental counter-movements Climate delay discourses repeatedly occur across sources, actors in the USA, including the Merchants of Doubt, Deceit and and contexts. What features do they share? Based on the under- Denial, The Triumph of Doubt and others (Brulle & Aronczyk, lying logic they use to discourage climate action, we characterize 2019; Freudenburg et al., 2008; Markowitz & Rosner, 2003; discourses of delay as negations of at least one of four questions: Michaels, 2008, 2020; Oreskes & Conway, 2011). (1) Is it our responsibility to take actions? (2) Are transformative Our goal in this article is simply to identify an expansive – changes necessary? (3) Is it desirable to mitigate climate change, albeit not necessarily exhaustive – list of climate delay discourses. given the costs? (4) Is it still possible to mitigate climate change? In doing so, we follow similar efforts to compile common climate The varying positions to these fundamental questions allow us to denial claims and provide a reference point for countering misin- group discourses into four categories that ‘redirect responsibility’, formation (www.skepticalscience.com). Our secondary goal is to ‘push non-transformative solutions’, ‘emphasize the downsides’ of examine the common features and shared underlying logic of climate policy, or ‘surrender’ to climate change (see Figure 1). delay discourses. This allows us to condense them into a set of This typology assists in the identification of diverse discursive overarching strategies that can be more easily recognized and strategies and may suggest tailored responses to each. These ques- hence challenged. Our approach is deductive: we derive our initial tions also cut to some of the most contentious aspects of social list of discourses from an expert elicitation of the study and political change; they indicate that discourses of delay often Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.35.76, on 23 Sep 2021 at 19:54:21, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2020.13 Global Sustainability 3 contain partial truths and may be put forward in good faith. Yet An underlying concern in these narratives is the ‘free rider’ our focus here is to identify the features of these discourses, rather problem: unless all individuals, industries or countries undertake than to attribute underlying motives to those who use them. In emissions reductions, some will stand to benefit from the actions the absence of high-quality public deliberation, and in the of others. We see this more explicitly formulated in the ‘free rider’ hands of interest groups fighting against regulation, our concern excuse discourse, which claims that others will actively take is that discourses of delay will disorientate and discourage ambi- advantage of those who lead on climate change mitigation – tious climate action. This issue thus demands urgent attention “[I]f we stopped emitting altogether tomorrow, not only it and a new set of responses to facilitate a more robust public would have no impact but undoubtedly