Rhetorical Analysis of Arguments Made in the Climate Change Debate: Argument Families and ...

366 Pages·2004·1.13 MB·English

ABSTRACT

Title of dissertation: RHETORICAL ANALYSIS OF ARGUMENTS MADE
IN THE CLIMATE CHANGE DEBATE:
ARGUMENT FAMILIES AND SOCIAL NETWORK
LINKS AS POTENTIAL BASES FOR AGREEMENT

Elizabeth L. Malone

Dissertation directed by: Professor Meyer Kestnbaum
Department of Sociology

The issue of climate change brings together some of the most important
sociological issues of the age, including global governance, the role of industrialization
and capitalism in degrading the environment, the relationship between humans and non-
human nature, and the inequality of nations. However, it is an open question whether
societies and countries of the world can come to agreement about the meaning of climate
change and actions (or no action) that should be taken to address it. To avoid privileging
one or another of the issue’s aspects, this study used a discursive and rhetorical approach
to include all the arguments made in the debate on an equal footing. First, 100 documents
that make arguments about climate change were analyzed to characterize the arguments
made and to distinguish four rhetorical elements: the personal and organizational sources
of authority for the rhetor, the type(s) of evidence used for the claims made, the
worldview(s) expressed, and the actions proposed. This analysis provided the basis for
categorizing the documents into “families,” coherent arguments made about the climate
change issue; and performing a social network analysis to discern linkages formed by the
argument families and rhetorical elements that might be the basis for coming to
agreement about climate change issues. The study found coherence within families as
well as multiple links across families, indicating that rhetors in the climate change debate
form a dense network of ties that could be used to build agreement.
RHETORICAL ANALYSIS OF ARGUMENTS MADE IN THE CLIMATE CHANGE
DEBATE:
ARGUMENT FAMILIES AND SOCIAL NETWORK LINKS
AS POTENTIAL BASES FOR AGREEMENT

by

Elizabeth L. Malone

Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the
University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
2004

Advisory Committee:
Professor Meyer Kestnbaum, Chair/Advisor
Professor Jeanne Fahnestock
Professor R. Patricio Korzeniewicz
Professor Laura Mamo
Professor Miranda Schreurs
©Copyright by
Elizabeth L. Malone
2004
To Richard Harvey Brown
ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION...............................................................................1
Interactions in the Debate..........................................................................................6
Social Science in the Debate......................................................................................9
This Project: Analyzing Arguments in the Debate...................................................15
Overview of this Project...........................................................................................15
CHAPTER 2: SOCIOLOGY AND CLIMATE CHANGE....................................19
Social Movement Studies..........................................................................................21
Sociology of Science.................................................................................................27
Environmental Sociology..........................................................................................32
Environmental Sociology and Global Climate Change...........................................46
CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY............................................................................52
Theoretical Analysis of the Climate Change Debate and its Arguments.................53
Industrialization, Development, and Inequality...................................................54
The Relationship between Humans and Nature...................................................54
The Legitimacy of Northern/Western Science.....................................................55
Global Governance and Nation-State Actors.......................................................56
Parallels between Globalization and Climate Change..........................................56
Content Analysis/Rhetorical Analysis Methodology................................................57
Rhetorical Argumentation....................................................................................59
Applying Rhetorical Analysis to Arguments about Climate Change...................65
Social Network Analysis Methodology.....................................................................70
Theoretical Descriptions..........................................................................................74
CHAPTER 4: THEORETICAL APPROACHES TO HOT TOPICS:.................78
GLOBALIZATION AND CLIMATE CHANGE...................................................78
Approaches to Theorizing Globalization..................................................................80
Globalization of the Economic System................................................................82
Political Globalization..........................................................................................85
Globalization of Culture.......................................................................................87
Contributions of Theorists to Understanding Globalization....................................91
Approaches to Theorizing Climate Change.............................................................92
Economic Globalization and Climate Change.....................................................96
Political Globalization and Climate Change........................................................98
Cultural (Scientific) Globalization and Climate Change....................................104
iii
Globalization and Climate Change: More Heat than Light?.................................107
CHAPTER 5: RHETORICAL ANALYSIS OF ARGUMENTS MADE............112
IN THE GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE DEBATE............................................112
Rhetorical Analytic Approaches to Comparative Analysis....................................114
A Methodology for Comparative Analysis of Arguments.......................................122
Family #1: No Problem!.....................................................................................132
Family #2: Climate Change May Be Good for You...........................................135
Family #3: Science Provides Knowledge about Climate Change......................138
Families #4-9: More Modernization Is the Cure................................................142
Family #10: Inequality Is the Problem...............................................................153
Family #11: Rift with Nature.............................................................................156
Family Ties?...........................................................................................................159
CHAPTER 6: SOCIAL NETWORK TIES AMONG RHETORS IN THE
CLIMATE CHANGE DEBATE.............................................................................162
Social Network Analysis Applied to Potential Bases for Agreement.....................162
Authority of the Rhetor and Organization Type.................................................166
Type of Evidence................................................................................................167
Worldview..........................................................................................................170
Proposed Actions................................................................................................171
Results of the Categorization..................................................................................174
Within-Family Analysis..........................................................................................180
Results of the Ucinet Analysis................................................................................182
Conclusion..............................................................................................................197
CHAPTER 7: PROSPECTS FOR THE DEBATE: ENDLESS RECYCLING.198
OF ARGUMENTS OR MOVEMENT TOWARD AGREEMENT?..................198
Potential Pathways to Agreement..........................................................................210
APPENDIX 1: FIRST-STEP ANALYSES OF ARGUMENTS...........................220
APPENDIX 2: DOCUMENTS LISTED BY ARGUMENT.................................338
REFERENCES.........................................................................................................347

iv
LIST OF TABLES
Table 3.1. Template for Document Content Analysis.................................................68
Table 4.1. Dimensions of Globalization and Examples...............................................81
Table 4.2. Dimensions of Climate Change..................................................................95
Table 5.1. Example of Template for First-Order Document/Presentation Analysis.126
Table 5.2. Overview of Document Set and Rhetorical Classifications.....................132
Table 5.3 First-Step Analysis of Lindzen Argument.................................................134
Table 5.4 First-Step Analysis of Ausubel Argument.................................................137
Table 5.5 First-Step Analysis of Darwin et al. Argument.........................................141
Table 5.6. First-Step Analysis of Worldwatch Argument.........................................145
Table 5.7. First-Step Analysis of Browne Argument................................................148
Table 5.8. First-Step Analysis of Edmonds and Scott Argument..............................151
Table 5.9. First-Step Analysis of Agarwal and Narain Argument.............................155
Table 5.10. First-Step Analysis of Meadows Argument...........................................158
Table 6.1. Argument Elements that May Form Social Ties among Rhetors.............164
Table 6.2. Arguments Sorted by Family with Coded Rhetorical Features................175
Table 6.3. Ucinet Groups from Analysis of All Factors............................................183
Table 6.4. Ucinet Groups for Authority of the Rhetor (followed by family number)193
Table 6.5. Ucinet Groups for Evidence (followed by family number)......................194
Table 6.6. Ucinet Groups for Proposed Actions (followed by family number)........195

v
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

At first blush, global climate change does not seem to be worthy of much
sociological interest. It looks to be concerned mostly with the physical world, not the
social. Most people neither know nor care about the science involved: the tropopause,
gas concentrations in parts per million by volume, watts per meter squared of radiative
forcing, atmospheric lifetimes and the carbon cycle, etc. Much of the scientific
analysis of climate change has been from the stance of the physical scientists:
emissions of greenhouse-related gases from human activities, the physico-chemical
reactions that produce the greenhouse effect and its enhancements, the impacts on
crops and water supply, and so on. Most of these “hard” scientists agree that there are
many uncertainties and that significant climate change will happen very slowly, over a
century or more.
The stance of these physical scientists parallels that of scientists studing other
Earth processes, like plate tectonics and earthquakes, solar storms and electricity
outages, and geologic processes and volcanic eruptions. In each case, the large-scale
processes are studied as intrinsically interesting and as relevant to human life. In the
case of climate change, the Earth’s climate system is a wonderfully complex and
nonlinear system – but it also determines the level of well-being of humans and
societies.
Thus, the issue of climate change, seen from the perspective of human
dependencies, opens up to become a very human, very social issue.
1
It is the claim of this study that climate change merits sociological attention
because it brings together some of the most important societal issues of the age.
Important societal issues are entwined in the debates associated with global climate
change. It has become, among other things, a political issue; a manifestation of the
problems associated with modernization, capitalism, and globalization; and a
particularly good site in which to study the interrelationships and contradictions
among scientific and other forms of knowledge. And these large-scale issues meet
each other in the climate change debate. The climate change debate raises questions
about whether global consensus or cooperation about the environment (or anything
else) is possible, how the issues raised by Marx and his intellectual descendents apply
to the environmental byproducts of modernity and capitalism, and what counts as
knowledge within the world system. In terms of Ulrich Beck’s (1992, 1999) “risk
society,” for example, climate change may be the limit case, the ultimate risk –
something that you can’t see or touch and that may not make you sick, but may make
life on this planet uninhabitable for human beings. How can that societal challenge be
met by diverse people in diverse places and by people working together?
The political, economic, scientific, and social aspects of the debate have
brought climate change onto the global stage. In the 1980s, climate change emerged as
an issue worth attention on the international agenda.1 Over the past two decades
climate change has been described by scientists, environmentalists, and politicians as a
threat unprecedented in human experience. Many reasons and combinations of reasons

1 Also leading to interesting theories about how items get on the international agenda.
2