Worldview struggles under a new climate regime

Abstract

Climate change poses a fundamental challenge that exerts pressure to pursue change – politically, economically and in daily life (e.g., Giddens 2009 and Hulme 2010). It has also become an era of struggle and contestation that calls forth our worldviews, norms and values. During the Seventeenth Conference of the Parties (COP17), which took place in Durban in 2011, this struggle was manifested in representations of worldviews under the presumption that the climate negotiations will be concluded with a new global climate deal some time in the future. The mass media constitute an important arena on which this struggle is taking place, as depicted in the following quotation from the State Secretary of the Norwegian Department of Finance: The rich countries of yesterday, are not necessarily the rich countries of tomorrow. Today countries like Singapore and South Korea are defined as poor, while Bulgaria and Greece are placed in the category of rich nations in the Kyoto system. We can’t base climate politics in this century on a worldview from the last century” (Ketil Lund, in Bergens Tidende 05.12.11; my translation).