ABSTRACT
A major conceptual factor behind climate change is the global economic system. Kumar suggests the “economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of ecology” (2007, 3). And yet the paradigm sweeping the globe is one where the economy comes fi rst, the environment its handmaiden, and growth and development its voracious practice. Moreover, scientists, strategists, activists, and even some politicians argue this economy-fi rst paradigm lies at the heart of climate change-the concrete outcome of global capitalist development that ignores people and ecosystems. Citizens need to be mobilized since this “environmental reality is linked powerfully with other realities, including growing social inequality and neglect and the erosion of democratic governance and popular control” (Speth 2008, xi). Others, however, contest this viewpoint and they often have better access to government support and mainstream media. For example, Margaret Wente’s column in the Globe and Mail (2009), Canada’s only ‘balanced’—relatively speaking-national newspaper, identifi ed 1998 as the hottest year on record and therefore noted that the planet was not in fact heating as predicted. Scientifi c reports of melting of polar ice caps, turbulent weather patterns, growing food insecurity, and dwindling natural resources are not the outcome of unfettered growth development but are something more ‘natural.’ The
message is that citizens should make small changes in their lives and governments will look after the larger and long-term issues in their interests. As expected public confusion, fear, and even sometimes apathy are often the result of these inconsistencies in messages (Jickling 2001).
