ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book reviews the history of how environmental issues, particularly climate change, have been taken up in mainstream politics and news reporting. It tries to make sense of the way that climate change emerged as a political issue in the late 1980s by putting this in the context of both the prior history of elite engagement with environmental issues and the particular challenges that political leaders faced at the end of the Cold War. The book offers a meta-analysis of research on the ups and downs of the environment as a news issue over time, interrogating the different ways that such fluctuations have been theorised and explained. It examines the role of the media as campaigners in their own right, trying to raise public awareness of environmental concerns and to advocate for change.
