ABSTRACT
Several authors have been struck by the 'celebritisation' of climate change in the early twenty-first century. Celebrity involvement with climate change is an indication of its already-established status as a consensual, mainstream concern, although one might see the preference for consensus as working against more radical, anti-capitalist versions of environmentalism. Climate change is viewed through the frame of religious guilt rather than political engagement, but for a broader audience and a secular society this is rendered in therapeutic terms relating to personal doubts and feelings. There has indeed been a shift of emphasis in how celebrities establish their standing on the issue of climate change, from scientific expertise to emotional involvement. Dan Brockington considers various ways of conceptualising celebrity culture – as a top-down imposition of 'false consciousness'; or conversely in a more bottom-up way, as a 'tonic demanded by estranged masses'; or in a more Foucaultian way.
