ABSTRACT
Mainstream discourses of climate action foreground individual consumption habits, misdirecting attention away from the failures of governments and the misdeeds of the fossil fuel industry. In response, counterdiscourses rightly highlight the insufficiency of individual lifestyle modifications to produce systemic change. However, when one has been taught to equate lifestyle changes with climate action, learning that these changes are inadequate can lead to cynicism, exhaustion, and a sense of powerlessness – hardly the ideal tone for the mass mobilization we need. To better understand this communicative dilemma, this chapter examines discourses of lifestyle change as climate action – termed “sustainable lifestyle discourses” – in conversations between climate activists and their friends and family. Although the suggested conversational themes focused on advocacy and community organizing, many of the conversations drifted towards lifestyle-related topics such as plastic recycling. Some participants suggested that minor lifestyle changes could add up to impactful action, although this is doubtful if the proposed changes, like many of those mentioned in the conversations, do not directly contribute to climate change mitigation. At the same time, many of the non-activists voiced skepticism and jadedness about the effectiveness of lifestyle changes. In response to their conversational partners’ persistent focus on such changes, the activists either affirmed the changes as a valid form of climate action, challenged this position, or redirected the conversation. These findings emphasize that sustainable lifestyle discourses can contribute to climate despair and offer communication strategies that could restore people’s faith in their power to contribute to a sustainable world.
