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Susanne C. Moser and Lisa Dilling, eds., Creating a Climate for Change: Communicating
Climate Change and Facilitating Social Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2007), xxv!549 pp. $140.00 (cloth).

‘‘Global Warming Is a Hoax*.’’

Having attracted our attention with this skeptical headline, by appending an asterisk Newsweek
quickly reframed its August 13 cover story as an account of the ‘‘well-funded machine’’ behind
such climate skepticism. According to its author, Sharon Begley, formerly a science columnist
for the Wall Street Journal (whose opinion page is one of the cogs in that machine), polls taken
in 2006 found that ‘‘64 percent of Americans thought there was ‘a lot’ of scientific
disagreement on climate change.’’1 They think this because, unlike the Europeans and
Japanese, who are aware of the scientific consensus on global warming, Americans have been
exposed to a public relations campaign orchestrated by the fossil fuel industry. However, while
it may explain America’s unusual poll results, Begley’s history of climate skepticism begs a
deeper question: why was this ‘‘well-funded machine’’ able to gain traction in the United States
but not in Europe or Japan?
The book under review here does not address this question, but, indirectly and
unintentionally, it does point to an answer. And the path one would take to that answer
should prompt us to pose a broader question: what is the role of the humanities, rhetoric in
particular, in our culture’s effort to understand and effectively address climate change?
A broad consensus in science does indeed point to a crisis. But it is an odd sort of crisis, in
which we need to act now to prevent dire consequences that might not happen for decades.
This slow emergence of danger does not feel like an emergency; yet once it is fully manifest, we
are told, its momentum will be unstoppable. Acting now, however, means making some
fundamental changes in the way we live, especially ‘‘we’’ in the United States. Such is our
collective problem. The problem for the contemporary rhetor*whether activist, community
leader, executive, or politician*is how to persuade fellow citizens to make these fundamental
changes.
Faced with such a challenge, what rhetorical theories or theorists, practices or practitioners
would you draw on for a solution? While you consider your answer, consider that Susanne C.
Moser and Lisa Dilling, editors of Creating a Climate for Change and policy analysts with
related Boulder, Colorado, institutes, did not feel the need to draw on rhetoric for any part of
their analysis. The only references to rhetoric you will find in this volume are of the ‘‘mere’’
sort. Should we as scholars of rhetoric find this odd? As citizens?
Creating a Climate for Change: Communicating Climate Change and Facilitating Social
Change grew out of a 1999 MacArthur Foundation grant to the National Center for
Atmospheric Research (NCAR) ‘‘to help improve the communication between scientists and
non-government groups about climate change’’ (ix). A formal project to meet that objective*
a project in which Moser and Dilling were both deeply involved*was underway by 2003. A
three-day conference on this project was convened in Boulder, Colorado, in June 2004. Most of
the articles in this collection, which Moser and Dilling have sorted into three sets, began as
papers for that conference.2
The first part of Creating a Climate for Change gathers fourteen articles on ‘‘Communicating
Climate Change,’’ on the challenge of persuading people that global warming is real and merits
their attention. The first four articles examine aspects of climate change that make it difficult
to understand or gauge as a social problem. The next five consider climate change in different
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social contexts: mass media, municipal management, low-income and minority communities,
Native Americans in their Arctic tribal lands, and Protestant churches. Three more address
communication strategies for scientists. The last two articles in this first part of the book stress
that communication about climate change must move beyond the transfer of information to
genuine dialogue among all affected parties.
In the second part of their collection, Moser and Dilling present sixteen articles on
‘‘Facilitating Social Change.’’ Here sociologists, public administrators, psychologists, political
scientists, management consultants, government scientists, environmental lawyers, and
economists discuss what it takes to move people from conviction to action on climate
change. This section includes brief reports on actual programs or initiatives, including
Portland’s 30-Day/5,000-Pound Program, Santa Monica’s comprehensive plan for sustain-
ability, the Cities for Climate Protection program, the Northeast’s Regional Greenhouse Gas
Initiative, and the West Coast Governors’ Global Warming Initiative. Other articles look at
business, economic/market, legal, pedagogical, and political strategies that can be used to
recalculate the values by which we order our lives.
The last part of the book, ‘‘Creating a Climate for Change,’’ presents two overviews. The
first*‘‘An Ongoing Dialogue on Climate Change: The Boulder Manifesto’’*stresses the role
of dialogue in maintaining and extending hard-won personal and communal commitments to
reducing CO2 emissions (485"90). The second, ‘‘Toward the Social Tipping Point,’’ is Moser
and Dilling’s summary of the volume’s arguments and findings, including their suggestions for
further research, communication, and political action (491"516).
Although I have already faulted the editors for underrepresenting the humanities, especially
rhetoric, in this collection, I must nevertheless acknowledge their efforts to facilitate a
multidisciplinary discussion. One measure of these efforts is provided by the 158 academic
and/or professional journals cited by the forty-seven different contributors to this volume.
(The same list, however, provides evidence for my initial claim: no rhetoric journal appears on
the list, and the only journal with any connection to the National Communication Association
is Communication Monographs.) Underlying this broad spectrum of social-scientific
approaches and perspectives is a core message. That core message begins with an explanation
of the difficulties global warming poses for the public communicator.
As several articles in this collection note, if you want to prompt swift action, you need a
problem that is visible, immediate, and clearly menacing or troubling. You also want to be able
to point to steps your audience can take to address that problem affordably but decisively. For
most Americans, global warming possesses none of these qualities. It is seen as remote in time
and place*the most serious consequences will occur in the future and probably somewhere
else*and it is hard to distinguish from weather events we generally discount as risks because
they seem beyond our control. Likewise, any serious measures to address climate change will
yield few immediate results, but these actions will entail ongoing expense and effort. In short,
it is hard to see the problem and harder to see what one can do about it, yet the prescribed
solutions could affect one’s daily life hereafter.
To address climate change as a social problem, then, the editors and contributors argue, one
must broaden one’s understanding of communication. It is not simply the dissemination of
information but ‘‘a continuous and dynamic process unfolding among people that facilitates an
exchange of ideas, feelings, and information as well as the forming of mutual understanding and
common visions of a desirable future’’ (15, emphasis in the original). Human beings are not
biological computers, rational maximizers that simply need to be fed the right data in order to
make the right decisions. For this reason, effective communication is as much about removing
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obstacles to understanding as it is about conveying information. And each of these tasks must
be undertaken with respect to specific audiences. Arguments broadcast to ‘‘the public’’ will be
selectively heard and interpreted by different social groups; instead of changing worldviews,
the message will be changed to fit those views.
Indifference, whether because the auditor is otherwise engaged or can perceive no relevance,
is perhaps the most persistent barrier to communicating climate change. However, provoking
strong emotions*whether with striking images of natural disasters or harrowing scenarios of
the future*risks distorting the underlying message. Many people already confuse weather
with climate (and also with the ozone hole, according to risk analyst Ann Bostrom and Daniel
Lashof; 32), and they see little they can do about the weather. Catastrophic scenarios of climate
change, conversely, while they may initially attract the attention desired, can overwhelm
people, activating defense mechanisms that enable them to ignore the problem, or prompting
apathy or depression, as Moser explains (67"69). In either case, the new awareness of climate
change does not change behavior. Nevertheless, some contributors to this volume, notably
sociologist Sheldon Ungar (81"88), see a use for emotional appeals, and Moser and Dilling’s
final chapter fairly summarizes the division on this point (496).
All the contributors, however, agree on the importance of finding messengers who will be
credible to the communities they are asked to address. Here membership in the community, or
at least the ability to speak in terms and with cultural references the community will
understand, can be as*if not more*important than knowledge of the science. For sustained
action on climate change, according to environmental writer Sarah Rabkin and behavior-
change specialist David Gershon, one wants to find ‘‘early adopters’’ and ‘‘champions’’ for
whatever program has been devised (297). Early adopters are members of the community who
quickly take up a challenge. Champions, as also described by strategic planner Abby Young
(387"88), are early adopters who are perceived as leaders in their community; they are
individuals whose public embrace of a program can persuade others to join.
Which brings us to the one point stressed more than any other in Creating a Climate for
Change: once someone is convinced a problem is real, that person wants to participate in a real
solution. If communicators do not give audiences a positive, can-do angle on climate change,
heightened awareness will only lead to a dispirited fatalism. Individuals will either seek to
protect themselves or they may regard any effort as wasted energy. Both choices may actually
make the problem worse, encouraging more energy-intensive lifestyles. A positive and practical
course of action is essential.
Finally, there is the problem of sustaining these positive and practical actions. Changing
one’s habits is difficult. Earnest goals can quickly fall by the wayside unless other forces, or
other wills, strengthen our resolve. Dialogue*open-ended discussion in which all interested
parties participate in the (re)definition of the problem and the discovery, testing, and choosing
of solutions*is the next form successful climate change communication must take. We need
others to hold us accountable, and we need to know that we are part of a larger effort.
Each of the articles in Creating a Climate for Change touches on at least one aspect of this core
message, drawing that general conclusion from a specific context or application. In ‘‘Across the
Great Divide,’’ for example, Nancy Cole (with writer Susan Watrous) explains how scientists and
communicators can collaborate to make climate science more persuasive (180"99). A senior
advisor with the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), Cole first describes how members of that
group consulted with policymakers and scientists in order to choose research projects with
potential to translate abstract science into concrete, and policy-relevant, terms. For climate
change, this can mean performing regional analyses that draw on the most up-to-date global
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models. In the example presented, the UCS recruited scientists to conduct an impact study for
California, which was published in a peer-reviewed journal, and then worked with the scientists
to digest the results. The communicators did not draft the scientific study, but they did manage
the scientists’ schedules and created opportunities for them to speak to the press, to the public,
and to policymakers. It was also the UCS analysts and communicators who handled the delicate
task of translating the science into policy recommendations.
Three articles highlight the importance of stories for communicating climate change. In
‘‘Education for Global Responsibility,’’ cultural anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson
observes that humans most often use stories to understand how they are connected to each
other and to the natural world (281"91). Education should involve us in ever more complex
and far-flung stories, stories that link us to humans around the world, to the environment, and
ultimately to the realization that humans and nature are part of a larger and still evolving
system, Gaia. (It is in Bateson’s article that Aristotle receives his one and only citation*but for
his Poetics; 284.) The Reverend Sally Bingham concludes her essay on the potentials and pitfalls
of communicating climate change from the pulpit, ‘‘Climate Change: A Moral Issue,’’ by
suggesting that we tell ‘‘stories of interconnectedness’’ that make ‘‘the far-away tangible,
meaningful’’ (162"64). In his essay on ‘‘The Moral and Political Implications of Climate
Change,’’ by contrast, environmental philosopher Dale Jamieson explains why it is difficult for
us to see climate change as a moral problem: individual human actions are remote from
individual human consequences (475"82). By tracing out the interconnections, however, we
can see that our individual consumer choices have global, social, and moral consequences.
The interconnections between climate change and the marketplace are also traced out in this
collection. In ‘‘Consumption Behavior and Narratives about the Good Life,’’ energy policy
analyst Laurie Michaelis uses two variables, social interconnection and social stratification, to
describe five different ‘‘cultures of consumption’’: hierarchist, individualist, egalitarian, fatalist,
and hermit (255).These groups perceive nature in very different ways, and attempts to address
the problem of climate change with them must take different tacks. Two articles, one by
organization analysts Keith James, April Smith, and Bob Doppelt (303"18) and another by
policy/risk specialists Vicki Arroyo and Benjamin Preston (319"38), examine how organiza-
tions, especially business organizations, must change in order to succeed in a climate-changed
marketplace. Finally, in ‘‘The Market as Messenger: Sending the Right Signals,’’ Department of
Energy analyst John Atcheson argues that when energy and carbon are accurately priced,
Americans will make more appropriate choices (339"58).
QJS readers will readily see how this material*both the core message and the individual
analyses*could be translated into rhetorical terms. We are clearly concerned with different
kinds of persuasive appeal (emotional, logical, ethical), with the need to understand the
situation and character of one’s audience, with arguments from and about probability, with
questions of identification, with the power of language and images, and with modes of
discourse (in this case, however, just one- vs. two-way communication). But why, we must ask
once again, was rhetoric not included in this multidisciplinary discussion? And what, if any, are
the consequences of its exclusion? A reflective answer to these questions, in my view, returns us
to the question with which I opened this review: why has climate skepticism gained so much
more traction in the United States than in Europe and Japan?
In their conclusion to Creating a Climate for Change, ‘‘Toward the Social Tipping Point,’’
Moser and Dilling move to ‘‘correct’’ several misapprehensions about communicating climate
change, including the ‘‘myth’’ that climate change ‘‘is a unique social challenge*we’ve never
had to deal with anything like it’’ (497). As evidence for their rebuttal, Moser and Dilling point
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to our past experience with ‘‘other issues such as slavery’’ that have also involved long time
periods, complexities, and uncertainties (497). ‘‘The problem with accepting the ‘uniqueness’
myth,’’ they continue, ‘‘is that it tends to paralyze individuals and institutions rather than
empower them’’ (498). While one might agree with this general conclusion, it is difficult to see
how our efforts to forestall disastrous climate change*that is, acting before the damage is
done*can be compared with the abolition movement, which came into being only in
response to the evident harms of slavery. Further, even if the analogy could be sustained, it is
hard to see it as a basis for optimism. If we look only at the U.S., we must consider the two and
a half centuries that preceded the four years of civil war, and we then must acknowledge
another century of segregation and discrimination. Indeed, can we really say that slavery has
been eradicated?
Slavery, however, may have a much more direct bearing on America’s response to climate
change. The U.S. Constitution was designed, at least in part, to make democracy safe for
slavery; the South wanted assurances that the new nation could not easily adopt, disseminate,
or enact the North’s misgivings about slavery. When, after the Civil War, the U.S. adopted
amendments expressly abolishing slavery, many of the mechanisms that allowed regional
factions to obstruct national deliberations remained in place. The success of the climate
skeptics’ ‘‘well-funded machine’’ may thus be attributable, at least in part, to the mechanisms
incorporated into our constitution in order to accommodate slavery.3 In this collection’s only
response to climate skepticism, ‘‘Dealing with Climate Change Contrarians,’’ sociologist of
science Aaron M. McCright highlights the underlying conflicts of values that distort this
scientific debate (207). Indeed, a system that protects ‘‘peculiar institution[s]’’ will also
obstruct critical analysis of values, reducing them to ways of life.4
Tracing lines of influence and effect is the work of historians and critics. Their absence from
Creating a Climate for Change means that the U.S. example is both misunderstood and
misapplied. It is indeed true that regional, state, and municipal experiments could provide
models for national and international policies, but our system also provides to competing
regions and states (as well as powerful economic interests within regions and states) many
ways to block the adoption of policies they perceive as inimical to their interests. To highlight
the opportunities without explaining the constraints is to misrepresent the rhetorical
situation.
In Moser and Dilling’s collection, then, rhetorical scholars will find three layers of text. The
first is the social-scientific assessment that I have tried to summarize above. Its core message
about rethinking the information model for communicating climate change is easily translated
into rhetorical terms and thus interesting as an early analysis of a challenge that is only
growing in importance and urgency. The second layer consists of the case studies and their
reference lists; scholars looking for bodies of public discourse on climate change will be guided
to several such stores by articles in this collection. The third layer has just been highlighted: the
articles in this collection can be read for evidence of how climate change has been refracted
through the discourses of American social science and politics. In order that rhetoric and the
humanities may play a greater role in shaping our culture’s response to climate change, I urge
QJS readers to examine Creating a Climate for Change.

Michael Svoboda
George Washington University
# 2008 Michael Svoboda
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Notes
[1] Sharon Begley, ‘‘Global Warming Is a Hoax,’’ Newsweek, August 13, 2007, 22.
[2] The June 2004 conference date partially explains the contributors’ silence on two seminal
climate change events: Hurricane Katrina (August 2005) and the Al Gore documentary An
Inconvenient Truth (May 2006). An afterword, however, could have addressed this problem;
the failure to include one makes this 2007 book already feel dated.
[3] Marc D. Davidson provides support for this suspicion in ‘‘Parallels in Reactionary
Argumentation in the US Congressional Debates on the Abolition of Slavery and the Kyoto
Protocol,’’ Climatic Change 86 (2008): 67"82.
[4] See Kenneth M. Stampp, The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Antebellum South (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1956).

A. Susan Owen, Sarah R. Stein, and Leah R. Vande Berg, Bad Girls: Cultural Politics and Media
Representations of Transgressive Women (New York: Peter Lang, 2007), xix!261 pp. $29.95
(paper).

What is immediately striking about Bad Girls is that the authors position themselves as going
beyond traditional cultural criticism; as Bruce E. Gronbeck states in his foreword, they believe
they are ‘‘on a transhistorical mission’’ (xviii). In their introduction the authors explain their
task as transgressive, weaving together textual analysis and social commentary to construct a
counter-memory that challenges many contemporary understandings of feminism as
irrelevant, undesirable, and defunct. Owen et al. situate their work as providing essential
context for contemporary cultural politics around and media representations of women,
working against a social penchant for amnesia that ignores the legacy of second wave feminism
and endangers the rights of women and other underrepresented groups.
The passion with which the authors pursue this mission is refreshing, and is most evident in
the introduction and epilogue that bookend their more conventional analysis. Although brief,
these two chapters are perhaps the most challenging and insightful in the book. In the
introduction the authors offer this admonition: ‘‘Be careful not to forget or lose sight of history.
Failure to remember past oppression carries very real dangers’’ (10, emphasis in the original).
They situate the book as a response to current events including the confirmation of Supreme
Court Justice Samuel Alito, working mothers’ persistent balancing of home and profession,
and debates around the morning-after pill and HPV vaccine. They offer a number of vignettes
from media and cultural life to illustrate their points, each providing a tantalizing glimpse of a
larger set of concerns that animates Bad Girls. One such tidbit is a brief discussion of the
‘‘Teflon slipperiness of irony,’’ the relevance of which hardly needs discussion given the
popularity of programs such as The Sarah Silverman Show, South Park, and even the tongue-
in-cheek violence of the Grindhouse double feature (12). The authors suggest that ironic texts
often adopt signifiers of race, gender, and sexuality in problematic ways, emptying out the
history that accompanies them and treating them as sites of resistance, with challenges to such
efforts ‘‘branded as humorless, dour, too serious, and/or politically correct’’ (236). Regrettably,
this important line of argument is not pursued within the main body of the book, though it
certainly merits further consideration.
The bulk of Bad Girls consists of textual and cultural analysis of ‘‘the tensions between
remembering and forgetting in representations of the American feminist movement between
1979 and 2005’’ (2). This period allows the authors to consider the cultural trauma of the