Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to University of Pennsylvania climate communicator Hanna Morris, use of the word “Anthropocene” facilitates disregard for the disproportionate suffering of indigenous peoples, and encourages the false belief that we are all equally guilty for the current climate crisis.
The language of climate change—and the Anthropocene
Brandon Baker
February 5, 2019Hanna E. Morris, a doctoral student at the Annenberg School for Communication who researches environmental communication, explains the sudden rise of ‘Anthropocene’ as the latest buzzword in the climate dialogue.
Climate change, global warming, climate crisis—the operative term for the most pressing global issue seems to change by the year.
It’s how we discuss climate change that intrigues Hanna Morris, a doctoral student at the Annenberg School for Communication, who will soon present a new paper that assesses climate news frames at the annual International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) conference this July in Madrid, Spain. She tackles the rise of the term “Anthropocene” in climate news, which can be summarized as a relatively new word that is meant to mark the beginning of a new epoch defined by human-caused environmental change.
In the paper, Morris argues that the word not only misinterprets the actual share of blame—the oversimplified notion that humans are all equally responsible for climate change—but ties up the problem in a neat, media-friendly bow.
“By eliminating differences,” she writes in the paper, “histories of colonial violence, and the disproportionate burden of environmental harm felt by Indigenous people is neutralized and therefore evaded. The idea of the Anthropocene therefore validates ‘planetary scale’ projects designed by white male capitalists working from an unaddressed imperial logic.”
Colonialism and capitalism, she argues, drove climate change, and are now deciding how to frame who is responsible for it, who is most affected, how it will be solved, and how we should collectively feel about it.
…
“So, by saying that we all are to blame and that we all are equally experiencing climate change in a new epoch is a dangerous generalization that wipes away historical context. I worry that European and North American powers are once again perpetuating imperial violence and harm through the idea of the Anthropocene. And I explore this problem across the United States news media in my most recent paper.”
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Read more: https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/language-climate-change-and-anthropocene
Sadly Hanna’s paper has not yet been released, but Hannah raises an important issue.
When white male climate scientists promote the use of the word “Anthropocene”, are they actually unconsciously assuming the role of an imperialist colonialist capitalist aggressor, and unwittingly facilitating public acceptance of the climate exploitation of indigenous peoples?
UPDATE: Fixed headline to read UPenn rather than Penn State. – Anthony
What is a “Climate Communicator?”
If this delusional twit claims to be communicating with me on behalf of the Climate,then she is a miserable useless failure.
Climate A.K.A weather has no difficulty communicating.With no human interpretation.
Climate Big,human tiny.In proportion.
If she claims to study how humans communicate with respect to climate, she is also a useless failure.
Communication requires common ground, defined terms must be agreed to,or what you communicate is your confusion.
Which is the history of The Climate Concern Cult.
Authoritarian Confusology.
They resist communication by refusing to define their terms,they fight common ground by refusing the Scientific Method and obstruct cooperation by insisting their belief is more “Truthful” than facts and history.
Then they polish off their assertions by stating all who doubt them are evil.
Paging Brad Keyes.
Indeed!
Another distortion of language by the left. (akin to erasing the difference between “immigration” and “illegal immigration” when referencing data.)
A logical interpretation would be that a “Climate Communicator” is one who communicates about the climate and its impacts. Accordingly you would expect a grad student to have studied the works of Roger Pielke Jr, John Christie, Roy Spencer, Bjorn Lomborg, et al who are the acknowledged experts on the subject.
But no, a Climate Communicator is actually a specialist (and this is no exaggeration) in communicating “Catastrophic Climate Change , and the premise of such a program rests on three assumptions (that no one teaching or administering these “studies” are allowed to challenge):
– That the climate is suddenly changing and that change will not only be harmful, but catastrophic.
– This is all the fault of humans (and capitalism) and we must immediately reverse hundreds of years of industrialization.
And most important of all; and why Climate Communicators need to be produced by our elite Universities, is:
– We plebes are too dumb to understand this, and it is an unfortunate failing of our heroic and dedicated Climate Scientists (TM) that they have not been able to adequately convey this message; and thus PhD communicators are needed to right this wrong.
Hmmm… lets think… two biggest names in British Colonialism, slavery, exploitation, blah blah…. VICTORIA, ELIZABETH… Sad pathetic feminist drivel…
Elizabeth I’s 1585 attempt to colonize North America failed, but her successor James I’s succeeded in 1607.
However, Spanish colonization of the New World began under Queen Isabella I of Castile in 1492, and under her daughter Juana la Loca, nominally Queen of Castile and Aragon until 1555 (although imprisoned by her father than son).
And let us not forget Marie de’ Medici, regent of France until 1617 (when her son Louis XIII came of age), during whose rule the French first colonized North America in 1605.
In 1558, Scottish Calvinist preacher John Knox famously denounced Catholic queens Mary of Scots and Mary I of England (Isabella’s granddaughter) as “the monstrous regiment of women”.
And who was monarch of Britain when the devil’s gas CO2 was let out of its bottle by Thomas Newcomen’s steam-powered “atmospheric engine” c. 1712 than the last Stuart Queen Anne?
‘Imprisoned’ is a little harsh. She was incompetent and cared for. ‘Loca’ is the key word.
===========================
And of course white women were also colonizers. When Mayflower left England for America, 18 adult women were aboard her. Three of them–Elizabeth Hopkins, Susanna White and Mary Allerton–were in their last trimester of pregnancy. She also carried a few teenage girls nearing marriageable age.
Only five women survived the terrible winter of 1620-21, one of whom died in May. My ancestress Priscilla Mullins lost every family member in the colony, but aged ~19, wed John Alden at Plymouth in 1621. She had ten kids. Much of America is descended from the Aldens.
Why does the name of an epoch need to address moral judgement? Would it be immoral for a large asteroid to wipe out an entire phylum? Names need to be descriptive and best characterize an era. Not point finger in blame.
Translation: Here’s your justification for hatred and persecution of white males.
This sort of open bigotry is a feature of progressivism and common thread of all hate-based ideologies.
Without “colonialism and capitalism” the world of today would look like any of the shithole countries Trump called out, only worse. We’d have not developed into modern society and would still be living under a fiefdom with no technology and short, miserable lifespans.
I think you’ve identified the greenie agenda.
Not for THEM of course.
See that’s the inherent elitism of Progressives – they always see themselves as the upper-class – dictating what’s appropriate for the rest of us.
She’ll be a rising star in climate communications. The inventive merger of gender into the climate policy crusades is a milestone in subliminal thought experiments and mental inserts into the media modus.
/sarc
Indigenous Amazonians contribute a lot of CO2 per capita, thanks to slash and burn cultivation.
Hopeless dingbat.
And this is why many faculties in colleges and universities should be completely shut down. They aren’t about education or learning….they are political expensive monstrosities. Nothing more.
We were actually able to clean house at our primer state university in Tennessee. They put out a piece asking students to address each other as “Zer” Zip” among a 100 other weirdness’s. Our super majority university funding legislature hauled in the guilty and gave them a good thrashing. The top people resigned. A proud moment.
We also have a knack for song writing and whiskey making
Thank God that making whiskey requires replenishing the air’s plant food supply.
Ocrazyeyes approves of this paper. Bigly.
Maybe they can name it Lefkoandracene
Lefko = White
Andras = Man
I’m not a linguist, so if this doesn’t work, please feel free to make corrections.
No news site or even here at WUWT has recognized or acknowledged that President Trump said not one word about Climate Change or carbon dioxide emissions in his State of the Union address last night.
I did a search of SOTU text at Yahoo!News to make sure of this.
His one comment on oil and natural gas was:
“We have unleashed a revolution in American Energy — the United States is now the number one producer of oil and natural gas in the world.
And now, for the first time in 65 years, we are a net exporter of energy.”
That’s what WINNING looks like.
Trump hit the ball out of the park with his State of the Union speech. I was impressed.
I wish we had a picture of Rep. Ocasio’s face when Trump bragged that the U.S. was now number one in the world in oil production and was now a net exporter.
I bet that went over well in the CAGW world. 🙂
Question to Ms Morris.
Does my gender somehow relate to this? Or my ‘race’ whatever it is — Western racists called my people Mongols until they decided ‘white’ is worse. I’m not quite that ‘white’ thank you. Or my, or my ancestors’, or my ancestors’ fellow citizens’ nationality who as a rule were not quite colonialists than more a target of colonialism?
And finally my political affiliation? If I were a red hot post communist admiring non-capitalist Stalin government, were I less guilty?
Who should feel guilt? People of same ‘race’, gender, nationality as the people who Ms Morris finds guilty? What a generalization!
Or, is it that Ms Morris has about the same carbon footprint as anyone in the Western world or China?
Ms Morris, you made many readers here feel angry and insulted. I’m just astonished. What is it what you mean, when your words quoted make no sense whatsoever.
Maybe she should scan this?
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-07891-7
Does “Welcome to the TyranoAntiguoAlbuHeteroCisPatriachocene Epoch!” work?
I’m shocked no one noticed:
“who will soon present a new paper that assesses climate news frames at the annual International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) conference this July in Madrid, Spain. ”
So, CO2 bad…so lets go fly off to Spain and talk about how those bad, white male colonial capitalists are bad.
Yeah…..
Yes riding that capitalist developed carbon trail showing no guilt with her indiscretion.
Let’s see the ethics rules at U Penn. Do they contain a convenient gap in the Venn Diagrams of hate speech and slander? And what race and gender constructed the ethics rules?
This is not from a scientist, it’s pure political nonsense.
“pure political nonsense” describe most (97% shall we say 😉 ) of what passes for climate science these days, so it fits right in.
Graduate school in communications. Nothing much more you need to know.
“Colonialism and capitalism, she argues, drove climate change”
And yet the combined emissions from all such countries hasn’t risen since 1980 and represents only around 30% of all emissions today and falling. But let’s not allow facts to get in the way of a good left-biased story.
I have a gift for identifying highly neurotic people purely based on “pose” smiles.
I am never wrong and it is fitting to say Hanna “The Neurotic one” Morris.
It is also a fact that her neurotic tendencies lead her to write such self hating garbage
Clip from “Hanna”, the movie, couldn’t resist.
Lady, you’ve been in academia way too long.
She should refuse to use any white male invention or discovery or live in any city or country founded by them. Just to be safe.
She’s positioning for the Climate Hate Speech Award for 2019 from the Climate Communications Association. It’s a tough competition though.
Without colonialism what would America be? Not to mention Australia, New Zealand, India, etc. The Brits took a smallish island and turned it into a powerful global empire that pushed the world into the modern epoch.