As movements around the planet mobilize to counter the effects of climate destabilization on their communities, cultures, and ecosystems, a framing battle of global significance is underway.

In the climate fight, as with so many other struggles, the heart of the framing battle is naming the problem, since how we define the problem determines what solutions are possible. To varying degrees, governments and multinational corporations around the world have acknowledged the crisis and they claim they are working to address it. However, they present the climate crisis through a reductionist lens as merely a problem of too much carbon in the atmosphere while ignoring the underlying issues of justice, equity, and humanity’s relationship with the Earth. This framing allows exploitation of the crisis to justify escalating the very policies and practices that have pushed the planet to the brink. Essentially the world’s richest countries and companies are co-opting environmental rhetoric to put a PR friendly “green” face on the same old politics of unlimited economic growth, resource thefts and corporate exploitation.

Meanwhile the ‘official’ climate movement has been dominated by a loyal opposition of largely northern, policy, and access-oriented NGOs who, although (mostly) well intentioned, have failed to reframe the debate or address the root causes of the crisis. But increasingly as more global movements begin to unite under the banner of climate justice, there is a different story to tell. The terms of the debate are being reframed from seeing the climate crisis as an isolated issue, to understanding the disruption of the climate as merely the most visible symptom of a much larger problem: our global system of growth-addicted, fossil fuel-driven, corporate capitalism that is undermining all the life support systems of the planet.

When this deeper framing of the problem is accepted it becomes clear that we will never re-stabilize the climate without addressing the roots of the problem. This means acknowledging the Global North’s historic responsibility for the problem (“climate debt”) as the first step towards fundamental shifts to our economy, political systems, and cultural assumptions. This is why one of the over-arching and unifying messages coming out of global movements fighting for a just response to the climate crisis is “system change NOT climate change”.

However, as people’s movements around the world ramp up their organizing in the lead up to the next round of United Nations negotiations in Cancun there are a number of dangerous frames––control myths––that must be challenged.

Control Myth #1 Only The Market Can Save Us!

In this case a global carbon market that effectively privatizes the atmosphere, justifies massive land grabs and further commodification of forests, soils, and grasslands. Two hundred years of ideology have bestowed the “invisible hand” of the market with debate-shaping qualities of alleged efficiency, fairness and power. This is a familiar narrative to many of our movements fighting privatization and displacement but we still need better, shared strategies to reframe the myth of the market.

Control Myth #2 Technology Will Save Us!

Hand in hand with the story of the all-powerful market is the obsession with techno-fixes. Techno-fixes masquerade as solutions but just distract us from making the fundamental changes that are needed. The assumption that some benign “experts” will provide new, innovative technology to solve the problem justifies continuing unsustainable policies while removing people’s agency from the frame. More and more climate techno-fixes are being proposed: from overt lies like “clean coal” and “climate ready” genetically engineered crops to terrifyingly disruptive, untested new technologies like synthetic biology and geoengineering.[i] Beware!

Control Myth #3 Climate Is Too Big An Issue: Only Governments Can Save Us!

The debate has been overly focused on global and national policy while social movements and community-based responses are left out of the frame. Many mainstream environmentalists have even argued that any global emission reduction agreement (regardless of how weak or unfair) is better than no deal. Variations of this narrative have been used (particularly by the U.S.) to evade historic responsibility and blame China, India and other developing economies for blocking an international deal. Certainly a global agreement is important, but the reality of the scale of the climate crisis is that we need transformative action in all sectors of society.

Given the wide-ranging implications of the debate, climate is an essential arena for our movements to develop more holistic narratives and shared frames that mutually reinforce efforts across different sectors and struggles. At the heart of this framing battle is the emerging climate justice movement led by frontline impacted communities, indigenous movements and environmental justice organizers.

Climate justice framing is challenging the control myths above (and many more) by refocusing the issue on the core problems of fossil fuel addiction, the ongoing legacy of historic inequities and the need for systemic change. At the center of the evolving narrative is the role of community-based solutions in stewarding a just transition towards a society that is both sustainable and just. As different movements like migrants rights, reproductive justice and organized labor articulate the connections between their struggles and the climate crisis there are many opportunities to experiment with applying and broadening climate justice framing.

With the historic adoption of the Cochabamba People’s Agreement on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in April there is now a powerful new narrative emerging that unites ecology, justice and social movement action. This platform offers a potent counterpoint to the corporate driven, false solutions of the United Nations process. Most importantly it offers an invitation to organizers everywhere to connect their issues with this multi-faceted struggle to transform our world. In the words of one of the key slogans uniting movements in the lead up to the COP-16 meeting and beyond: “grassroots organizing cools the planet!”

[i] For a good summary of “false solutions” to the climate crisis check out Rising Tide North America’s Hoodwinked in the Hothouse: False Solutions to Climate Change. Other resources for tracking the rebranding of failed GMO seeds as “climate ready” can be found by following the ongoing work of Food First!/Institute for Food and Development Policy and the Organic Consumers Association. To learn more about the latest developments in the emerging fields of synthetic biology and geoengineering check out two recent reports by global technology watchdog ETC Group Geopiracy: The Case Against Geoengineering (Oct 2010) and The New Biomassters: Synthetic Biology and the Next Assault on Biodiversity and Livelihoods (Nov 2010) both of which are available at www.etcgroup.org. For updates on the ongoing resistance to geoengineering check out the international H.O.M.E. campaign.

It has taken me far too long to post this, but I feel strongly that smartMeme community will enjoy this important conversation.

On Febuary 25th, the Boston Chapter of the Progressive Communicators Network convened a panel discussion called “Talking About Racial & Economic Justice in Obama’s America.” After some fairly crude sound editing, I managed to upload the recordings of the panelists for your listening enjoyment!

Amaad Rivera [LISTEN] is the director of the racial wealth divide program at United for a Fair Economy, and lead author on their 2009 State of the Dream Report: The Silent Depression. He discusses Racism without Racists, patterns of school segregation in Boston, and building racial justice frameworks.

Tarso Luís Ramos [LISTEN] is the director of research at the right-wing watchdog group Political Research Associates. He discusses the work of Ian F. Haney Lopez’s on “colorblind white dominance,” Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s work on White Supremacy and Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era, and the “Color Blind Ideology.”

Color-Blindness:

“views racism at the individual level (e.g. Lines of reasoning such as “I don’t own slaves” or “I have very close black friends” to defend oneself) without looking at the larger social mechanisms in which racism operates.”

Ramos presents a facsinating discussion of Bonilla-Silva’s frames of color blind ideology, and how these play out in affirmative action fights: Minimization (“Yes, there is some racism but its no big deal”); Cultural Failings (“Mexicans have too many babies; Blacks don’t value education,” etc.); Naturalization (“Its natural for people to flock together. Its not segregation.”); and Meritocracy (“Its unfair for government to advance one race over another; treaty rights/civil rights are special rights.”)

Ramos says that these four frames reinforce each other and hold racism in place, and he points to the work of the Center for Social Inclusion to suggest that audiences need an alternative frame of “Structural Racism” to buck the colorblind mythology.

Doyle Canning [LISTEN] (that’s me), discusses some of the stories in the popular culture on racism and “post racism,” and how story-based strategies can work to challenge some of the underlying assumptions of white supremacy in the dominant culture.

The most potent meme of the moment was the “Nation of Cowards” from Eric Holder’s speech on systemic racism.

I strongly recommend watching this amazing roundtable on the topic on Laura Flander’s GRITtv:

Manning Marable’s comments (10 minutes into the video) are particularly powerful in terms of thinking about the power of narrative and history. He speaks about the stories we carry in our head as we’re walking through the world depending on our history: Marable sees lower Manhattan as a slave trading port, while others (whites) see Wall Street’s glittering façade.

This gets to the heart of the internalization of racism. The Peoples’ Institute for Survival and Beyond discusses the interconnected principles of learning from history and addressing the inter-generational processes of internalized racial superiority and inferiority.

I believe that story-based strategies can help us build movements for racial justice, but it really is about movement building. If only it were as easy as coming up with a pat sound-byte to address these deep seeded cultural currents! It still takes struggle, as it always has.

One piece of work I want to point to specifically is work on unmasking and undoing White Privilege, such as the first annual White Privilege Awareness Week!

Also, in terms of racial justice communications specifically, check out the guide “Talking The Walk,” edited by Hunter Cutting and Makani Themba-Nixon (download the toolkit!); and the Center for Media Justice toolkit, Communicate Justice 101. See also: A Three-Ring Circus On Race This Week by Paul Rosenburg.

And one more thing…

Maureen Dowd wrote in her NY Times OP-Ed on Holder’s speech,

“In the middle of all the Heimlich maneuvers required now — for the economy, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, health care, the environment and education — we don’t need a Jackson/Sharpton-style lecture on race. Barack Obama’s election was supposed to get us past that.”

My observation is that this is the line of reasoning often used in white-led liberal organizations (“We’ve got a crisis and so much work to do…we can’t deal with this now…and besides, we have some people of color involved.”) about why we can’t talk honestly about racism and work to address racism within our movements…Just a thought.