Dr. Anaïs Augé’s study investigates the socio-cultural components that influence the production of sceptical arguments in climate crisis discourse. In particular, the study examines the references to religion(s) to dispute climate science and policy (e.g., Donald Trump’s statement at the World Economic Forum, in 2020 “we must reject the perennial prophets of doom and their predictions of the apocalypse”). This leads to the following research question: How do different socio-cultural approaches to religion(s) lead to different arguments about the climate crisis?
To answer this question, the study draws on Argumentation Theory and Critical Metaphor Analysis, applied to a large corpus of over 12,000 texts about the climate crisis. These texts have been extracted from national news media and political speeches, produced between 2006 (the year of the first main wave of climate scepticism) and 2024. Four case studies are discussed: Belgium’s pragmatic approach to ecology, France’s fear of eco-terrorism, the United Kingdom’s distrust of climate science, and the United States’ sarcastic view on climate activism.
The study reveals that sceptical arguments about the climate crisis significantly draw on national histories and cultural traditions. These arguments thus refer to the public’s experiential knowledge, which facilitates acceptance and prevents effective mitigation.
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Dr. Anaïs Augé is an FNRS research fellow and associate lecturer at the University of Louvain, in the Institute of political sciences Louvain-Europe and Institute of language and communication. She is the author of a monograph entitled Metaphor and Argumentation in Climate Crisis Discourse, and of many articles published in international journals and edited volumes. Her fields of research include political discourse analysis, psycholinguistics, and pragmatics. She is interested in the public understanding of political discourse in intercultural contexts and politicians’ and activists’ argumentation in the context of the climate crisis.