master narratives & global climate change

Master Narratives &

Global Climate Change

Charlie VarsDave BellaCourt Smith

January 22, 2013

Getting Past “Not Yet”

A master narrative is coherent system of interrelated and sequentially organized stories that frame a common rhetorical script to establish audience expectations in support of a positive or negative perspective.

Competing Climate Narratives

Economic Ecological

SCIENCE WILL INFORMPOLICY

Science Frame for Policy Making

A frame consists of the mental representations, interpretations, and simplifications of reality used to communicate positive or negative perspectives to a target audience.

A master narrative is coherent system of interrelated and sequentially organized stories that frame a common rhetorical script to establish audience expectations in support of a positive or negative perspective.

Framing Master Narratives

A frame consists of the mental representations, interpretations, and simplifications of reality used to communicate positive or negative perspectives to a target audience.

Framing

A master narrative is coherent system of interrelated and sequentially organized stories that frame a common rhetorical script to establish audience expectations in support of a positive or negative perspective.

Master narratives are

Good narratives are

Simple Concrete Explanatory Realistic

Compelling narratives foster the illusion of reality.

(Kahneman 2011:199-200)

…limitation of our mind:

our exclusive confidence in what we believe we know, and our apparent inability to acknowledge the full extend of our ignorance and the uncertainty of the world we live in …

(Kahneman 2011:13-14)

our exclusive confidence in what we believe we know, and our apparent inability to acknowledge the full extend of our ignorance and the uncertainty of the world we live in …

…limitation of our mind:

(Kahneman 2011:13-14)

The frame for thinking about climate change has action stuck at “yes, but NOT YET, more research is needed”

The basic frame