Browsing by Subject "justification theory"

This study examines the moral arguments found in the national climate change debate in the United States. A multi-level approach to the debate is achieved by using two different materials. The primary object is to trace national characteristics and trends from the American climate debate by examining four samples gathered from The New York Times. To add a local perspective in the study, interviews from Californian non-governmental organizations (NGO) are analysed. While climate change is a popular and interdisciplinary topic of research, the social sciences’ take on it has been surprisingly poor. This study will contribute to the earlier research by approaching the topic from a new kind of perspective addressing the social and moral dimensions in the climate change debate. The theoretical framework of this study is based on the justification theory developed by Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot (1999). By using a new kind of method called Public Justification Analysis (PJA), partly derived from the justification theory and developed for analysis of political disputes, this study answers the following research questions: Who are the main actors taking part in the climate change debate in the United States and what kind of arguments are used; what kinds of solutions do they propose to combat climate change; how do local actors participate in the climate change debate and what kinds of arguments do they use. It was hypothesized that arguments based on efficiency and economic factors are dominant in the debate. Furthermore, it was hypothesized that the representatives of NGOs would state more radical and direct references about ecological facts than other participants in the debate. The literature review and the analysis follow three thematic controversies relating to climate change governance that are identified by Harriet Bulkeley and Peter Newell (2010): The use of science, privatization and marketization of climate governance and climate justice. The focus of this study is to examine how different actors justify their arguments in discussions about these disputes. From the point of view of justification theory, these three controversies correspond to three different 'worlds of justification', or three moral perspectives to the problem of climate change. These are (1) the world of industrial justifications (science and technology controversies); (2) the world of market justifications (privatization and marketization of climate governance) and (3) the world of civic justifications (climate justice). The results of the study can be summarized as follows: First, the main actors participating in the debate were experts, representatives of governments and civic organizations and officials. Second, the most common justifications used in the debate were based on efficiency, joint agreements and markets. Additionally, based on the examined material, the use of liberal grammar (referring to selfish acts by countries or other actors, usually calculating their own interests, benefits and costs over others) the polarized party system, realism and climate skepticism affected the climate change debate in the United States. Hence, the solutions offered to tackle climate change were largely related to technology, energy solutions and market based systems. Third, the NGOs strongly emphasized the importance of local and regional efforts over national or global ones. The justifications based on efficiency were also dominating the interview material and they as well suggested mainly technological, energy based solutions and the importance of climate science in combating climate change. The results of this study suggest that the common usage of industrial and market justifications is part of the political culture in the United States that emphasizes efficiency, economic factors and rationality. While this confirms the initial hypothesis of the study, the surprising result was that this concerns the NGOs as well that in other countries have traditionally represented somewhat different policies compared to the governments.