Donald Trump, the Republican candidate for the 2016
Presidential election, has called climate change a hoax created by the Chinese.
His running mate, Mike Pence, has recently been interviewed to clarify Trump’s
thoughts on climate change and said that he believes climate change is
happening naturally – due to natural, normal weather patterns – and not because
of any man-made influences such as the emission of greenhouse gasses. Further,
he believes that the threat of climate change is nothing more than a political
agenda set forth by the Obama Administration and other Democrats. Most
Republicans agree with the latter, and that’s what we see in the GOP’s official platform outline which was updated for the National Convention this past July.
Even though the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
has said they have a 97 percent certainty on anthropogenic climate change, the
American public’s views and opinions on climate change are extremely mixed.
According to “Reframing the Climate Change Debate to Better Leverage Policy
Change: An Analysis of Public Opinion and Political Psychology” by Terrance M.
O’Sullivan, the American public’s confusion is due in part to widespread “political
resistance to mitigation measures such as GHG reduction, government environmental
regulations, and spending on research and alternative energy subsidies” (318).
This resistance comes almost entirely from the GOP.
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| Source: NASA |
In its platform, the GOP does not write off climate change
entirely. Rather, it simply places it extremely low in the economic priority
list of our nation. Part of its policy reads: “climate change is far from this
nation’s most pressing national security issue” (GOP Platform 20). Even though
research and statistical data proving climate change exist and are accessible, the
GOP misleads its members and frames the science of climate change as a
political agenda set forward by the Democratic Party. It frames scientific facts
supported by a high percentage of scientists abroad and at home as
untrustworthy.
According to Critical
Media Studies by Brian L. Ott and Robert L. Mack, framing is a concept
within Marxist analysis that is exercised by major media conglomerates and
contributes to the undermining of democratic ideals (Ott 51). Framing is simply
the lens used by the media or conglomerate by which the audience views the
message(s). Typically used with news or entertainment media, I’m applying the
concept of framing to the GOP’s platform to look at how scientific data is communicated
(or left out) of conversations about climate change, thus resulting in the
widespread confusion among US citizens.
Throughout the section “America’s Natural Resources:
Agriculture, Energy, and the Environment” in the 2016 GOP Platform, scientific
claims that aren’t even explicitly being described in the outline, are labeled
as dishonest in a few different instances:
On trade: “We will not tolerate the use of bogus science and
scare tactics to bar our products from foreign markets” (17).
On “radical environmentalists”: “Their approach is based on
shoddy science, scare tactics, and centralized command-and-control regulation” (21).
On climate change in general: “Information concerning a
changing climate, especially projections into the long-range future, must be
based on dispassionate analysis of hard data” (22).
In these instances, scientific studies or results that are
vaguely introduced are cast off as “shoddy” or “bogus” with zero explanation to
how they are misleading or inaccurate. No scientists or scientific institutions
(except for the UN’s IPCC) are mentioned. The GOP is framing environmental
information in a way that encourages its members to distrust any science that
supports climate change because it is all a part of the democratic agenda. Although
195 countries are members of the UN’s IPCC, the GOP claims that the scientists
on its board are not reliable in its platform outline:
The United Nations’
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a political mechanism, not an
unbiased scientific institution. Its unreliability is reflected in its
intolerance toward scientists and others who dissent from its orthodoxy (22).
It’s odd that the GOP is pointing out here that the IPCC is
biased because it doesn’t tolerate scientists who dissent from their stances
that climate change exists and the majority of its causes comes from human
causes (O’Sullivan). If the IPCC was completely biased, wouldn’t there report
claim 100 percent of scientists back climate change as opposed to the 95-97
percent numbers that are used?
The GOP not only frames scientific facts that would lead
others away from their policy plans in a poorly-researched way, they frame the “facts”
supporting their ideas ineffectually as well. Hardly any claims made in the platform
regarding its own stances on the environment are not backed up with facts or
data of any kind. Under the “A New Era in Energy” section the platform reads “the
Democratic Party does not understand that coal is an abundant, clean,
affordable, reliable domestic energy resource” but does not provide support for
the claim that coal is clean (19).
Furthermore, under the “Environmental Progress” section, the
GOP states that the environment is improving year by year, but provides zero
statistical data that that is true (21).
From a Marxist Analysis view of framing, everything relates
back to the means of production and where power and control exist in the
economy. In the GOP’s platform, it’s obvious that they don’t think environmental
efforts are worth tax dollars. They are vehemently against several initiatives
that are supported by almost all other developed nations, primarily the Kyoto Protocol
and the Paris Agreement that the US currently contributes money toward (22).
The GOP wants to halt all US government spending to all UN supported initiatives
regarding climate change, primarily the Green Climate Fund (22).
Republicans want a small government. They don’t believe in
top-down mandates and they think that harsh environmental regulations on
corporations will destroy our free-market economy. By framing the facts of
climate change in a way that encourages Americans to distrust its government and
the science they believe investing in, people are not recognizing the
seriousness of environmental issues and will not until the problem affects them
directly.
“Democratic Party Platform 2016.”
Dem Convention, July 2016. https://www.demconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Democratic-Party-Platform-7.21.16-no-lines.pdf.
Accessed 12 October 2016.
Sullivan, Terrence M. and Roger
Emmelhainz. “Reframing the Climate Change Debate to Better Leverage Policy
Change: An Analysis of Public Opinion and Political Psychology.” Homeland Security & Emergency Management,
vol. 11, no. 3, 2014, pp. 317-336
Ott, Brian L., and Robert L. Mack. Critical Media Studies: An Introduction. 2nd ed. West Sussex: John
Wiley & Sons, 2014. Print.
Republican Platform 2016.” GOP, July 2016. https://prod-static-ngop-pbl.s3.amazonaws.com/static/home/data/platform.pdf.
Accessed 12 October 2016.
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