Far-right narratives of climate change acceptance and their role in addressing climate skepticism

Abstract

AbstractAs research on far-right climate change communication focuses on climate skepticisms, little is known about how the far-right justifies climate acceptance—and what this might mean for environmental education and counter-communication. To initiate a discussion of communicative strategies through which far-right actors might become more accepting of climate mitigation, we, first, reconstruct the narrative structure underlying far-right climate acceptance. Drawing on insights this reconstruction provides and assuming that such acceptance contains lessons for persuasive communication with far-right skeptics, we, second, discuss a number of axioms for counter-communication to be used in environmental education and teaching practice.Keywords: far rightclimate change communicationnarrativeskepticismcounter-communication Disclosure statementNo potential competing interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 In this piece, we operationalize “far right” as the political ideology comprising, at its core, ethnonationalism (ethnicity is the key criteria of belonging to the nation) and authoritarianism (strong, order-like state and centralized leadership epitomized in a strongman).2 In line with contemporary conventions, we use narrative and story interchangeable (Riessman, Citation2008, p. 7).