Beyond Climate Breakdown: Envisioning New Stories of Radical Hope by Peter Friederici

Abstract

Peter Friederici, a journalist and professor of communication at Northern Arizona University, draws useful insight about stories “that we use to make sense of the world” (3) and that interfere with combating climate change. The book is part of the One Planet series edited by Sikina Jinna and Simon Nicholson, designed to let academics “speak from the heart.” Friederici argues that the dominant Western narratives are not conducive to understanding climate “disruption,” and since he assumes that we need appropriate collective stories to appropriately respond to climate change, this explains climate inaction. We learn from the environmental humanities to be reflexive about our language, and he believes that the “greenhouse effect, global warming, and climate change carry with them enough defusing power that they themselves constitute potent barriers to action” (50). For example, the greenhouse effect sounds like a technical problem someone else will manage. Friederici believes that climate “breakdown” better conveys a sense that climate change will “unleash numerous corollary breakdowns in politics, economic systems, and societal relations” (56). Friederici argues that several dominant Western narratives provide tools for climate denial. He is not referring to the organized denial by conservative think tanks but to a cultural blindfold that inhibits our ability to conceive what is happening and what it means. One example is the idea that neoliberal economic growth is inevitable and should never be questioned, as in Margaret Thatcher’s invocation that “there is no alternative.” Another is that the future is not as valuable as the present and that future generations will have more wealth and resources, justifying the absurd logic of economic discounting, which is especially absurd under a broken climate. The first four chapters explain traps we must escape in prediction, metaphor, narrative, and tragedy. For example, Friederici argues that climate predictions are both too big and too small to make sense. The planetary impacts of climate disruption are so large that we cannot fully imagine what they mean, but at the same time, we hear that the sea level rises three millimeters per year. Beachgoers cannot see those three millimeters, but at the same time, coastal