Polar bears and energy-efficient light bulbs: strategies to bring climate change home

Introduction
The question of how best to engage the public in efforts to confront global climate change
poses a significant challenge to activist organizations, policymakers, and academics
(Jasanoff and Wynne, 1998). Peter Tabuns, Executive Director of Greenpeace Canada,
notes that `` no one knows how to make climate change relevant [to people]'' (interview,
26 June 2003). In this paper I address this issue by way of an analysis of two campaigns:
the Cities for Climate Protection (CCP) campaign and Greenpeace Canada's (GPC)
climate campaign.
I pose two related questions. First, how do the strategies employed by GPC and
the CCP campaign attempt to inspire public support for greenhouse-gas mitigation
measures? Engaging the public on climate change is especially difficult because global
climate change is perceived as spatially and temporally distant. The perception is
not unexpected given that scientists, advocates, policymakers, and constituents have
constructed a global interpretation, vision, and community around climate change
(Boehmer-Christiansen, 1994; Demeritt, 1998a; 1998b; 2001; Hinchliffe, 1996; Jasanoff,
2001; Jasanoff and Wynne, 1998; Shackley and Wynne, 1996; Taylor, 1997; Taylor and
Buttel, 1992). The two organizations' strategies are efforts to localize global climate
change to enable the public to see climate change as a local problem with local
solutions. Some of the ways `local' may be understood include: at a political-jurisdic-
tional level, as a time ^ space specific, material-discursive context always articulated
with the global (Barad, 2003; Massey, 2002); as an area, but only to afford discussion
(Cox, 1998); as particular, parochial, and small compared with the global universal; in
terms of an event in a place that affects a specific group of people; or as a local issue
in the sense of being familiar and/or relevant to daily life. This paper is concerned with
the local understood as relevance to daily life. Daily life is always already rooted in
some place and linked to larger-scale processes, but this is not necessarily acknowl-
edged. The strategies of the campaigns further assume that making climate change
locally relevant to individuals and communities will inspire people to act. I consider how
Polar bears and energy-efficient lightbulbs: strategies to bring
climate change home
Rachel Slocum
Department of Geography, 144 Eggers Hall, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244-1020,
USA; e-mail: rachel slocum@hotmail.com
Received 31 May 2002; in revised form 15 November 2003
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2004, volume 22, pages 413 ^ 438
Abstract. Global climate change is the focus of climate politics organized across scales by a range of
organizations. These organizations represent climate change in ways they hope will make the problem
relevant to people and thereby inspire political action. The strategies require a choice of objects to
bring climate change home to constituents. Some objects are `more local' to certain constituenciesö
that is, they are more meaningful. Greenpeace Canada represents the impact of climate change via the
object of the hungry polar bear. The Cities for Climate Protection campaign makes climate change
relevant, in part, by its focus on the cost-saving benefits of energy efficiency. The process of localizing
climate change constitutes society. I use feminist science studies as a theoretical basis to support my
argument that organizations localizing climate change might choose objects that are more account-
able to their constitutive effects on societies. I point out potential pitfalls in the choice of the polar
bear and energy efficiency, and suggest some possibility in these objects.
DOI:10.1068/d378

`local' is constituted, how the process of `localizing' climate change occurs, and how local
relevance might be recast.
The scientific understanding of climate change is one process that constitutes
societies (Demeritt, 1998a; 1998b; 2001; Hinchliffe, 1996; Miller and Edwards, 2001;
Taylor, 1997; van der Sluijs et al, 1998). Similarly constitutive are social movements,
nongovernmental organizations, and other publics that create new facts and may certify
scientific knowledge (Jasanoff and Wynne, 1998, page 46). In this light, I examine the
choice of objects that GPC and the CCP campaign use to bring climate change homeö
polar bears and the bottom-line benefit of energy efficiency, respectively. These choices
constitute society by concealing some relations and revealing others and by directing
society toward some means of understanding and certain ways of acting. Thus the second
question I address in this paper is: how do these objects perform or intervene to shape
society? The objects often deployed to understand climate change (models, measurements)
and to make climate change understandable to policymakers (ice melt, temperature
change) have constituted societies as a global community (van der Sluijs et al, 1998).
The objects of polar bear starvation and the worth of energy efficiency, chosen to perform
climate change locally, communicate it to urban dwellers and residents of Canada in
complex ways. I contribute to the question of how to engage the public on climate change
by presenting empirical material on the two campaigns and linking it to theory from
feminist science studies. I reflect on the ways these objects shape society.
The CCP campaign is a global effort launched by the International Council for
Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) to focus attention on the local sources of
greenhouse-gas emissions and to lower those emissions. I devote greater time to the
CCP campaign because this section is based on primary researchöspecifically, 135
in-person confidential interviews I conducted in Minneapolis, MN, Tucson, AZ, and
Seattle, WA, as well as telephone interviews with campaign contacts in twelve other
cities.
Since the early 1990s, GPC has used the icon of the polar bear to dramatize the
effect climate change will have on the North. People dressed in polar bear suits pose at
climate talks and with local politicians as a means to increase public awareness and
support for the nationally and internationally oriented climate politics of GPC. The
section on GPC's strategy is derived from an interview with the Executive Director,
Peter Tabuns, and with Media Director, Andrew Male, in addition to a review of
secondary sources.
I begin by explaining how scale acts when a political effort claims that a process is
local or global. I discuss how adopted objects derive from location and then how
(boundary) objects as material-semiotic actors may serve as a bridge to translate global
climate change into local relevance. I introduce the notion of achieving context-specific
relevance through `practicing facts' (Dumit, 1997) that temporarily elevate aspects of
climate change which can be seen and felt by residents of Canada and of US cities. Also
important to my argument is the concept of situated knowledge because, if practised,
it could produce more effective objects to link climate, in better ways, to people's lives.
Next, I examine my research on the CCP campaign and critique the CCP campaign
participants' choice of cost saving through energy efficiency as the means to encourage
changes that might lower greenhouse-gas emissions. Under the section entitled `` Practic-
ing facts'', I show how some of my respondents are thinking of objects to bring climate
`home' other than the bottom line of energy conservation. I then switch to GPC's choice
of the polar bear as a familiar symbol and point out some positive and negative aspects of
this choice. I conclude by returning to the framework concepts of `localizing', boundary
objects, facts, and situated knowledge.
414 R Slocum

Location, objects, and knowledge
‘‘We will not give up
_
the stakes are too high, the science too decisive, and our
planet and our children too precious.''
Frank E Loy, a top US negotiator, preparing to leave the Sixth Conference
of the Parties at the Hague without an agreement (quoted in Revkin, 2000a)
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a body of scientists respon-
sible for interpreting research on global climate change and producing assessments for
the policy community, concludes that ``There is increasing evidence from many
sources that the signal of human influence on climate emerged from natural vari-
ability, sometime around 1980'' (Revkin, 2000b). Behind this statement are figures
such as the fact that carbon dioxide accounts for 81% of total US greenhouse-gas
emissions, and 99% of that amount is derived from fossil-fuel combustion (USEPA,
1998, page ES-4). As cautious, authoritative bodies such as the IPCC (Edwards and
Schneider, 2001; Jasanoff and Wynne, 1998) more strongly point to the anthropogenic
causes of global climate change, GPC and the CCP campaign cities seek ways to make
climate change locally meaningful in order to mitigate its impact. These groups want to
inspire citizens to care and act via symbols that make more sense to them than the
technically difficult science of climate change. The polar bear is a striking icon of
the North relevant to Canadians, Inuit, and Cree, among other nationalities, and
a powerful reminder of polar-ice melt. The CCP campaign, further, has read US
cultureöit is materialistic and its lifestyle is apparently not up for negotiation (Luke,
2000, page 56)öand so the campaign has developed strategies, such as the cost-saving
benefit of energy efficiency, that they think are `` more likely to resonate with short-term
political force'' (Juisto, personal communication, 24 July 2001).
The campaigns are similar in the broad sense that they are both attempts to address
national-scale and international-scale climate politics and to engage publics in democratic
societies. They differ in other respects. The ICLEI focuses on the city scale as a means to
approach the national and international level, but it is also specifically interested in cities
as sources of greenhouse-gas emissions and sites of action. GPC aimed to move the nation
of Canada toward adoption of Kyoto, which required gathering citizen and policymaker
support. The constraints and politics these two efforts face are also different. The CCP
campaign, directed from within municipal government, has a reformist bent whereas
GPC's activism could be seen as more radical and visible. The choice of objects to carry
climate change home is notably different: polar bears and energy efficiency. GPC's symbol
represents an impact of climate change whereas the CCP cities' object is directed toward
mitigation and the benefits (lower emissions and cost saving) of energy efficiency. I
highlight these differences here to indicate that I realize they exist. I do not make a
point-by-point comparison; instead, I reflect on how objects used by the campaigns to
make climate change locally relevant perform.
Scale and relevance
Political strategies may make the global or the local visible. Making climate local or
global is an act that constitutes society; it has consequences. Scales are material-
discursive representational practices (Jones, 1998) that can be conjured into being
(Tsing, 2000). For instance, local can suggest the community but actually mean the
individual as in a UK climate campaign (see Hinchliffe, 1996), whereas neoliberalism
`` conjures scale'' to make the world think it is global (Tsing, 2000, page 119; see also
Massey, 2000).
Constituting society through scale-making is a political act open to critique because
of what becomes visible and what disappears. Critiques of scale conjuring are
leveled at the way, for instance, environmental political strategies make desertification,
Strategies to bring climate change home 415

deforestation, soil erosion, and population into global problems, concealing local
specificity and social relations and damaging local knowledge, livelihoods, and ecosys-
tems in many places (Basset and Zue
¨
li, 2000; Fairhead and Leach, 1996; Peet and
Watts, 1996; Schroeder, 1997). Critiques also focus on politics that make people think
something globally active is actually limited to the local. For example, Timothy
Thomas, an unarmed African-American man, was killed on 7 April 2001 by a member
of the Cincinnati, Ohio, policeforce. The media called the killing, and the subsequent
riots, a local issueöCincinnati's problem. Use of the term `local'öin the sense of
being contained by that cityöin a word, erases a history of fear and hate and under-
mines critiques of the relational process of racism. Conjuring racism as only local, and
neoliberalism, for instance, as the only economics in town (Massey, 2000), makes
processes seem to exist in one scale alone or to exist pervasively.
Climate change has been framed by the physical and natural sciences (Taylor, 1997)
as a threat to the planet as a whole and to `our common' future (Demeritt, 1998a;
1998b; Hinchliffe, 1996; Taylor, 1997; Taylor and Buttel, 1992). Approaches based in an
appeal to the global and to scientific certainty avoid `` the more difficult work of
making global warming meaningful'' to different publics (Demeritt, 1998a, page 6).
They fail to see that socio-environmental change is local and that `` most people do
not have problems of a global nature'' (Taylor, 1997, page 151, his italics). The strategies
of the CCP and GPC are a response to this framing. To campaign proponents, polar
bears and energy-efficient lightbulbs are more local to citizens than the tons of green-
house gases collecting in the atmosphere. They are closer to homeöthey fall within
some people's scope of concern or interest according to the CCP campaign and GPC.
Although global is not equivalent to what is spatially remote and home is constituted
by local ^ global things and processes and is not necessarily geographically close, the
strategies of these campaigns support that false distinction.
The relational nature of scales and the simultaneity of local and global
(1)
may be
revealed by political efforts. Climate change is at once local and global, and, although
people do not necessarily acknowledge this, political strategies can make the relation-
ship visible. Revealing how an issue is at once local and global and changing how
people think about their relationship could be practiced for progressive purposes.
Rather than weeding out the globalness of climate change, localizing what has been
understood as a `global' problem could be done by situating it within a relational
context that may include the places people live, their histories, daily lives, cultures,
or values. Doing this can help people to grasp the extent of an issue, its relevance to
their lives, and its relationship to the lives of others. The feminist movement did
this by showing how the personal is international (Enloe, personal communication,
15 November 1996). Another good example is the Cree's battle against Hydro Que
¨
bec,
which took them to the schools, streets, and legislature of New York to ask people to
understand that an energy contract with Hydro Que¨ bec would be built on the loss of
Cree land, livelihood, and ecosystem devastation as well as being an attack on Cree
sovereignty (see Isacsson and Salzman, 1996; Jenson and Papillon, 2000).
Despite the problematic nature of a strategy that just focuses locally, it is also true
that the CCP campaign, in localizing climate change, is addressing the need to look
at the city-specific aspects of climate change. This specificity has remained less evident
in the global outlook of climate-change discourse. Thus, making global climate change
local is a process of reshaping the globalized scientific and policy discourse about the
causes and consequences of climate change and appropriate responses to it in ways
(1)
See, for instance, Howitt (1993), Katz (2001), McDowell (1993), M
c
Guirk (1997), Martin (1999),
Massey (1993; 1994), Ruddick (1996), Sletto (2002), Swygendouw (1997).
416 R Slocum

that are meaningful to people's lives as they vary by place and by individual (see
also Harding, 1998). In the process of making something local, the undifferentiated
discourse of climate science (Demeritt, 1998a) and politics at the international levelö
where some people apparently do have global problemsöcould become differentiated
when the formal fact of the contribution of carbon dioxide to global warming becomes
the practicing fact (Dumit, 1997) of urban quality of life or polar bear survival. In
other words, through climate campaigns, the practicing facts that come from aspects of
places, the values people hold, the networks they are part of, and the specific experi-
ences of people in Tucson, AZ, and Churchill, Ontario, could become part of the
discourse of climate change. The basis of the campaigns would then be in shared,
practical truths (Proctor, 1998a).
Facts and knowledge
The climate strategies in this study rely on certain facts to support claims. Facts are
material objects that travel (Dumit, 1997). The ability to travel means that facts are able
to communicate to many communities, to extend into other domains, and to last
through time and space. Facts are also unevenly known because they do not reach
everyone (Dumit, 2000). Facts are also local (Dumit, 1997); they ``function locally as a
temporary resting place for explanations'' (2000, page 210) but do not settle in one
place such that they are true `` once and for all everywhere'' (page 215). Indeed, local
knowledge is more mobile, and universal knowledge is more parochial, than has been
assumed (Eglash, 2003, page 129; see also Law and Mol, 2001). Dumit (2000) found
that changing the venue of where questions get asked is a way to make some facts
stronger for people suffering from specific illnesses, the subject of his research. In the
case of climate change, some participants in the CCP campaign, some of my respon-
dents, and GPC focus on the practicing facts of asthma rates and the hazards of
climate change for polar bears. I see these efforts as potentially changing the venue
to make some local, practicing facts temporarily strongeröpolar bear starvation and
the cost-saving benefit of energy efficiencyöby bringing the global climate into city-
scale life or into the realm of national icons. They seek to change the meaning of
climate change.
Global problems derive from a particular location (class, race, nationality) that gives
the world and climate problems particular meanings. `` Many people know that we
have global environmental problems because their institutional, linguistic and social
location facilitates global discourse'' (Taylor, 1997, page 165). Location, according to
feminist theory (Haraway, 1988a; Rich, 1986), refers to historically and culturally spe-
cific identities constituted through social relations. Location is culturally constructed
and subjects have the critical capacity to shape identity (Fraser, 1997). The view from
locatable positionsöidentities recognized as being constituted in relational time ^ space
contexts, as opposed to subjectivities seen as transcending all thatöis situated knowledge.
`Located' means situated; it does not mean local in the traditional sense of the
`local level' or a place (Haraway, 1997, page 121; King, 1994). Situated does not mean
being in one place, but instead involves `` multiple modes of embedding that are about
both place and space in the manner in which geographers draw that distinction''
(Haraway, 2000, page 71). The local, Haraway adds, is neither small-scale nor unable
to travel. She refers here, perhaps, to the notion that local efforts are associated with
the parochial and the ineffective (see Escobar, 2001). Situated knowledge recognizes
one's place in the history of how humans and nonhumans have been differently
constructed. It is useful as a basis for making choices `` for some worlds and not others''
(Haraway, 1997, page 37, her italics). Situated knowledge is partial because it is embodied
(Suchman, 1999). It facilitates connections to others across differences.
Strategies to bring climate change home 417

The perspectives people achieve through situated knowledges are sources of strong
objectivity (Harding, 1986; 1993). `` Objectivity is always a local achievement. It's always
about holding things together well enough so that people can share in that account
powerfully'' (Haraway, 2000, page 161). Haraway's statement is derived from a long
dialogue in which feminists sought a means to maintain the notion of objective
accounts of the world, some forms of the universal, and keep, as well, the powerful
poststructural notion of different knowledges based in multiply identified subjects
and constructed subject positions (see Benhabib et al, 1995; Fraser, 1997; Fraser and
Nicholson, 1990; Haraway, 1991; Harding, 1986; Tuana, 2003). Feminists sought an
objectivity formed through partial perspective, ongoing debate, and through the `` lived
work of knowledge production
_
for which we are all responsible'' rather than a
universal, unauthored, unaccountable, singular declaration of fact (Suchman, 1999,
page 1). Better empirical descriptions of truth, of objectivity, can be found sometimes
in temporary, local resting points for facts, rather than in universalized facts that are
not time or space specific (Dumit, 2000).
Campaigns to localize climate change have the potential to encourage the practice
of situated knowledge. Effective objects could be built through `` collective knowledge of
the particular and multiple locations of their production and use'' (Suchman, 1999,
page 5). King, argues, in the same spirit, that locals and globals exist in layers; the
layering effect is the `` simultaneous perception of material, literal embodiments
and discursive abstractions'' (1994, page 102). By way of example, the gay movement
created `` transhistorical continuities across time and cultures, to produce objects like
`the homosexual', [which were] within and accountable to very local, indeed culturally
quite narrow, political meanings and strategies'' (page 102). The terms (gay, homo-
sexual) were `` pluralized universals'' that were situated and traveled globally. These
objects were quickly replaced with others (King, 1994). Objects can be built, in the
manner Suchman and King suggest, on the situated knowledge of peopleöwhich
encompasses responses to animals close or far and the breathability of cities. Practicing
facts can be found to reveal the relationship of processes that link local and global.
Campaigns could promote situated knowledge and practicing facts to constitute society
on the basis of how people, polar bears, and climate are related.
Boundary objects
To this point, I have explored the possibility of strategies that do not bifurcate local
and global and that instead employ situated knowledge to reveal practicing facts that
are personally meaningful and that may derive from aspects specific to some places.
Within these strategies are the actual objects used to localize climate change, which are
the focus of the following discussion.
Objects such as the cost-saving benefit of energy efficiency or polar bears are
material-semiotic actors (Haraway, 1988b). They are neither neutral nor innocent.
Objects are the product of material-discursive practices (Barad, 2003); they generate
meaning and societies adopt `` objects that count'' (Haraway, 1991, page 195). As boun-
dary objects, the cost-saving benefit of energy efficiency and polar bears are ``temporary
bridges that allow communication across different groups'' (Star and Griesemer, 1989,
page 393) they are `` plastic and have different identities in many social worlds''
(page 409). The concept of `global warming potential' and the temperature range of
1.5 8C^ 4.5 8C have served as boundary objects that enabled communication across
communities and stabilized scientific knowledge so that it could be used in policy
(Jasanoff and Wynne, 1998, page 37; van der Sluijs et al, 1998). These objects are part
of interactions that ``materialize worlds'' (Haraway, 1994, page 64). They can be used
for local purposes and have different identities in the various worlds they inhabit,
418 R Slocum

but these objects also apply universally as a common thread or a temporary anchor
(Star and Griesemer, 1989, pages 409 ^ 414). Representation across social worlds allows
for many participants to be part of the process of translation and adoption of repre-
sentations and also for the instability and impermanence of the boundary itself (Barad,
1996; Star and Griesemer, 1989).
Different interpretations abound in scientific analysis and lay interpretation of
what causes climate change, what it will bring, and what society should do about it.
Different interpretations can be managed in several ways by boundary objects.
‘‘via a `lowest common denominator' which satisfies the minimal demands of each
world by capturing properties that fall within the minimum acceptable range of all
concerned worlds; or
via the use of versatile, plastic, reconfigurable (programmable) objects that each
world can mould to its purposes locally; or
_
each participating world can abstract or simplify the object to suit its demands; that
is, e`xtraneous' properties can be deleted or ignored'' (Star and Griesemer, 1989,
page 404, my italics).
Star and Griesemer argue that difference in values, information, identity, experience,
and so on results in different interpretations of boundary objects, which are then
resolved by the creation of a common representation which does not, however, indicate
consensus (see also Proctor, 2001). The boundary object is a temporary choice and it is
not a complete representation (Star and Griesemer, 1989, page 414). Representations
are an exchange (Adams, 1994, page 128, cited in Barad, 1998, page 92) and a struggle
over meaning produced within uneven relations of power (Jenson, 1990). Meaning,
however, is `` an ongoing performance of the world'' such that, when discursive practices
construct boundaries, there is no determined or final meaning (Barad, 2003, page 824).
Boundary objects are impermanent and ambiguous though they appear to have a
certain stability gained from holding ``a variety of scientific and policy endeavors
together in a common envelope of interpretation'' (van der Sluijs et al, 1998,
page 312). From this common envelope, certain communities will derive meanings
salient to each (1998). Berg (2002) suggests boundary objects, gender-equity policies
in his case, maintain the status quo in part because they are so open to different,
flexible interpretations. Some objects emerge that, because of this flexibility, make a
status quo by restricting or `anchoring' discourse around, for instance, the increased
temperature range possible (1.5 8C^ 4.5 8C) through climate change (van der Sluijs et al,
1998). Significantly, however, it matters how different communities take up and inter-
pret the object and the attached ideaöthat climate change needs actionöand how it
then becomes part of consciousness (Jasanoff, 2001). Less status-quo-serving objects
might then be counter-deployed and might perform in different ways.
In the next section, I introduce the CCP campaign and explore the way CCP
participants in the campaign have made global climate change local. I argue that the
use of the economic benefit of energy efficiency as the primary localizing object of
the campaign constitutes US society by hiding the social relations embedded in climate
change and elevating one value, the bottom line, while concealing other reasons to
protect the climate. It localizes, paradoxically, by way of what is assumed to be a
universal interest.
Localizing global climate change: the CCP campaign
The CCP campaign, launched by the ICLEI in 1991, seeks municipal commitments
to lower urban greenhouse-gas emissions. The campaign is based on three premises:
a significant amount of emissions are produced in cities; cities have the capacity to
reduce those emissions; and cities can set an example by lowering municipal emissions.
Strategies to bring climate change home 419

It aims to make cities serve as an example to state, national, and international political
bodies that may be slow to act. ICLEI has enlisted 403 cities worldwide; in the United
States, the cities range from Los Angeles, CA, and Dade County, FL, to Burlington,
VT, and Tucson, AZ. To participate in the campaign, cities must pass a resolution,
conduct an emissions inventory, and design a local action plan to address carbon dioxide
emissions. Local action plans are directed at transportation, residential, industrial,
commercial, municipal, and waste sectors.
The majority of the 139 US cities that have signed on agree to lower their carbon
dioxide emissions by 20% of 1990 levels by the year 2010. Most emissions in cities
derive from energy use and transportation (DeAngelo and Harvey, 1998). Residential-
sector emissions are typically 20% of total emissions while the transportation sector
contributes about 30%. Actions such as installing energy-efficient lightbulbs and
windows that can both lower emissions and save money are most favored by the city
administrators and politicians leading the campaign. Administrators must demonstrate
the cost-effectiveness and emissions reductions of efficiency retrofits as a means to get the
city council resolution necessary to join the CCP campaign. They struggle to get urban
citizens, city council members, and other members of city government interested in
climate action.
Switching off: the difficulties of getting people to care about climate change
An infomercial in a First Glasgow bus in Scotland showing a light switch and the
caption `` Do you switch off when someone mentions global warming?'' characterizes
the difficulty of catching the public's attention on climate change. The message cap-
tures both the mind numbingness of the phenomenon and the mundane ease and
finality of doing one's partöturn off the lights! Politics organized around climate
change strives to find ways to make the issue meaningful to people's lives in order to
promote action. People tend to act when an environmental problem comes close
to home as research on the Endangered Species Act, NIMBY,
(2)
and environmental
justice among others has shown. Climate change is not so close.
One obstacle to getting people to care about climate change is the fact that it is
technically complex and, for most of the 1990s, was portrayed as scientifically uncer-
tain. One respondent noted that it is `` hard to sell the world thing at the local level.
Now, as the issue is becoming more visible, it gives us permission to talk about the
global'' (city administration, interview, Minneapolis, MN).
(3)
At the time the campaign
began, and even during my preliminary interviews, the nation had not accepted that
climate change was actually happening. Municipal administrators had difficulty with
the science and felt ill-equipped to discuss it in public fora. The media, my respondents
pointed out, was intent on providing equal time to the naysayers, which gave the
impression that they were evenly represented in scientific communities. Said one
respondent, `` It's easy to slip into denial when there's just a little bit of disinformation''
(NGO, interview, Tucson, AZ).
CCP proponents also face the problem that the effects of climate change are not
locally visible. In Minneapolis, global warming `` cannot compete with neighborhood
survival, crime or deteriorating housing'' (city administration, interview, Minneapolis,
MN). Unlike threats to personal health that galvanize the public, the effects of climate
change are first felt by species more sensitive to biosphere changes than are humans
(2)
NIMBYönot in my backyard.
(3)
The interviews were confidential. I identify respondents according to their occupation or affilia-
tion and their city. Interviews in Tucson were conducted in November 1997, Minneapolis in June
1997, Seattle in April 1998. Telephone interviews in the other cities represented were conducted
during August 2000.
420 R Slocum

(IPCC, 2001) and those effects are currently invisible to most people. The respondent
below represents a sentiment widely expressedöthat climate change, to many people's
understanding, does not represent a rapid and drastic change.
‘‘On [National Public Radio's] Science Friday, they were talking about global warm-
ing and they said in the next 30 years they expect at most a one to two degree
[change] and some of the people were saying, `Well, what is that?!' A`n average
degree!?' I think that people in general say `Oh, one or two degrees, oh well, what
the hell!' '' (business, interview, Tucson, AZ).
A view echoed by many is that people realize climate change is both global and
local, but they `` can't get their hands around'' it: ``It's clearly a global problem. It's my
problem locally. I can't embrace anything bigger than that
_
I can't get my hands
around the global thing. It's just overwhelming'' (business, interview, Tucson, AZ).
In answer to the overwhelming nature of climate change, the uncertainties, and the
complexities was the idea, voiced repeatedly, that cities need to find local reasons to
address climate change.
‘‘The thought that the world is getting smaller in a sense that someone is generating
greenhouse gases over here, and it just does not affect the local environment, but it
affects the overall environment ... . It kind of appeals to people who have a sense of
community overall ... . This is a global issue and we want to be part of it. In another
community, they may have another reason for wanting to do something
_
I think
there are a lot of reasons. You just have to localize it'' (city administration, interview,
Seattle, WA, my italics).
Even though the respondent above invokes a number of reasons for acting on climate
change from the city scale, and local action plans list a range of measures, most cities
focus on the cost-saving benefits of energy efficiency.
Lowest common denominator politics: the boundary object of saving energy to save moneyöand,
by the way, the planet
The promotion of energy efficiency is a strategy used by many climate campaigns, as
well as by environmentalists more generally, as a means to reduce energy consumption.
The bus blurb advocating switching off the light mentioned earlier is similar to another
notice which asked its constituents `` Did you know that boiling a kettle half full instead
of full four times a day could save enough electricity to run a TV set for four hours?''
The US Department of Energy tells people ``You have the power. Turn it off '' and
features an image of earth in someone's palm (http://www.eren.doe.gov/femp/yhtp/
artwork.html). GPC's website questions readers as to whether they know how much
energy can be saved by washing clothes in warm, rather than hot, water (http://
www.greenpeace.ca/). Energy efficiency and conservation were also the theme of
a climate-change campaign directed at UK citizens, the Helping the Earth Begins
at Home campaign (Hinchliffe, 1996). Research conducted in Germany and Great
Britain has proposed that energy efficiency is the best starting point for greenhouse-
gas-emissions abatement (Assenza, 1996). The United Nations Framework Convention
on Climate Change documentation similarly suggests that, in addition to the respon-
sibility of nations, cities, and industries to redesign transportation and production
systems and use renewable energy, ``
_
Individual citizens, too, must cut their use of
fossil fuelsötake public transport more often, switch off the lights in empty rooms
_
''
(http://www.unfccc.de/resource/beginner.html).
These efforts rely on people to change their energy-use behavior. Advocacy of energy
conservation and efficiency continues despite debate about whether it lowers energy use
(see, for instance, Greening and Greene, 1998; Grubb, 1992; Inhaber, 1997; Joskow, 1995;
Joskow and Marron, 1992; Lovins, 1996; Saunders, 1992; Wackernagel and Rees, 1997).
Strategies to bring climate change home 421

The reliance on the individual's energy use is problematic as well. An analysis of the UK
climate campaign showed that respondents felt that they could do nothing in the face of
others' apathy and, even if they did, their contribution would mean little given the
enormity of the problem. Some felt that they had slight scope to make small or great
changes to their lifestyle or appliances (Hinchliffe, 1996). Energy conservation, finally,
tends not to be a `` galvanizing force for social movements'' nor to generate controversy
or social debate (Shove et al, 1998, page 296).
Nonetheless, the CCP-campaign participants rely on energy efficiency to make
climate change relevant to city dwellers. Describing the rationale, one respondent
pointed out, `` since we're looking at global emissions, we're not concerned with the
location of a plant but in looking at the cause of emissions, which is consumption, so we
aim at reducing demand through [energy] efficiency'' (NGO, interview, Minneapolis,
MN). The notion that climate was being or should be `sold' by addressing the cost-
saving benefit of energy efficiency was expressed by the vast majority of my respondents
and was particularly prevalent among those in city government. It was evident in the
emphasis of most local action plans on efficiency and cost-saving potential. An analysis
by ICLEI showed heavy reliance on energy-efficiency measures as the primary means to
achieve reductions in carbon dioxide emissions (Jessup, 1997).
Energy-efficiency measures used by municipalities include installing efficient light-
ing, adding insulation and weatherproofing, and purchasing energy-efficient appliances.
Between 1990 and 1997, Portland's energy-efficiency measures for municipal facilities
reduced energy use by over 15% (City of Portland, 1997). Further, in 1999, the City of
Minneapolis reduced carbon dioxide by an estimated 408248 tons, representing 10%
of the carbon dioxide reduction goal. The retrofitting of 104 buildings accounted for an
estimated carbon dioxide reduction of 10363 tons and changing streetlight timers in
1983 reduced an additional 7337 tons of carbon dioxide annually. Savings from the city's
municipal-building retrofits will be reinvested in energy-conservation projects (Fischer,
personal communication, 20 April 1998).
My respondents see the money-saving potential of energy conservation as a day-
to-day issue whereas climate change is not. They also claim they are pragmatic to
demonstrate the cost-saving benefit of emissions abatement. City administrators are
certain, furthermore, that saving money will have universal appeal to urban citizens
and, therefore, will be an effective strategy.
‘‘For most people, if you say global warming, they think first of all it's somewhere
else, it's off in the future. If you can bring the issue closer to home, in terms of
energy efficiency ... . Energy efficiency is good for a lot of reasons besides the fact
that it reduces carbon dioxide emissions'' (NGO and Education, interview, Seattle,
WA).
The following quote assumes that three different groupsöthe city council, business,
and economically depressed peopleöwill all respond most readily to saving money.
‘‘We have not tried to reach people on climate change. We have used it in some
literature, but climate change won't make the city council, business and economically
depressed people do anything. It is not a personal, day-to-day issue.What is, is reducing
energy [use] and saving money'' (city administration, interview, San Diego, CA).
Another respondent told me, `` cost effective that's the word, that's the buzzword now''
(business, interview, Seattle, WA). Finally, a city administrator noted that ``long-term
global warming is not going to be a selling point; it boils down to dollars'' (city
administration, interview, Kansas Overland Park, KS).
The focus on energy efficiency has an effect beyond its potential to lower emissions
and engender public interest in city climate action. Through their choice of this
object, municipal politicians and administrators enable what is speakable. I refer here
422 R Slocum

to Foucault's argument that discourses ``form the objects of which they speak'' (1972,
page 49). The CCP campaign is part of a hegemonic neoliberal discourse that appoints
cost saving as the gatekeeper to possibility. Cost saving falls within the realm of what
can be said. By playing into the overriding concern with the bottom line, saving money
overshadows other values and reasons for climate protection. Values are not just
reflected by the bottom-line approach; they are constructed through it (Demeritt,
1998a). In constricting the speakable, the discourse of money saving shapes what can
be attempted or, in other words, it sets a boundary between possible and impossible
action. Change, then, occurs only when savings can be demonstrated.
Local relevance in the campaign is established by whatever works, which depends,
in part, on what is attempted and what administrators think can be attempted.
‘‘Not everyone is going to relate to the same thing. Some people will relate to the
global environmental crisis [on the basis] of personal eco-guilt or [some will relate to]
economic opportunities
_
or maybe there are many buttons to pushöwhatever works
to get people connected'' (NGO and Education, interview, Seattle, WA, my italics).
`Whatever works' could be the basis for legitimate reforms pursued by administrators
with a good sense of what will work. Or it could be the more dangerous approach of
ends justifying the means. In the middle of these two lies a third, still suboptimal,
possibility that `whatever works' leads down a few short avenues of action.
As the link to the discourse of what society valuesöembodied in a dollar savedö
energy efficiency is a far too easy action in the list of things that need to be changed to
decrease greenhouse-gas emissions. It is the low-hanging fruit that ICLEI consultant
Ralph Torrie admonished his municipal government listeners to reach beyond (1999).
Further, efficiency is the fail-safe, politically uncontentious response that allows a one-
way technological process to intervene in change without `` sufficient thought to the
shape of the [energy-efficient] future'' (Shove, 1998, page 1110). Moreover, it transforms
a principle such as ecological integrity into an interest and then into a commodity
(Dryzek, 1990, page 83). Further, energy efficiency is a mechanism that limits the
possible in its diversion of attention from more thorough changes. It is an inadequate
answer to rising levels of urban and national greenhouse-gas emissions. Finally, both
efficiency and conservation operate within a fossil-fuel economy.
Boiling climate protection down to dollars localizes it in a paradoxical manner.
It appeals to a concern, constructed as universally applicable and appreciable, to bring
home a global phenomenon. Furthermore, energy efficiency and cost saving, as means
to encourage action by the public, focus on what people can do as individual consum-
ers or, at best, as households. Individuals and households are still typically treated as
passive, ignorant, and responsive to price stimulus rather than as active, knowledgeable
people for whom energy has different meanings (Shove et al, 1998). The campaign ends
up with universals directed at individuals who are misunderstood as passive consumers
(Slocum, 2004).
The climate, moreover, disappears in the focus on energy efficiency. Strikingly,
Minneapolis renamed its Urban Carbon Dioxide Reduction Plan as `The Energy
Plan' and eliminated references to climate change. Speaking about state-level efforts
to lower emissions, one respondent noted:
‘‘While we had government employees well educated and concerned about the topic
of climate change
_
attending [Northwest Council on Climate Change
(4)
meet-
ings], and each agency was responding to climate change as best it could through
education, land use planning or transportation, in no agency was climate change
spoken directly. The term simply did not occur at least in the written materials of
the agencies'' (NGO, interview, Seattle, WA, my italics).
(4)
http://www.nwclimate.org/
Strategies to bring climate change home 423

The final oddity of this strategy is that the reason to care about climate in the first
place is absent. The effects of climate change are not invoked. Instead, people are
asked to care about the savings they can achieve.
Climate politics and the strategies that make them up are material-discursive
practices that direct society down particular paths. Society is shaped by the designation
of a campaign to lower urban greenhouse-gas emissions and the means it chooses.
Society is formed by what is speakable, which limits the possible. It tends in a
particular direction when the focus of local-scale climate action is, predominantly,
energy efficiency and the justification is, mainly, personal cost saving. There are other
reasons to consume less energy and produce fewer emissionsöfor instance, concern
for the fates of children and polar bears.
Practicing facts: other objects
The CCP campaign's focus on the bottom-line benefit of energy efficiency may have
some positive aspects. First, rather than get into a debate about the existence of climate
change, it was reasonable, at the time, for administrators to suggest ways that people
could benefit from doing things that would lower emissions. Second, energy is located
intimately in daily life. If energy use is reduced it could deeply affect how people live
and should be recognized as guided by the different contexts in which people find
themselves (Shove, 1998). Appliances, moreover, are socially and culturally laden objects
whose meanings change over time, they are not just mundane commodities (Shove et al,
1998, page 306). They could come to mean something closely tied to local (non)human
life. Energy conservation may be part of a larger energy strategy that includes the
use of renewables as in the case of Santa Monica and Portland. Third, the boundary
object of cost-cutting through energy efficiency has been molded to suit the local
purposes, for instance, of solar coalitions in Tucson that promote solar water heaters
and other solar products.
There is also evidence from the campaign and related efforts that indicates more
hopeful ways of localizing climate change. I proposed earlier that the global, undiffer-
entiated discourse of climate change becomes locally differentiated when it is taken on
by cities that try to make this problem relevant to people living in Seattle, WA, and
Burlington, VT. Overwhelming facts about tons of emissions, necessary reductions,
and incomprehensible news about degrees of warming become the practicing facts of
communities. Finding a way around the incomprehensibility this respondent said
`` I think the things we're doing are beneficial in other ways
_
regardless of whether
the big picture
_
we've concentrated on our community and these things are good for
our community even if
_
'' (business, interview, Tucson, AZ). The wild salmon in
Seattle's rivers and harbor could be threatened, farmers' growing seasons are changing
in Minnesota, the maple trees in Burlington might move north, and asthma rates
around Tucson will rise. These are the local objects, valued for their meaning and
inherent worth to some people, that some climate advocates suggest using to make
people aware of what climate change could do.
In Salt Lake City and Los Angeles global climate change melts into urban air
pollution. Reasons for the dissolution of atmospheric changes into urban air are
pragmatic, according to my respondents from city government. Not only must cities
concern themselves with levels of air pollutants because of the federal linking of clean
air and transportation funding, but air pollution is also more locally comprehensible
than climate change because people see and breathe it. Rising levels of childhood
asthma were noted in several cities as a means to get people to pay attention to
greenhouse-gas emissions. For instance: ``We know that automobile emissions are
causing respiratory problems. All the people who came to Arizona in the old days
424 R Slocum

'cause they had asthma can't do it here in our cities anymore
_
'' (business, interview,
Tucson, AZ).
In the struggle to find what message might reach the public, some recognize that an
urban climate politics has to be differentiated to fit the audience. It is true, as the
respondent proposed earlier, that there are many buttons to push because people value
different objects. Tailoring the message, as the respondent below suggests, is a way of
locally differentiating the climate politics.
‘‘We assume they understand about species and ozone
_
we need to find a message
that is pertinent ... . It is incumbent on us to tailor the message ... I'm flexible;
I can go from issue to issue. We need to learn what the messages are that work''
(city administration, interview, San Diego, CA).
Campaigns could point, for example, to local impacts already felt and validate the
concerns and knowledge of area residents. For instance, one director of a local NGO
told me:
‘‘I love hearing people say `I have been working on this farm for 27 years and there
is definitely something different. I get up every morning and
_
the first thing I do
is to think about what the weather is going to be like today and I have been doing
this for 27 years and it is changed'' (NGO, interview, Minneapolis, MN).
Similarly, an American Green Network poll showed that 57% of voters polled think
they have seen changes in their local weather as a result of global warming. Almost
three quarters of those respondents say that the changes are for the worse (American
Green Network and Hinckley, 1998).
Respondents also noted that US citizens need to change what they value, which
could be encouraged by organizations' strategies. The respondent below claims that
bicycling is a radical act. He eschews factual information about pounds of emissions
produced or avoided and talks instead about how much fun he has when he bikes.
‘‘
_
what I'm going to put my resources into is telling people, `I have a great time
bicycling'. Or, I'll show up to meetings riding a bicycle. And I think that'll have a bigger
impact than, you know [the carbon dioxide chart]. It could be combined. Tell people,
o`h, I produced 2 pounds less carbon dioxide by bicycling to meetings'. It's [carbon
dioxide charts and similar information that are] too easily denied or ignored. I don't
think people base what they do on information'' (NGO, interview, Tucson, AZ).
Climate change becomes the proverbial forest that people do not see as they look
up at city trees. Tree planting is a favorite strategy of cities to confront greenhouse-gas
emissions. It is a visible means to contribute to urban beautification and sequester
carbon dioxideöalbeit a small amount compared with fewer sport-utility vehicles, less
vehicle miles traveled, or energy conservation. Burlington is acting on climate change
because its maple trees may be affected by climate change. And, as this politician
noted, `` people understand treesöthey hold all the carbon. Most people learn that in
school. And so they understand that they can contribute by doing something positive
like planting trees
_
'' (politician, interview, Minneapolis, MN).
At some level, people understand trees and other mysterious parts of the ecosys-
tem. They want breathable cities and salmon in the river. In the next section I explore
the strategy of localizing climate change via the multinational (Euro-Canadian, Cree,
Inuit, and so on) icon of the polar bear whose home, the North, is melting.
Bears performing
‘‘
_
what would a human be without elephants, lions, cereals, oceans, ozone or
plankton?
_
less than a human. Certainly not a human.''
Latour (1998, page 231) seeing in the French ecologist position the
notion that these things not be treated merely as means to human ends
Strategies to bring climate change home 425

Ice melts off the western Hudson Bay two weeks earlier than it did twenty years ago,
which means polar bears have less time to hunt sealsötheir primary source of food for
eight months of the year (Churchill, 2000). Bears store fat from these hunts to tide
them over the summer months. As a result of earlier ice breakup, the bears' condition,
over a seventeen-year period, has progressively deteriorated. The bears are 10% thinner
and have fewer cubs than they did twenty years ago (Stirling, 2000).
The world's largest land-based predators, the polar bears, are respected as powerful
beings by the Cree and Inuit. Polar bears serve as a source of food and clothing for
First Nations and as an economic boon for northern Manitoba as tourists flock there
to photograph them and scientists to study them (Waytiuk, 2002). In Churchill, near
the Wapusk National Park, the day-to-day life of residents is deeply affected by the
bears' movements (2002). The bears of the western Hudson Bay, however, are hemmed
inöthere is no habitat to the south and they cannot move farther north because that
habitat is occupied by other bears (Stirling, 2000). The IPCC asserts that some species
will not adapt to global climate change as well as others (IPCC, 2001). The bears, some
fear, will slowly starve (Waytiuk, 2002). Said climate scientist Robert E Wrigley, the
polar bear is `` an obvious warning symbol of the changes we're bringing down, not only
on our heads, but on all wildlife. That's why we should care'' (Waytiuk, 2002, page 14).
GPC addresses, directly, the material consequences of unchecked climate change
on nonhuman life. Demonstrators at the Sixth Conference of the Parties at the Hague
donned polar bear costumes and dramatized `die-ins' to emphasize the devastating
effects of climate change on these bears (Churchill, 2000). Peter Tabuns, Executive
Director of GPC, noted,
‘‘The polar bear is coming to symbolize the disappearing north, the end of the kind
of climate we all grew up with
_
. The habitat that polar bears depend on is being
wiped out. That is pretty strong stuff, emotionally and intellectually'' (quoted in
Churchill, 2000).
As part of GPC's campaign to pressure Canada to adopt the Kyoto Protocol, demon-
strators, dressed as thin, unhappy-looking polar bears, urged negotiators at the Sixth
Conference of the Parties at the Hague to reach an agreement in order to save the
polar bear and other nonhuman life. Collapsing in a parody of polar bear demise, GPC
activists attempted to bring the stark point of inevitable polar bear mortality home to
climate negotiators.
The image of GPC activists in polar bear suits has an element of comedy that some
argue is essential to politics (Merrifield, 2002; NGO, interview, Seattle, WA; resident,
interview, Tucson, AZ). Polar bear hunger is not funny, but if people laugh first they
might listen later. The bears, further, are not far out on the ice, creatures in their
pristine habitat; they are, admirably, out of placeöin the Sixth Conference of the
Parties accosting delegates, on the street with signs which people associate with
the jobless, and in bars having a beer with unofficial representatives.
Organizations deploy symbols to shape a common vision about the global environ-
ment (Jasanoff, 2001, citing Anderson, 1991). Tabuns told me that the polar bear
costumes were first used in England before they were taken up by the Canadian arm
of Greenpeace. They are a `` significant part of Canadian iconography'' as Canadians
are `` used to thinking of Canada as a Northern country'' (interview, 26 June 2003). Part
of Canadians' identity, he notes, is wrapped up in being Northern. Because of the
growing awareness that the poles will feel the affects of climate change most severely,
the bear becomes an `` easy to connect the dots'' type of symbolöthe polar bear `` says
ice and snow''. It is also a `` simple, emotional symbol ... people identify with the polar
bear ... it will matter to them'' that the bear's habitat is melting. Climate change was
`` wiping out part of Canadians' understanding of themselves, of something familiar.''
426 R Slocum

Further, because of the magnificence of the bear, the knowledge of the melting Arctic,
and the Northern identification, the polar bear is a symbol that does not need text with
itöthe bear can stand alone. Northern people affected by climate change need text.
The media was very quick to pick up on the polar bear, which signaled to GPC that it
had hit on a successful icon. Despite its success, Tabuns thought perhaps 5 ^ 10% of the
public was aware of and interested in the dangers of climate change.
According to Andrew Male, Media Director for GPC, the polar bear was chosen
not because it was the most relevant animal to Canadians, but because the polar bear
is `` familiar to everyone'' (interview, 20 June 2003). Importantly, it was the `obvious
animal' because of the data showing that polar bears are being negatively affected by
the melting ice attributed to the increase of globally averaged surface air temperature
from growing amounts of greenhouse-gas emissions in the atmosphere. Male said that,
rather than bringing people to the western Hudson Bay, GPC personalized the plight
of the bear by taking the bears to Ottawa to pose with political leaders prior to the
Bonn Conference (see figure 1)
Lately, the Canadian government has linked climate change to drought in the
western part of the country, thunderstorms in the Arctic, and the need to have indoor
ice rinks where once they would stay frozen outdoors. The polar bear was a symbol
that focused on a selective impact. Tabuns agreed with my respondents that there is a
danger in discussing reports on climate impacts because these accounts are too filled
with ``doom and gloom'' (NGO, interview, Seattle, WA) and because impacts for parts
of the United States still tend to be distant or uncertain. A message of hope and threat,
Tabuns argued, is a better strategy. The hope his organization underscores is that of
economic opportunity, particularly job creation in the area of energy efficiency. Similar
to observations from the CCP research, he also noted that the polar bear will not work
for all sectors but that icons have to be crafted to the sector and the mood of the
audience. Tabuns suggested that, depending on the audience, there are different objects
and multiple buttons. For instance, he thought the effects of climate change on the bald
eagle might resonate more in the United States. Having `` put everything [they] had into
Figure 1. Greenpeace Canada sending New Democratic Party Leader Alexa McDonough off to
Bonn, Germany, for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change 6 Part 2
Conference of the Parties, July 2001. The placard reads `` Bonn'' Vacances (ß Greenpeace Canada/
Calzavara, June 2001, Ottawa, Canada).
Strategies to bring climate change home 427