Looking Beyond the Science: A Rhetorical Analysis of the Climate Clock and the Trust Science Approach to Climate Activism

Abstract

Addressing the climate crisis is one of the most pressing issues of our time, yet risingauthoritarianism, science skepticism, and doomerism all play a role in stalling political action and making climate destruction feel inevitable. Climate activists thus face a dual challenge: how to persuade others to join us in changing an apparently unchangeable world, and how to tame the tides of skepticism towards the very reality of the crisis? In order to address these questions, this thesis focuses on a case study of the Climate Clock, a well-known public art installation in New York City which seeks to motivate action by counting down the time we have left before passing a critical threshold of warming. I contend that the clock is representative of an approach to climate activism I call the trust science paradigm, which focuses on affirming the veracity of climate science. Although an understandable response to the exigence of hostility towards scientific expertise, I argue that the trust science paradigm is guilty of maintaining an inaccurate and harmful divide between the discursive jurisdiction of scientists and the public, which impoverishes the public understanding of both science and the climate crisis, and our capacity to imagine solutions. As a result, the Climate Clock backfires as a rhetorical strategy, failing to provide a productive solution to the challenge climate activists face. I close by suggesting alternative approaches to an environmental rhetoric that may be more productive.