The Rise and Decline of Public Interest in Global Warming: Toward a Pragmatic Conception of Environmental Problems

Even in the face of growing evidence that global warming is a very real threat to human social systems, global warming has received relatively little media coverage. This book explores the possibility that one reason for this limited coverage may be that on a phenomenological level proposed solutions offered for global warming have not provided closure to the loss of taken-for-grantedness associated with the problematic disturbance of the everyday life world brought about by the initial problem claim. This lack of closure manifests itself in both the quantity of global warming media coverage and the types of claims made about global warming. To explore this issue the public arenas model of social problems is extended through a discussion of social action and typification drawn from the phenomenology of Alfred Schutz. A content analysis of the literature about global warming suggests that the types of proposed solutions to global warming in these sources have largely not permitted the taken-for-grantedness of the life world to be maintained. As a result media coverage of global warming has declined over the last twenty years and much of this coverage has been in the form of counter claims resulting in the dismissal of global warming as an issue worthy of public attention. This important book sheds light on the impact of the media on an issue of central interest to humanity.