Table of contentsSummaryIntroductionPlace the research in current literatureArgument and methodology DiscussionResearch results, analysis and discussionConclusionSummaryClimate change has become, since the 1970s, a increasingly unanimous science, with fewer and fewer people and fewer people disagreeing with the idea that man is the cause of climate change, that is, it is the cause of anthropogenic climate change. However, solutions to this problem were once considered to be contrary to good economic practice and were therefore likely to cause economic harm to any government implementing them, although this can to some extent be explained by a construction of the discourse used by businesses (such as major oil companies). ) to prevent the implementation of policies likely to harm their profits (Carvalho 2005+2007). This essay will explore how climate change is constructed in modern political discourse, how much time politicians spend on it in their conference speeches, and what proportion of manifestos it takes up. He will then explore the effect of natural disasters on this construction, concluding that they make political rhetoric and construction more environmentally friendly. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”?Get the original essayIntroductionThe question this article will attempt to answer refers to how parties use political discourse to describe the environment and the problem of climate (anthropogenic) change. The question of how climate change is presented is important because, for most people, politicians and the media are where they absorb the majority of their information on scientific issues and how they should influence policy decisions. . The central argument of this essay will be that Although climate change is fortunately almost unanimously considered to be of anthropogenic origin in the United Kingdom, it often takes a back seat in major political discourses, with references to this phenomenon being mostly rare. However, when natural disasters strike, the discourse will shift to appeal to the populist beliefs of the general public, in an attempt to gain political standing and increase popularity. In order to assess the legitimacy of this hypothesis, a discourse and content analysis will be conducted on manifestos and speeches delivered by party leaders at their respective annual conferences in order to conclude on how climate change is described in the usual political discourse. Next, the same research methods will be applied to leaders' speeches and appearances during natural disasters, such as the UK floods in winter/spring 2013/14. Because the hypothesis tested focuses on the representation of climate change, not its challenge, most research and analysis will focus on the period following the publication of the second report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. climate change in 1995-1996, because it marked a decisive turning point. time when the science of climate change has become an almost unanimously recognized fact in politics (with the exception of a few dissidents, mainly in the United States). Moreover, as shown in the graph, compiled with data from research carried out by Carvalho and Burgess (2005). marks an increase in media time granted by the three “major newspaperspolicies”. It also marks the start of the “Third Circuit” on climate change. (Carvalho and Burgess: 2005: 1) Placing the research within the current literature Currently, the majority of research on the representation of climate change in political discourse appears to focus on the media, notably the Broadsheet newspapers and how they affect, and are affected by science. , popular opinion and policies. (Carvalho & Burgess: 2005, Carvalho: 2007, Zehr: 2000, Bell: 1994) While some research even looks at how popular media and culture, i.e. Hollywood films with themes and environmental messages, affect public perceptions and shape political discourse (Lowe, Brown et al: 2006)The thesis that seems to be at the heart of much of the current literature appears to be that the "construction" of climate change in political discourse and the resulting policy recommendations are deeply rooted in ideology (Carvalho: 2007). This argument is well made by Burgess and Carvalho (2005): “Forms of filtering and reinterpretation of climate change information are entrenched and reproduce deeply divergent value systems. » Research on broadsheets and their representation of climate change in discourse tends to focus on three articles: ; the Times (right-leaning), the Guardian (left-leaning) and the Independent (unbiased), and analyzes how ideology affects the argument, with the conclusion generally centering on the idea that ideology does affect the argument, but in recent years, with the certainty of anthropogenic climate change, the only difference lies in the nature of the combat policies advised. Discussion of the argument and methodology The position taken by this work, which the research supports, is that climate change, although not denied by any politician in the UK, is not a main priority for many of them in terms of policy. Although this can be observed to change when climate change, or more specifically natural disasters, affects the UK. In recent years, there has been clear evidence of the growing threat natural disasters pose to Britain. And after that, the construction of climate change in the discourse; the positions of politicians on man's impact on the environment; and the urgency to act; everything becomes much more intense. This is an attempt by politicians to curry favor with a public that sees the obvious effects of the phenomenon (climate change) and sees its leaders as those who can change the situation. Rhetoric about climate change should slow down and calm in its urgency once catastrophe has been averted and its consequences addressed. The methods that will be used to answer this question and prove the hypothesis will focus on political discourse. , and so the two chosen are content analysis, and also discourse analysis. Although they appear similar, the two methods explore different phenomena and complement each other well in answering questions about constructions of climate change discourse. Content analysis is, and will be, used to uncover trends in discourse and the political construction of climate change discourse. It examines the overt contexts of texts and discourse, including the number of times a word, phrase, or theme is mentioned in communications (Berelson 1952: 18). In the context of this work, the communications chosen werespeeches by political party leaders at conferences and election manifestos, in order to observe how political discourse usually addresses the issue of anthropogenic climate change and associated policies to address and resolve the problem. Next, news articles and speeches given by leaders and politicians at the time of and after natural disasters will be analyzed to see if there is an increase in the number of mentions of words, phrases and themes related to the climate change, which should be the case. The nature of the hypothesis must be given so that it can be proven. A slight problem with this type of research, focusing solely on the content of a text, is that political discourse and constructions are not neutral, and do not exist solely in a vacuum. In order to better understand the nature and construction of climate change in political discourse, discourse analysis must be used in order to gain a better knowledge and understanding of what is, in the subjective reality of political discourse; “interdependent set(s) of texts and practices” which, through “their production, diffusion and reception… give rise to an object”. (Philips and Hardy 2002) The idea behind using discourse analysis alongside content analysis boils down to the need to understand the effect that the timing of the construction of a discourse affects the content and the meaning behind it, which gives a clear need for a great understanding of the context and thematic meanings behind articles, speeches and other types of communication. by thought leadersResearch findings, analysis and discussionsThe first phase of research to be used to answer the question of how natural disasters affect the construction of climate change in political discourse is to apply content analysis to manifestos of the main parties and to analyze their speeches. at the respective conferences to assess the level of time, effort and urgency given to the problem of anthropogenic climate change. Analysis of the manifestos of a large number of parties in global elections going back several decades was carried out by the Manifesto Project, and forms the basis for the analysis of the manifestos of the main parties in UK general elections. The table above shows how often the major parties have included policies regarding environmental welfare in their platforms from the first elections in 1974 until the most recent elections in 2010 (the Liberal Democrats are formed after the 1987 elections as a merger of various centrist parties, although this is tangential to the argument). While this shows some interesting things, such as the fact that after the first IPCC report in 1990 the frequency with which climate change policies appear in a manifesto appears to increase, a similar point can be made about election manifestos of 2001 after another from the IPCC. reports. These can be seen as the catalyst for disseminating knowledge about anthropogenic climate change to the public via the media, public agencies and politicians. However, looking at the percentage of manifests to which these frequency figures translate, it may seem that this conclusion is slightly off. As the table seems to suggest only a slight positive correlation between the percentages of a manifesto devoted to environmental policies and the manifesto's most recent election date. However, if we keep in mind the assumption that environmental discourse and policies are used as a kind ofpopularity capture by politicians, it appears that as the Liberal Democrats have become a more dominant party and gained vote share, they have reduced the number of climate policies in their manifestos, in line with what the 'assumption. Likewise, considering that Labor was far behind the Conservatives throughout the 1980s, the reason for the slight increase in frequency from the second election in 1979 throughout the 1980s until victory Blair's election in 1997, when climate science was much more accepted, thanks to various IPCC reports. This analysis also holds when considering the increase in frequency of the Conservative manifesto, from 22 policies in 1997 to 85 in 2001, at the height of Blair's reign, to 9 in 2005, when Blair had apparently held office for too long. long to maintain its populist status, and it passed the baton to Gordon Brown at the next general election, regardless of anything else. The reason the sample of manifestos chosen dates back to 1974, before any IPCC report, is that it was a sample of populist manifestos. the decade in which climate science was beginning to gain popularity and acceptance in academic circles. With the beginning of analysis of the aerosol and CFC problems, and most publications opposing the traditional belief that the Earth would continue in a cooling cycle, with most scientific articles predicting the opposite, i.e. that the Earth was about to warm up. In terms of analyzing the speeches given at the party conferences, the decision was made to stick to the speeches given at the 2010 post-election conferences. Indeed, the analysis simply takes longer when we examine speeches consisting of dozens of pages, and approximately 200 paragraphs of rhetoric and speeches. Furthermore, after checking the levels of political preference and the priority given to climate change in terms of electoral platforms, this exercise simply aims to provide a deeper and more focused overview of the context in which natural disasters can be placed on a timeline between elections. Shifts in party policy orientation in elections five years apart may well be significantly different, and so the addition of annual conferences adds to the substantive context in which natural disaster discourse can be placed. Since leading the Conservative Party to victory in the 2010 election, David Cameron has made 4 speeches at party conferences. In these, it appears to generally follow "the usual format of political discourse" (Anonymous: 2013) with very little in-depth analysis allowed, having been scrutinized in favor of a more generalist approach; using humor, accessible language, simple examples and catchy rhetoric in order to entertain both the public and the media satisfied with the quality of the soundbites they receive. This, however, leaves very little room for expansion of a question which, in reality, is complex. Solutions to anthropogenic climate change are not obvious, and policy directions associated with managing the threat have clear advantages and disadvantages. Perhaps this is why Cameron only mentions the environment or green policy a few times in each speech. In 2010 for example, he made two references; one on the first green investment bank and the other on environmental protection. In a broader context, much of the speech focuses on the electoral victory that the party has just achieved..