Steve Schwarze

Environmental Communication as a Discipline of Crisis

This essay interprets Coxs keynote as a call for environmental communication to reorient itself as a form of ideological criticism and identifies the potential pitfalls of heeding that call. First, the author revisits key arguments surrounding the practice of ideological criticism in Communication Studies and articulates their relevance to discussions about the mission and purpose of environmental communication. Second, he suggests that an uncritical embrace of the rationale for a “crisis discipline” may perpetuate problematic assumptions about communication, both as a social practice and as a scholarly discipline. Third, he argues that such problems may be sidestepped by making environmental crisis itself a central concept and object of environmental communication inquiry, such that environmental communication does not merely respond to crisis but becomes a discipline of and about crisis. A focus on the dynamics of crisis, the author concludes, entails a persistent concern with judgment in its political, scholarly, and pedagogical contexts.

Corporate-State Irresponsibility, Critical Publicity, And Asbestos Exposure In Libby, Montana

The story of asbestos exposure in Libby, Montana, should cement W. R. Grace’s place in the annals of corporate irresponsibility. Although the company is perhaps better known for its toxic dumping in Woburn, Massachusetts (popularized in the movie A Civil Action), its record in Libby reveals a troubling disconnection between knowledge and action and serves as an exemplary negative case for scholars of corporate social responsibility. But the story of Libby also reveals a lesson about the limitations of the rhetoric of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Libby reminds us that corporate wrongdoing is often accomplished with the help of the state. Thus, a rhetoric of CSR must have an interorganizational focus; it must demand social responsibility from the corporate body constituted in tandem by companies and the state agencies charged to regulate them. In the brief space allotted here, I want to illustrate these points in relation to Libby, and suggest that CSR rhetoric foreground and enact the notion of critical publicity to expose the exercise of corporate-state power.

Narratives, Rhetorical Genres, and Environmental Conflict: Responses to Schwarze's “Environmental Melodrama”

The appearance of Steven Schwarzes essay, “Environmental Melodrama” (Schwarze, 2006) as the lead article in a recent issue of The Quarterly Journal of Speech marks an important moment of recognition for environmental communication scholarship. Schwarzes essay demonstrates how studies of environmental rhetoric can contribute to rhetorical theory more generally, while addressing practical questions regarding the rhetorical aspects of environmental conflict. The contributors to this forum respond to Schwarzes arguments, drawing in part upon their own case studies of rhetorical action and narrative in environmental conflict.

Corporate Ventriloquism: Corporate Advocacy, the Coal Industry, and the Appropriation of Voice

In the second decade of the 21st century, the U.S. coal industry is facing unprecedented challenges. While for many years coal provided nearly half of U.S. electricity, in the spring of 2012 that share dropped to below 40% and is expected to continue falling (Energy Information Administration, 2012).1 Coal production is increasing not in Appalachia, the primary U.S. source for coal historically, but in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin (Goodell, 2006). Market competition from the natural gas industry combined with well organized climate and anti-mountaintop removal (MTR) campaigns have significantly curtailed the production of new coal-fired power plants in the United States (EIA, 2012). Under the Obama administration, the Environmental Protection Agency appears to be somewhat more amenable than the Bush administration to regulating carbon emissions as a pollutant, and more interested in enforcing Clean Water Act provisions applicable to MTR mining (Broder, 2012). Combined with sharp reductions in the number of coal mining jobs due to the increased efficiency of coal mining techniques, these circumstances have put the coal industry in Appalachia in a precarious position.

The Technological Shell Game

“The Technological Shell Game” examines the industry’s persistent use of the “clean coal” trope to resist environmental regulation. The chapter interprets “clean coal” as a case of strategic ambiguity in which the industry invokes different definitions of “clean coal” to play a “technological shell game” with audiences, offering the promise of clean coal while hiding what exactly is meant by clean coal. This rhetorical strategy can unite disparate audiences in support of “clean coal,” but it obfuscates the coal industry’s resistance to regulation by appearing to work voluntarily and proactively toward technological solutions to environmental problems. The shell game enables the industry to finesse contradictions between its neoliberal calls for smaller government and deregulation, and its demand that the federal government subsidize carbon capture and sequestration technologies.

The Hypocrite’s Trap

“Hypocrite’s Trap” examines the coal industry’s response to the fossil fuel divestment movement. Using a realist style of rhetoric, the coal industry and its allies in the oil and gas industry, conservative think tanks, and conservative media set a rhetorical trap for divestment advocates, the “Hypocrite’s Trap.” Three moves set the trap: establishing ignorance, exposing complicity, and naming hypocrisy. Industry advocacy characterizes the divestment movement as idealistic and unrealistic, elitist and dangerous, and hypocritical and immoral. In so doing, the hypocrite’s trap thus reinscribes divestment activists as individual consumers, rather than members of a collective movement. It also positions itself as a heroic provider of energy for the poor. This strategy positions the advocates of divestment as hypocrites but also reasserts the neoliberal reality, reasonableness, and virtue of the market.

Coal and the Contradictions of Neoliberalism

This concluding chapter examines the contradictions and fissures in the rhetoric of coal industry advocacy. By identifying inconsistencies in the coal industry’s public discourse, the chapter shows where neoliberalism’s footing is not secure and reveals how the coal industry’s rhetoric is a cobbled-together project, not a discursive and ideological monolith. It buttresses a rationality that requires constant rhetorical upkeep, a smoothing and suturing of the various and contradictory neoliberal impulses. The authors argue that these contradictions are sites where environmental and climate advocates can continue to apply pressure and leverage, and that coal is the harbinger of things to come for oil and gas, as climate change awareness, renewable fuels, and regulatory policies continue to apply pressure to the fossil fuel industry.