Environmental Communication

Vol. 4, No. 1, March 2010, pp. 122
133

PRAXIS FORUM

Beyond Frames: Recovering the

Strategic in Climate Communication
J. Robert Cox

Recent calls for communication scholars and practitioners to identify effective

communication means for mobilizing constituencies to address climate change often
fall to distinguish between communicative acts that mobilize and mobilization that
enables a particular end. The latter presupposes an account of the intentional or strategic
alignment of mobilization, that is, the predicted or assumed relationships among a
mobilized public, the mode(s) of influence or leverage this creates, and the expected
consequences of such influence, i.e., how specific communicative efforts are related to
outcomes or effects within a system. This essay argues that the neglect of strategic
alignments in some recent climate communication campaigns have caused these
campaigns to be non-adaptive at the scale and/or urgency required. Drawing on case
studies of the 2007 Step It Up initiative and the Sierra Clubs Beyond Coal campaign,
the essay proposes viewing the strategic as an heuristic for identifying openings within
networks of contingent relationships and the potential of certain communicative efforts to
interrupt or leverage change within systems of power.
Keywords: Frame; Mobilization; Strategic; Strategy; Public Will Campaigns; Climate
Change
John Broders (2009) column Seeking to Save the Planet, with a Thesaurus and
reactions from the Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, Grist.org, Fox News, and
climate blogs (e.g., Romm, 2009a), among others, gave visibility to the sharp
Robert Cox (B.A., University of Richmond; Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh) is a Professor in the Department of
Communication Studies, as well as the Curriculum in the Environment and Ecology at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research centers on environmental communication and public policy, particularly
the challenges of climate change and energy policy. He is the author of Environmental Communication and the
Public Sphere (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2010, 2nd ed.). Cox also is a former President of the Sierra Club and
has served as a director on its board since 1993. He is currently the Sierra Clubs vice-president for Mission/
Strategy. Correspondence to: Robert Cox, 102 Boulder Bluff Trail, Chapel Hill, NC 27516, USA. Email:
robbiecox@mindspring.com
ISSN 1752-4032 (print)/ISSN 1752-4040 (online) # 2010 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/17524030903516555

Recovering the Strategic in Climate Communication

123

differences among practitioners and scholars over approaches to climate change

communication; they also revealed the frustration of many over the apparent failure
of recent efforts to educate and/or mobilize public concern. While some polls show
concern about global warming (e.g., Yale Project on Climate Change & George Mason
University Center for Climate Change Communication, 2009), others trace a decline
in the publics sense of urgency (Gallup, 2008, 2009; Pew Research Center for the
People & the Press, 2009a), a drop-off in news coverage (Boykoff & Mansfield, 2009;
Ward, 2008), a decline in the number of Americans who believe that global warming
is occurring (Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, 2009b), and a belief
that news media exaggerate the seriousness of the issue (Gallup, 2009; Rasmussen
Reports, 2009). Krugman (2009, p. A21) echoed this when he observed that, climate
scientists have, en masse, become Cassandras*gifted with the ability to prophesy
future disasters, but cursed with the inability to get anyone to believe them;
nobody, he said, wants to hear about it or do anything to avert it.
Other responses, nevertheless, suggest that a growing number of practitioners and
scholars, despite differences, are intent to offer analyses of the challenges, sources of
resistance, and empirical and/or theoretical support for more effective communication about climate change. A recent issue of this journal (July 2009), for example,
took as its assignment to respond directly to the challenges of [climate change]
motivation and mobilization, by offering analyses of the historical contexts . . .,
political initiatives, practices of resistance, and theoretical significance of discourses
about climate change (Carvalho & Peterson, 2009, p. 131).
Still, much of the scholarship in this area has focused on the discursive
representations, framing, and perceptions of climate change itself and its seriousness,
rather than the relationships among specific communicative efforts (e.g., framing) and
their strategic or consequential potential within the economic, political, and ideological
systems in which energy policy is embedded. Carvalho (2008, p. 8) comes closest in
asking, What are the relations between political action or inaction and given forms of
discursive construction of climate change? Similarly, Carvalho and Peterson (2009,
p. 131; emphasis added), in introducing the special issue of this journal on climate
change, propose that a primary communication challenge lies more in mobilizing a
relatively aware constituency than in persuading more people to accept the scientific
consensus. I believe this is a pivotal suggestion for future research. I would like,
therefore, to focus on the implications of such a call that follow from the ambiguous
positioning of mobilization in recent climate communication campaigns.
As a heuristic for communication research, mobilization, is often positioned
uncertainly between (1) an analysis of communicative acts that mobilize, for
example, apocalyptic frames that have the potential to motivate or move certain
publics to act (Foust & Murphy, 2009); and (2) an account of intended purposes or
expected consequences, i.e., mobilization that enables a particular end (e.g., denial of a
permit for a coal-fired power plant). Furthermore, the latter appears to presuppose
an explanation of the intentional or strategic alignment of the mobilization. By this,
I mean the assumptions about the relationships among a mobilized public, the mode
of influence or leverage presumed from this, and the expected consequences of such

124 J. R. Cox

influence, i.e., how specific communicative efforts are related to expected outcomes
or effects within a system of power.
I would like to pursue this line of inquiry and argue that the neglect of strategic
alignments in recent climate communication campaigns too often have caused such
campaigns to be non-adaptive at the scale and/or urgency required by the
complexities of climate change. Id like to illustrate this by describing what I believe
are limits to the usual assumptions about mobilization in public will campaigns
(Salmon, Post, & Christensen, 2003), particularly as these become our models for
climate change communication.
I also want to describe the thinking in one climate campaign that appears to have
achieved an alignment between its communicative efforts and the potential of these
to influence subsequent events. Specifically, by examining the Sierra Clubs Beyond
Coal (2009) initiative, I want to suggest a view of the strategic as a heuristic or mode
of analysis for identifying the sites or openings within a network of contingent
relationships and the potential of certain communicative efforts to interrupt or
leverage change within such a network.
Mobilization and Public Will Campaigns
It may be helpful, initially, to distinguish climate change communication that aims to
influence policy or system behavior from that aimed at changing individual,
voluntaristic behaviors*for example, campaigns encouraging us to recycle or install
compact fluorescent light bulbs. While both employ a range of communicative efforts
(e.g., framing), the latter traditionally succeed when a targeted population alters its
personal behavior in a desired way. With the former*campaigns to alter policy
behavior*changes in audiences attitudes and/or behaviors are a strategic condition of
a wider objective, i.e., mobilized constituencies, themselves, are pivotal in influencing
a wider chain of events or outcomes at the policy or system level.
The assumption of a meditative, strategic role of public audiences is the defining
characteristic of what Salmon et al. (2003, p. 4) have called public will campaigns.
They distinguish these as organized, strategic initiatives designed to legitimize and
garner [mobilize] public support . . . as a mechanism of achieving . . . change. They
are strategic because the initiatives used*agenda building, framing, social marketing,
etc.*are organized to produce a series of wider effects. Indeed, such campaigns are
defined this way precisely because they mobilize the newly educated public will in
ways that align with wider effects and an outcome beyond personal behavior-change.
I believe recent scholarship in climate communication (e.g., Moser, in press; Moser
& Dilling, 2007) implicitly assumes a similar meditative, strategic function as the
public will campaign approach. I would argue, however, that such communication*
at least, as often conceived*is non-adaptive at the scale and the timetable required to
address the complexities of climate science and energy policy. This is particularly the
case in changes required in carbon economies of energy production, pricing, and
distribution, as well as the regulatory and ideological apparatuses, and sunk carbon
costs (Brulle & Jenkins, 2006, p. 84) which underpin these systems. As a

Recovering the Strategic in Climate Communication

125

consequence, the assumption of a strategic alignment that is relatively

straightforward*i.e., between popular mobilization, on the one hand, and
subsequent changes in this complex system, on the other hand*is increasingly
proving to be elusive.
It is not hard to understand the implicit assumption of such a meditative function
of public will in our research in climate communication. After all, it was a principal
tenet of the successful, environmental campaigns of an earlier era. These often
proceeded in a stepwise fashion:
1. identify a problem (for example, acid rain);
2. get a bunch of physical and social scientists to propose the technical and policy
solutions (e.g., scrubbers and a cap and trading scheme for SO2);
3. conduct a public education campaign to develop support for the solutions; and
4. mobilize that support by focusing it on decision makers to pass legislation
embodying that solution.1
This may have been a viable pathway to reform in the 1970s and 1980s, when the
environmental threats of the time (e.g., the impacts of acid rain on New England
lakes) were highly visible and amenable to specific*and often singular*policy
solutions. However, the assumptions of a mobilized public*either as communicative acts that mobilize or as mobilization that enables a particular end*do not
appear to be working in the case of energy policy and climate change. This is true, not
only due to the publics alleged resistance to technological solutions (Shellenberger
& Nordhaus, 2004, p. 9) but also for, at least, two other reasons.
First, opponents have become more sophisticated in mounting resistance to
climate campaigns by running equally effective public will initiatives and/or
manufacturing uncertainty about climate science itself (Cox, 2010; Jacques, Dunlap,
& Freeman, 2008). Weve seen this resistance in the carbon industrys multi-million
dollar TV ad campaigns for clean coal. As Brulle and Jenkins (2006, pp. 84
85)
remind us, powerful vested interests in the existing carbon-based economy . . . will
continue to define values that also mobilize public attitudes. As a consequence,
many climate scientists believe that efforts to educate the public about global
warming are failing miserably to translate knowledge into a constituency capable of
demanding political action that is adequate to the challenge before us (Krugman,
2009; Romm, 2009b, para. 5).
Second, such campaigns have so far failed in mobilizing a constituency capable of
demanding changes on the scale and timetable that climate and other system crises
require. This appears to be true both temporally (i.e., sufficient public will seems to
be absent as a weakened energy bill proceeds in the Congress, as I write), and also
politically. By this I mean the inability to align a mobilized public with the
complexities of either energy policy or the regional distribution of energy politics, i.e.,
oil and coal regions (e.g., Louisiana, Montana, and Indiana, as well as Alaska, Texas,
and Wyoming) exert very different pressures on politicians*both Republican and
Democratic*than regions where energy resources play a lesser role.

126 J. R. Cox

As a result, I believe the scale and complexity of system change, particularly in

addressing global warming, invite a rethinking of some of our assumptions about the
design and modes of influence of public will campaigns. Let me illustrate what I mean
by describing the neglect of the strategic in a recent climate mobilization effort, the
2007 Step It Up initiative.
Mobilization and the (Absence of) the Strategic
The Step It Up initiative was a one-day occurrence, on April 14, 2007. Tens of
thousands of activists, students, musicians, public officials, and others in 1,400 local
communities across the USA called on the Congress to Step It Up by reducing
carbon dioxide emissions by 80% by 2050. The idea for a series of community
events*coordinated by open source, social networking tools*was the brainchild
of environmental author and activist Bill McKibben and his students at Middlebury
College. The purpose of the campaign was to persuade the Congress to act to ensure a
reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century by mobilizing thousands of
citizens around a simple, urgent message (Endres, Sprain, & Peterson, 2009).
The advantage of the Step It Up approach*combining social media and grassroots
organizing*lay in empowering organizers to create locally adapted activities
embodying the message of 80% by 2050. The campaigns communication design
seemed smart and simple: mobilize tens of thousands of citizens to voice this message
to the Congress in simultaneous events on April 14, 2007. Indeed, the days
mobilization included a wide range of inspiring and creative events in all 50 states,
including events where:
. activists lined a lake shore near Seattle with bamboo poles to mark the levels that
scientists predict oceans will rise;
. organizers on the Boston Common placed laptops near the speakers stage for
emailing members of Congress;
. speakers at the Alamo in San Antonio evoked its history to call for a new energy
future; and
. yoga practitioners performed Sun Salutations in Salt Lake City to symbolize their
intention to reduce their own carbon footprint (Cox, 2009).

Afterward, McKibben (2009, p. xiv) claimed, the days demonstrations worked, that
is, Our demand*80 percent reductions by 2050*had been radical when we
began . . . [And although] we hadnt succeeded yet . . . wed helped jumpstart a
movement. This would have been a major achievement, indeed, if a single days
events helped jumpstart a movement or built a political constituency in the USA
for serious action on climate change. But did it?
I was fortunate to have access to analyses from a team led by Danielle Endres et al.
(2009) that interviewed participants and that tracked the aftermath of the Step It Up
rallies. The results were not encouraging. Although the days events were creative and
the participants enthusiastic, little happened afterwards. Organizers posted photos of

Recovering the Strategic in Climate Communication

127

themselves on Step It Ups website, and mainstream media and blogs like Grist.org
carried favorable reports the following day. The Endres et al. team, nevertheless,
reported that, despite generally positive coverage, it is doubtful that many viewers
and readers perceived SIU actions as a national protest of movement proportions
(Prelli, 2009, p. 85).
Although the original Step It Up team subsequently launched another decentralized initiative (350.org), the days following April 14 showed little or no political
follow-through at the policy level, the original goal of the days events. The emails,
blog posts, and photos did little to prompt the Congress to take up legislation on
climate change. Although the figure of 80% gained in popular discourse around this
time, as Prelli (2009, p. 92) noted in the days afterward, it seems doubtful that
congressional leaders were influenced, let alone compelled, by SIUs nationwide
action to adopt the SIU standard or take positions on the climate-change issue that
they otherwise would not have taken.
So, what happened? According to the public will model, the Step It Up initiative
appeared to do many things right: organizers mobilized thousands of participants at
rallies, concerts, and exhibits; and they communicated a simple message: tell
Congress to Step it Up by reducing 80% by 2050! As McKibben (2009, p. xvi)
said, the days strategy played out extraordinarily well. Participants believed they
were sending a message. We began with the image in our minds of pictures
streaming in from iconic places around America, and so it happened (McKibben,
2009, p. xvii).
The implicit, strategic assumption seemed to be that, with news (and images) of
enthusiastic and inspiring citizens sounding an alarm, more people would became
informed and would*consistent with a democratic polity*rise up and demand that
elected officials take necessary steps to protect our life-sustaining planet. In fact, this
turned out to be the assumption of many at the Step It Up events. For example, one
participant at the Seattle event told the Endres et al. team that holding up her
bamboo pole, visually illustrating the rise in sea levels, help people see what is
happening . . . [and] more and more awareness will lead to action (quoted in Sprain,
Norton, & Milstein, 2009, p. 290). Another participant at the Boston Common rally
believed, Just having all these people here means that the politicians cant ignore it
(quoted in Prelli, 2009, p. 90). Others expressed hope that, the people, like the local
politicians and the national politicians, actually do something, while another
confessed, I dont know how that happens, but I guess through everything*politics
and art and all that. Eventually, people will take action and do something about it
(quoted in Prelli, 2009, p. 91).
Such assumptions, of course, clash with other research suggesting that this is not
necessarily the case; politically appropriate behavior doesnt always follow from
environmental awareness. In a national study, Leiserowitz (2007, p. 44), for example,
found, Large majorities of Americans believe that global warming is real and
consider it a serious problem, yet global warming remains a low priority . . . and lacks
a sense of urgency for them. Orr (1992) once compared this conundrum to a
cartoon that showed scientists puzzling over how to balance an equation. One

128 J. R. Cox

scientist inserted, in the middle of the equation, then a miracle occurs (emphasis
added; quoted in Orr, 1992, p. 61). Orr (1992, p. 61) commented, Most strategies of
social change have similar dependence on the miraculous. Torgenson (1999, p. 22)
has argued that such a dependence is often true of environmental strategies
particularly, that is, the belief that as problems grow worse, more and more people
will be moved to join the green cause, thus enhancing its power and its chance of
making a real difference.
I believe, therefore, that the fragments of strategy (Orr, 1992, p. 61) in recent
mobilization initiatives such as Step It Up invite us to rethink climate change
communication at the scale of systems and from a heuristic of contingency that
allows us to identify expected consequences more strategically, i.e., as mobilization
that enables a certain end. Id like to offer some very tentative theses on such a
heuristic, and illustrate these in the context of an ongoing campaign that addresses
energy and climate change.
Beyond Coal: A Campaign to Leverage Capital
Burning coal to generate power has until recently been the source of over half of the
electricity in the USA. Globally, coal-burning plants are also one of the major sources
of carbon dioxide, a leading contributor to climate change. Since 2007, a growing
number of citizens, community activists, and environmental groups have sought to
defeat or delay the construction and/or operating permits for new coal-burning
power plants in the USA. The Sierra Club has taken a lead in these efforts, and its
Beyond Coal campaign illustrates the idea of a campaigns strategic alignment of
mobilization and its mode of influence or leverage that can enable wider outcomes or
effects (Beyond Coal).
The idea of leverage, of course, arises from Archimedes ancient claim, Give me a
place to stand and a lever long enough and I will move the world, i.e., the application
of a certain kind of action (assuming a place to stand) produces a dynamic that can
move*or leverage*a much larger force. As a discourse on power, then, we might say
that Archimedes principle of leverage requires two conditions: (1) a place to stand
within a system of power; and (2) an intervention or application of certain energy
able to re-direct the momentum of forces at this site.
A place to stand, importantly, is in relation to a site where lines of force intersect; it
is, therefore, a point where an intervention may occur*a way of affecting the
dynamic of forces at this site. In short, the strategic consists not only of a campaigns
communicative efforts (framing, message construction, etc.) and its mobilization, but
also alignment of these efforts with contingent openings within a system of power, as
well as a mode of influence or leverage that enables a campaign to take advantage of
such openings to achieve wider outcomes or effects. Let me illustrate by elaborating
on the Sierra Club Beyond Coal campaign.
Under the US Clean Air Act, the authority to build and operate coal-fired power
plants is contingent upon permits from state agencies, usually a utility commission.
And, while such entities may grant applicants the authority to build a plant, the

Recovering the Strategic in Climate Communication

129

capital required to do so is almost always beyond the ability of the electric utility
itself. Instead, financing depends upon institutional investors, firms like Morgan
Stanley or Goldman Sachs, and occurs only if these institutions are confident of
recovering their investments, once the utility is permitted.
As a result, the regulatory (and capital) requirements for a new coal-fired plant
have provided opponents a place to stand and site for their intervention, not only
in blocking individual permits, but also as a fulcrum for leveraging larger capital
flows in the US energy system. Simply put, the strategic challenge of the campaign is,
by increasing the cost of carbon*commensurate to its risk, i.e., its contribution to
climate change*it might be able to shift capital flows to non-carbon-based energy
sources*wind, solar, etc. (G. Haegele, personal communication, January 23, 2008).
By 2007, the US Energy Department had listed over 150 proposals for permits in a
major push to construct new or expand existing coal-fired power plants. Yet, few of
these proposals have been authorized. Indeed, as I write, 107 of the permits for new
coal-fired plants have been denied or quietly abandoned (B. Nilles, personal
communication, September 25, 2009). While stopping any one coal plant is a public
health success*after all, mercury and other air pollutants from these plants are a
major concern*the goal of systematically challenging the permits is more strategic:
denial of permits and delays in construction at multiple sites cumulatively have the
effect of signaling capital markets in ways that influence the direction of investment
in the broader energy economy and, therefore, the array of energy sources and
technologies coming online.
Specifically, delay of a plant increases construction costs*and thus increases risk
for institutional investors*while the denial of operating licenses jeopardizes the
expected return for capital investment in such utilities. Such signaling of risk, in turn,
has the potential to shift direction in capital investments toward renewable sources of
energy*wind, solar, and so forth. In fact, when the Department of Energy first listed
the proposed plants in 2007, it cautioned that, proposals to build new power plants
are often speculative . . . based upon the economic climate of . . . power generation
markets (IHS, 2007, p. 8).
In fact, the pressures created by citizen mobilization, lobbying, and media activities
around permit hearings (including threats of legal action) appear to have significantly
amplified market signals in this sector. With a growing number of coal-fired plant
permits denied or delayed, institutional investors have begun to notice. In 2008, three
major firms*Citigroup Inc., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., and Morgan Stanley*
announced that they were imposing new requirements for financing that will
make it harder for companies to build coal-fired power plants in the US. (Ball, 2008,
p. 1). With this, Beinecke (2008, p. 1) noted such firms are sending a potent signal to
the energy sector that it views dirty coal as shaky financial prospects and that the
smart money is heading toward cleaner, more sustainable energy options.
While shifts in capital flows are overdetermined, the early signs for the Sierra Club
Beyond Coal campaign and its coalition of allies are encouraging. The US Energy
Information Agency (2009), for example, reported that, while the net generation of
electricity from all energy sources dropped by 6.8% in June 2009 from the previous

130 J. R. Cox

year, largely due to recession, electricity generated from coal-fired plants decreased by
twice that amount (13.1%). Even larger drops in coal-fired electricity, as a percentage
of total generation, in February (15.1%) and March (15.3%) constituted the largest
decline in a quarter-century in the USA (US Energy Information Agency, 2009, p. 1).
Correspondingly, a shift to alternative energy sources appears to be underway. The
agency reported that hydroelectric power and other renewable sources (solar, wind,
geothermal, and biomass) actually increased as a percentage of electricity generation
in 2009, while wind turbines alone added over 42% of new electrical power capacity
in the USA (Nilles, 2009).
Conclusions
Citizen mobilization in Sierra Clubs Beyond Coal campaign, and its leveraging of
carbon pricing to signal capital markets, is only one example of a potential strategic
alignment of communicative acts and wider effects. Yet, its early success suggests that
we might rethink the idea of climate communication at the scale of systems, and not
simply as cognitive (framing) processes or the construction of meaning in individual
subjects, though this, too, is important. In this case, it suggests that we rethink
meaning as signaling within networks in which power is contingent upon certain
sites through which lines of authority and influence flow. Let me conclude, then, by
sketching some tentative theses toward such a rethinking of strategy in climate
communication campaigns.
1. The strategic is, first and foremost, a heuristic*a way of identifying a mode of
leverage within a network of contingent relationships.
2. Specifically, the strategic as leverage requires a place to stand, that is, a
relationship or access to a relevant site within a system of power.
3. Such sites have relevance to the degree they function as nodes in a network of
contingent relationships; that is, certain actions or determinations at these nodes
sustain, disrupt, or redirect lines of influence or the flow of power in this network.
4. The ability to alter the dynamic at relevant sites, therefore, depends upon an
intervention*the application of a certain force with the potential to redirect the
lines of authority or influence which intersect at this site.
5. Such an intervention may produce an effect in itself, but may also signal or
initiate a disturbance within the wider network (e.g., a reversal in regulatory
permits for coal may function to signal risk to institutional investors in the US
energy sector).
6. Furthermore, the effects of such signals may be particularly consequential, that is,
they may reconfigure power in a wider system (e.g., capital flows to alternative
energy sources).
7. Finally, the effect of similar interventions at multiple, relevant sites may amplify a
signal in the wider network and, therefore, reinforce transformations in the
direction of authority within this system.

Recovering the Strategic in Climate Communication

131

As a heuristic, then, the strategic is an accounting, a mode of describing what is

expected as the consequence of an action. This is another way of saying that it is an
attempt to account for communicative effects*how the application of a certain force,
and the citizen mobilizations aligned with this, enable or initiate a process of events
that influence larger effects within a system of power. And, finally, it is the hope that,
as climate communication practitioners and scholars, we leave behind the miraculous
and, instead, continue to nurture an ability to imagine or invent (rhetorical inventio)
appropriate practices of communication in those contingent moments in which
networks of power prove to be vulnerable.
Note
[1]

I am indebted to Greg Haegele, former Conservation Director of the Sierra Club, for this
analysis of traditional mobilization strategies.

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