‘Carbon footprint nationalism’: re-conceptualizing Finnish nationalism and national pride through climate change discourse

Abstract

During recent years media discussion over the gravity of climate change has increased rapidly. One of the most used bywords has been ‘carbon footprint’, a concept with a moral appeal to global responsibility and a sense of global environmental togetherness. However, ‘carbon footprint responsibility’ cannot be separated from nationalistically loaded affects and their representations but instead it has effected new articulations that support state-centric ideologies, offering a fresh starting point for re-conceptualizing the theories of nationalism. This article analyses how the Finnish media constructs a contradictory discourse in which the moral debate over carbon footprint responsibility merges with nationalistically loaded argumentation.