Navigating US greenways: US political reflections in An Inconvenient Truth

Abstract

Environmental discourses resonate with certain intrinsic values over others and shape environmental behaviours. Political ideology offers a powerful values-based heuristic for evaluating environmental messaging. The USA is a major global producer of greenhouse gases and the greatest industrialized nation holdout to political reform. A deeper understanding of the specific political-ideological forces at play in the US environmental debate can yield greater understanding of domestic ideology-based tensions and international US intractability by offering insight to the evolution of the US environmental movement and its political supporters and adversaries at home. Understanding what occurs within the US mindset in environmental discussions can help representatives of other nations frame more effective arguments and lead to policy reform. A textual analysis of a US environmental artefact deemed key to raising US global warming awareness, the documentary An Inconvenient Truth (2006), reveals that US politician/creator Al Gore simultaneously appeals to each of the three disparate - and conflicting - US political ideologies (liberalism, traditionalist conservatism, and individualist conservatism). The result is a transcendence of global warming from its entrenched liberal identity to moral identity, beyond political ideology, making it more comfortably accessible by members of multiple political ideologies rather than just liberals. Understanding the inherent US political-ideological dynamics of global warming can help the progress of this movement by informing framing of policy-shaping arguments. © 2013 Taylor & Francis.