^ Green Wedge? Mapping Dissent Against Climate Policy in Europe [20 MB]

We are inter- ested in the hidden wiring of public opinion and the ways in which various clusters of opinion are likely to constitute hurdles for the development and the implementation of the EGD, regardless of what the majority of citizens express in traditional survey data. [...] And the account of the European Commissioner for Energy Kadri Simson6 shows the lack of discussion between the institutional sphere and NGOs: although it is central between the accounts of the Commission, its President, and the DGs associated with the EGD (light blue community), it has no interaction outside this network (see Figure 20).7 The light blue community of DG Climate (see Figure 25) is l. [...] CONTENT, STYLE AND COMMUNITIES IN THE CLIMATE CONVERSATION 31 The virality of emotions and the use of memes Our research highlights a fundamental issue for EU institutions: that not only is there a lack of engagement between EU institutions and the rest of civil society, but that this lack of engagement is also due to the nature of the register used by institutions, institutional actors and policy. [...] The mix of gravity, irony and resignation feels relatively new, and cannot but highlight the gap between the emotional and tonal register of the online activist conversations (on both sides of the climate issue divide) and those of the institutions and policy-makers. [...] While they draw a parallel between the exploitation of nature and the exploitation of women, their main argument is rooted in a critique of capitalism as the main cause of climate change and the driver of exploitation across the board.