Since the late 1980s, green consumerism has been hailed in the West as an efficient solution to environmental problems. However, Chinese consumers have been slow to warm up to eco-friendly products. Consumers prefer SUVs to hybrid cars, health supplements and snake oil medicines to organic foods and eco-fashion is still secluded in high-end designer studios. These choices contradict the findings of many sustainable lifestyle surveys that claim to register a rising desire for green products among the Chinese.

This book examines the psycho-cultural differences that disrupt the translation...

Despite the findings on global climate change presented by the scientific community, there remains a significant gap between its recommendations and the actions of the public and policy makers. So far scientists and the media have failed to successfully communicate the urgency of the climate change situation in such a way that long-term, comprehensive, and legally binding policy commitments are being made on the national and international level. This book examines the way the public processes information, how they perceive threats and other perceptual factors that have a significant effect...

Despite an overwhelming scientific consensus, climate change remains one of the most controversial issues of our time. Focusing on the rhetoric that surrounds the issue of climate change, this groundbreaking book analyses why the debate continues to rage and examines how we should argue when winning the argument really matters.

Going beyond routine condemnations of the wildest statements made by religious fundamentalists or spokespeople for fossil fuel interests, the book explains the mutually exacerbating problems that permit many of us greet catastrophic predictions with an...

Environmental ethics presents and defends a systematic and comprehensive account of the moral relation between human beings and their natural environment and assumes that human behaviour toward the natural world can and is governed by moral norms. In contemporary society, film has provided a powerful instrument for the moulding of such ethical attitudes.

Through a close examination of the medium, Environmental Ethics and Film explores how historical ethical values can be re-imagined and re-constituted for more contemporary audiences. Building on an extensive back-catalogue of...

As society has become increasingly aware of environmental issues, the challenge of structuring public participation opportunities that strengthen democracy, while promoting more sustainable communities has become crucial for many natural resource agencies, industries, interest groups and publics. The processes of negotiating between the often disparate values held by these diverse groups, and formulating and implementing policies that enable people to fulfil goals associated with these values, can strengthen communities as well as tear them apart.

This book provides a critical...

The vast majority of the world's population lives on or near the coast. These communities are an extraordinary and largely untapped resource that can be used to mitigate planetary disaster and foster environmental stewardship. Repeated waves of scientific fact and information are not inciting action, nor apparently producing enough momentum to change voting behaviour towards a progressive environmental politics. A critical coastal policy, underpinned by a deeper understanding of environmental communication, can offer something new to this status quo.

This study of contemporary political communication focuses on what is widely considered to be the most important environmental and political problem of our time: climate change. Its principal objective is to explore the transformations which politics has undergone in recent decades through the mediation of environmental discourse and, in so doing, to advance current understandings of environmental advocacy and contemporary Western political culture.

Climate change is increasingly understood as a post-political issue, widely seen as cutting across conventional left and right wing...

Given the urgency of environmental problems, how we communicate about our ecological relations is crucial. Environmental Communication Pedagogy and Practice is concerned with ways to help learners effectively navigate and consciously contribute to the communication shaping our environmental present and future.

The book brings together international educators working from a variety of perspectives to engage both theory and application. Contributors address how pedagogy can stimulate ecological wakefulness, support diverse and praxis-based ways of learning, and nurture...

This study of contemporary political communication focuses on what is widely considered to be the most important environmental and political problem of our time: climate change. Its principal objective is to explore the transformations which politics has undergone in recent decades through the mediation of environmental discourse and, in so doing, to advance current understandings of environmental advocacy and contemporary Western political culture.

Climate change is increasingly understood as a post-political issue, widely seen as cutting across conventional left and right wing...