A rhetorical history of 350.org's International Day of Climate Action

Abstract

Chapter 1, Introduction: Wait 'til It's Bad" introduces my dissertation as a scenic, rather than narrative, rhetorical history answering Marlia Banning's call for a way to respond to public doubts about climate change science. I explain how Burke's dramatistic theory of human motives provides a framework for my construction of three scenes of debate about the environment. I explain how Burke's theory of terminological screens provides a sensitive heuristic for analysis of the vocabulary used by Bill McKibben's group 350.org to persuade digital and embodied publics of the need to reduce carbon emissions. In chapter two, "Choosing Terminology in the Global Warming Drama," I provide a close reading of selected documents in scenes of pro- and anti-environmentalism in the decades before the International Day of Climate Action, an embodied and digital event organized by 350.org to influence decisions at the 2009 United Nations Framework Conference on Climate Change.^I analyzed the potential of vocabulary to motivate and de-motivate environmental activism. In chapter three, "Bill McKibben and 350.org: Circumferences and Reductions in the Rhetoric of a Social Movement," I argued that contracting and expanding terminological circumferences first establish and then limit the scope of 350.org's influence. My examination of McKibben's rhetorical efforts reveals his ability to manipulate terminological circumferences, but also his failure to deflect widespread public attention from the arguments of climate change deniers. In chapter four, "Overcoming Trained Incapacity," I created a new way of seeing the connection between Burke's concepts of the rottenness of perfection, trained incapacity, and piety by demonstrating how individuals acquire a vocabulary to express their worldview and subsequently rehearse and reiterate that worldview into a perfectly rigid set of beliefs capable of blinding the individual to other views.^Chapter 5, "Responsibilities of the Social Movement Leader: Piety or Rigidity" expands the overall conclusions of this study, its contributions to social movement rhetoric, and identifies ideas for further study"--Abstract.