Polar Bears and Energy-Efficient Lightbulbs: Strategies to Bring Climate Change Home

Abstract

Global climate change is the focus of climate politics organized across scales by a range of organizations. These organizations represent climate change in ways they hope will make the problem relevant to people and thereby inspire political action. The strategies require a choice of objects to bring climate change home to constituents. Some objects are ‘more local’ to certain constituencies—that is, they are more meaningful. Greenpeace Canada represents the impact of climate change via the object of the hungry polar bear. The Cities for Climate Protection campaign makes climate change relevant, in part, by its focus on the cost-saving benefits of energy efficiency. The process of localizing climate change constitutes society. I use feminist science studies as a theoretical basis to support my argument that organizations localizing climate change might choose objects that are more accountable to their constitutive effects on societies. I point out potential pitfalls in the choice of the polar bear and energy efficiency, and suggest some possibility in these objects.