Fairy Tales of Climate Change Resilience. Greta Thunberg’s The Climate Book and Right-wing Discourse Strategies
摘要
This chapter shows that the concept of resilience is central to many of the contributions in Greta Thunberg’s The Climate Book (2022), a volume for which Thunberg has collected contributions from 105 scientists, activists, authors, and artists, all of whom are concerned with the climate crisis in one way or another and are leading figures in their respective fields. The chapter claims that The Climate Book not only presents the concepts of these contributors, but also implicitly opposes the resilience concepts of the political right, which use the term resilience as an excuse not to engage in climate change mitigation. Moreover, Thunberg’s volume itself functions as a resource of resilience through the use of narrative strategies and the use of the narrative structure of the fairy tale. The reference to the fairy tale makes it possible to emphasize both the urgency of the situation and the possibility of a happy ending and therefore hope. Most importantly, the use of the narrative structure illustrates that resilience on a planetary scale is not only—and probably not even primarily—a question of technology, economics, or science. Rather, it seems to be a matter of making and telling compelling stories.