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Risk and Safety; Real and Staged

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The Fossil-Fuelled Climate Crisis

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Abstract

The fossil-fuelled climate crisis brings risk and uncertainty, whereas solutions would bring safety and sustainability. The work of the pre-eminent social scientist of risk, Ulrich Beck, is critically assessed. Risk, risk assessment, and uncertainty are distinguished and scrutinized, as are risk calculability and cultural perceptions of risk, and the actualization of risk into disaster examined. Beck’s arguments that staging is needed to translate scientific findings into popular understanding, and that climate risk is hard to stage, are evaluated. Common stagings are assessed: ‘scare’em to death’, dramatic iconic images, and presenting the climate crisis as opportunities. Beck’s staging framework is then turned right side up by investigating the more significant staging of safety and of discounting danger. Several strategies are examined: staging of faith in market miracles, of mitigation as a job killer, of fossil fuels as poverty reduction, of blamelessness, and of fossil-fuel critics as hypocrites.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada

    Raymond Murphy

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Correspondence to Raymond Murphy .

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Murphy, R. (2021). Risk and Safety; Real and Staged. In: The Fossil-Fuelled Climate Crisis. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53325-0_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53325-0_7

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-53324-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-53325-0

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