On the relative nature of adequate measures: Media representations of the EU energy and climate package

This paper aims to contribute to media studies on climate change through a study of the ways in which the adequacy of transnational measures of tackling climate change are represented in media outlets in the UK, Ireland, Sweden and Finland. Media texts on the European Union Energy and Climate Package, introduced in January 2008 and approved in modified form in December 2008, are analyzed in-depth. Through an exploratory cross-societal comparison of media representations, the paper traces some of the dynamics of contemporary environmental debates. We argue that the adequacy of proposed transnational measures for tackling climate change becomes a relative concept in the media: measures are not adequate or inadequate per se, but contingent upon social context and relative with regard to time and to the comparisons made.