A climate for reduction? Futures imagined in newspaper coverage of UN climate summits

This article studies how futures were imagined in newspaper coverage of the UN climate summits in Bali (2007), Copenhagen (2009) and Cancún (2010) in the Finnish newspapers Helsingin Sanomat (HS) and Ilta-Sanomat (IS). The study employs a discourse-theoretical perspective to highlight the contingency of representations and the process of meaning-making. Articulations of futures are studied in relation to the argument that in climate change debates a sense of predestination, in the form of predictions inferred from climate models, prevails over ways of imagining futures that allow more room for human agency and social change. The “prestige paper” (HS) rated the summits high on its news agenda and covered climate treaty negotiations extensively while the “tabloid” (IS) provided more sporadic, often celebrity or scandal driven coverage. In both papers, futures were articulated in relation to the climate treaty which functioned as a nodal point in a binary dichotomy between a desired future articulated through emission reductions and an undesired future articulated through consequences of climate change. Beyond the immediate summit context other articulations of futures, relating to uncertainty (HS) and the probability of concrete climate change consequences (IS), emerged.