Wildfires in the US and Australia: NGO Polarization Amidst Political Polarization and Climate Disasters

Bates College Bates College

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Honors Theses Capstone Projects

5-2023

Wild9res in the US and Australia: NGO Polarization Amidst Wild9res in the US and Australia: NGO Polarization Amidst

Political Polarization and Climate Disasters Political Polarization and Climate Disasters

Kallie E. Polgrean

Bates College

, [email protected]

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Climate Disasters" (2023).

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Wildfires in the US and Australia:

NGO Polarization Amidst Political Polarization and Climate Disasters

An Honors Thesis

Presented to

The Faculty of the Department of Political Science

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the

Degree of Bachelor of Arts

By Kallie Polgrean

Lewiston, Maine

April 3, 2022

Table of Contents

Introduction......................................................................................................................................4

Chapter 1: Literature Review...........................................................................................................7

Chapter 2: Why the US and Australia?..........................................................................................27

Chapter 3: Methodology................................................................................................................ 31

Chapter 4: NGO Classifications.....................................................................................................37

Chapter 5: Analysis........................................................................................................................49

Chapter 6: Discussion.................................................................................................................... 81

Conclusion..................................................................................................................................... 89

References......................................................................................................................................92

Appendices...................................................................................................................................101

Acknowledgements

I want to thank the Bates College Politics Department for giving me the opportunity to work on

this project. I am so grateful to my thesis advisor, Professor James Richter, who never failed to

make himself available for the many questions and worries that came up along the way. His

support and guidance allowed me to complete this thesis through numerous setbacks surrounding

the creation of my research question and the daunting literature review.

To my friends and loved ones, thank you for being there to listen to my ideas and excitement

over this project and for always providing me with motivation and a place to relax. Mom, Dad,

Brynn, and Emma, you have all set an example of excellence for me which I hope to have at

least somewhat lived up to with the completion of this work.

This page wouldn’t be complete without a thank you to the yellow lab that has been with me

since third grade, watching me grow up and finally graduate college! I love you, Cody, thanks

for always greeting me at the door with a wagging tail when I came home to work on my thesis.

Introduction

As the effects of climate change loom closer each passing year, natural disasters appear to

have increased exponentially throughout the 21st century. The most recent Intergovernmental

Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report concluded that humanity is being pushed closer to the

brink of its ability to adapt to the impacts of climate change. An increase in extreme weather

events, resource scarcity, infectious diseases, displacement, infrastructure damage, and even

phenological changes are just a fraction of the dangerous factors accompanying a changing

climate.

In this work, I hone in on natural disasters in the form of catastrophic wildfires bringing

destruction and increased risk to the terrain and people of the United States and Australia.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) with the

US Department of Commerce, climate change is playing a role in more intense wildfires and the

increase in severe droughts that often cause them in the United States. In a 2021 study conducted

with support from the NOAA, it was found that climate change is the main cause of the increase

in fire weather in the Western United States.

The same can be said of bushfires in Australia,

where the fire season has lengthened each year as a result of increasing average temperatures on

the continent.

In the past decade, the acreage of land impacted by wildfires in both countries has

hit record highs, with examples including California’s 2018 Camp Fire that decimated over

150,000 acres and Australia’s 2019-2020 Black Summer Bushfire season that burned an

estimated 46 million acres across the country.

Both people and wildlife in the US and Australia are under threat from these catastrophic

mega-fires, and science supports the frightening truth that the danger is only going to increase.

When forest fires cause billions of dollars in damage and take the lives of citizens, these natural

Climate Council, “The Facts about Bushfires and Climate Change.”

NOAA, “Wildfire Climate Connection.”

IPCC, “Climate Change 2022.”

disasters become enmeshed with the politics of climate change. As the direct impacts of climate

change begin to reveal themselves, environmental politics has gained heightened attention from

policymakers in Washington and Canberra. However, the past decade has sown deep political

divisions in both countries, representing a threat to the implementation of climate mitigation,

adaptation, and resilience measures.

Coinciding with growing climate impacts is an increase in political polarization in both

the United States and Australia. Both nations have seen rises in disagreement, antagonism, and

confrontation between the two primary political parties within their respective governing bodies.

Oftentimes, climate change is at the center of these disagreements, representing a controversial

subject that can be argued from a multitude of viewpoints. For some, implementing mitigation

measures such as carbon taxes, switching to renewable energy, or banning fossil fuels is an

unacceptable way to deal with the problem, as it sacrifices economic growth for the sake of

environmental protection. Many individuals, including officeholders, doubt the legitimacy of the

science backing climate change and are therefore hesitant to agree to policies that deal with the

issue. On the other end, some people take a strong stance on the need for progressive climate

action and the dire consequences that would confront the planet in the case of inaction. These

contrasting stances on the severity of climate change and the need for action are just one

symptom of political polarization in the US and Australia.

This research seeks to further an understanding of how Australian and American forest

fires may impact non-governmental organizations’ (NGOs) advocacy. Scholars such as Hadden

(2015) and Ciplet et al. (2015) have identified a recent split over the past fifteen years among

environmental organizations falling along increasingly radical or reformative lines, indicating

disagreement on how to approach the issue of climate change.

In this work, I aim to build an

understanding of what variables may contribute to polarization within the society of NGOs

associated with forests and the environment. Have non-governmental organizations become more

radical over time? The period in question begins in the year 2007 and ends in our current year.

Utilizing the existing literature on framing and NGO operations within climate change politics, I

analyze the emotional framing positions of eight environmental and forest-associated NGOs in

the United States and Australia along a radical-reformist spectrum. I use qualitative approaches

and sentiment analysis to examine emotional framing in the form of wildfire-related press

releases, social media posts, and newsletters from these eight organizations. I find that

polarization among the eight NGOs has been increased by the dual factors of political

polarization on the issue of climate in the USA and Australia and the experience of catastrophic

wildfires.

Ciplet et al., Power in a Warming World, 157.; Fitzgerald and Rogers, “Radical Social Movement

Organizations,” 581; Hadden, Networks in Contention, 3.

Literature Review

NGOs and ENGOs

There are a wide variety of NGOs that operate domestically, internationally, and

transnationally. From business and industry non-governmental organizations (BINGOs) to

market advocacy NGOs (MANGOs), and environmental NGOs (ENGOs), there is an acronym

out there for nearly any kind of organization operating today. Many NGOs are involved directly

in monitoring and setting standards for businesses and transnational corporations.

We can draw

a further distinction between service-oriented and advocacy-oriented NGOs, where advocacy

NGOs lean towards social activism, information dispersal, lobbying, or networking surrounding

a perceived problem. It is the advocacy category of NGOs that I focus on in my work. Many

advocacy-based non-governmental organizations aim to change society in some way by

attempting to mobilize citizens, policymakers, and companies.

I have chosen to analyze non-governmental organizations because they are key actors in

the environmental movement that can pressure the public and governments for climate change

action. Climate change is a global issue, yet it requires action at local and national levels as well

as internationally. Scholars such as Princen and Finger (1994) and Henry and Sundstrom (2021)

emphasize that environmental organizations provide the necessary link between international

norms that need to be translated to national climate change norms.

In addition to this ability to

navigate the two levels, non-governmental organizations that exist within domestic contexts

Princen and Finger, Environmental NGOs in World Politics, 30.; Henry and Sundstrom, Bringing Global

Governance Home, 216.

Espinosa and Treich, “Moderate Versus Radical NGOs,” 1478.

Beer et al., “NGOs: Between Advocacy,” 6.

provide scientific expertise, policy recommendations, and potential technological innovation to

governments and other organizations or partnerships.

Existing NGO scholarship highlights a wide variety of avenues NGOs have gone down in

their pursuit of influence and change. Keck and Sikkink (1998) argue that NGOs use ideas,

leverage, venue shopping, arguments, and framings, while Rodela et al. (2016) emphasize the

leveraging of cognitive, material, social, and symbolic resources as the key to NGO influence.

Ciplet et al. (2015) also highlight resource-oriented NGO tactics as well as their level of access

to key events, actors, and other organizations.

Other scholars focus on advocacy, service

provision, and regulation as the key capabilities NGOs bring to the table.

These works envision

the physical and immaterial capacities that are available to non-governmental organizations, of

which I hone in on the intangible, ideological stances promoted by environmental organizations.

I hold that environmental NGOs in particular utilize ideological stances to a great extent in their

operations, given the contentious topic of climate change. It is vital for an

environmentally-affiliated group to establish their values, beliefs, and solutions on the topic as a

frame for their pursuant actions. If one of the goals of this kind of NGO is to mobilize public

opinion and governmental attention to climate change, beginning with an ideology that informs

the audience of how to envision the problem is the most logical place to begin.

It is clear that governments have perhaps the greatest capability to introduce climate

change mitigation and bring certain issues to the table, but the proliferation of non-governmental

organizations (NGOs) over the past few decades has brought new solutions and knowledge to the

political sphere. Non-governmental organizations are in a unique position when it comes to

Beer et al., “NGOs: Between Advocacy.”

Ciplet et al., Power in a Warming World.

Keck and Sikkink, “Activists Beyond Borders.”; Rodela et al., “Developing Environmental NGO

Power.”

environmental advocacy as they operate outside of the bounds of government. Since the 1980s,

the number of non-governmental organizations has grown sharply, attributed to many as a

response to the globalizing world.

Today there are thousands of NGOs operating across the

globe and in different sectors, with a recent upswing in environmental organizations over the past

decade.

Climate change is global in scale, yet environmental organizations must ultimately

decide how to engage with important actors and the general public that implement policies at the

national level. As the next section will address, how NGOs choose to engage with actors outside

of their organization is not uniform and it is their distinctions that comprise the bulk of my thesis.

Radical vs Reformist Approach

A multitude of discourses surrounding how to understand and respond to climate change

have proliferated across public and political domains.

Naturally, this means environmental

advocates will come at the issue from a wide variety of angles and personal assumptions. In

social movement scholarship, a distinction has been made between radical and reformist

organizations. This concept has worked its way into climate change activism within NGO

society. According to Tarrow and Tilly (2009), there are ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ when it comes

to activism.

Dryzek (2022) establishes a useful way to conceptualize environmental discourses

by classifying actors as either reformist or radical.

‘Insider’ or reformist organizations often

operate within existing institutional structures, emphasizing a gradual, step-by-step process

where social or political change can be achieved more efficiently in the long run.

Radical

organizations, also known as ‘outsiders’, tend to seek a change or dismantling of existing power

Dzhengiz et al., “Emotional Framing of NGO Press Releases,” 2468.; Espinosa and Treich, “Moderate

Versus Radical NGOs,” 1478.

Dryzek, “The Politics of the Earth,” 13.

Tarrow and Tilly, “Contentious Politics and Social Movements,” 6.

Dryzek, “The Politics of the Earth,” 5.

Hadden, Networks in Contention, 10.

Hall-Jones, “The Rise and Rise of NGOs.”

structures, stressing the value of drastic, large changes as a more effective route to avoid the

longer time frame often found with a reformist perspective.

Key features of radical organizations are a non-hierarchical and anti-bureaucratic internal

structure, often combined with anti-capitalist sentiments.

According to Ciplet et al. (2015)

along with Fitzgerald and Rodgers (2000), radical organizations face larger barriers to effective

mobilization and influence. Oftentimes, radical groups are discredited within larger power

structures and the social movement area as a whole, meaning reformist approaches tend to be

associated with greater resources and links to power.

Due to the difficulty of achieving

mainstream attention and the possibility of more moderate organizations aiming to weaken

support for radical change, radicals often rely on mass action demonstrations and grassroots

organization as well as evolving and innovative forms of communication.

Reformist, also associated with moderate organizational stances, are conceptualized by

Yaziji and Doh (2010) as tending to be more satisfied with existing institutions, calling for small

changes to the system that will not influence their access to resource pools found within

institutional contexts.

Because much of their leveraging power comes from lobbying

governmental institutions, moderate or reformist NGOs tend to target corporations as the ‘bad

eggs’ in need of reform. Their tactics to pursue this aim include the utilization of dominant

institutions such as courts, legislators, and regulatory bodies.

Along with these potential

avenues for action, reformative NGOs seek to mobilize public opinion, similarly to radical

Ibid., 90.

Yaziji and Doh, NGOs and Corporations, 9,81.

Ibid., 580,585,589.; Espinosa and Treich, “Moderate Versus Radical NGOs,” 1479.

Ciplet et al., Power in a Warming World, 157.; Fitzgerald and Rogers, “Radical Social Movement

Organizations,” 581.

Fitzgerald and Rogers, “Radical Social Movement Organizations,” 574.

Ibid.

NGOs but with a greater emphasis on common-sense or widely accepted beliefs about a

subject.

It is vital to recognize that radical and reformative organizations are not required to

remain as such. Dzhengiz et al. (2021) along with den Hond and de Bakker (2007) argue that the

reformative-radical divide is more akin to a spectrum, where organizations can shift their stance

over time, or take some radical and some reformist actions at differing times.

This means as

political contexts change over time, environmental organizations may likewise fall along

different places within the radical-reformist spectrum.

NGO Polarization

I build off of the conception of an increasing rift between radical and reformist

organizations to explain what may cause shifts among radical and reformist environmental

organizations. Both Hadden (2015) and Ciplet et al. identify a fragmentation between

reformative and radical NGOs working within the domain of climate politics.

Ciplet et al.

conclude that three sets of NGOs have emerged from this fragmentation: professionalized NGOs

that continue to cooperate with the government for incremental change, social movement and

advocacy NGOs pushing for radical change, and those who have stayed away from participation

entirely, leaning towards grassroots action.

Hadden argues that a factor explaining heightened NGO polarization was the 2009

COP15 in Copenhagen. At the conference, some organizations sought to continue their work

within existing institutions, using conventional tactics and science-based framing, while the other

side moved outside of these norms, pursuing radical approaches that utilized a justice-based

Ciplet et al., Power in a Warming World, 157.

Hadden, Networks in Contention, 3.

Dzhengiz et al., “Emotional Framing of NGO Press Releases,” 2468.; Den Hond and De Bakker,

“Ideologically Motivated Activism,” 904.

Ibid.

framing approach.

Hadden attributes this divide to growing political opportunities for

organizations to mobilize on climate change around 2009, giving space for more diverse

organizations to enter the fold of climate politics and bringing new tactics and beliefs to the

network.

As new coalitions sprang up in the world of climate activism, many began to take

more confrontational, dramatic action such as organizing protests and demonstrations. Hadden

argues that this was a response to ease organizational frustration fueled by a belief that the NGOs

were not able to directly impact public discourse.

Also creating this rift were divisions in the

social network of climate change, where less coordination and overlap in membership likewise

pushed organizations apart from one another.

What may be the ramifications of a heightened radical-reformist divide? Fitzgerald and

Rodgers conclude that the existence of radicals within a network is generally thought to have a

somewhat beneficial effect on the moderates.

Drawing from Haines (1998), the extreme stances

often taken by radicals often make those of the reformists appear more reasonable to the public

and policymakers.

If the environmental NGO society continues to fragment along

radical-reformist lines, one could argue that moderates will find more support for their platform,

which could be seen as a potentially positive impact of heightened polarization. Taking a more

pessimistic view, Ciplet et al. and Hadden suggest that ENGO fragmentation has led to ‘limited

coordination’(Ciplet et al.) between environmental organizations, which in Hadden’s view

disrupts the environmental movement’s ability to communicate and coordinate collective

action.

This latter view seems reasonable. ENGOs are often praised for their capacity to bridge

Ciplet et al., Power in a Warming World, 157.; Hadden, Networks in Contention, 56.

Haines, “Black Radicalization.”

Fitzgerald and Rogers, “Radical Social Movement Organizations,” 574.

Ibid., 47.

Ibid., 33.

Ibid., 10,19.

Hadden, Networks in Contention, 3.

the gap between parties, nations, and other coalitions, but a ‘network in contention’ will be

hard-pressed to accomplish these tasks. If the environmental network becomes so polarized that

NGOs are unable to communicate solutions and unite the public under a common cause, we will

have lost a major player in the fight against climate change. I do not doubt that environmental

NGOs have shifted along the radical-reformist spectrum, but what I aim to clarify is how they

have changed over time, and what may be the factors creating these changes.

Building on the Literature

If, in fact, environmental NGOs have become more fragmented, I investigate how these

divisions have changed since the year 2007 and what may have caused this. To build an

explanation for NGO polarization, I look at conditions of political polarization in the US and

Australia along with experiences of wildfires as climate-induced disasters.

The goal of many environmental NGOs is to mobilize public support for specific issues,

and I argue that public opinion also informs the actions of NGOs. In empirical work that looks at

concrete data on public perceptions of natural disasters, personal experience emerges as a

deciding factor in how people respond to climate change. The work done by Baccini and

Leemann as well as Konisky et al. explores the effect of proximity to natural disasters and level

of concern for climate change after the event. Both of their findings indicate that the level of

concern for climate change as expressed through opinion surveys and voting patterns increases

up to a year after an experience with a natural disaster when the participant lived within a short

distance of the event.

Baccini and Leemann argue that natural disasters create a window of

opportunity after small and local disasters where voters are more sensitive to questions of climate

change.

Baccini and Leemann, “Do Natural Disasters Help the Environment?” 482.

Baccini and Leemann, “Do Natural Disasters Help the Environment?”; Konisky et al., “Extreme

Weather Events and Climate Change Concern.”

It is widely accepted that advocacy NGOs seek to mobilize public opinion in much of the

work that they do. Given this apparent link between the experience of a natural disaster and

concern for climate change, I argue the same trend is paralleled within NGO media. In the

months following a catastrophic wildfire in the country that the NGO operates within, I expect

increasing emotional framing, specifically negative, as a result of heightened awareness of

climate change-induced events. Konisky et al.’s study is useful in its US-centered data collection,

providing more support for the idea that natural disasters change public perceptions of climate

change. Overall, it appears that personal experience involving extreme weather plays a role in

public mobilization and participation in politics, specifically climate change politics.

One cannot separate organizations from the people they are composed of. Individuals

working or volunteering for NGOs bring their opinions into the organization, so if the public

becomes concerned about severe wildfires, the NGO will more than likely experience the same.

Given the necessity for NGOs to gain traction with public opinion and the confirmation that

natural disasters impact public concern for climate change, I conclude that increasingly

catastrophic wildfires may be one of the driving factors pushing NGOs to become more radical

and polarized. Wildfires are inherently negative events that often inspire negative sentiment, and

if the public expresses this negative sentiment, so too will NGOs affiliated with forests and the

environment.

Alongside climate-induced disasters, I argue that political polarization in the United

States and Australia has also played a role in NGO polarization. Polarization, or the division of

groups into sharply contrasting beliefs or ideologies, has been studied primarily as an American

phenomenon, yet the polarization of politics has occurred within democracies across the globe,

including in Australia.

I utilize Pierson and Schickler’s (2020) work to discuss political

Carothers and O’Donahue, Democracies Divided.

polarization in the United States. According to the authors, over the past two decades, America

has moved from an area of low political polarization to a system of high political polarization.

The increase of polarization in politics is attributed to the 1960s and 1970s, when Republicans

and Democrats increasingly aligned themselves as conservative or liberal surrounding the topic

of race.

Clearing up the distinctions between the parties, the decades after saw Americans

increasingly stratifying themselves and their ideologies according to a particular party. The

political parties also became more pluralized, ensuring continued disagreement both within and

outside of the party system.

Australian polarization has been less far-reaching than in the US,

but polarization surrounding climate change has become a central issue in the country. Tranter

(2013) argues that attitudes to climate change fall along party lines, with both the public and

policymakers themselves becoming increasingly polarized about how to deal with climate

change and, in some earlier cases, whether it even presents a threat.

Tranter discusses how

climate was used as a wedge issue for the conservative, Liberal, party to distance itself from

Labor and the Greens. The 2009 election of climate-denier Abbott as Prime Minister appears as

the beginning of political polarization on climate in Australia.

The polarization of American and Australian politics likely has a hand in influencing

NGO polarization for many of the same reasons as catastrophic climate disasters. Political

polarization is reflected in tensions within society and the polity, where deadlocks, progress

followed by backsliding, and tempestuous election cycles are reinforced by the general public

but also demonstrated within elite circles of policymaking. I argue that NGOs, specifically the

domestic NGOs I focus on in this work, must remain privy to the political atmosphere of the

Ibid., 400.

Tranter, “The Great Divide,” 398.

Ibid.

Pierson and Schickler, “Madison's Constitution Under Stress.”

country they operate within. When the parties are able to cooperate and pass bipartisan

legislation, NGOs can rely less on letting politics motivate their actions, while periods of

disagreement and tension, such as we have been seeing for the past fifteen or so years, call for

organizations to realign their outreach in a manner that resonates with the public. Therefore, as

political parties in Australia and America reached two extremes of ‘right and left’, so too have

NGOs shifted further apart between radicalism and reform. To measure the extent of this

polarization, I utilize the concept of emotional framing. The following sections address framing

as a theoretical concept and explain the use of emotional framing as a logical framework with

which to measure NGO polarization.

Framing Theory

Framing theory has spread throughout a multitude of disciplines, from psychology,

anthropology and linguistics, to politics.

Hallahan (1999) argues that framing as a rhetorical

tool addresses the creation of messages, but also connects to the psychological motivations

underpinning human analysis, judgment, and decision-making.

Keck and Sikkink, citing

McAdam et al. (1996) define framing as ‘conscious strategic efforts by groups of people to

fashion shared understandings of the world and of themselves that legitimate and motivate

collective action’.

Framing theory covers a wide lens that encompasses the attribution of

meaning within specific messages and how they are intended to influence the audience. The

creator of the frame can stratify pieces of information that are relevant or irrelevant to the frame

they are constructing, leaving out unimportant or potentially weakening viewpoints. Entman

defines framing on the individual level as ‘clusters of ideas’ that are stored within the mind to

Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders, 90.

Hallahan, Seven Models of Framing,” 206.

Benford and Snow, “Framing Processes and Social Movements,” 611.

guide information processing.

This involves both the creation of a message by a messenger and

the reception of that message, along with its impact on the decisions and interpretations of the

receiver. Framing acts as a possible method of promoting an understanding of the world or of

specific issues at the individual and collective levels.

When applied to social movements or civil society, framing entails a set of beliefs or

meanings that compel the activities of a social movement organization.

This is referred to as

collective action framing, an activity that results in the cohesion of people’s understandings of a

problem, and who or what to blame for it.

In my work, the concept of collective action framing

can be applied to the tactics utilized by various environmentally-affiliated organizations. Each

group seeks to define its media and literature in a manner that compels the general public to

generate a shared understanding of the threats wildfires pose, and who or what causes them. In

the case of logging associations and wood product professional organizations, it is often natural

weather patterns or climatic variations that are to blame for increasingly severe fire seasons, if

any blame is attributed at all. In the case of progressive environmental coalitions, it tends to be

the logging industry and extractive practices that further degrade forests, assisting climate

change in worsening fire events. For the organizations I examine in this work, frames must be

carefully constructed to resonate with people and gain the most support. I choose to employ

emotional framing as a concept that allows me to measure levels of radicalism among the NGOs

studied.

Emotional Framing

Language, rhetoric, and the emotions that they evoke are a reflection of the framing

process. The tone and significance of wording within organizational press releases, social media

Ibid., 615.

Benford and Snow, “Framing Processes and Social Movements,” 614.

Entman, “Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm,” 53.

posts, newsletters, etc. all carry with them an attribution of meaning. Emotional framing refers to

the process in which rhetoric or language that is intended to evoke specific kinds of emotions

results in a negative or positive attribution by the audience.

Framing has a psychological

element, as the introduction of new frames to the human mind may result in the creation of new

psychological connections between framed issues and an individual’s underlying values.

The

evocation of certain types of emotions can promote action or awareness of specific subjects.

Emotional framing is a valuable analytical tool for this work because identifying instances of

emotional evocation in NGO media allows me to attribute these sentiments to a particular

ideological stance, whether it be radical, reformist, or neutral.

To understand the role emotions play in social movements and activism, I turn to Jasper’s

(2018) five key distinctions in types of emotions. These five types are reflex emotions, urges,

moods, affective commitments, and moral commitments.

Reflex emotions are chosen as the set

of emotions to be analyzed within my work because they refer to relatively quick, knee-jerk

reactions to specific events or information.

Although they tend to subside just as quickly as

they arise, my conception of reflex emotions is that they are often the kind evoked by stimuli

such as social media posts or press releases, where small bits of information are introduced to

create an immediate impact on an audience. Jasper conceives of the negative emotion of anger as

an external motivator, where perceived injustice or wrongdoing results may result in outside

action, whereas fear causes introspection or a self-critical look at our anxieties and weaknesses.

Within my research, I identify instances of emotional framing where NGOs attempt to elicit

Ibid., 42.

Ibid.

Jasper, The Emotions of Protest, 4.

Anspach and Draguljić, “Effective Advocacy,” 617.

Baek and Yoon, “Guilt and Shame: Environmental Message Framing Effects," 441.

negative emotions within their publicly-oriented media, including their websites, newsletters,

and social media.

The work conducted by Giorgi (2017) in her study of emotional and cognitive resonance

is the key framework that this paper will utilize in understanding the concept of emotional

framing. Giorgi establishes the concept of resonance as a key factor in the success of framing,

defined as a bridge that connects the frame to the audience.

She distinguishes between two

kinds of resonance: cognitive and emotional. While cognitive resonance deals with

understanding and beliefs, emotional resonance refers to the ability of a frame to ‘move’ or

‘shake’ its listener.

Given the relative lack of literature regarding emotional framing, I use this

conception of emotional resonance to describe the term ‘emotional framing’. Therefore,

emotional framing involves the use of rhetoric that expresses a certain positive or negative

sentiment that affects the audience. My conception of emotional framing is that it both possesses

and promotes an emotional response to specific issues or events.

Within media conglomerates, corporations, and managerial firms, many studies have

found a link between emotional framing and increased participation, attention, or support for the

idea being framed.

Given the divisiveness of climate change and the difficulty of garnering

widespread support for pro-environmental causes, concerted framing has become an important

tactic for environmentalist organizations. At the level of environmental advocacy, ENGOs tend

to strategically frame their mobilization efforts to resonate psychologically with audiences.

Along with the concepts of efficacy and psychological proximity, ENGOs utilize emotion to

elicit a response from target audiences, meaning the inducement of sadness or anger has a

Anspach and Draguljić, “Effective Advocacy.”

Geradts et al., “Social Entrepreneurial Action.”; Raffaelli et al., “Frame Flexibility.”; Lee,

“Asset-Oriented Framing.”

Ibid., 721.

Giorgi, “The Mind and Heart of Resonance,” 712.

positive impact on levels of public support for the organization’s campaign.

A study conducted

by Anspach and Draguljić finds that using efficacy, also known as motivational frames, results in

a null effect on audience behavior and support, but evoking psychological proximity to specified

issues and resonating with emotions such as sadness and anger had tangible success in ‘garnering

political support’.

These studies confirm that there is a relationship between emotional framing

and bolstered support for a variety of issues, from environmental causes to corporate and

business interests. Therefore, the evocation of emotions has the potential to be an effective tactic

for NGOs to utilize.

My work adds more content to this existing analysis of emotional framing, as eight

organizations associated with forestry and the environment are analyzed according to their

emotional framing techniques, with a specific focus on positive and negative sentiment. There

are three classifications for these NGOs based on their mission statements and preferred action:

radical, reformist, and professional. I examined four NGOs from the United States: Greenpeace

USA, American Forests, National Forest Foundation, and American Loggers Council. The four

Australian NGOs are Greenpeace Australia Pacific, Greening Australia, the Australian Forest

and Climate Alliance, and Forest and Wood Products Australia.

I hypothesize that the identified radical organizations will respond to moments of

political transition and intensifying forest fires by utilizing more emotional framing that evokes

negative sentiment. Because these organizations have already displayed a willingness to take

confrontational action when it comes to the environment, I argue that these actions will be

complemented by enhanced negative framing that expresses frustration and anger with the

current state of things. In my view, negative sentiment can be paired with radicalism because the

Ibid., 631.

Ibid.

goals of a radical social movement are to replace existing institutions, meaning a negative

attribution of current systems must be formed. As fires worsen in both countries and climate

laggards such as Trump and Abbott are installed in office, I hypothesize that both branches of

Greenpeace will take this as an impetus for pushing forth their radical agendas, which involve

emotional framing that relies on negativity.

I hypothesize that the reformist organizations will be confronted with the dual issues of

political polarization and increasing forest fires as a motivator for increased reliance on

emotional framing. I believe that some organizations may be more willing to assume a radical

stance, whereas other reformists, such as the NFF who were chartered by Congress, will shy

away from overt negativity, but may choose to decrease their positive sentiment evocation. I

think that over time, these organizations have been forced by severe fires and political

polarization to decide whether they will continue operating within the mainstream activist

channel which relies upon existing institutions, or begin to distance themselves from their bodies

and become more radical. I say this because both of these conditions have heightened to the

extent that they cannot easily be ignored by the NGOs, specifically the increasing prominence of

forest fires in the public. For these organizations to stay relevant, they must respond to the

factors around them that are influencing public opinion.

The professional organizations are likely to be unwavering in their framing because they

are not advocacy-based, but service provisioning. Lumber and wood product organizations rely

on the cooperation of the government to allow continued harvesting of trees, so administrations

with a lack of emphasis on environmental causes will likely be met with positivity by the

professional organizations. I do not expect to see major increases in negative sentiment within

the American Loggers Council and Forest and Wood Products Australia because it is in their best

interest for political institutions to remain operating as they have been.

I stress here that the two variables, climate-induced wildfires and general political

polarization, influence NGO behavior in mutually constitutive ways. In some years, where fires

are not severe but political tensions run high, NGO emotional framing will be influenced,

whereas some years fraught with severe wildfires but lacking political turmoil will also see a

difference in emotional framing. Also possible is that both factors are present in one year,

creating the greatest potential for divisions in NGO framing tactics. Therefore, I argue that

political polarization and extreme wildfires reinforce each other in their impact on emotional

framing, and can thus be analyzed in isolation and as a unit, depending on whether they occur in

similar or different time periods.

The Internet and Framing

Over the past few decades, the Internet and social media have become increasingly

prominent in the framing process. The website, typically regarded to be the ‘public face’ of an

organization has become less of a dominant factor for public outreach, as social media

supplements and enhances interactivity and participation.

Most NGOs or professional

organizations today have created accounts across a wide range of platforms, including Facebook,

Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and recently even TikTok. This wide spectrum of influence allows

for even greater framing power and information dispersal, as groups can reach ever-increasing

numbers of people on a weekly, daily, or hourly basis. The accessibility of the Internet and social

media is both a blessing and a curse for ENGOs seeking to enhance their support. With the

hundreds of NGOs online offering their own frames for interpretation and hoping to build their

following count on various platforms, competition and overwhelming amounts of viewpoints

Lovejoy and Saxton, “Information, Community, and Action,” 338.

have become the norm. At the same time, higher levels of exposure may mean higher levels of

support and action from the public. Scholars contributing to this field have fallen along both

sides of the aisle when it comes to the benefits and drawbacks of social media for framing power.

Van Laer and Van Aelst (2010) provide a conception of the internet as a benefactor for

civil society, in its creation of new tools to support their activism.

In essence, the Internet brings

more information to a wider range of people more quickly and efficiently. A byproduct of these

online capabilities is that much of the research on framing has shifted to the Internet, as available

data and trends have become widely accessible.

A simple Google search will reveal that the

vast majority of environmental groups nowadays have some form of social media presence. Even

well-established ENGOs such as the Environmental Defense Fund, created over fifty years ago,

have a strong social media presence on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

From the

largest organizations with millions of dollars in resources to the smallest grassroots

organizations, social media has pervaded the scene of framing and information dispersal.

At a broad level, the goal of most ENGOs is to mobilize public action by seeking media

attention, and the Internet has served to simplify this task.

Hestres (2015) utilizes the term

‘internet-mediated advocacy methods’ to describe this new kind of outreach.

What is unique

about this form of advocacy is it does not rely upon the tactics of legacy environmental groups

that have the benefits of resources and centralized staff. The Internet and social media have

created a much more level playing field for NGOs of all sizes and capabilities to disperse their

frames of interpretation and understanding.

A consequence of this lowered participation barrier

Ibid.

Hestres, “Climate Change Advocacy Online,” 196.

Luxon, “Mobilizing Environmental Sentiment Through the Media," 639.

Environmental Defense Fund, “Home.”

Güran and Özarslan, “Framing Theory in the Age of Social Media,” 449.

Van Laer and Van Aelst, “Internet and Social Movement Action Repertoires,” 1147.

is that numerous frames compete with one another for public acceptance. Cacciatore et al. (2016)

argue that this new openness to framing on a broad scale may destroy framing as a theoretical

framework as the term begins to lose its explanatory power and meld with other frameworks

such as priming, agenda setting, and persuasion.

What they suggest is a move toward more

specific categorizations of framing, meaning the word framing cannot exist on its own as an

explanatory theory, but requires further clarification of what type of framing is in use.

maintain the efficacy of framing as a theoretical framework, I agree that it is necessary to be as

specific as possible when it comes to defining types of framing, which has motivated me to

utilize the concept of emotional framing rather than the broader conceptualization of framing

theory.

The abundance of frames as a result of internet-mediated advocacy methods means

environmental groups vary their communication techniques to suit their audience’s

characteristics.

What Merry calls ‘message tailoring’ is especially important surrounding

climate change, as the public possesses varying degrees of knowledge about the issue, so ENGOs

must be conscious of the frames they use and their accessibility to wide audiences.

For many

environmental organizations, this may entail a process of reframing, where content creators on

social media decide which news to share above others, taking stock of current socio-cultural

leanings on the issue and framing strategically to resonate with the greatest possible audience.

Social media allows ENGOs to be in near-constant contact with public audiences, meaning they

can shift their tactics depending on how their messages are being received.

Güran and Özarslan, “Framing Theory in the Age of Social Media,” 448.

Ibid., 65.

Merry, “Environmental Groups' Communication Strategies in Multiple Media," 49-50.

Ibid., 20.

Cacciatore et al., “The End of Framing as We Know it,” 9.

This constant contact may have negative impacts on the ability of an audience to accept a

frame that is offered to them. The overwhelming amount of information flowing across the

Internet at any given moment may make it challenging for a person to choose what message they

will support and whether or not they will take action. As a result, there exists a certain level of

tension between different frames that seek dominance over others.

Competing frames may

confuse Internet users and lead to them disengaging entirely from the process of granting support

to an environmental group. Other drawbacks introduced by Van Laer and Van Aelst (2010) refer

to the digital divide that points out inequalities of access to the Internet, meaning large groups of

people are entirely left out of the process of internet-mediated advocacy.

An inability to create

strong activist networks as a result of a lack of established trust between various parties on the

Internet means social media tends to create weak ties among activists.

The ease with which

people can participate in online activism such as signing digital petitions or ‘liking’ progressive

posts may also detract from public participation in offline activism which tends to be more

effective.

Despite these potential drawbacks, the Internet appears to have leveled the playing

field for the participation of diverse NGOs with varying degrees of resources.

What the literature suggests is that the Internet and social media have become important

tools for non-profits and other NGOs to utilize in garnering public support. The establishment of

internet-mediated advocacy as a legitimate method for NGOs to utilize confirms that studies

such as mine that analyze these online activities can uncover framing at work in much more

accessible ways. Thus, the analysis of emotional framing via Facebook posts, online newsletters,

Ibid., 1162.

Ibid., 1163.

Van Laer and Van Aelst, “Internet and Social Movement Action Repertoires,” 1161.

Luxon, “Mobilizing Environmental Sentiment Through the Media," 640.

press releases, and other forms of publicly available media provides a sharper focus on how

polarization has infiltrated the operations of environmental NGOs.

Why the US and Australia?

I have chosen NGOs in the United States and Australia as case studies for four primary

reasons. These factors include parallels in increasingly catastrophic wildfire seasons over the

past decade and a half, similar histories with climate politics, and democratic regime types that

are open to NGOs. Also of interest is the potential difference between NGOs operating in

parliamentary or presidential systems. Although I do not anticipate major distinctions across the

countries, there is certainly a chance that regime type will impact how NGOs frame specific

issues. The time span of 2007-2022 was decided upon due to the political upheavals within this

period as well as the severity of wildfire seasons. As the analysis of climate politics in both

countries will illustrate, political polarization begins increasing during this time, along with an

increase in concern and political attention for climate change. I briefly outline each of the factors

compelling me to examine the US and Australia in greater detail below.

Democracy and Openness

The United States and Australia are both liberal democracies, governed by principles of

equality, freedom, and free and fair elections. In both countries, the general public has a certain

degree of voting power and may elect their representatives. Australia and the United States are

home to robust civil societies, where hundreds of NGOs, think tanks, and educational institutions

provide expertise and advocacy. It is a widely held belief that NGOs and civil society as a whole

have more freedom to operate within democracies as opposed to other forms of government.

Both the United States and Australia remain open to civil society activism and general political

participation. Choosing two democratic nations to examine ensures my results are not clouded by

one group of NGOs’ inability to operate as freely as the other group.

Spires, “Contingent Symbiosis and Civil Society,” 3.

Similar Climate Politics History

As will become clearer in my analysis of climate politics since the late 90s in both

countries, the US and Australia have experienced notably similar progress and decline in the

realm of climate politics. Because I will be delving into the specific events in two chapters, I

avoid getting too bogged down in the details here. However, in many instances across the

development of climate change legislation in both countries, there are multiple transitions from

administrations pushing for pro-climate legislation, often followed or preceded by backsliding or

inaction. Of all the possible pairings of countries in terms of their responses to climate change, I

believe the similarities between Australian and American climate policy development share the

closest material for comparison.

Parallel Worsening Fires

The US and Australia as countries with vast territories and diverse ecosystems have

always been prone to wildfire. Each summer, comprising the months of June-September in the

US and December-February in Australia, both naturally occurring fires from forces like lightning

strikes and manmade causes such as campfires, still-lit cigarettes, and even gender reveal parties

have burnt through forests. For centuries, wildfire seasons have been expected and even

appreciated for their ability to clear underbrush and reduce fuel loads within forests. However,

the past decade and a half has indicated that these once-typical fires are becoming more severe

and harder to manage. In the past, fire safety teams would often let the fires burn their way to a

close, but now, as human settlement reaches ever closer to nature, fires are becoming more

destructive. It is not just human encroachment on wild lands that has resulted in more severe

fires, but the rising of average temperatures across the world, accompanied by dryer, hotter

weather that allows fires to easily spark and spread. Therefore, each year climate change

worsens, wildfires are given greater opportunities to consume trees and infrastructure in

Australia and the United States. I recognize that many other countries suffer through severe

wildfire seasons, but the scale in terms of acres of destruction and climatic conditions is closely

paralleled between Australia and the US.

Different Political Systems

Given the comparative nature of this research, it is important to establish the fundamental

differences and consistencies between the political systems in Australia and the United States.

One group of scholars such as Carey argues that there are a variety of differences between the

parliamentary and presidential systems of governance. Carey holds that these differences,

including more power being concentrated in the hands of the executive in a presidential system

and less influential veto points for actors in parliamentary systems, act to differentiate the

institutional strength of the two systems.

Due to the separation of powers across the branches of

presidential governments, adversarial relationships between political parties and factions tend to

flourish, while the constitutional structure keeps major disagreements from being resolved.

These factors along with the ever-changing nature of elected politicians and executives are in

contrast to most parliamentary systems, where voters do not have the same level of power in

determining who will represent them.

Parliamentary systems indeed allow voters to elect the

assembly, but it is the assembly, not the people, that elects the executive. Following this line of

thinking, institutions in presidential systems are categorized as weaker and more susceptible to

instability as a result of the diffusion of power that is viewed as more extreme than the

consolidated power inherent in a parliamentary system.

Ibid., 92.

Ibid., 117.

Ibid., 94.

Carey, “Presidential Versus Parliamentary Government,” 116.

I agree with the notion that presidential systems and their institutions may be more

volatile than parliamentary systems, which may have an impact on American NGOs' willingness

to utilize negative rhetoric as opposed to Australian NGOs. However, the shorter terms of

Australian PMs may also have an influence on NGO tactics, given more common political

transitions that could be seen to inflame tensions more often than a four-year term as President

may. Therefore, I argue that both presidential and parliamentary systems appear to have

characteristics that may compel NGOs to take radical stances, meaning the data on both

countries will not be widely dissimilar.

Methodology

Data Collection

I conduct a sentiment analysis provided by an online software called NVivo to survey the

activities of eight NGOs. These organizations are American Forests, National Forest Foundation,

Australian Forests and Climate Alliance, Greening Australia, Greenpeace USA, Greenpeace

Australia Pacific, American Loggers, and Forest and Wood Products Australia. The first six

NGOs listed belong to an advocacy-centered organizational form, whereas the final two embody

the professional, otherwise known as BINGO type of professional organization. To maintain

symmetry in my analysis, there are four NGOs from each country, three advocacy organizations,

and one BINGO for each of Australia and the United States.

Given the examination of these organizations over time and within the context of forest

fire seasons, I begin my analysis in the year 2007, concluding in 2022. This time frame is

constrained by the available data from the eight organizations, with some more recently formed

NGOs providing data beginning in later years. Drawing on Hadden’s (2015) argument that

environmentalism’s increasing media coverage has opened the field for more NGOs to become a

part of the discussion, I believe this is why many NGOs examined here were not established until

a few years after 2007. I provide the data on forest fire seasons in the US and Australia

throughout this period, identifying the number of acres burned during each season. This data is

grouped into two distinct tables for each country (see Appendix A).

One part of the analysis of the identified eight NGOs comes from a sentiment analysis of

the publicly-available data released by these organizations. For each group, I analyze press

releases, newsletters, magazine or journal articles, and Facebook posts as they are available. It

should be noted that the early years of my analysis, essentially the years spanning 2008-2012

have fewer publicly-available documents for analysis, so the inclusion of social media posts is

anticipated to supplement some of these shortcomings. To conduct my analysis, I employ a

textual analysis program called NVivo. This program uses automatic coding to conduct word

search queries and identify positive and negative sentiments in a given text. I input the data

collected for each NGO, including press releases, Facebook posts, newsletters, and any other

articles concerning wildfires into the software. It is important to note that because this program

involves autocoding, a comprehensive list of negative and positive sentiment terms is not

provided by NVivo. However, each word coded is highlighted within the coding process,

allowing me to see which terms are identified with which sentiments. By looking at a sample of

the coding process and cross-referencing it with the Harvard IV-4 Sentiment Dictionary, I

confirmed that the autocoding process reliably identifies instances of positive, negative, or

neutral sentiment within sentences.

For the sentiment analysis, NVivo utilizes five classifications for each of the words it

identifies within a given text. These classifications are Very Negative, Moderately Negative,

Neutral, Moderately Positive, and Very Positive. To decide which words go with which

categories, NVivo assigns a score to each term that decides where on the scale the word belongs.

The words that fall anywhere outside of ‘neutral’ territory are then coded to determine how far

negative or positive they fall.

NVivo Explanation

A few examples of this process are provided below:

- The word safe is categorized by NVivo as moderately positive, so it is then coded as a

moderately positive term. This example is the simplest kind of analysis, where one kind

of sentiment is evoked in a sentence.

- The words receptive and significantly are both scored as positive, but receptive is coded

as moderately positive, whereas significantly is coded as very positive. Here, NVivo

sticks with the ‘most extreme’ term in the sentence, so this sentence would be coded as

very positive.

- The terms valuable and dangerous when used in the same sentence provide an example

of two opposing sentiments. Valuable is scored as moderately positive, while dangerous

is scored as moderately negative. In situations like this, NVivo codes the sentence as both

moderately positive and moderately negative.

- As mentioned previously, only words carrying negative or positive sentiment are coded,

so sentences holding only neutral terms are noted and included in the autocoding process.

I used the autocoding process to identify sentiment within the sentences of the NGO

media imported into NVivo. The numbers within the tables indicate how many sentences

contained sentiment at each node, or each of the four coded classifications: very positive,

moderately positive, very negative, and moderately negative. From this data, I can extrapolate

trends in sentiment evocation across time and various types of media, from social media posts to

biannual newsletters. An example of the data tables used in this analysis is shown below for

clarification (see Appendix B for all raw data):

NFF

A : Very negative

B : Moderately

negative

C : Moderately

positive

D : Very positive

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

2021

2022

Here, the year 2013 indicates that NVivo detected four sentences in the available media where

very negative emotion was evoked. This is a smaller number compared to the 12 or 7 sentences

in the same year that were coded as moderately negative and positive, so the lighter blue color is

utilized to make this distinction clearer.

Because emotional framing involves the attribution of positive or negative meaning,

negative sentiment is associated with a more radical approach, while positive and neutral

sentiment is affiliated with reformist and professional NGOs. My decision to use negative and

positive sentiments comes from the idea that radical ideologies tend to express dissatisfaction

with the current order, often calling for change or the dismantling of existing institutions.

Positive and neutral emotions are associated with reformist ideologies because they often call for

continued operation within existing institutions and would be far less likely to evoke the same

level of negativity or pessimism as a radical group. Within my analysis, I focus primarily on the

negative sentiment data because negativity can be more telling than positivity. I hold that where

positivity is often associated with positive outcomes, it can also be used when conditions are

remaining consistent and are thus deemed to be positive. Negative sentiment is more useful to

examine here because it is often evoked in response to specific undesirable events or outcomes,

variables that parallel those with which I am interested. Fires and political transitions are not

protected events, but moments in time that evoke the kind of ‘reflex’ emotions described by

Jasper (2018). Thus, focusing more on the negative sentiment data may provide a better

explanation for how events are immediately responded to.

Qualitative Analysis

For my qualitative analysis, I analyze the history of climate politics in the United States

and Australia from the late 1990s to 2022. I focus on large political developments in terms of

environmental legislation and cooperation with international agreements, paired with moments

of political transition. The analysis paints a picture of polarization over the past fifteen years in

both countries, and I take an impressionistic account of political events to identify key years in

which political transitions occur in the form of parliamentary and presidential elections. Below

the political timelines are fire season timelines. In the United States, fires that burned 8 million

or more acres since 2007 are included, while larger acreage burned in Australia means fires that

burned 15 million or more acres are included on the timeline. I chose these values because they

are less frequently found in the data and they represent severe fire events rather than average fire

seasons. Climate-induced disaster is one of the two variables I examine to determine what

influences NGO polarization, so larger spikes in acreage burned are intended to embody these

catastrophes. These events are organized as four distinct timelines from which I compare the data

and assess the relationship between the sentiment analysis figures and years of heightened

political polarization. Below these timelines illustrating the two independent variables, each

organization receives a timeline to assist the reader in visualizing the data and its relationship to

the independent variables. I include these timelines at the end of the analysis chapter.

Using the data provided by NVivo, what I know about the missions of the eight NGOs,

and key moments of polarization, I can deduce how their emotional framing of wildfires has

changed over time. I hypothesize that NGO media for the eight identified organizations will

become more negative for radical groups, positive or neutral for the professional organizations,

and a split between the reformist organizations becoming more negatively oriented and thus

radical, or maintaining their rhetoric as-is. I believe these changes can be attributed to growing

political polarization surrounding proper governmental responses to climate change. In addition,

I argue that experiencing the consequences of climate change in the form of increasingly severe

wildfires in the United States and Australia has also played a role in pushing some organizations

to the more radical end of the spectrum. Before I delve into the sentiment analysis and climate

politics of both countries, I provide a brief summary of each of the eight organizations,

classifying them as radical, reformist, or professional organizations.

NGO Classifications

American Forests

American Forests has been acting to conserve and protect forests across the United States

since its creation in 1875. The organization has gone through various names and leaders, but its

mission has remained to preserve forests and their landscapes in urban and rural spaces through

innovation, broad partnerships, and movement building. The nonprofit organization views forests

as a vital resource for slowing down climate change, filtering water, and providing habitats for a

wide array of species. Throughout their nearly 150 years of operation, American Forests has

lobbied the US government and policymakers to get conservation and forestry bills passed or

added to agendas. They have published numerous scientific studies and made climate data

available to the public. A recent development they had a hand in shaping was the improvement

of funding for the United States Forest Service (USFS) budget in a bid to improve forest

conservation and protection from threats like wildfires. The organization emphasizes its

acceptance of diverse viewpoints and experiences, while focusing on the most pressing issues of

the day, which in these times has come to be embodied by climate change and social equity.

A few of the many corporate partnerships forged by American Forests include American

Express, Eddie Bauer, Microsoft, Timberland, and Bank of America. The organization receives

funding from many of these corporations as well as donations from public and private sources.

American Forests is also involved in seven coalitions with climate and forestry themes: 1t.org

US Chapter, United States Climate Alliance, Forest-Climate Working Group, U.S.

Nature4Climate, Smart Surfaces Coalition, Trees for Community Recovery, and Sustainable

Urban Forests Coalition.

American Forests, “Homepage.”

I classify this NGO as a reformist organization after an analysis of its policies and

mission. American Forests focuses primarily on lobbying in US politics to gain traction for their

ideas. They have worked towards helping pass bipartisan legislation and government programs

that champion forest conservation and protection under the USFS and played a part in adding 8

billion dollars in the 2021 Infrastructure Bill to support forests. While American Forests engages

in scientific research, coalition building, and public information sharing via social media and its

website, the organization is operating within existing American political institutions. This can be

referred to as a reformist approach, where the NGO seeks influence within legislative avenues

and attempts to amend or introduce new policies for politicians to enact. American Forests has a

mission to conserve US forests and advance notions of social equity, but this goal has been

pursued through a reformist stance that does not challenge existing political structures in the

country.

National Forest Foundation

The National Forest Foundation (NFF) was chartered by the US Congress in 1992 with

the primary goal of uniting people together to restore and conserve national forests and

grasslands. The NFF believes in the power of community to protect and restore public lands and

keep them for generations to come. This organization has five core values that guide its

practices: unite, restore, engage, sustain, and add value. Uniting means overcoming the conflict

that has infiltrated the political sphere and small communities as well as improving people’s

relationships with the US Forest Service. Restoration is evoked in many of the community-based

projects the NFF has organized across the country, from the grasslands to wildfire-impacted

forests in California. These initiatives often involve trail maintenance, tree planting, fire dam

building, and occasionally tree thinning to reduce fuel levels in forests. Engagement refers once

National Forest Foundation, “Who We Are.”

again to the importance of community engagement with public lands and the idea that if people

can form a bond with nature, they may be more inclined to protect and take care of it.

The National Forest Foundation combined regional programs, grants, and collaboration

on projects with blogging and a National Forests Magazine that issues biannual publications on

the organization’s projects and ongoing issues within forests. The group has a few kinds of

corporate partnerships, from ‘custom’ partnerships, to tree planting partnerships, and ski

conservation funding partnerships. They also have regional programs in most regions of the

country, spanning the Northern Rockies, California, the Southwest, Pacific Northwest, and

Alaska. Given the community-oriented nature of its mission, NFF offers a variety of ways to get

involved in conservation such as volunteer tree planting, trail maintenance, youth engagement

activities, and donations.

Like American Forests, I also classify NFF as a reformist organization, although their

approach focuses less on political mobilization and more on grassroots engagement. All the

same, the National Forest Foundation’s background as a congressionally chartered organization

places it in an interesting position as an NGO that may have less freedom to operate outside of

established institutions in the US. Their focus on the public may be the NFF’s way of exiting the

political sphere entirely and focusing on community-based outreach and engagement. Due to the

lack of emphasis on alternative order building or turning away from cooperation with US

political institutions, the NFF is regarded as a reformist organization in this study.

Australian Forests and Climate Alliance

The Australian Forests and Climate Alliance (AFCA) is a younger organization than the

two American NGOs discussed previously, with the first evidence of its operation coming around

2010. The AFCA focuses on ending the logging of native forests, mitigating climate change, and

Australian Forest and Climate Alliance, “All About AFCA.”

protecting biodiversity as well as the natural ecosystems of Australia. To achieve this mission,

the AFCA aims to educate the public and government about the threats native logging causes to

wildlife and the climate as well as offer them ways of assisting the organization in their hope to

preserve Australian forests. Alongside educational outreach, the AFCA campaigns for the

immediate end of native logging, restoration of forests and ecosystems, the reduction of

emissions from fossil fuels and industrial practices, ending the Regional Forests Agreements that

encourage logging, and convincing the Australian government to take a leadership role in climate

and forest protection. They campaign against practices of land conversion to plantations,

deforestation and landscape degradation, carbon credits on wood products, and forms of biomass

or biofuel coming from native forests. Guiding this work are three main values that include

ecologically sustainable development, integrity and ethics, as well as intergenerational equity

when it comes to the environment.

The AFCA has publications for each of the six states and two territories of the country,

including information on bushfire risk, threats caused by logging, and admonitions of the

government for allowing coal and lumber industries to detract from thoughtful climate action.

The organization seeks to provide a national network for forest and climate campaigners as well

as create alliances with other like-minded organizations. Along with publishing up-to-date

scientific information and organizing campaigns and public events, the AFCA submits

information and recommendations to Australian policymakers and government agencies. They

also utilize social media and email to communicate campaign actions to the public.

The AFCA is a reformist organization, but it lies in a slightly more radical position than

the two NGOs described above. I say this because the AFCA demands a radical change in the

logging practices that the Australian government has allowed to go widely unchecked for many

decades. Their rhetoric surrounding what the government needs to do and what it has failed to do

is more direct than what may be expected of a typical reformist NGO. For instance, directed

words such as ‘needs to’ or ‘must’ are more common in the AFCA’s rhetoric within submissions

to the government than in a reformist organization that works entirely within accepted

institutions. While the Australian Forests and Climate Alliance remains within the bounds of

reformative action, it pushes slightly down the spectrum toward the end of radicalism.

Greening Australia

Greening Australia is a nonprofit organization that was established in Australia in 1982 to

tackle the issue of declining trees, climate change, and losses in biodiversity. It emphasizes the

importance of community, economy, and environment connecting together to rebuild nature. To

do this, the organization’s values include putting people first, taking action to find solutions,

collaborating with others, and holding themselves accountable to their commitments. Greening

Australia takes action through on-the-ground restoration efforts that include planting trees,

restoring landscapes, improving water quality, increasing biodiversity, supporting local

communities, and sequestering carbon. The organization has restoration projects in Southern

Australia, Tasmania, coral reefs, and urban centers as well as providing carbon offsetting

services for companies, individuals, and landowners. Greening Australia operates various native

seed banks across the country where a wide array of seeds can be purchased.

These NGO activities are widely action based, where members physically attend to

landscapes and guide communities to do the same. Compared to the previously mentioned

organizations, Greening Australia does not commonly lobby their government or submit

recommendations like their Australian counterpart, AFCA. However, like the AFCA, Greening

Australia focuses primarily on mobilizing community members to engage in restoration and

Greening Australia, “What We Do.”

forming meaningful relationships with the landscapes around them. Their publications include

teaching resources, revegetation guides, scientific research, seed bank guidelines, and current

events updates about climate, forests, and lands across Australia and abroad. Greening Australia

has partnerships with Mastercard, Nestlé, Nespresso, BHP, and AstraZeneca to name a few of the

corporations that often partner with the organization for tree-planting efforts and research

initiatives. Funding for this NGO comes primarily from donations by individuals and businesses

as well as corporate partners.

I place Greening Australia on the reformist end of the social movement spectrum, given

their relatively ‘status quo’ approach to confronting climate change and forest restoration. Also

contributing to this classification is their neutrality towards Australian climate politics and

politics in general, where they instead focus on releasing media that summarizes their ongoing

projects and corporate partnerships. Greening Australia is mainly operating within the confines

of the Australian political system, not tending to introduce new norms or practices that upend

dominant institutions.

American Loggers Council

The American Loggers Council (ALC) is a professional organization that acts as a

national network to connect local, state, and regional logging groups across the United States.

The organization was formed in 1994 and currently represents thirty-eight states across the US.

Their primary goals are to enhance the logging profession, create a more level playing field for

professional loggers, and provide accurate information about the logging industry to forest

products companies, landowners, and public audiences. To achieve these goals, the ALC utilizes

education, training, networking, research, promotion, and lobbying to create a unified voice on

logging issues. Professional timber harvesters and log truckers can apply for individual, state, or

American Loggers Council, “American Loggers Council.”

associate memberships that allow them to access rebates, meetings, promotions, and safety

training resources. These members often donate to the American Loggers Council, while

members from each membership type can be voted in to sit on the Board of Directors.

The four main issue areas that the ALC focuses on are the preservation and enhancement

of logging jobs, responsible forest management that involves thinning forests to reduce fire risk,

renewable energy policies that harness the capacity of wood to provide fuel, and federal truck

weights for safety considerations. The ALC emphasizes the importance of the logging industry to

the American economy, creating nearly 2.5 million jobs, producing raw materials for

manufacturing, and supplying people with the wood products they require on a daily basis. The

ALC holds numerous events throughout the year, from annual member meetings to visits to

Congress for discussions with policymakers. One branch of the organization created a

headquarters in Washington, D.C., giving board members easier access to the policymakers with

the potential to introduce beneficial legislation to the logging industry. The organization has

partnerships with corporations like Enviva, John Deere, Morbark, Biomass Power Association,

and Tigercat. Many of their publications involve rebate offers for members, recent technology

releases in the realm of lumber harvesting and truck loading, with the occasional mention of

proper forest management techniques.

The American Loggers Council is not assessed in terms of its position along the

radical-reformative spectrum because it lies under a separate category of a BINGO, or business

and industry NGO. Given its interest in the logging industry and service provision over an

advocacy mission, this organization was chosen to highlight the interests of professional groups

and compare them with those of the radical and reformist activist NGOs. Thus, the ALC receives

the classification of a ‘professional’ NGO that promotes the interest of a certain industry

associated with forests. The ALC has a potential interest in obstructing or pushing back on the

calls for change coming from the radical or reformist groups included in this study, many of

whom desire an end to logging practices or oppose the prescribed thinning of forests.

Forest and Wood Products Australia

Forest and Wood Products Australia (FWPA) is a non-profit organization funded by the

Australian Government that provides research and development services to forest and wood

products industries in the country. Their main objective is to grow the forest and wood products

industry through increasing demand for these products. FWPA collaborates with government and

industry stakeholders to create strategies that grow the market while increasing profitability and

productivity. Among these goals is a desire to pursue environmentally and socially responsible

practices that are associated with sustainability and innovation. Like the American Loggers

Council, members of the forest and wood products industry can pay a fee to become members of

the organization and gain access to publications, research, annual meetings, webinars, and recent

innovations in the field. The five key programs at FWPA are promoting wood products through

education and campaigning for wood as the ‘ultimate renewable’ resource, dealing with market

needs that ensure the industry is competitive and efficient, value chain optimization through the

transfer of technology, forest growing with environmental technology and forest safety practices,

and capacity building that relies on training, statistical analysis, and leadership programs.

FWPA has three brands associated with it that have been created to assist them in

supporting the industry: Forest Learning, The Ultimate Renewable, and Wood Solutions. Each of

these offshoots deals with a core element such as improving education around forest safety and

utilizing trees as valuable resources to assist Australia in combating climate change. There are a

variety of resources available to members, including scientific reports kits for dealing with

Forest and Wood Products Australia, “FWPA.”

misleading claims, statistics concerning the industry and its growth or decline, and videos that

outline new practices in marketing forest and wood products. While Forest and Wood Products

Australia as an organization does not have a major social media presence, its three off-shooting

brands publish forest-related information for members and the public on Facebook and

Instagram. Their publicly available articles and media releases address important announcements

like dates for meetings, contributions from members with recommendations, and new technology

available for use in the industry.

FWPA is similar to the American Loggers Council as a professional organization that

aims to further a specific sector of the Australian economy. Like the ALC, I have included this

organization as an example of a group that has little incentive to reduce tree harvesting and

lumber practices. The FWPA provides a reference point with which to examine the four reformist

and two radical NGOs when it comes to their framing of wildfires over the years.

Greenpeace USA

The United States branch of Greenpeace is one of the largest, most well-known

environmental organizations in the country and internationally. Established in the early 1970s,

Greenpeace has utilized methods of peaceful protest and creative communication outlets to

campaign for a change in how we treat the environment and to showcase the potential solutions

to mitigate climate change. Greenpeace USA has committed itself to remedying the country’s

unjust social, environmental, and economic systems as a way of addressing the climate crisis,

promoting racial justice, and forming an economy that benefits the people. Inherent in their

values is the need to bear witness to the environmental destruction occurring across the country,

to use non-violent means of confronting issues as a way of gaining attention for them, to expose

threats to the environment and people, and to ensure financial independence from political and

Greenpeace USA, “About.”

commercial actors. Greenpeace relies on the efforts of volunteers and staff as well as individual

donations coming from the public domain. Greenpeace USA tackles a variety of environmental

issues including fighting plastic pollution, defending democracy, protecting the arctic, ensuring

sustainable seafood, and championing forest recovery in Indonesia and Brazil.

A share of their activism comes from petitions that seek the signatures of Americans on

issues to present to the President as well as state and federal politicians and agencies. As

mentioned in their mission, Greenpeace also partakes in direct action such as sit-ins on land

destined for development, picketing outside government buildings, and even sitting in sinking

kayaks to demonstrate the threat of climate change and rising sea levels. Greenpeace USA has a

large database of media and press releases that bring attention to environmental concerns,

solutions, and ongoing or completed organization projects. They also utilize social media

platforms to repost pertinent information or post images that exemplify the ongoing struggle

against climate change. Greenpeace USA publishes research and data concerning environmental

degradation and potentially useful technology, as well as means of participating in the fight for

the environment.

I classify Greenpeace USA as a radical organization given its direct forms of activism.

Greenpeace expresses its dissatisfaction with the existing institutions in the US that have allowed

for discrimination and injustice against people and the environment. The organization calls for

the dismantling and reconstruction of the power structures that have allowed for the destruction

of the environment, and their confrontational activism is a testament to this refusal to accept

things carrying on in the way they have been. Radicalism involves reconstruction or dismantling

and this is precisely what Greenpeace USA is calling for in their media, mission, non-violent

resistance, and exposure of injustice within the country and globally.

Greenpeace Australia Pacific

Greenpeace Australia Pacific, as a branch of the same overarching organization as the

USA branch of Greenpeace, utilizes the same tactics of nonviolent confrontation and peaceful

protest to expose environmental and social injustice in the country of Australia as well as the

Pacific Ocean. Their activities and mission remain nearly identical to what was noted in the

previous description of the American Greenpeace, with some variation in the key projects or

issue areas focused on. These campaigns involve backing clean energy in Australia, protecting

and creating global ocean sanctuaries, shifting Australian energy to electricity-based power,

decreasing reliance on coal, pursuing climate justice, and protecting forests. Greenpeace

Australia Pacific relies on individual donations, as Greenpeace refuses to tie itself to

governmental or corporate interests.

Included in their media are blog posts, podcasts, daily newsletters, reports, and news that

aim to mobilize and educate the public about ongoing environmental concerns. Petitioning,

organizing protests, and taking creative action to raise awareness and expose the destruction of

Australian ecosystems and Pacific Ocean life summarizes the main activities undertaken by the

organization. Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram allow Greenpeace to engage with broader

audiences and share videos, photos, and articles that disseminate their messages and progress.

Like its counterpart in the United States, Greenpeace Australia Pacific is a radical NGO

for the same reasons as US Greenpeace. Confrontational action, exposure of injustice, and public

mobilization against the coal and other so-called ‘dirty’ industries are categorized as radical

activities. Greenpeace demands a change in how Australia approaches the environment and the

energy it uses to power the country. Given these calls for a complete shift in how energy is

Greenpeace Australia Pacific.

produced and how ecosystems like forests or drylands are managed, this organization is seeking

a reconstruction of many political and environmental norms in Australia.

Analysis

Climate Politics in Australia

Australia is a country full of biodiversity, forests, and unique ecosystems. Up to 90% of

the terrain is made up of desert land, forcing most communities to settle in coastal areas along

the outer portions of the continent.

The British settlement of the Commonwealth focused on

cultivating civilizations in the more temperate southeast regions of the country, yet the entire

continent is now susceptible to severe climate change threats, while increasing average

temperatures create dryer land.

In the colonial period, Australia was deemed a ‘terra nullius’ for

the swathes of British people entering the continent and settling there. In many ways, this ideal

has been carried forth through time.

For almost two centuries, Australian land has been

exploited for its natural resources, most notably coal and timber. The practices of forestry and

logging industries have resulted in the degradation and destruction of over half of Australian

forests over a 200-year period.

The vast amounts of vegetation and forests covering the country

are incredibly fire-prone, and forests represent an important part of environmental politics in

Australia.

Bushfires have destroyed millions of hectares of trees over hundreds of years, but in

recent decades, climate change has led to the intensification and lengthening of fire seasons in

the country. According to the Climate Council operating in Australia, fire weather has

experienced a lengthening season since the 1970s, with this increase projected to continue

causing extreme fire events that could increase by 15-70% by the year 2050.

Of the six states

and two territories that comprise the country, Victoria emerges as the most threatened by

Climate Council, “The Facts about Bushfires and Climate Change.”

The Wilderness Society, “Wilderness Society.”

Lewis and Tiernan, The Oxford Handbook of Australian Politics, 34.

Robin and Smith, “Australian Environmental History,” 137.

Crowley, “Fighting the Future,” 263.

intensifying bushfires.

Climate action in Australia is desperately needed, yet the past three

decades have shown that Australia is far from overcoming these existential threats. The politics

of climate change in Australia have undergone numerous changes since the 1990s, and it is vital

to understand how politics and the parties that contribute to decisions have evolved with the

climate.

The Australian response to climate change has been a combination of growth and retreat

for several decades since the mid-1990s. As the reality of climate change came to be both

politically and scientifically accepted around this period, many countries began to organize to

curb the warming of the Earth. Referred to by the UN as the ‘cornerstone’ of climate action, was

the development of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997.

Kyoto’s aim was to begin curbing greenhouse

gas emissions by at least five percent below their 1990 levels by 2008 to 2012. In 1998 however,

when the opportunity for countries to commit opened up, Australian Prime Minister John

Howard refused to get on board.

Howard represented the Liberal Party, and throughout his time

in office, which ended in 2007, there was essentially no major climate action taken by the

Australian government.

Following this period of climate politics stagnation, Kevin Rudd of the Labor Party was

elected as PM in 2007. The Kyoto Protocol was promptly ratified by the country and a major

shift towards climate action materialized.

A carbon pollution reduction scheme was introduced

the following winter as well as a proposed carbon trading scheme in 2009 that was eventually

rejected by the Senate. Rudd’s government created a Minister for Climate Change, and by 2010,

it appeared that there was a general bipartisan belief in the need for climate change mitigation.

Ibid., 79.

Tranter, “Political Divisions Over Climate Change,” 78.

Jackson,"From Stockholm to Kyoto.”

Forest Fire Management Victoria, “Past Bushfires.”

However, many argue that the new climate-conscious government under Rudd did not go far

enough. In Tranter’s view, there still existed a high priority on economic growth at the expense

of the environment.

Further hiccups challenged the Labor Party’s dedication to climate

mitigation when the US and Japan refused to commit to a post-Kyoto agreement in Copenhagen

in 2009. Beeson and McDonald claim that this reluctance on the part of two of the world’s major

emitters resulted in a weakening climate change stance in Australia.

However, the Labor Party continued its dominance in the government with the election of

Julia Gillard as PM in 2010. Gillard was able to implement the Clean Energy Package in 2011

that called for more serious emissions reductions by creating economic incentives for businesses

and industries to reduce GHG emissions. Costs for emissions would be foisted on different

sectors of the economy including a carbon pricing mechanism that eventually became a cap and

trade system.

The Climate Change Authority was also created by the government as an

independent statutory body tasked with providing climate-related advice to the federal

government.

100

Amidst this reign of the Labor Party, opposition leader and soon-to-be PM Tony

Abbott relentlessly criticized the Gillard administration’s climate measures, asserting that they

had no government mandate to introduce the legislation.

101

Australian climate policy in 2012

focused on reducing emissions, promoting energy efficiency and adaptation, and helping to

shape a global response to climate change.

102

Despite these apparent breakthroughs, Beeson and

McDonald argue that the government lacked the capacity to follow through with these

commitments, notably excluding the issue of coal from political discussions.

103

Ibid., 337.

102

Beeson and McDonald, "The Politics of Climate Change in Australia,” 335.

101

Rootes, "A Referendum on the Carbon Tax?” 1.

100

Ibid.

Australia, Parliament of Australia.

Beeson and McDonald, "The Politics of Climate Change in Australia,” 334.

Ibid., 79.

Climate action experienced backsliding in Australia once the Liberal Party took control

of the PM, as Tony Abbott assumed the position of Prime Minister in 2013. Throughout this

period and the decades prior, the Australian constitution lacked the power to legislate on

environmental matters. The states maintained primary control of implementation and

decision-making when it came to regulating resource exploitation, conservation, and

environmental protection.

104

There was also a strong reluctance on the part of federal and state

governments to intervene in private property rights, so land continued to be exploited by coal and

lumber companies with little interference. This decentralized political system made it more

challenging for the Australian government to enact progressive climate policies.

Under Abbott’s term as PM, the Australian Climate Commission was abolished and the

carbon tax repealed, along with a dwindling of Australian involvement in international climate

cooperation.

105

In the period of 2013 to 2015, the Australian government led by the Liberal Party

deferred to business and industrial interests in a bid for economic growth, where chief executives

of major fossil fuel companies enjoyed a disproportionate ability to shape policy debate.

106

Around this time, climate change politics became increasingly shaped according to party lines.

The Labor and Green parties tended to support climate action, while the Liberal Party remained a

climate skeptic, focusing on a pro-growth ideology that ignored many environmental threats.

107

Abbott positioned himself as a staunch climate denier during his time in office, further distancing

himself and his party from Labor and the Greens.

108

From 2013 up until 2022, the Liberal Party held control of the Prime Minister’s seat, with

Malcolm Turnbull and then Scott Morrison making some climate concessions, yet primarily

108

Tranter, “The Great Divide,” 400.

107

Ibid., 343.

106

Beeson and McDonald, "The Politics of Climate Change in Australia,” 344.

105

Ibid., 15.

104

Hobay and McDonald, "Environmental Issues in Australia,” 6.

focusing on economic growth in Australia. Turnbull was somewhat of an outlier as a member of

the Liberal Party in his professed investment in the Paris Agreement, and he committed himself

and his party to the climate cause, yet substantial emissions reductions remained mostly absent.

Morrison’s years in office consisted of some climate focus, committing to a 35% reduction in

emissions by 2050. Yet, the Climate Council deemed his climate policies a ‘complete and

catastrophic failure’, citing frequent Liberal Party attacks on the validity of climate science,

cutting budgets for climate research and programs, and producing weak international

commitments.

109

The Council’s report reinforces the idea that for the past eight years, Australia

has failed to take climate action seriously at the national level and that a major change is needed

to curb the disastrous impacts of a warming climate on Australian people and wildlife.

110

In the spring of 2022, Labor Party representative Anthony Albanese was elected as PM

pledging that Australia would embark on a new era of climate action. In the current Australian

political system, the Commonwealth now has the constitutional authority to dictate matters of

national environmental significance, simplifying the issue of decentralized political power and

giving the federal government a greater capacity to enact climate policies.

111

The Climate Change

Bill of 2022 was introduced in July, which aims to reduce GHG emissions by 43% below 2005

levels by 2030, with a commitment to reaching net zero emissions in 2050.

112

It also plans to

codify into law these emissions reduction targets, yet there was no mention of carbon pricing,

emissions trading, or a carbon tax scheme.

113

Albanese updated Australia’s nationally determined

contribution under the Paris Agreement to match the emissions reduction target outlined in the

113

Australia, Parliament of Australia.

112

DCCEEW, “Climate Change Bill 2022.”

111

OECD Publishing. “OECD Environmental Performance Reviews: Australia,” 6.

110

Ibid.

109

Climate Council, “The Facts about Bushfires and Climate Change.”

Climate Change Bill of 2022.

114

In light of the pro-climate dedication that the current

government has made, it may be possible for Australia to produce the effective climate policy

measures it so desperately requires. The maintenance of biodiversity, forests, and water sources

is essential to any hope of adapting to the threats posed by climate change.

The past three decades of climate action in Australia have been fraught with political

polarization along party lines, deference to corporate interests and economic growth, and a lack

of climate leadership at the international level. Recently, Australia was ranked third from last in

their environmental policy performance out of the twenty-seven developed nations analyzed.

115

As the world’s fourteenth-highest emitter, Australia has a responsibility to reduce its emissions

and contribute tangible, realistic changes and additions to its climate policy. This will be no

small feat to achieve, and the impediments to cooperation across party lines are significant, yet

the stakes in the event of further climate response failures are incredibly high.

Climate Politics in the United States

The United States is made up of over 3 million square miles, covering much of North

America. It is home to over 300 million people and millions of mammals, reptiles, amphibians,

and diverse plant life. As in Australia, there are high levels of biodiversity and biomes that

stretch across the country, yet this biodiversity has begun to wane as climate change impacts

environmental conditions and the ability of many species to survive under shifting temperatures

and weather patterns. The United States has consistently been ranked globally as one of the

highest contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions. The country is responsible for around

30% of global emissions, despite being home to about 5% of the world’s total population.

116

Zulinski, “U.S. Leads in Greenhouse Gas Reductions.”

115

Crowley, “Fighting the Future,” 264.

114

Climate Action Tracker, “Australia.”

in Australia, climate change has begun to manifest itself across the country with increased and

more common extreme weather events such as forest fires, floods, droughts, and hurricanes.

117

Much of the Western United states, including California, Colorado, Oregon, and Montana

has experienced increases in the length and intensity of wildfire seasons, attributed by many

scientists to the effects of a changing climate.

118

Many scholars and environmental organizations

have argued that the United States has a responsibility as one of the most wealthy, developed

nations in the world to make a substantial contribution to curbing emissions and participating

proactively in international climate discussions. This is an ideal that has not always been pursued

by the nation. Between the years spanning the late 1990s up until the present day, climate politics

in the United States have undergone many transformations, gains, and losses with each

administration that takes office.

The American response to climate change has remarkable similarities to the development

of climate politics in Australia. The US has also experienced periods of concerted effort

regarding climate action, followed by steps backward, and then more progress forward. This

pattern of growth and decline in governmental responses to climate change has been seen in the

Australian political system as well. When the Kyoto Protocol was devised and opened for

signing in 1997, then-president Bill Clinton signed the agreement, yet it was never submitted to

the Senate, so it remained unimplemented until 2001 when George W. Bush formally declared

that Kyoto would not be joined by the United States.

119

According to many analyses of American

climate policy, in the pre-2007 period, the US pursued legislation and agreements that focused on

voluntary, rather than mandated, GHG reduction programs.

120

From 2003 to 2007, comprising

120

Lattanzio et al., “U.S. Climate Change Policy.”

119

Claussen and Diringer, “A New Climate Treaty: US Leadership after Kyoto.”

118

NOAA, “Wildfire Climate Connection.”

117

IPCC, “Climate Change 2022.”

much of George W. Bush’s second term as president, several bipartisan bills passed in the Senate,

including the hazardous waste and forestry regulations in 2002 and 2003 respectively.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 was a notable piece of legislation produced during this

time, spearheaded by Vice President Dick Cheney. It aimed to provide tax incentives and other

economic benefits to ensure secure, affordable, and reliable energy.

121

According to Rabe in his

work “Environmental Policy and the Bush Era: The Collision between the Administrative

Presidency and State Experimentation”, the close partisan divide within the Senate and the

requirement of a supermajority for bills to pass posed some impediments to climate action during

Bush’s years as president.

122

During this period, the Bush administration turned towards the

utilization of executive powers to get climate change action on the table. However, in 2007, a

major turning point in the realm of climate politics took place with the ruling made by the

Supreme Court in Massachusetts vs EPA.

This ruling allowed the EPA to regulate GHG emissions from motor vehicles under the

Clean Air Act, and it catalyzed the shift from voluntary emissions reductions to more regulative

legislation and direct enforcement.

123

Congress went on to pass legislation that mandated

emissions reporting for large contributors to GHGs operating in the country.

124

Under these

transformed conditions, one might expect large leaps forward to be made for the rest of Bush’s

second term, yet many have referred to these subsequent years as lacking the capacity to provide

real change in climate mitigation as a result of a diminishing level of collaboration between the

Bush administration and Congress.

125

However, the terrain of climate politics shifted upon the

election of Barack Obama as president in 2009.

125

Rabe, “Beyond Kyoto,” 417.

124

Claussen and Diringer, “A New Climate Treaty: US Leadership after Kyoto.”

123

Lattanzio et al., “U.S. Climate Change Policy.”

122

Rabe, “Beyond Kyoto,” 418.

121

Congress.gov, "H.R.6 - 109th Congress (2005-2006): Energy Policy Act of 2005."

At his inauguration, Obama proclaimed his dedication to re-engaging in international

climate discussions, believed by many to mark a large shift in US climate policy.

126

However,

Kincaid and Roberts argue that this early era in Obama’s presidency did not have a political

environment conducive to climate change policy that would reduce emissions.

127

There was little

congressional action or agreement on climate discussions during COP15 in Copenhagen, yet the

Obama administration was still able to quadruple the US budget for direct international climate

assistance working towards adaptation, clean energy, and sustainable landscapes.

128

Various bills

such as the American Clean Energy Act 2009 and a proposed cap and trade system passed

through the House, although a lack of bipartisan support in the Senate meant they were never

passed into legislation.

129

During his first term as president, Obama appeared to shy away from direct mentions of

climate change in his speeches and rhetoric, instead preferring the term ‘green energy’ as a less

divisive term. After his reelection in 2012, the rhetoric shifted towards more direct referrals to

climate change.

130

During this second term, 2015 saw the US adoption of the Paris Agreement, a

treaty that many hoped would outshine Kyoto in its ability to enact concrete emissions reductions

from member states.

131

The election of Republican Donald Trump in 2016 turned climate politics in the United

States in a different direction. It was during this period that political polarization across party

lines gained a very significant role.

132

However, in February, a few weeks after Trump’s

inauguration, members of the House of Representatives formed a bipartisan climate solutions

132

Nadeem, “In a Politically Polarized Era.”

131

Lattanzio et al., “U.S. Climate Change Policy.”

130

Kincaid and Roberts, “No Talk Some Walk,” 43.

129

Claussen and Diringer, “A New Climate Treaty: US Leadership after Kyoto.”

128

Ibid., 43.

127

Ibid., 42.

126

Kincaid and Roberts, “No Talk Some Walk,” 41.

caucus that hoped to reconcile some of the tensions between the parties.

133

Nevertheless, the

Trump administration withdrew from the Paris Agreement in 2017 and votes on comprehensive

climate change proposals continued to be relatively rare in either chamber of Congress, while

proposals that indirectly addressed climate change were more common.

134

In this era of apparent

climate backsliding, many public figures in the US including city mayors, businesses, and

governors created the ‘We Are Still In’ organization to demonstrate their continued support of

international climate cooperation.

135

The Trump administration rolled back dozens of climate actions taken under the Obama

administration and implemented environmental policies that loosened restrictions on emissions.

One such example is Trump’s executive order 13783 - Promoting Energy Independence and

Economic Growth. The order aimed to ‘promote the clean and safe development of our energy

resources while reducing unnecessary regulatory burdens and directs federal agencies to

undertake several actions to further this goal’.

136

This declaration was utilized to replace many

climate policies and federal regulations created under the Obama administration in favor of the

development of fossil fuels.

137

Trump’s four years in office had very little focus on the climate

issue, and legislative gains in this area were slim. It wasn’t until the inauguration of Joe Biden as

president in 2021 that another major shift in climate politics took place.

A fair share of Biden’s campaign rhetoric involved promises to take on the issue of

climate change and reintroduce the US into international climate cooperation. The United States

reentered the Paris Agreement in February 2021, submitting a new nationally-determined

contribution (NDC) set to reduce GHG emissions 50-52% below 2005 levels by 2030. The Biden

137

Ibid.

136

Fitterman, “Executive Order 13783.”

135

Basseches et al., "Climate Policy Conflict in the US States.”

134

Ibid.

133

Lattanzio et al., “U.S. Climate Change Policy.”

Administration has also worked to centralize various executive branch organizations to enhance

coordination and issue climate directives to help meet these emissions reduction goals.

138

Another big step forward came with the 2020 Omnibus Package, a bipartisan bill including the

allocation of funds towards research and development of clean energy technologies, tax

incentives, and the EPA’s phasing down of the use and production of hydrofluorocarbons

(HFCs).

139

More recently, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act marked yet another milestone in US

climate policy, investing in domestic energy production and helping the US to reduce carbon

emissions by around 40% by 2030. This sets the country on the path to meeting its goal of

halving emissions from their 2005 levels by 2030. It remains to be seen what other legislation

and rulings will emerge in the final years of Biden’s term as president, yet it appears that the US

has taken some positive steps forward.

The US has been ranked by the Climate Change Performance Index as 52nd in the world

for its response to climate change, a strikingly low number given its level of economic

development and democratic institutions.

140

It remains one of the nine countries responsible for

90% of global coal production, and the top twenty for housing the largest oil and gas reserves.

141

While growth in progressive climate action has been notable throughout the current

administration, there is still a long way to go if the country aims to effectively mitigate and adapt

to climate change in the years to come.

As we found with Australia, the United States’ response to climate change has often been

dictated by party lines. The Pew Research Center found that as opposed to Democrats, 49% of

which place climate change as a top personal concern, 10% of Republicans felt the same.

142

Tyson et al., “Climate Engagement and Activism.”

141

Ibid.

140

Climate Change Performance Index, “US – Climate Performance Ranking 2023.”

139

Congress.gov. "H.R.133 - 116th Congress.”

138

Lattanzio et al., “U.S. Climate Change Policy.”

When asked about the role of climate scientists in influencing policy debates, 44% of

Republicans believed that scientists held too much influence as opposed to 27% of Democrats.

143

The data shows that reactions to climate change have fallen along a clear partisan divide, with

many Republicans believing that climate change should not be a priority, while most Democrats

take a more pro-climate stance. Parallels can be drawn between the political parties of Australia

and the division in attitudes towards climate change between the Labor and Liberal parties. This

ebb and flow of climate politics over the past two and a half decades has meant that both the US

and Australia have yet to make substantial headway in curbing their emissions to a level high

enough to effectively mitigate climate change.

This brief assessment of climate politics in the United States and Australia is a testament

to the increase in political polarization on climate over the past fifteen years. As of now, both

countries have installed climate-progressive administrations, but the years before this potential

move away from climate polarization compose the bulk of this study. Utilizing the information I

have provided here, I formulate two timelines for both countries that include events of political

transitions since the mid-2000s. These are complemented by timelines displaying severe fires

over the same time period and can be located at the end of this chapter.

143

Ibid.

Sentiment Analysis: NGOs in the United States

Greenpeace USA

Greenpeace USA’s Facebook page indicates that posts concerning fires began to be

associated with higher levels of negative sentiment beginning in the year 2019. Before this

period, moderately negative sentiment was detected in 2013 and 2016. I hypothesize that the

political context of 2013 may explain this sporadic increase in negative sentiment, as political

stalemates between the Republican and Democratic parties kept legislation from passing and a

government shutdown further testifies to the bleak nature of cooperation between the parties. The

negative sentiment expressed by Greenpeace can be attributed to government inaction in spite of

increasing threats from climate change and fires, burning nearly 10 million acres of land in the

previous year’s fire season. In 2016, the spike in moderately negative sentiment comes after

another 10 million acres of land were burned in the previous year, coinciding with the election of

Donald Trump as President. Given his party’s underemphasis on climate change mitigation and

environmentalism, it is very likely that Greenpeace reacted with negative sentiment to the

possibility that environmental legislation would be hard to come by in the pursuant four years.

As many Americans observing the 2016 Presidential Election can attest to, the months

following up to the vote were fraught with tension between the parties, leaked emails, and

admonitions of illegal practices coming from both Clinton and Trump. This was an era of

heightened polarization, and the rise in Greenpeace’s negative sentiment seems to complement

this trend. By 2017, sentiment of all kinds became more frequent in Facebook posts, indicating a

new reliance on emotional framing to reach the public. The devastating fires in California during

the 2018 and 2020 seasons are accompanied by the highest levels of negative sentiment in the

data, spanning the years 2019 to 2021. Amidst the natural disasters, Trump-era policies had very

little focus on combating climate change, with President Trump often blaming the proliferation

of fires on the state of California’s lackluster fuel maintenance within forests. The data for

Greenpeace USA’s Facebook posts indicate an increasing willingness to evoke sentiment,

specifically negative sentiment in reference to forest fires.

Greenpeace USA’s media and press releases about wildfires demonstrate a higher

proportion of negative sentiment than positive sentiment. Following the failure of a

comprehensive climate agreement at the 2009 COP 15 in Copenhagen, Greenpeace’s rhetoric

surrounding fires is marked by a spike in negative sentiment. I attribute this spike to the

frustration of slow-moving international efforts to reach a decision on how to approach climate

change mitigation and adaptation. The year 2009 is followed by a sharp decline in sentiments of

all kinds, until negative sentiment rises again in 2013-2014. This trend of decline and then rise

can be explained as Greenpeace’s response to the political stalemate mentioned previously,

where political dealings came to a near halt for much of 2013. Interestingly, the fire seasons in

2011 and 2012 were rather severe, burning a total of 18 million acres, yet Greenpeace did not

respond in these years with increased negative sentiment. It appears that at this point, the severity

of wildfires and their potential link to climate change had not yet become a primary concern for

Greenpeace’s campaigns. By 2016, sentiment had stagnated and remained relatively neutral, until

the year 2016, when it skyrocketed to include heightened sentiment of all kinds, in particular

very negative and moderately negative.

As I hypothesized with the Facebook posts, the election of a conservative Republican

with a nearly nonexistent climate agenda galvanized Greenpeace into more emotional rhetoric

that could capture public attention. The two years following this period display sustained

negative sentiment within press releases and media referring to forest fires, as 2017 and 2018 hit

records for land burned by wildfires. More difficult to explain is the sharp decline in media

mentioning forest fires, with little to no data after 2018 providing material for sentiment analysis.

One possible explanation for this trend is that Greenpeace began to focus more heavily on social

justice efforts such as voting rights issues and the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Perhaps

resources were shifted away from wildfire towards new avenues of campaigning, as wildfires are

one of many issues Greenpeace confronts. Despite this inconsistency, Greenpeace USA, as a

radical organization, has higher overall levels of negative sentiment than the reformist and

business organizations, increasingly utilizing emotional framing with negative sentiments to

express the threats posed by wildfires, and how they should be responded to.

National Forest Foundation

Prior to 2018, data for the National Forest Foundation indicates a minimal level of

sentiment being used in their Facebook posts. However, from 2018 onwards, both positive and

negative sentiment become more common. In 2018 and 2019, the years when severe California

forest fires gained large amounts of media attention, the NFF’s Facebook posts reveal more

negative as opposed to positive posts. This trend has been observed with Greenpeace USA and is

likely a result of worsening forest fires and the organization’s attempt to emotionally frame the

issue to gain more attention for it. However, the overall trend in the data is toward moderately

positive rhetoric, with especially positive sentiment most recently in 2022. As a reformist

organization, the NFF appears to have initially become more receptive to emotional framing of

wildfires, but the sentiment evoked is predominantly positive. Therefore, this NGO aligns with

my belief that organizations operating within the typical American political and social system

have confronted a sort of crossroads in the past five years, where they must decide whether to

continue in a reformist mindset, or become more radical. In this case, the National Forest

Foundation, relying upon the existence of National protection for forests, remains largely

positive. I argue that the NFF has remained reformist due to this form of partnership with the

United States government which declares national jurisdiction over the same forests across the

country that the NFF is seeking to promote and conserve.

As was detected in their Facebook posts, the NFF’s use of sentiment is very moderate,

where positive sentiment tends to outweigh negative sentiment, continuing to an even greater

extent in their newsletters and media. Negative sentiment is less evident in these forms of

outreach, although positive sentiment was once consistently in the lower to middle hundreds

from 2009 to 2018, but has dropped to numbers in the 30s to 90s from 2019 onward. However,

this decreasing positive sentiment is not supplanted with increased negative sentiment, meaning

the positivity was instead replaced with neutrality. This may represent the farthest the NFF is

willing to push the boundaries of existing American power structures, removing some level of

positivity for a neutral, less emotive stance. I hypothesize the reason that the NFF leans away

from increasing negativity is its closeness with the US government in its focus on National

Forests. This is especially important given the organization’s creation was made possible by a

congressional charter many decades ago. To continue its operations within these forests, the NFF

likely wishes to maintain cooperative relations with the powers at work in government.

Displaying potentially radical intentions through negative sentiment would likely lead to a more

adversarial relationship between this NGO and the government.

American Forests

American Forest’s Facebook posts indicate evenly balanced sentiment, with no large

upticks in sentiment being evoked from 2010 to 2022. It appears that American Forests has

always utilized some form of emotional framing within their Facebook posts, evoking both

positive and negative sentiments with similar frequency. The data shows no significant swings or

increases in sentiment around key years for wildfires, like 2018 and 2019. In fact, from the years

2014-2016 little to no sentiment of any kind was present within the Facebook posts. Given this

turn away from emotional framing during such a tumultuous period in politics, with the

presidential elections polarizing the country, I hypothesize that American Forests assumed a

neutral stance to avoid inflaming tensions or losing support from the public. This leads me to

believe the organization has remained largely reformist throughout the years in question, as no

major shifts are in the data to indicate a change in mindset or ideology regarding forests and their

conservation.

Like their Facebook posts, American Forest’s media indicates widely balanced sentiment,

with sentiments that remain in the moderate categorization. From 2015-2017, ‘very positive’

sentiment was at its peak, before dropping off in 2018 when wildfires began to take more lives

and destroy more buildings and land in California. Although ‘very positive’ sentiment dropped,

‘moderately positive’ sentiment remained consistent and negative sentiment was not increased to

account for the loss of positivity. As opposed to Greenpeace USA which became very negative

around 2015 and 2016, American Forests experienced two of the most positive years within the

data. This is especially interesting given the tense political atmosphere amidst Clinton and

Trump’s presidential campaigns and the eventual election of Trump as president.

I believe this positivity was a strategy for the organization to continue with business as

usual. Given their mission of influencing policymakers with recommendations and scientific

research, American Forests likely saw the necessity of maintaining cooperative relationships

with the government, regardless of which party assumed power. Their positive framing may be a

tactic to maintain healthy communication with public and political bodies. Where negative

framing could have pushed people away from supporting the organization, relative neutrality,

and even positivity during the 2015-2016 presidential campaigns ensured the organization’s

rhetoric maintained reformist and sympathetic. Given American Forests’ reliance on existing

political structures to lobby politicians and gain bipartisan support for environmental policies,

the relatively positive, moderate data falls in line with the reformist mission of the organization.

American Loggers Council

The American Loggers Council Facebook page is unique in that it displays increased

negative sentiment in the years 2021 to 2022, with little to no change in 2019 and 2020, the years

when US forest fires hit records for acres burned. Prior to these years, sentiment is low relative

to the other organizations analyzed. I attribute this sudden increase in negative sentiment to

American Loggers’ dissatisfaction with political developments under President Biden. The ALC

benefits from tree harvesting, and public disapproval of this practice in light of the destruction of

forests by fire, coinciding with the election of a Democratic president may frustrate the ALC’s

efforts to support their industry. Likewise, lost trees from fire mean lost revenue for logging

companies, and this supply chain disruption further exacerbated by the pandemic may be pushing

the ALC to adopt more negative sentiment. The Biden administration’s turn towards renewable

energy and a pro-environmentalist stance is likely discouraging loggers from maintaining the

profits they received under the previous Republican administration. The current political party in

office is not as sympathetic to their industry as the Trump administration, when sentiment is

rarely evoked by the organization. Recent government spending on infrastructure and renewable

energy that allocated little to the logging industry may have incited anger and can explain some

of this move toward negative sentiment.

In their general media, the American Loggers Council tends to avoid extremes of

sentiment. Overall, there is more positive than negative sentiment, with instances of neutrality in

certain months. The data on general media has less of a wildfire focus, with the first mentions of

fire in the media not coming until 2019. It seems plausible that the recent increase in severe fires

had finally gained enough attention to be included in the organization’s public outreach. The year

2022 shows the highest level of negative sentiment out of the data set, which I attribute, like the

Facebook posts, to political factors working against the logging industries’ interests. These

results are a bit different from what I originally hypothesized, as I originally believed the

professional organizations would steer clear of negative sentiment. However, given the United

States’ apparent shift towards more progressive environmental policies under the Biden

administration, it seems likely that the American Loggers Council is responding to these political

pressures. In the preceding years, my hypothesis that professional organizations would remain

widely positive or neutral is supported by the data before 2021.

Sentiment Analysis: NGOs in Australia

Greenpeace Australia Pacific

Greenpeace Australia Pacific’s Facebook posts indicate a similar trend to its counterpart

in the United States. Sentiment remained relatively stable throughout the years until 2018, when

negative sentiment increased dramatically. In 2018, the Liberal Party took office, with the

Marshall administration widely conceding to the coal and lumber industries on climate change.

Like the jump in negative sentiment upon the election of Trump in America, Greenpeace appears

to be responding to the election of a climate-conservative administration with heightened

negative emotional framing. In light of the relatively mild fire season of the same year, it is likely

that these negative sentiments were politically, rather than environmentally motivated. This

negative sentiment is sustained throughout 2021, with heightened negative emotional framing in

2019-2020, when the Black Summer Bushfires burned an estimated 46 million acres and

scientists estimated over a billion animals perished in the flames. The historic destruction of the

2019-2020 bushfire season carried the negative sentiment through 2021, before all sentiment

drops off in the year 2022. A possible explanation for this decline may be the election of Labor

Party representative Anthony Albanese as prime minister, a policymaker pledging to take direct

action to combat climate change in the country. This potential growth in the right direction

combined with a less severe bushfire season may have compelled Greenpeace to minimize their

emotional framing with the expectation that climate action had been put on the table and would

continue to be directly addressed by the Australian government.

The media and press releases produced by Greenpeace Australia Pacific mark the highest

count of sentiment in the entire data set. The media remains dominantly negative throughout the

years 2009-2022, with significant spikes occurring in 2009, 2013, 2016, and 2019. The spike in

2009 can be attributed to the Black Friday Bushfires that marked Australia’s deadliest bushfire

season alongside the unsuccessful negotiations at COP15. The spike in negativity in 2013

coincides with larger quantities of land being burned in that year’s bushfires, paired with the

continued climate inaction of prime minister Abbott of the Liberal Party. Negative sentiment

tapers off following this year before increasing again in 2016 and 2017, as another Liberal Party

prime minister without a dedication to fighting climate change was elected to office. During this

period, the Australian government continued heeding the interests of the coal and lumber

industries as a proponent of economic growth and stability, coming at the cost of the

environment.

As observed in the organization’s Facebook posts, the Black Summer Bushfires caused a

dramatic rise in negative sentiment within the general media, further influenced by

dissatisfaction with the Liberal government’s laggard climate politics that many Greenpeace

representatives blamed for the deadly fires consuming the country. Following 2021, emotional

framing as a whole drops off to levels similar to the pre-2018 data. I hypothesize that the election

of Albanese had a direct impact on this easing off of emotional appeals, as the government’s vow

to formulate a comprehensive climate strategy may have convinced Greenpeace that negative

sentiment was not as necessary as it had been. Overall, Greenpeace Australia Pacific’s high count

of negative sentiment referrals as compared to the rest of the data set fits with my classification

of the organization as a radical group more apt to evoke negative emotions. This negative

sentiment appears to now be sustained after some periods in earlier years of less detectable

sentiment.

Australian Forest and Climate Alliance

The Australian Forest and Climate Alliance’s Facebook posts indicate that little sentiment

was used in the years 2017 and 2018, before very negative and moderately negative sentiment hit

a major upswing in 2019, continuing onwards to 2022. As I observed in the analysis of

Greenpeace Australia’s data, the Black Summer Bushfires represent a catalyst for increasing

negative sentiment and, I argue, radicalism. This negative sentiment appears to have continued

this past year, possibly indicating that the AFCA has shifted towards a more radical stance over

time as fires have worsened and perceptions of government efficacy have waned. The fact that

positive sentiment remains lacking both before and after the fires as compared to negative

sentiment indicates a predominantly negative emotional framing that aligns the AFCA with an

increasingly radical stance on forest fires, their threats, and how to deal with them.

General media published by the AFCA remains similarly negative to their Facebook

posts, although major spikes in sentiment can be identified in 2018 and 2020, the year preceding

the Black Summer Bushfires, and the year of their conclusion. The 2018 surge in negativity is

harder to attribute, but I believe it may be related to the relative severity of the wildfires in 2017,

where 16 million acres burned. While the fires burning in 2017 were not nearly as catastrophic as

those that would occur two years later, it seems reasonable to conclude that the AFCA viewed

the fire season as unreasonably destructive when compared to past burns. Also occurring in 2018

was the election of Scott Morrison of the Liberal Party as Prime Minister, a move that would

allow for the continued dominance of the coal and lumber industries in Australian politics. The

AFCA’s negative sentiment can be attributed to political and environmental factors that

culminated in a desire to frame wildfires in an increasingly negative manner. The increase in

blame being placed on the government and logging industries for the Black Summer bushfires

and criticism of the Royal Commission into the Black Summer Bushfires paint a picture of an

NGO becoming more radical as time goes on.

The AFCA is an interesting case, as it was categorized as a reformist organization, but the

data show that in the past five years, since around 2018, the AFCA has increasingly turned to

negative sentiment. This indicates that when faced with the decision to remain moderate or

become more radical, the organization chose to take a more adversarial stance on bushfires, the

government’s responsibility, and the threat of logging native forests. This represents an example

of an NGO beginning as a reformist movement, but becoming increasingly radical as

environmental and political pressures altered its ideology and rhetoric.

Greening Australia

Greening Australia’s Facebook posts display little emotion concerning bushfires from the

period 2013 to 2022. As we have seen with other Australian NGOs, negative sentiment hit an

all-time high in the year 2020, the Black Summer Bushfire season. Prior to this year, there were

very few hits for sentiment of any kind, with the 2020 fires marking the only instance where very

negative and moderately negative sentiment starkly outweighed positive sentiment. This

negativity is somewhat sustained in the years following, but it appears to have tapered off as

more time passes between the Black Summer and today’s context. In fact, by the year 2022,

positive sentiment became more common in Greening Australia’s Facebook posts, illustrating

that attention for bushfires begins to wane one to two years after the event. Identified as a

reformist organization, this brief negative framing is preceded by little to no emotional framing

around wildfires, and followed by a shift towards more positive rhetoric. Greening Australia

remains a reformist organization, choosing to remain mainly neutral and positive over time, with

the one outlier year being 2020. It appears that the crossroads for making this decision came with

the Black Summer fires, where for a time, negative sentiment and a potential turn to radicalism

were in sight, before the Facebook posts changed course towards a moderate, positive stance.

As was discussed with the Facebook posts, this organization has remained moderately

positive throughout the years of study. There has been little move towards a more negative stance

in comparison to the data for positive sentiment. As a reformist organization, Greening Australia

appears to have taken a neutral, more positive stance in its use of emotions for framing. This data

fits with the work of the organization as a whole, as they tend to take a more moderate stance to

communicating information and projects to the public.

No direct mentions of bushfires after the 2020 Black Summer indicate that the

organization is more occupied with on-the-ground restoration and community engagement than

focusing on the deleterious effects of fires. Additionally, the political climate of contention

surrounding environmental policy, Liberal versus Labor Party ideals, and the interests of coal

and lumber does not appear to have infiltrated the attitude of Greening Australia. While some of

the media does discuss bushfires in a negative light, the overall impression is that Greening

Australia has maintained a positive outlook on its projects and tone of public outreach. This is

logical because much of the organization’s work relies on community building and public

mobilization to care for the forests around them, so taking a predominantly negative, radial

approach may lessen popular support and participation in restoration projects.

Forest and Wood Products Australia

The data for Forest and Wood Products Australia’s Facebook posts is very minimal, as

FWPA did not include many references to fire or bushfire in their posts. Little to no posts refer to

fires and those that do have very small instances of sentiment evocation. Given the small number

of sentiment references in the data, I can go through each instance in this section. In 2015, one

count of very positive sentiment was noted, 2020 saw two instances of moderately negative

sentiment, and 2021 had two instances of sentiment, one very negative and the other moderately

negative. The small number of sentiment counts leads me to conclude that emotional framing

around wildfires is not a tactic pursued by the organization, which makes sense given their

reliance on harvesting trees for profit. One may expect that the potential loss of revenue from

these destroyed trees would cause greater negativity, yet FWPA seems to have benefited from

timber salvaging that allowed their practices to continue widely unaffected. Likewise, the

election of Labor Party representative Anthony Albanese in 2022 may have been expected to

impact FWPA rhetoric given his promise to put the Australian environment first, potentially

taking away support for lumber and wood product industries. However, as the data shows, this

was not the case. As I anticipated with professional organizations, FWPA does not heavily rely

on emotional framing in their tactics and appears to take a ‘business as usual’ approach to both

political and environmental developments.

The regular media published by FWPA, like its Facebook posts, uses much less overall

sentiment than the other organizations examined. However, of the sentiment identified, it is

overwhelmingly positive, with very few media examples evoking ‘very negative’ sentiment. This

positivity reached its peak in 2016, with 75 counts of ‘moderately positive’ and 10 counts of

‘very positive’, compared to 13 and 4 on the negative end. From 2017 onwards, sentiment

becomes less common, with a decline in positive sentiment. Interestingly, 2021 marked the first

year in which negative sentiment outweighed the positive, but by an almost insignificant margin

of 1. Overall, FWPA appears to have begun its media releases with a moderate level of

sentiment, dominated by positivity, before decreasing its overall use of emotional framing from

2017 onwards, including fewer instances of positivity. Therefore, I conclude that this

organization, beginning as more positive, has become slightly more neutral over time. Emotional

framing as a whole does not appear to play a large role in FWPA’s media.

United States Timelines

Political Transitions and Fire Seasons

Greenpeace USA

National Forest Foundation

American Forests

American Loggers Council

Australia Timelines

Political Transitions and Fire Seasons

Greenpeace Australia Pacific

Australian Forest and Climate Alliance

Greening Australia

Forest and Wood Products Australia

Discussion

The data shows that both identified radical organizations, Greenpeace USA and Australia

Pacific began heightening their use of emotional framing amidst increasingly destructive

wildfires and moments of political transition. Along with a general increase in sentiment

evocation of all categories, negative sentiment in particular reached high levels when compared

to the other organizations examined. Greenpeace Australia Pacific emerges as the highest utilizer

of sentiment - especially negative sentiment - out of the two radical NGOs, and within the

overall dataset. The data for the two radical NGOs supports my argument that increasingly

catastrophic wildfires along with instances of political turmoil such as the continued election of

climate laggard Liberal Party PMs or Republican President Donald Trump caused jumps in

negativity, which was generally sustained in the years after the events. As the timelines show,

spikes in negative sentiment are associated with large fire years for both organizations, with

Greenpeace USA experiencing sustained negative sentiment in the years before and after the

election of Republican President Donald Trump.

The graphs for Greenpeace Australia show spikes in negative sentiment in the years 2019

and 2020, when the Black Summer bushfires marked a catastrophic fire season. From 2020

onwards, negativity gradually declines to return to sentiment levels similar, but slightly elevated

from those present in 2017. Coinciding with the bushfires of 2019 was the election of a Liberal

government headed by Scott Morrison, continuing the party’s six-year reign. As was outlined in

the analysis of Australian climate politics, environmental action was limited throughout this

period, and the election of another Liberal PM cemented this climate inaction for another

three-year term. The heightened use of negative sentiment in these years leads me to believe that

Greenpeace Australia responded to these dual impacts on the environment by intensifying its

negative emotional framing. It seems likely that the previous years caused frustration with

political bodies to increase, where they reached a climax once compounded by the millions of

acres burned from 2019 to 2020.

Shifting our focus to Greenpeace USA, major increases in negative sentiment occurred in

2016, 2019, and 2020. In my view, the election of Republican President Donald Trump was the

key factor leading to the spike in negative emotional framing in 2016, likely because Greenpeace

USA recognized the anti-environmental stance of the incoming administration, and adjusted its

emotional framing to reflect this. Here, the negative sentiment is utilized to display

dissatisfaction with political institutions, whereas the spike in 2020 can be attributed to the 15

million acres burned across the country in that year’s fire season. The negative sentiment used in

2019 is harder to pin down with reference to the timelines, but I hypothesize that it may be

related to the sustained political polarization within the country, meaning Greenpeace responded

to fractured political and social conditions by heightening negative sentiment. By increasing their

use of negative emotional framing, the organization is illustrating their discontentment with the

current system, which divided the country and produced few environmental reforms that could

help to mitigate severe wildfires.

Given the parallels across the timelines for the radical organizations and the fire season

and political transition timelines, where negative spikes align with the independent variables, I

conclude that political polarization and the experience of climate change in the form of forest

fires have pushed radical organizations to become more radical as time goes on. In both

organizations, negative emotional framing coincides with key political transitions and major fire

events, pushing the two branches of Greenpeace towards greater negativity, and I argue

radicalism.

The four reformist organizations, American Forests, National Forest Foundation,

Greening Australia, and Australian Forest and Climate Alliance provide less conclusive support

for my hypothesis, as three of the four remained widely neutral and only one organization

demonstrated a shift towards increased negativity associated with radicalism. The AFCA

emerges as the one reformist organization that has turned towards a radical stance, although the

National Forest Foundation began to heighten its use of emotional framing as a whole beginning

in 2018. The other two NGOs, American Forests and Greening Australia very rarely utilized

emotional framing in their Facebook posts and general media, with the recorded sentiment

consisting mainly of positive evocation. While key events such as major wildfire seasons in both

countries and elections of new executive leaders with low priorities for climate action were often

associated with a move away from positivity, the reformist organizations, except the AFCA, did

not become more radical. However, in many cases, positivity was replaced with neutrality, even

without being supplanted by negativity.

Spikes in negative emotional framing in the Australia Forest and Climate Alliance’s

general media and Facebook posts occurred in 2018 and 2020, but the graphs show that negative

sentiment has been increasing as a whole from the start of the data collection in 2010. I argue

that political tensions caused the spike in 2018, in the midst of Turnbull’s Liberal Party

dominance and lack of support for environmental reform. While it is interesting that the spike

does not coincide with the election of another Liberal prime minister the following year, I

maintain that the political background of increasing polarization surrounding climate change

played a role in the organization’s heightened negative sentiment. It is clear that the spike in

2020 is directly related to the catastrophic Black Summer, which marks the highest levels of

negative sentiment in the entire data set. What is remarkable about the data for the AFCA is the

sustained level of negative emotional framing, which began its growth in 2010, and continued to

increase over time. This level of continued negativity leads me to argue that the Australian Forest

and Climate Alliance can no longer be regarded as a reformist organization, but has gone down a

similar radical route as Greenpeace USA and Australia.

Across the four reformist NGOs, the years 2019 and 2020 show changes in emotional

framing tactics, which I attribute to the impact of wildfires. Reformist organizations in the US

either heightened their emotional framing, as in the case of the NFF, or declined their use of

positive sentiment in 2019 (American Forests), the year after 8 million acres of land were burned

by forest fires, marking the deadliest fire season in California history. In 2020, the year in which

46 million acres had been burned across the 2019-2020 fire season in Australia, the AFCA and

Greening Australia both shifted toward negative sentiment. This indicates that major fires and

political transitions play a role in reformists distancing themselves from professional

organizations, who maintain widely positive rhetoric when they do choose to utilize emotional

framing.

However, looking at the graphs of negative sentiment for American Forests, the National

Forest Foundation, and Greening Australia will show that there are few discernible ‘spikes’ in

negative emotional framing when compared to the radical organizations and the AFCA. This is

in line with my beliefs about reformist organizations, who rely upon their ability to communicate

and lobby with governments, and will avoid direct confrontation of the existing institutions with

which they cooperate. The absence of sustained negativity for all but the AFCA can be attributed

to the other three NGOs’ operating environments that depend on partnership and collaboration

with political bodies. As mentioned above, key political events and major fires have impacted the

ways in which emotional framing is used, as positive sentiment is often replaced by neutrality. I

can conclude that these two factors have played a role in altering the rhetoric of the reformist

organizations, but not to the same extent as can be observed with Greenpeace USA, Greenpeace

Australia, and the AFCA. Because the AFCA turned towards evoking more negative sentiment

over time, I conclude that one reformist organization does appear to have been influenced by

political polarization and severe wildfires. If a larger number of reformist organizations had been

analyzed, this phenomenon may have occurred in more reformist organizations.

For the two professional organizations, American Loggers Council and Forest and Wood

Products Australia, business appears to have continued as usual. Key political events and severe

fires do not appear to have impacted either of these organizations’ emotional framing. Emotional

framing as a whole was not utilized to the same extent as it was for the other six organizations,

mainly because these NGOs are not necessarily seeking change. When emotions are evoked,

they tend to be positive sentiments that do not indicate a desire for reform or restructuring of

political institutions. The graphs show that the American Loggers Council does not rely heavily

upon emotional framing as a whole, with levels of negative sentiment sporadically increasing or

decreasing, but remaining consistently low.

The data that came as unexpected was American Loggers’ heightened negativity after the

election of Biden as president. This remains the one political event that seems to have influenced

its rhetoric. I conclude that this instance of negative sentiment was a result of dissatisfaction with

the regime change that inserted a climate-forward administration less likely to cater to the needs

of the lumber industry like the previous administration. For FWPA, emotional framing is rarely

utilized as shown by the graphs of negative sentiment, although the year 2016 shows one spike.

However, this spike does not align with either timeline of political transition or major forest fires,

which leaves me unable to directly conclude what may have contributed to this change. Overall,

my argument that professional organizations would remain widely neutral and positive is

supported by the data. The American Loggers Council and Forest and Wood Products Australia

rely on emotional framing far less than the other six NGOs, and utilize negative sentiment

evocation very rarely when compared to the reformist and radical groups.

There is some amount of NGO polarization evident here when we compare the radical

and reformist organizations with each other as well as with the two professional organizations.

The radical side’s rhetoric has divided it from the reformist group to a greater extent over the

past decade. Where the organizations began relatively moderate without much reliance on

emotional framing, Greenpeace USA, Australia Pacific, and AFCA have separated themselves

further from the mainstream, reformist sentiment evocation. The difference between reformist

and professional NGOs has also intensified, with reformist groups tending to replace their

positive sentiment with neutrality, while American Loggers Council and FWPA maintained

positivity and rarely entered into the negative category. Even reformist organizations have, to an

extent, distanced themselves from professional organizations in their heightened use of

emotional framing over the past fifteen years.

When compared with the professional organizations, radical organizations appear even

more radical, with much higher levels of emotional framing and overall negative sentiment

evocation. Moments of political transition, where administrations without much of a climate

agenda took office, along with major fire events appear to influence the emotional framing of the

radical organizations to a greater extent than the reformist and professional groups. However,

these same events played a role in more modest changes for the reformist organizations,

illustrating that both factors are in some way impacting the emotional framing tactics of the NFF,

American Forests, and Greening Australia. As was expected at the outset of this research, the

framing tactics of the two professional organizations are not influenced in any observable way by

political transitions and severe wildfires.

A striking finding of this research is that there are no large differences in data trends

between Australia and the United States. In both cases, radical, reformist, and professional

NGOs appear to utilize parallel levels of emotional framing and negative sentiment according to

specific political and fire events. Neither country shows higher overall negativity or positivity

when compared to the other, which is certainly an interesting finding. As I outlined in Chapter 2,

despite their differing political systems, the US and Australia share remarkable similarities in

their climate politics and susceptibility to forest fires. I believe these consistencies across the two

countries may explain why their respective organizations experienced such comparable

sentiment trends. Aside from the parliamentary versus presidential regimes, the US and Australia

have experienced progress and backtracking in their climate policies, as well as heightened

polarization concerning the issue of climate change. It appears that these governance structures

have not greatly influenced the manner in which non-governmental organizations conduct their

public outreach and media dispersal. Instead, specific events of polarization and disaster play a

dominant role in the emotional framing of these organizations.

I conclude that my hypothesis was supported by the NVivo data and substantiated by the

political background and increasingly catastrophic fires. For reformist and radical organizations,

the data shows that many changes in sentiment evocation are associated with either key political

moments or years in which forest fires were particularly deadly. I do not believe this to be a mere

coincidence. I argue that these events were experienced and then responded to by the NGOs in

their heightened use of emotional framing within both their general media and Facebook posts.

What has resulted is more negative, increasingly radical NGOs that were previously classified as

radical, along with one reformist organization following suit to become radical.

While I cannot conclude that the other three reformist NGOs have become more negative,

they have increased their use of emotional framing as a whole and in many cases, decreased their

positive sentiment in place of neutrality. I believe that the past fifteen years of heightened

political turmoil and damage from fires have led reformist organizations to a crossroads. They

can either continue with their reform-based ideology by staying neutral on political

developments, or, like the AFCA, they can transition to an ideology that seeks the restructuring

of existing institutions. The professional organizations fit with my hypothesis of general

neutrality and positivity in their emotional framing. Their business-as-usual stance provides a

reference point for measuring how far other organizations have distanced themselves from this

neutral stance. As I maintained at the start of this work, the dual effects of political polarization

and climate-induced wildfire disasters in the United States and Australia have increased divisions

and polarization across the eight NGOs examined, with a particularly strong impact on radical

NGOs.

Conclusion

The Environmental Movement is typically seen as a cohesive unit, but what happens if

this is not the case? My findings show that radical and reformist organizations are not as in step

with one another as many may hope. I conclude that severe wildfires and political polarization

have pushed radical organizations such as Greenpeace towards greater use of negative emotional

framing that calls attention to dissatisfaction with current political systems. To a lesser, but still

observable extent, reformist NGOs have been impacted by these variables to reduce their

positive emotional framing in place of more neutral, occasionally negative sentiment evocation.

When situated alongside professional organizations associated with lumber harvesting and wood

products, these differences become more striking. Both radical and reformist groups have begun

to distance themselves from mainstream beliefs about forestry, climate change, and political

institutions, while the professional organizations have remained with a ‘business as usual’

mindset.

There are a few ramifications to this heightened polarization across

environmentally-affiliated NGOs in their emotional framing tactics. Often, environmental NGOs

are called upon to create a united front with which to tackle the issue of climate change, but if

there is one faction seeking to dismantle existing power structures and one opting to work within

them, this task becomes much more challenging. If ENGOs are the link between international

and domestic climate norms and the actors that ensure climate is put on the agenda, discord

between them is unlikely to be productive. With a fractured NGO society, it becomes more

difficult to achieve legitimacy in both political and public spheres, as the inability to

communicate decisively and harmoniously creates numerous, conflicting frames that confuse

policymakers and the general public.

Adding to these issues is the fact that climate-induced disasters are only going to increase

as time goes on. When more fires burn greater acres of land, the need for concerted action only

increases. But if these NGOs are unable to align their beliefs and calls for change, it seems

unlikely that such harmony can be achieved. It could be the case that environmental

organizations become more obsolete due to the divisions amongst them, as international and

domestic actors see the weakening of NGO society and its inability to unite. I do not believe that

the issue has yet reached this level, but the decades to come may see further fracturing among

environmental organizations. If this were to occur, we would lose a vital part of the force

working to combat climate change, even as the climate crisis worsens and expands across the

globe.

On the flip side, many see value in having a diverse NGO society that possesses both

radical and moderate stances. There is an argument that the presence of radical groups can make

moderate positions seem more reasonable and acceptable to the general public and policymakers.

Thus, radical organizations can assist the reformist groups in garnering greater support and

notoriety for their mission and values. If this is true, more polarization among ENGOs could

benefit the reformists by pushing more people towards this more neutral, rational sect of the

environmental movement. While it is true that radical organizations tend to appeal to a more

limited audience where reformists often resonate with greater numbers, I remain convinced that

unity, rather than separation, is most important in the realm of environmentalism. The existence

of a variety of approaches to combat climate change is certainly necessary, but these stances

must also be amenable to one another. I maintain that if radicals and reformists develop

irreconcilable views that fracture ENGO society, their legitimacy, bargaining power, and overall

efficacy will diminish.

With these possibilities in mind, I believe that further research into NGO polarization is

needed to understand what the future may hold for climate politics on the domestic and

international levels. Due to time constraints, I was unable to analyze the number of organizations

that would have been desired, but new studies working with a greater number and diversity of

ENGOs could provide valuable insight. Additionally, studies that compare NGOs operating

predominantly at the international level may glean other findings than my domestically-focused

research. I also believe that emotional framing is a valuable analytical tool to be used in political

research and that more scholarship relating emotions to political decision-making, public

resonance, and civil society mobilization can usefully combine sociological approaches with

political thinking. Climate change is an emotionally charged issue for many, and the way

emotions are evoked and to what ends is a central question of how the environmental crisis may

be confronted.

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101

Appendices

Appendix A

Fire season table for Australia and the United States

Table 1A.

Australia

United States

Year

Acres Burned

Year

Acres Burned

2007

15,963,008

2007

9,328,045

2008

9,068,767.5

2008

5,292,468

2009

10,501,979

2009

5,921,786

2010

6,622,424.2

2010

3,422,724

2011

24,982,354.1

2011

8,711,367

2012

21,374,615

2012

9,326,238

2013

8,426,293.5

2013

4,319,546

2014

14,381,533

2014

3,595,613

2015

8,673,398.9

2015

10,125,149

2016

8,772,241

2016

5,509,995

2017

15,715,902

2017

10,026,086

2018

10,872,637

2018

8,767,492

2019-2020

46,000,000

2019

4,664,362

2020-2021

76,600

2020

10,122,336

2021-2022

163,000

2021

7,125,643

2022

7,577,183

102

Appendix B

NVivo sentiment analysis raw data

1B. Greenpeace USA Facebook

A : Very negative

B : Moderately negative

C : Moderately positive

D : Very positive

2B. Greenpeace USA General Media

A : Very negative

B : Moderately

negative

C : Moderately

positive

D : Very positive

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

3B. Greenpeace Australia Pacific Facebook

A : Very negative

B : Moderately negative

C : Moderately positive

D : Very positive

2010

2013

103

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

2021

2022

4B. Greenpeace Australia Pacific General Media

News

and

Press

A : Very negative

B : Moderately negative

C : Moderately positive

D : Very positive

2009

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2019

2020

149

124

2021

2022

5B. National Forest Foundation Facebook

A : Very negative

B : Moderately negative

C : Moderately positive

D : Very positive

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

2021

2022

104

6B. National Forest Foundation General Media

News

and

Media

A : Very negative

B : Moderately negative

C : Moderately positive

D : Very positive

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

2021

2022

7B. American Forests Facebook

A : Very negative

B : Moderately negative

C : Moderately positive

D : Very positive

2010

2012

2013

2015

2017

2018

2019

2020

2021

2022

8B. American Forests General Media

A : Very negative

B : Moderately

negative

C : Moderately

positive

D : Very positive

2011 S

2011 F

2012 S

105

2012 F

2012 W

2013 S

110

2013 F

100

2013 W

2014 S

111

2014 F

2014 W

111

2015 S

2015 F

140

2015 W

105

2016 S

124

2016 F

118

2016 W

2017 S

101

2017 F

105

2017 W

122

2018 S

102

2018 F

112

2018 W

102

2019 S

2019 F

2019 W

2020 S

100

2020 F

2020 W

105

2021 S

2021 F

2021 W

110

2022 S

2022 W

9B. Australian Forest and Climate Alliance Facebook

106

A : Very negative

B : Moderately negative

C : Moderately positive

D : Very positive

2017

2018

2019

2020

2021

2022

10B. Australian Forest and Climate Alliance General Media

A : Very negative

B : Moderately negative

C : Moderately positive

D : Very positive

2010

2011

2014

2017

2018

116

2019

2020

187

297

176

2021

11B. Greening Australia Facebook

A : Very negative

B : Moderately negative

C : Moderately positive

D : Very positive

2013

2015

2019

2020

2021

2022

12B. Greening Australia General Media

Gazette

A : Very negative

B : Moderately negative

C : Moderately positive

D : Very positive

Apr

2007

Aug

2007

Mar

2010

107

May

2011

Mar

2012

Jan

2014

Dec

2014

Dec

2015

Dec

2017

Dec

2018

Apr

2020

13B. Forest and Wood Products Australia Facebook

A : Very negative

B : Moderately negative

C : Moderately positive

D : Very positive

2015

2020

2021

14B. Forest and Wood Products Australia General Media

A : Very negative

B : Moderately negative

C : Moderately positive

D : Very positive

2008

2009

2010

2011

2014

2015

2016

2018

2019

2020

2021

15B. American Loggers Council Facebook

A : Very negative

B : Moderately negative

C : Moderately positive

D : Very positive

108

2010

2012

2013

2017

2018

2019

2020

2021

2022

16B. American Loggers Council General Media

A : Very negative

B : Moderately negative

C : Moderately positive

D : Very positive

2019

2020

152

145

Feb

2020

Mar

2020

Apr

2020

May

2020

Jun

2020

Jul

2020

Sep

2020

Oct

2020

Nov

2020

Dec

2020

2021

114

Jan

2021

Mar

2021

Apr

2021

109

May

2021

Jun

2021

Jul

2021

Aug

2021

Oct

2021

Nov

2021

Dec

2021

2022

125

182

Jan

2022

Feb

2022

Mar

2022

Apr

2022

May

2022

Jun

2022

Jul

2022

Aug

2022

Oct

2022

Nov

2022

Dec

2022