Introduction

Truth vs Appearances: Does Social Media Help or Hinder Efforts to Combat Climate Change?

As the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases increase, so does the temperature of the earth. So at a time when the atmospheric level of carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas) is the highest it has been in three million years (and is continuing to increase), it is fitting that “the five warmest years on record have all occurred in the last five years”(Axios, 2020)

Rising global temperatures result in more frequent wildfires and storms; melting glaciers; rising sea levels; flooded ecosystems; disease outbreaks; species becoming extinct, etc... Therefore, in the age of the Anthropocene, taking action against climate change is considered by many a matter of life or death for mankind. So when it comes to arguably the most pressing crisis humanity has ever faced, global warming, is there any hope in this ever-warming world that enough people will take the issue of global warming seriously enough to actually cease it in its manmade tracks?

Groups such as Extinction Rebellion(Extinction Rebellion, 2019) and individuals such as Greta Thunberg(Watts, 2019) have risen to prominence in recent years for their deliberately disruptive methods in demanding that governments take action to help tackle global warming. While Extinction Rebellion and Greta Thunberg remain powerful forces in the fight to make positive changes in a climate catastrophe, I want to shine the light on other efforts to combat climate change on social media.

In 1967, the French philosopher, Guy Debord, published his book The Society of The Spectacle. The “spectacle” is “Debord’s term for the everyday manifestation of capitalist-driven phenomena; advertising, television, film, and celebrity”(Morgan, 2016) which he describes as “capitalism’s instrument for distracting and pacifying the masses”. In the age of social media, the spectacle exists in many more forms than it did in Debord’s lifetime, meaning that his theory is arguably even more relevant today.

Throughout this essay, I will analyse the relationship between truth and appearances, using Guy Debord’s The Society of The Spectacle as a theoretical framework. I will examine the online efforts of individuals and businesses to raise awareness of issues surrounding (and action against) global warming and will consider the ways in which these efforts have been received.

I will first look at the degradation of truth in our culture and how this can result in a general distrust in information. Then I will consider why our society is so obsessed with appearances and how this obsession can result in a piece of information losing its meaning.

In the second chapter, I will examine why a video, in which a plastic straw is pulled out of a turtle’s nose, went viral. I will look at the attitudes in response to this video, of both a business (Pizza Express) and of individuals and I will try to determine how genuine these attitudes are in their environmental claims, and whether or not their appearances disguise profit-driven agendas.

Conversely, in the third chapter I will explore whether appearances can be used to spread good messages by analysing an Instagram influencer’s campaign to save the coral reefs, with the ultimate aim of determining whether social media helps or hinders efforts to combat climate change.