1. There’s a light on in the attic.

2. Though the house is dark and shuttered,

3. I can see a flickerin’ flutter,

4. And I know what it’s about.

5. There’s a light on in the attic.

6. I can see it from outside,

7. And I know you’re on the inside…looking out.

8. Shel Silverstein (1981)

As we collectively hurtle through the new millennium, the complex and multi-faceted issue of climate change cuts to the heart of humans’ relationship with the environment. The cultural politics of climate change are situated – power-laden, media-led and recursive – in an ongoing battlefield of knowledge and interpretation (Boykoff et al., 2009a). Mass media link these varied spaces together, as powerful and important interpreters of climate science and policy, translating what can often be alienating, jargon-laden information for the broadly construed public citizenry. Media workers and institutions powerfully shape and negotiate meaning, influencing how citizens make sense of and value the world. James Dearing and Everett Rogers have commented that many social problems never become issues because they ‘require exposure – coverage in the mass media – before they can be considered “public issues”’ (1996, 2; Matsaganis and Payne, 2005, 381).

Mike Hulme has observed, ‘social, political and cultural dynamics at work around the idea of climate change are more volatile than the slowly changing and causally entangled climate dynamics of the Earth’s biogeophysical systems’ (2010). Amid these dynamics resides a set of questions regarding who – through media traction – become authorized to make sense of, translate and speak on behalf of climate change. This book has pursued these intertwined considerations, along with why and how these interactions have transpired over time, from place to place.