Care and Constraints in the Climate Crisis: An Intersectional Rhetorical Analysis of News Comments about the El Dorado Fire

Abstract

In September 2020, a gender reveal party started the El Dorado Fire in southern California. We analyzed comments on news coverage of the fire from two outlets with different political leanings to evaluate how the rhetorical process of assigning guilt is influenced by interlocking systems of power, making an intersectional lens useful for analyzing responses to environmental crises. Some comments evoked scapegoat ecology, which is a response to guilt that narrows the scope of climate change to the igniters of the wildfire. Other comments evoked what we call ecological transcendence, which replaces scapegoating with attention to systems-level concerns. In analyzing ecological transcendence, we outline differences between collective action mobilized by inclusive care and seemingly unifying discourses of selective care that foster marginalization and oppression. We contribute to environmental rhetoric and feminist studies by emphasizing the importance of attending to intersectionality in analyzing rhetorics of guilt in ecological contexts and through our proposal of ecological transcendence as an alternative to scapegoat ecology.