Pratet om klimatet som förflyttar politiken - En diskursanalys av regeringen Kristerssons klimatpolitik

Sammanfattning: This paper examines the way in which the Swedish government under Ulf Kristersson’s leadership constructs the problem and argue about environmental politics. Using Carol Bacchi’s “What’s the problem represented to be?”- approach and Maarten Hajer’s concept of “storylines” this paper highlight how the Kristersson administration constructs the problem with the Swedish environmental policy and how the discourse is shifted using argumentative storylines. This paper finds that the government constructed the problem with Swedish climate policy as a problem around energy policy and production. Climate policy is, in the government's discourse, energy policy. The government also problematizes the opposition's view of reduced consumption as the solution to climate change and instead promotes the solution as an electrified, green "transition". Three storylines could also be identified in the discourse. The first storyline was about how the government sees a need for climate politics to be depoliticized. The second storyline identified concerns the need for climate policy not to limit or affect individuals in their everyday lives. The last storyline identified describes the fact the government promotes a long-term focus, rather than a symbolic short-termism. This paper argues that these storylines enable three shifts in the governments climate policy. These shifts are partly a movement from the political sphere to the technical and business world, partly a shift of responsibility from the government to the individual level, as well as a movement of focus from the present to the future. The paper argues that some of these shifts can be connected to the ecological modernist discourse.