Responsibilizing the Net-Zero Hero? Creation and Implications of a Tragic Subject Position
分析了能源市场参与者如何通过叙事将消费者塑造成“净零英雄”，并指出这种责任转移最终导致悲剧性后果，对政策制定者和消费者有警示意义。
The energy sector is the largest contributor to global carbon dioxide emissions. To address the current climate emergency, however, energy market actors (e.g., energy providers, nongovernmental organizations, policy makers) try to make individual consumers take responsibility for achieving an overall net balance of zero greenhouse gas emissions. The purpose of this research is to understand this process of responsibilization and its implications. The research method is a narrative discourse analysis of hundreds of public documents by energy market actors. The findings show that market actors try to shape ordinary consumers into “net-zero heroes” with responsibility for reducing emissions but end up creating a tragedy when these market actors translate their collective agenda into a metanarrative. These findings have implications for consumer responsibilization specifically and the conversion of agendas into action more generally. Theoretically, this research shows (1) the influence of the translation stage in the agenda-to-action chain, (2) the way market actors attempt to form net-zero heroes, and (3) the limited usefulness of the hero narrative. Practically, the research explains the implications of making consumers solely responsible for reducing emissions.