Green conflicts as discursive struggles over the common good

‘Green’ concerns about nature, the environment or the climate have traditionally been juxtaposed with
concerns about economic growth or job creation, or efforts have been made to dissolve this opposition via
conceptions like ‘sustainable growth’ or ‘ecological modernization’ (Hajer 1995). Recently, however, a new
type of conflict has appeared, in which different green concerns collide. For instance, the construction of wind
turbines, solar heating systems or biogas plants, established not at least to reduce carbon emission and mitigate
climate change, has been opposed with reference to the protection of landscape values, nature and the quality
of life for local residents. This has given rise to heated conflicts where local inhabitants, media and
municipalities are central players with national authorities, NGO’s and experts involved on both sides.
This paper will address the new green conflicts as discursive struggles over how to represent the common
good when it comes to the environment, i.e. whether concerns about natural environments and landscapes are
associated with common or just particular interests, and how these interests are articulated discursively. An
important aspect is the scales of time and space (Lemke 2000, Chilton 2004) invoked in the debate. For
instance, concerns about local environments may invoke the idea of a natural heritage which extends far back
in time and calls for common responsibility many years ahead. Similarly, the range of interests can spatially
be expanded to a matter of a wider community (ultimately to the whole world as in the case of UNESCO’s
World Heritage List) or narrowed down to the particular economic interests or personal taste of a few
stakeholders (cf. the infamous Not In My Backyard attitude). The paper will analyze these scalations of time
and space as well as the central topoi (Wodak et al. 2009, Wengeler 2013) employed to weigh the opposing
concerns in the conflict.
Empirically, the paper will present a case study from a green conflict in Western Denmark. Texts from local
media will form the empirical basis of the analysis, supplemented with material from social network sites,
press releases and petitions.