Role of language in shaping climate futures: a frame analysis of carbon governance in China and the US

In the current environmental situation, evaluating targets, regulations, and measurable reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions is no longer enough; a more comprehensive approach is needed that also shows how discursive frames shape climate change governance.

The study “Role of Language in Shaping Climate Futures: A Frame Analysis of Carbon Governance in China and the US” examines how policy language mediates the relationship between institutional intent and real-world carbon outcomes, shedding light on a dimension that is often overlooked.

The research compares carbon governance discourse in China and the United States (California) between 2007 and 2022, examining 209 official policy documents and linking discursive dynamics to carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions through correlation analysis. To connect different forms of evidence, the study developed the integrated language–policy–outcome (LPO) framework, which, combining quantitative methods (large-scale topic modeling and network analysis) with qualitative ecolinguistic frame analysis, provides a holistic understanding of how carbon governance discourse intermediates among institutional behavior, epistemic culture, and environmental outcomes.

The analysis showed clear differences in how the two countries talk about carbon governance: Chinese policy discourse exhibits a technocratic, development-oriented frame in which climate mitigation is strongly associated with modernization and innovation. California's policies are characterized by a legalistic and institutional tone, where climate action is organized around legislation, government agencies, and regulatory procedures. However, despite these differences in tone, the researchers also highlight important similarities, as both narratives share a weak sustainability paradigm that emphasizes short-term compliance and efficiency improvements over systemic socioecological transformation.

Furthermore, the comparison with emission data added another dimension to the findings. Indeed, both corpora show a partial, context-dependent association with emission outcomes, which the authors interpreted as suggesting that policy language mediates and conditions decarbonization rather than directly driving it.  In particular, China showed that while several policy themes were connected to improvements in carbon intensity, efficiency gains coexisted with absolute emission growth, indicating a potential rebound effect in which expanding economic or infrastructural activity can offset efficiency gains. In California, policies were associated with emissions, but financial and technology-focused policy themes showed weaker or more complex relationships with environmental outcomes. 

Together, the results reveal what the researchers call a “discursive coherence–emission fragmentation paradox”: a government can construct a highly coherent climate-policy narrative without necessarily producing equally coherent changes in emissions. For this reason, the researchers emphasize that understanding and investigating not only raw material data but also how words manipulate these data is essential to fully understand the role of governments around the world in climate action. The analysis thus highlights the complex interplay among discourse, economic dynamics, and governance structures, where policies can enable, constrain, and orient action, while underscoring that language does not have a direct, causal relationship with carbon emissions.

The authors suggest that future research should extend the analysis to additional countries and economic systems and combine policy-text analysis with stakeholder interviews, ethnographic research, case studies, and additional economic and institutional indicators, to provide a fuller account of the role of language in the socio-ecological system.

This work was supported by the Key Project of National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 52430003); the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MUR) (Grant No. CUP H74D23000780004).

DOI Link: 10.26599/CS.2026.9510011

About Carbonsphere:

Carbonsphere is an open-access, peer-reviewed, and interdisciplinary journal by Tsinghua University Press, and distributed by SciOpen. Carbonsphere is dedicated to illuminating and stewarding carbon-related processes from cellular to planetary scales, providing a shared platform to co-create evidence, tools, and solutions for a just and sustainable net-zero future. We particularly encourage interdisciplinary work that integrates natural sciences, engineering, and social sciences, and that bridges scales from nano to global and from seconds to centuries.