Discourses of Cycling Advocacy and Power amidst Wars, Petro-Masculinity and Climate Inaction

The promotion of active mobility touches upon a vast number of social aspects as it is able to deliver effective positive change for many of our contemporary crises: climate change, pollution, obesity, the growth of cities and more in general the negative effects of our fossil fuel lifestyles. This chapter looks at dominant discourses starting from the observation of texts related to the Russian war in Ukraine and then zooming in to a local scale observing the promotion of active mobility and the differences separating the approaches employed. The texts observed reveal how our dominant fossil fuel automentality hinders the effectiveness of institutional attempts to promote active mobility, as these are mainly based on communication appealing to rationality. Examples from grassroots movements are also observed in order to show how their communication, less affected by the dominant automentality and aimed at communities rather than individuals, can be more effective.