The views expressed in these articles are those of the individual authors.
The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media is grateful for the generous financial support of the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment and of individual Yale University alumni.
BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA — Growing tensions between scientists and major news outlets in Australia center around scientists’ concerns over coverage of the potential effects of climate change on coral reefs.
Many of the environmental scientists point to what they see as biased and misleading reporting, leaving them frustrated and wondering how they can best engage in a public debate that seems to have left them behind.
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| Along with the U.S. … China makes up the climate change ‘G2′ |
It’s a virtual truism that two countries matter above all others when it comes to avoiding the most severe impacts of anthropogenic climate change: the U.S. and China.
That’s why so much was on the line when President Obama visited China last fall, and why speculation up to, during, and since Copenhagen focused so much on what the “G2″ might or might not agree to.
But understanding in the U.S. of how climate change plays out in China and Chinese media is sparse.
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| Shiprock, sans the brown haze that often envelopes it. |
Shiprock rises like a massive cathedral 1,800 feet above Navaho country in New Mexico. The best photographs capture the rock formation in reddish hues, set against a pristine blue sky.
But the first time I saw Shiprock, which figures prominently in Navaho religion and mythology, it was mostly lost in a brown haze.
In Camille Feanny’s neighborhood workers busily repair homes and patch or reinstall roofs and windows after drenching storms last fall nailed the Southeast.
As she stares out her window, she’s dismayed: No rush to install new insulation, or solar panels, or double-paned windows.
“There are tax credits for installing and rebuilding your home in an energy-efficient way. The government is pouring billions into this,” Feanny said. “None of my neighbors knows anything about it.”
It’s a bitter irony for Feanny. She lives in Atlanta, home of CNN, where for nearly a decade she had worked on the network’s science and environment unit. That news unit was trimmed back for years and then unceremoniously dumped a little over a year ago, in what is the most prominent example of a science and environmental reporting team getting tossed aside as the traditional news industry sails stormy seas.
Less than a year after launching its newly reorganized reporting team designed to enhance the paper’s focus on environment and climate change, The New York Times finds itself without the two long-time science desk reporters - Andrew C. Revkin and Cornelia Dean - who for years provided the heart of just that coverage.
The nation’s climate change science desk gets a lot smaller come December 21 with the resignation from The New York Times of science writer Andy Revkin.
With its paring of some 100 newsroom and editorial employees, it’s not at all clear how the Times itself can fill the substantial void. Even more problematic, given the dire financial conditions facing most metropolitan daily newspapers, are prospects for others to move in.
Science writer Andrew C. Revkin, the individual journalist most identified with reporting on climate change, is leaving The New York Times. His last day will be December 21, and he will affiliate with Pace University. He is expected to continue working on his popular Dotearth blog through The Times, though details are still being arranged.
A veritable flood of hundreds of e-mails surreptitiously released by a computer hacker from a famous climate change research facility has climate skeptics seeing, or hoping for, blood. It has climate change “consensus” scientists crying foul, but anxious and standing by the underlying science. And it has those personally linked in or to the e-mails looking embarrassed, in some cases petty and vindictive, and, by some reasonable interpretations, on thin ice.
On a November 2007 episode of the NBC comedy “30 Rock,” former Vice President Al Gore makes a guest appearance and network executive Jack Donagy tries to demonstrate his company’s commitment to the environment.
“We’re with you on this whole planet thing,” he says to Gore, “Look at the set we built with the smiley-faced earth, and some green things.”
“We’re way beyond that,” Gore deadpans, challenging the network to “use entertainment for substance,” incorporating environmental themes into all of its programs for one full week.
Donagy is unimpressed, uninterested.
At nytimes.com, the Energy & Environment page on a recent Sunday led with stories generated by its Green, Inc. team - covering everything from U.S. Chamber of Commerce efforts to derail climate legislation to Canada’s greenhouse goals and efforts by an Idaho pub to cut its greenhouse gas footprint.
But look farther down that November 1 page and you’ll find a cache of climate- and energy-related stories parked in spaces reserved for Greenwire and ClimateWire - two of several content products from Environment & Energy Publishing.