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.
A recent Environmental Protection Agency finding that greenhouse gases “threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations” prompted references to an “historic” action in many headlines and news stories.
But whether the coverage surrounding that April decision was historic in terms of its quality, depth, and thoroughness … that is another question.
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It’s known as “Reggie” for short. And though it may be small, it’s said to be paving the way for something huge: a federal cap-and-trade program for greenhouse gas emissions.
The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), the country’s first public sector experiment with auctioning carbon permits, is up and running. It is consistently cited as a good “first step” - an example of how green ideals and good old American capitalism can work in harmony.
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Journalist Eric Pooley’s January 2009 Shorenstein Center critique and analysis of press coverage of climate change policy issues has generated substantial attention and on-going “buzz” in climate journalism circles.
After publishing freelance writer John Wihbey’s February 17 article and analysis of Pooley’s “discussion paper,” The Yale Forum asked four respected university-affiliated environmental and science writers their views on Pooley’s analysis: Their comments and Eric Pooley’s own reaction to those comments follow.
A March 2009 Gallup Poll survey points to “the highest level of public skepticism about mainstream reporting on global warming seen in more than a decade” of Gallup polling on the issue.
With luck and the passage of time, the annals of climate change will neither note nor long remember (thank you, Abe Lincoln) the communications imbroglio that for some, and too many, characterized the last two weeks of February 2009.
There were blossoms amidst these weeds and thorns, no doubting that. Slogging through the abundant muck was the downside.
The extraordinary thing about editorials in American news media isn’t that they are inherently cunning or engaging. It’s that they treat mundane and complex issues alike with an unusual degree of disparity while presenting detailed arguments.
This is the case with a recent announcement by President Barack Obama as he maneuvered a sharp U-Turn from Bush Administration environmental policies in a closely watched case involving California and fuel economy standards.
“An impassioned plea to construct a better economics ….”
And “If we can’t afford the future, what are we saving our money for?”
Those are just two sound bites used by the publisher in promoting Tufts University economist Frank Ackerman’s new and highly readable “Can We Afford the Future: The Economics of a Warming World.”
Eight years ago, to limited press coverage, Cynthia Rosenzweig, Ph.D., led a team in a significant report on climate change and New York City.
The findings, published in July 2001 as “Climate Change and a Global City: The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change,” were sobering: They asserted that the New York City region was warming faster than the global average - by nearly 2 degrees F over the previous century.
Last summer the head of Harvard University’s Science, Technology and Public Policy program, John Holdren, penned an argument on the subject of climate change sufficiently compelling that The Boston Globe and International Herald Tribune eagerly published it. On the morning of August 4, 2008, however, subscribers opened their newspapers and read in the Opinion pages a different version of Holdren’s original viewpoint, “Climate Change Skeptics are Dangerously Wrong.”
Newly released research on effective messaging to Americans regarding needed climate change actions points to discrete audience segments and urges careful targeting at each of six different group’s concerns, needs, and values.