A Better Face for Climate Change
By Krista Macomber,
Clean Air-Cool Planet
Our webmaster Kay Harrison recently put me to work finding climate change news stories for the next edition of our science center newsletter. I scoured the web, but instead of generating the list of educational yet interesting and upbeat articles which would appeal to K-12 students that I was hoping to produce, I ended up with a batch of doomsday articles. Two years as a journalism student and six months as an environmental writer have taught me that global warming marketing and news tends to be negative, but I somehow never realized that it was quite so bad! In my opinion, this is one of the biggest problems with the campaign to solve climate change.
It is true that the public opinion toward climate change is improving. However, there is still a large group of skeptics who roll their eyes at the mention of the phrase “global warming.” In all honesty, though, with the tenor of the majority of PR out there for the issue, who can blame them?
Climate change is serious, and the general public doesn’t fully understand it. As informant to the public, the media must handle the issue delicately. The media’s current approach appears to be bombarding the public with ads along the lines of “If you don’t buy a Hybrid right now we will all die.” That is not to say that the science is not out there and assertions aren’t backed up, because they are. But if it were presented in a different light it could go much further. Extremes simply never work.
An excellent example is the following two contrasting ads for the Coal River Wind Farm Project. The campaign is one to build an eco friendly wind farm on West Virginia’s Coal River Mountain instead of a destructive mountainside removal coal mine. This first video, a public service announcement for the cause, uses dramatic music, bold lettering, and tragic images to convey its message. A second video, while longer, gets its point across without the drama. One can see, 2 minutes and 45 seconds into the video, a graphic which illustrates the point simply and clearly: Which would you rather have, it asks: 6,400 acres of temporary mountaintop removal coal generated electricity, or wind power which can last forever?
Bill Burtis, our Communications Manager, recently blogged here about politicizing and proving global warming. As he says, it should not be a political issue. If, instead of trying to prove global warming exists, we appealed to the undeniable fact that, as a race, we are having a tremendous, negative impact on the Earth, and it needs to stop, I think that everyone would be on the same (or at least a similar) page and more would be accomplished for climate change.
I think that common skepticisms towards global warming could also be better addressed by supportive media for the issue. For example, I have heard many people say “It’s 58 degrees out in July. Where’s global warming now?” They don’t understand how all climate change is related. Publishing and publicizing some science explaining this connection would, in my opinion, be beneficial in helping people understand how all-encompassing the issue is.
Tags: climate change, Climate Change Publicity, False Solutions to Climate Change
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September 8, 2009 at 12:25 am
Hi Krista, Check out this news! Climate SOS is touring to let U.S. Senators know about the false solutions. We are a group of climate and social justice advocates and environmentalists. We’d love to talk to you about our work.
GRASSROOTS GROUP TOURS
TO DEFEAT CLIMATE BILL
• Climate SOS Tours to “Kill The Bill” and push tougher laws
• “Worse Than Nothing is Not Good Enough”
Climate SOS, a grassroots network of environmentalists, scientists, and social justice activists, is launching a nationwide car-free tour to defeat the climate bill now being considered in the Senate—and to demand that any new legislation be grounded in science instead of politics. http://www.climatesos.org/
The Climate SOS Heartland Tour will feature meetings with senate staffers in North Dakota, Indiana, Arkansas, and Ohio. Climate SOS organizer Duff Badgley, traveling exclusively by bus and train, will touch down in Bismarck on September 8, in Indianapolis (September 10-11), Little Rock (Sept. 14-15), and Cleveland (Sept. 17-18). His message? “Kill the Bill—Worse Than Nothing is Not Good Enough!”
Climate scientist Dr. James Hansen has personally endorsed the Climate SOS campaign.
According to Hansen, if the senate climate bill is based upon the house-passed American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACESA), it will be “worse for the environment than doing nothing.”
Climate SOS maintains that cap-and-trade will be ineffective in forestalling climate change, and supports EPA authority over carbon dioxide emissions. The group opposes the use of carbon offsets and believes that polluting coal plants should be phased out quickly. Climate SOS asserts that incineration technologies must not be categorized as “renewable,” and targets loopholes in the bill that allow unlimited carbon dioxide emissions from biomass and trash burners. (Call to Action here)
Climate SOS holds that social justice concerns must be central to any climate legislation, and maintains that the federal climate bill currently under consideration would:
• Prevent the U.S. from making its fair share of greenhouse gas reductions—reductions necessary to forge an effective global strategy on climate stabilization and to avert catastrophic climate change.
• Lock the United States into a complex cap-and-trade scheme that benefits fossil fuel utilities, Wall Street, and agribusiness. Cap and trade will be prone to Enron-style market manipulations, while doing nothing to save the climate.
• Use public money to subsidize the most polluting industries, drawing much needed financing away from real climate solutions.
• Add more polluting smokestacks, especially in backyards of the poor, people of color, and indigenous communities across the U.S., by grandfathering dirty old coal plants, permitting numerous new ones, and subsidizing incinerators as a form of renewable energy
• Trigger rainforest destruction in Africa, the Amazon, and Southeast Asia through its failure to incorporate indirect land use change provisions in the Renewable Fuel Standards (RFS) for biofuels.
Contacts:
Duff Badgley, Founder, One Earth Climate Action Group
duff@climatesos.org
206.283.0621 (o)
206-619-6304 (c)
Rachel Smolker, Co-director, Biofuelwatch
802.482.2848 (o), 802.735.7794 (m)
rsmolker@riseup.net
Robert Jereski, Co-founder, New York Climate Action Group
212.973.1782
mutualaid@earthlink.net
Maggie Zhou, Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Communities
781.316.8283
maggie@securegreenfuture.org