A change in the climate on climate change

Green is no longer the colour, at least in politics. That reality began to sink in late last year at the Copenhagen climate change summit, which turned into more of a media circus than a serious exercise in working out a new international treaty to curb carbon emissions. Other straws in the wind have also been showing up, all of which add up to the decline in public concern about this issue. One such straw arrived this week, in form of new survey of TV weathermen in the U.S. The study, done by the Centre for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University, shows that only about a third of weather forecasters surveyed believe there is a scientific consensus that global warming is a reality. This, despite the fact that such a consensus has been in place for some time. Given the influence the forecasters, and other TV and radio types, have over public opinion, this finding says several things about the role of the media in shaping opinion on important issues. For example, it seems to suggest that it is time for advocates of action on emissions to go to an education strategy, instead of relying so much on confrontation and its close cousin, the politics of fear. People eventually get tired of being warned that the end of the world is near, even though that might be true. So, if the scientific and environmental communities are going to turn back the tide now running toward inaction on these issues, they are going to have to stop trying to frighten people and concentrate instead on making the case for government policy change by sharing information that ordinary people can understand. That, in turn, leads to step two, which would be to do what the energy industry has always done and focus on marketing its case through the media, in part by getting the media on side. That's where the weathermen come in. The scientific types may, and likely do, resent the influence the talking heads seem to have on this issue. But if they want to change the direction of public opinion, they are going too have to start informing, and persuading, these public spokesmen of the validity of the scientific evidence. In other words, they are going to have to get a coherent communications strategy to sell the case for action on climate change, to counter the impression many people have that there is no real climate problem and that the five-day forecast proves that is the case. The challenge to the scientists and environmentalists is large, in no small part because it will require them to start taking communication seriously, and stop assuming that mere expertise is enough to win the argument. It will also require them to get their act together, instead of speaking as individuals. It might even mean some of them will have to go on TV and look those weathermen, and their audience, in the eye. Can they do it? The jury is out.

Climate change in the news ecosystem

The Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) last week produced a new study on how local news is shared in the changing media environment of the early 21st Century. This study can be found here, and is a good starting point to consider some trends that have been developing in Canada, as well as in the U.S. We plan to look more deeply into some of these trends on this site in coming days, but here are a couple of quick observations based on the study:

• People still seem to be getting a lot of their news from professional reporters, even though they access it using new media on the Internet. According to PEJ, stories containing new information carried by Baltimore, Md. media outlets in one-week period last summer were mostly produced by local newspaper or TV reporters. The new information was accessed by most readers online, sometimes through aggregators, or blog posts. But the information was developed the old-fashioned way, simply because it takes serious, purposeful inquiry to produce useful material. To quote the anchor-people, more on this later.

• What the Internet has done is speed up the delivery of hard news. Breaking developments in a community, which used to take hours to share via local radio and TV, now are disseminated in minutes via blogs and websites, many of which are maintained by mainstream media. The faster pace seems to agree with many readers, who frequently cite this as a reason to abandon newspapers and the evening newscasts. But it is having an impact on the contents of the reporting, and non-journalists are often oblivious to these effects, which include a tendency to exaggerate the significance of new developments, an absence of context and a heavy reliance on official sources. Once again, we will write more about this in a future post.

Facebook 'activism'

How much clout does Facebook have in Canadian politics, really?

We may be about to find out, thanks to the online group Canadians Against Proroguing Parlaiment. This group, founded by Edmontonian Chris White just before New Year's, was up to 150,000 members as of this morning (Jan. 11, 2010) and is now encouraging its members to organize local protest events to show the governing Conservatives just how angry they are at Stephen Harper's decision to shut down Parliament until after the Winter Olympics. Harper was dismissive of the complaints in comments last week, suggesting the Opposition parties would be really upset about the government's move when they got back from their Christmas holidays. The Liberals were out this past weekend with attack ads, slamming the government for being anti-democratic. The Facebook group, meanwhile, was drawing fire from talk radio conservatives, who questioned whether all the online anger really meant anything in political terms. This, in turn, prompted a Vancouver online politics expert to argue that Facebook is the new face of political action in Canada and is ignored by old-style politicians at their peril.

White and his supporters believe their campaign is having an effect but of course you would expect them to say that. Their efforts to get those who joined the Facebook group to get out and march betrays them a little, however. They seem to have grasped one basic truth about Internet activism, which is that online outrage is easy for politicians to ignore, as long as it doesn't translate into action in the actual arena, which is the street and, ultimately, the ballot box. Obama Nation, the best example we have of an online movement that ultimately turned an election, was only able to achieve its objectives by leaving cyberspace and entering the actual political marketplace. For many of these activists, this included joining a party, mobilizing others to do the same, campaigning in an election and getting out the vote on election day. Setting up a Facebook group pales in comparison to this list of assignments. That is why old style politicians like Harper and his supporters are, and will be able to dismiss groups like CAPP: Because they haven't shown their activism extends to the real world. But as the Obama campaisn demonstrates, such activism can make a huge difference, as soon as its practitioners engage in meaningful political action, on the politicians' turf. Or until we move the whole political process online.