The Onion, CJR do climate change
The Columbia Journalism Review and The Onion have both turned their attention to climate change, running a couple of good stories about how the topic is covered.
First, the CJR looks at the rhetoric of the term ‘carbon footprint’ and wonders if we adopt new terms far more easily than adopting the substance or actions behind them. The second addresses the five failings of environmental journalism, which was checked with the Society for Environmental Journalists and picked up by the blogs, coming as a response to the Wired article that ran in June on revisiting our ‘preconceptions of green’.
But my favourite piece has been the new issue of The Onion: the ‘obligatory green issue’, a spot on spoof of the ‘greening’ craze, for generally one issue only, of UK and US magazines and newspapers. It’s well worth a look. My favourite headline?
“Temperature of Coffee set to rise nine degrees over 21st Century”
Simon Hoggart’s ‘dogmatic and irrational’ mistake
Yesterday in the Guardian Simon Hoggart referred to the environmental movement as a ‘religion - dogmatic and irrational’ in a small aside about wind power as the last entry in his week’s sketch. The full quote:
We are to have across our still beautiful countryside thousands more ghastly, noisy, hideous wind turbines, which produce very little energy at enormous cost. Proof that the environmental movement has become a religion - dogmatic and irrational - in that it has now persuaded government that to save the environment, we must first destroy it. [my emphasis]
Not the kind of environmental journalism you expect from the Guardian, which has delivered a consistent and well-researched line of sober alarm on climate change. In contrast, Jeremy Leggett’s piece took apart the government’s ‘green revolution’ in a far more measured way. Wrapped up in the safety net of opinion with no need to check facts, Hoggart has got it all wrong. For example:
- which produce very little energy…
According to Research Energy Solutions and the British Wind Energy Association, “Modern wind turbines are operational for 70-85% of the time and over the course of the year they will generate, on average, up to 35% of the theoretical maximum output. The exact figure is dependent on the location, technology, size, turbine reliability and wind conditions. By comparison, the load factor of conventional power stations is on average 50%2. A typical modern 2.3MW wind turbine can produce enough power for over 1,000 homes - and that is taking into account the fact that the wind doesn’t blow all the time.”
- at enormous cost…
According to both the British Wind Energy Association and the US Electric Power Research institute, prices are competitive with both coal and nuclear. In the UK, “An average for a new onshore wind farm in a good location is 3-4 pence per unit, competitive with new coal (2.5-4.5p) and cheaper than new nuclear (4-7p).”
- still beautiful countryside…
Hoggart’s use of the ’still’ here is a linguistic rhetoric device to stir up emotive reactions, making the beautiful countyside live in the continuous present tense, and therefore providing the threat that this continuous present is under threat. And personally, I think wind farms are pretty stunning and beautiful themselves.
- the environmental movement is a religion - dogmatic and irrational…
Which is pretty ironic, really, as Hoggart’s piece has ‘proved’ (another rhetorical device) that his opining is, well, rather dogmatic (‘asserting opinions in a doctrinaire or arrogant manner; opinionated’) and irrational (‘not in accordance with reason’) . No, environmental action is not a religion. Unless, of course, religion is based on science. Or if religion is a focus on the present world, not a future transcendental. Or if religion is a way to justify the dismantling of the military-political complex, rather than a way to excuse its gross expansion. The modern environmental movement began with Rachel Carson’s highly scientific and focused study on pesticide use and its impact on the environment (Silent Spring). Driven by passion and justice, yes. A blind faith in a cognitive myth, no.
Such a shame that this old and buried meme is stil circulating.
Lexus advertises its climate credo
Lots of ink on car advertising this morning, as The Guardian report Fiat are criticized by the Advertising Standards Authority for “boasting” about claims on low CO2 emissions. FIat were found to have breached “the CAP code on grounds of truthfulness, prices, comparisons, motoring and qualification of environmental claims.” That’s a lot of breaching.
Now then, I wonder which of these categories could be used against this ad from Lexus? Probably none, unfortunately. I spotted this ad as I was on my way to work the other day:
Ad agencies and their clients have responded to climate change in a number of ways. Many have been aggressive and counter to the general trend that there is more we can contribute in reducing our individual levels of consumption (e.g. the carbon footprint idea). Others have been more responsible.
Team Lexus have taken an approach that is not the worst I’ve seen, but it’s unsavoury. What’s unsavoury is the translation of its strapline: yes, we know we pollute, but let’s drive faster, let’s accelerate that pollution, and take a swipe at the carbon reduction community at the same time.
- Putting your foot down = accelerating, driving fast, getting there in a hurry, often in an emergency
- ‘Putting your carbon foot down’ = all of the above, but with the understanding that you’re sending carbon into the atmosphere at an increased rate.
So what is it saying?
What this advert is saying is that buy a hybrid, but get the performance. Buy green, assuage your guilt, and pollute freely. This for a car that, on its website, claims its green credentials. This is not an individual instance for Lexus. As Segnit and Ereaut noted in their Warm Words II report for the IPPR, “Ads for the… Lexus RX400H attempt a bolder piece of mythmaking: guiltless emissions.
‘High performance. Low emissions. Zero guilt’ (Lexus Dealers 2007)
This was, like Fiat’s, found guilty (the irony) by the Ad authorities last year for misleading people on CO2 emissions information. Lexus company spokesman Scott Brownlee said: “We weren’t trying to be misleading and any changes that are needed, we will certainly make.”
Well, they haven’t shifted their position too far, have they?
Writing in the London Review of Books John Lanchester argues that the ‘SUV driver is…trying at the same time to send a signal…that even if climate change comes she will be able to protect herself from it.’
And that is exactly what the Lexus advert is appealing to: the need to protect yourself from an emergency. Because somewhere buried behind the machismo of peak performance and thrusting acceleration, and why it’s so unsavoury, is that the advert conflates the emergency of changing our CO2 consumption habits (our carbon footprint) with the need to be able to drive fast in an emergency, to protect those inside.
SUV vehicles such as the Lexus are causing more and worse accidents: worse for the other driver (if in a smaller, less builky vehicle) in the accident. SUV’s are sold on protection in emergencies, that is, for those inside. This is the anthropocentric mindset that, some theorists argue, is at the heart of the global system of exploitation that means a few million people own the world’s majority of capital; and the mindset that exploits the natural resources of our planet to continue to grow that capital ownership (it’s capitalism, by the way). But back to the ad.
So why has Lexus taken this approach?
Clue One: It may be an electric hybrid, but it ain’t that green by a long way: take a look at the top ten lowest emitters. So it cannot sell itself in a competition with the Honda Insight or Toyota Prius, so it has to maintain its market advantage: luxury performance. (It has a 3.3l V-6 engine, by the way). Read more
Is incoherency the Republican ticket?
Lots of questions this week on why John McCain is ditching his green credentials and environmental strategy to deliver a mix of messages to the American public.
Earlier in the week Grist and Politico both commented on the launch of McCain’s new environmental TV ad coming on the same day as his call for the lifting of restrictions on offshore drilling (this to an audience of Big Oil in Houston). Commenting on this, Lester Feder at the Huffington Post suggests that:
McCain’s wholesale abandonment of a month-long environmental PR strategy is more than a knee-jerk response to a new peak in oil prices. It is a sign that the McCain campaign’s efforts to define the 2008 election narrative are in disarray.
And Feder quotes a number of political commentators who see this reversal as McCain “grasping at straws” to re-focus his campaign on the economy, in line with American voters’ views.
But I wonder if, at some deeper lever, McCain and his campaign are ingrained into an incoherency (it’s in the title of Feder’s article) that won Bush the last (two?) elections. Is incoherency a card the Republicans have become too used to playing in sowing doubt in the minds of the voting public? Read more
Networked journalism to cover climate change
How can citizen media help improve the mainstream and commercial coverage of climate change?
Through networked journalism: professional journalists and citizen journalists working together. How it could work for climate change was inspired by a case of good/bad reporting. RealClimate.org (good) picks up on a Wired article (bad) from last month, and takes apart the weak argument (”air conditioning is better than heating”) with some fairly straightforward science. What riles RealClimate most is that:
WIRED got the story egregiously wrong, and not just because they did the arithmetic wrong. In their rush to be cute, they didn’t even make a half-baked attempt to do the arithmetic.
Some comments pin down Wired for this and blame it on profiteering (”eyeballs for advertisers”). Both the comment and RealClimate’s commentary of a ‘rush to be cute’ are straying a bit far from a fair hearing on the matter, I’d say, because even Wired has to make money, and it generally does a good job of reporting across its tech homeland under the standard pressures that journalists face: file quickly, file accurately, move on.
What’s happening now?
But digital media is now providing unlimited freedom to respond to the media’s inaccuracies; we are no longer confined to a letters page or in the hope that a printed competitor will take up the matter. Of course, even the best journalists slip up, but there is now so much media surveillance that any errors or biases are very quickly spotted and addressed. This is one of the key benefits of networked journalism for those publications that are willing to work with sites and reporting such as RealClimate’s.
Networked journalism is coming through as a powerful idea for reshaping the newsroom and news practices. This is not the technical overview, but as a brief intro, it could work like this:
1. Journalists network with the best non-professional journalists (particularly experts) to gather more and better info
2. They publish. Praised when great, and take the stick when wrong
3. Incorporate, amend, improve (win awards)
4. Grow the network, refine, use RSS, Twitter, WIkis, and produce better journalism
The only option?
No, of course this is not the only option to think about. There are, including the idea of networked journalism as option A), four ways of improving climate change reporting:
a) develop the ’21st century newsroom’ according to Paul Bradshaw, and ‘network’ the journalist into the myriad digital opportunities for improved coverage
b) put less pressure to file on normal journalists
c) train every journalist and journalism student in science reporting
d) embed journalists with scientists at the UN, IPCC, Oxford and MIT, the Radley Centre…
I’m sure you can think of more. But sticking to these four, in reverse order:
d) is not going to happen. A bit of tongue in cheek on this one
c) is also not going to happen, and is less likely than d): see Nick Davies’ Flat Earth News, which blames ‘churnalism’, the rapid output of poorly researched articles, on economic pressures that even Wired journalists would be under, and not the journalists themselves. This is not going to change any time soon.
b) is a viable option. Science training as standard for every journalist (and student of journalism). Although highly improbable.
a) then is the most likely and most effective, that goes with the flow of developing media patterns, utilizing the changes in the way we now consume and produce (as prod-users) new media, and the speed at which journalists can find, connect with, talk to, work with, and source/quote from a range of experts who are already publishing on their story issue.
Think about the quality of the Wired story if they had connected with RealClimate BEFORE they published…
It’s Friday: a climate change media quiz
Something to keep you entertained this Friday. A climate change coverage quiz for you.
1. Of the 956 questions asked by US network news channel NBC of Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Barack Obama in the presedential nomination race, how many were about the ‘climate crisis’?
2. And of the 844 asked by ABC?
3. A 400-page report on which continent was presented last week, showing satellite photos of climate affected land mass in every country on that continent, as covered by the BBC, Times and Independent on Thursday?
4. Multipe Choice: What percentage of the Republican members of Congress in the US have rejected the climate science that human activity is changing the planet’s climate?
A) 26% B) 49% C) 74%
5. Multiple Choice: how many of papers of the UK national press have in the past week covered the U.N. Climate Talks taking place in Bonn, Germany, over this previous week?
A) 6 B) 3 C) 0
6. Which national newspaper wrote a six word editorial on May 29th: ‘This global warming’s wet, isn’t it?’
7. Which former minister in Margaret Thatcher’s government has turned out to be the UK’s anti-Gore, as his book ‘An Appeal To Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming’ hit the shelves?
8. Which newspaper’s two headline stories on climate change in May were ‘It’s hot, but just wait for global warming’, and ‘Climate change ‘puts City at risk of flooding”?
A) The Mirror B) The Evening Standard C) The Daily Telegraph
9. Which actor is selling face cream by appealing to his climate change campaigning credentials in the product’s TV ads?
10. And what film, directed by M. Night Shyamalan, is released today, supposedly tapping into the fears of an ‘inexplicable’ global environmental catastrophe?
Good work. Answers below this non-commercial break….
Answers
1. Of the 956 questions asked by NBC, two were about the climate crisis (as Al Gore asks in his latest video)
2. Of the 844 asked by ABC, two (and, by the way, of the 601 asked by Fox, two, and the 319 by CBS, zero)
3. Africa. Thanks to Knight Science Tracker for these links: BBC’s Martin Plaut quotes one source saying it’s “a very unfair situation, if you think about it” ; Times (UK) Lewis Smith ; Independent (UK) Michael McCarthy evokes a powerful sense of history in his lead. The head: “The destruction of Africa”; and Guardian (UK) John Vidal
4. C) 74% - that’s three quarters of Republican congressmen and women who are denying climate change, and using it to score political points off the Democrats
5. C) zero. No British newspapers covered the UN Climate Change talks, despite being covered by Reuters (and The Economist)
6. The Sun
7. Nigel Lawson, who thinks it’s all propaganda
8. B) The Evening Standard. In May 2008, The Evening Standard mentioned climate change or global warming 34 times. this was down from 137 in May 2007, a drop of 75%
9. Piers Brosnan, for L’Oreal Vita Lift (men’s facial cream)
10. The Happening: ‘inexplicable’ means, of course, unable to explain what’s happening. If only…
Credit crunch hits coverage of climate change
Headline coverage of climate change in the UK national press has dropped by over 40% since May 2007.
In May 2007, 103 headline stories in the top 20 UK newspapers carried either ‘climate change’ or ‘global warming’ or ‘Kyoto Protocol’ in the title. In May 2008, that figure had dropped to 59.
One month’s statistics could be a blip, of course, so I took a look at the whole of 2008 so far, in comparison with 2007. These are the results, first January-May 2007:
And then January - May 2008:
You can see that for these five months, the best month in 2008 (March, with 79) doesn’t even come close to the worst month in 2007 (May, with 103). While the Guardian has maintained a trend of near every day reporting, other titles have reduced their coverage. Of course quantity is not the same as quality, responsible or positive coverage. I’ll get to this in my later posts this week (tomorrow on The Sun; and you’ll be surprised about how much and how positive…). But in numbers, coverage is falling. And the trend is generally downwards.
So what’s happening? Read more
Media’s blind eye to advertising
Yesterday I wrote about protests by publishers and car manufacturers against plans by the EU to introduce compulsory rules governing pollution info on car advertising. In last night’s 7pm Channel Four flagship news programme, the producers covered the story (good) but relegated it to the ‘And Finally…’ slot (bad) generally reserved for the more lighthearted story of the day.
I want to pick up on this, because news media play an important role in developing the public’s broader understanding of political and health issues.
Is Climate Change a serious issue or not?
Serious political and health issues are well covered, in general, by C4. And, just like smoking (the example C4 used as a parallel), climate change is both a political and health issue. So why the almost clownish approach? Watch it for yourself:
By relegating the story to the lighter-hearted final slot, through its ordering of scenes and interviews, by its very headline (’Driven to Distraction by Brussels’) and therefore by its emphasis on certain aspects of the story, the importance of the issue was downplayed. If this health threat concerned fire hazards in toys or flooding in the home counties, would it have be covered in the same way?
Media’s blind eye to advertising
No. And the reason is, I feel, the fact that advertising came into the mix. This report provides what I see as an example of the ‘institutional blind eye’ from which media suffers in relation to advertising. Generally this comes, in relation to climate change, in the form of charges of hypocrisy levelled at writing articles criticising government and business, but accepting advertising money from polluting products (airlines, car manufacturers etc). MediaLens picked up on this. For the Guardian, Monbiot and the readers’ editor responded.
But last night was interesting in that the turn of this blind eye became in many ways more subtle, challenging and, I feel, dangerous. The relationship moved beyond one of reliance, to one of defense: that is, this report, this news piece, made advertising the hero, in exactly the same way the car is made the hero by advertising. Read more
Imagining our environment: Hiroshi Sugimoto
Research for my PhD took us last weekend to the Museum of Modern Art in Salzburg and an exhibition of the work of photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto. The Japanese-born New Yorker Sugimoto has been exhibiting since 1987 and is recognised as one of the outstanding contemporary photographers. Contemporary, but using almost archaic photographic equipment and practices, such as an old 19th century large-image camera, and an army of assistants touching up the black and white prints by hand.
It is this approach, along with the subject matter, that now draws me to Sugimoto as a case study of how we ‘talk’ about - in visual and verbal languages - and therefore represent the environment.
Why the environment?
Many of Sugimoto’s images are of, or relate to, how we experience the environment, both built and ‘natural’. Some of his most arresting images are of architecture in slow exposure (blurred) focus, teasing out how great design is strengthened by reconnecting with its more impressionistic, ‘yet to be realised’ image in the architect’s mind: what the design must have first ‘felt’ like. This urge to reconnect what we experience is the present with what we have experienced in the past, either internal or external to ourselves, is central to Sugimoto’s work, and is the kernal for perhaps his most emotive and powerful work, his Seascapes. Read more
Artemis ads hunting me down
That’s Artemis Investment Management, not the Greek goddess of of the hunt.
I’m thinking through the choice of cultural objects as case studies for my PhD that explores how we represent, talk about and communicate the environment. I’ll be looking at media, long form journalism, literature, poetry, and now, I think, a key contender has to be advertising. In particular, the long-term campaign and advertisements of Artemis Investment Management: The Profit Hunter.
The Profit Hunter Campaign
I’ve been incensed by these ads for a while. They’re all over the UK travel network (tube, train, bus) and, here’s a great example, on a London taxi.
The Artemis brand is moulded around this conceit of profit hunting as a mimetic analogy with profit as an animal in the natural wild, tracked down, hunted, by its investment specialists. Its advertising campaign uses a pastiche of 1930s Great Adventurers in hunting gear.
It’s not a metaphor, stupid
What astounds me is that the people behind this campaign, both client and ad agency, present the goal of capital profit gain at the metaphorical expense of the environment, when they must, surely, understand that what they are communicating is no longer, and never has been, simply a metaphor?
The animal itself, the profit, is a clever illustration that marries together a line graph profit and what looks like an extinct, or soon to be extinct, primitive bird that can’t outrun the smart investor/hunter.
I’ve been a reader of semiotics and deconstruction for some time now, and will develop the argument in detail, but in essence it’s not difficult to anticipate my position. The signification of these advertisements contributes to the cultural meaning-making that the environment is a resource for human endeavour, from which great profits will be plundered. Fair play to Artemis, they’re not exactly subtle about the evisceration of our planet by capitalism’s global financial racket, are they? In fact, any typical semiological analysis would be redundant faster than you could say “What’s that you smell boy, a profit up ahead?” But how can we address these ads as cultural objects? Read more
