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Shelling out on sustainability

Energy company (didn’t they used to be an oil company?) Shell are running a series of web dialogues, with today’s (6am GMT time, unfortunately they are not supplying the coffee) on ‘Sustainability Communications’ with their V-P for Comms, Björn Edlund.

Early skirmishes between the Comms team and the great unwashed (it is 6am) remind me something of either a manicured garden or Capoeira - well managed and quite elegant to look at or watch, in its own way. If Bjorn and his team are not at present reclining in Lazy Boys in reality, metaphorically it seems they are. Perhaps that is the nature of self-selection for those who would be taking part in such a web chat.

The most interesting Q/A so far (6.32am) is this: More »

Tags: activism, alism, biness, Bjorn Edlund, campaign, capitalism, comment, economics, economy, environment, environmentalism, Foucault, greenwash, hegemony, jobs, language, media, news, politics, professionalism, programming, psychology, regulation, reporting, representation, research, sharing, Shell, students, training, US

Forum: climate change and violence

Last Friday I attended the first of seven ‘climate change and violence’ 1-day workshops attended by a network of academics, campaigners, government and faith groups (and others) interested in looking at climate change in a holistic manner, rather than from segregated disciplines or policy positions. The network is called Crisis Forum, set up and coordinated by Mark Levene and David Cromwell (of MediaLens), both academics in Southampton. More »

Tags: business, campaign, capitalism, convergence, Copenhagen, ecology, economics, environment, Guardian, jobs, kyoto, news, politics, regulation, research, training

‘Smart children likely to vote green’

On this fine morning for democracy, something to warm the hearts of the Green Party, and its leaders and principal speakers, Caroline Lucas and Derek Wall. This story in The Times from Monday:

Cleverer children are more likely to vote for the Green Party or the Liberal Democrats in a general election than other parties when they become adults, research suggests. The study, by the University of Edinburgh and the UK Medical Research Council and published in the journal Intelligence, indicates that childhood IQ is as important as social class in determining political allegiance. The IQs of more than 6,000 subjects were recorded at the age of 10, before any secondary schooling. Twenty-four years later they were asked about their voting habits.

Wonder how that would play out in the U.S. in the future? Derek Wall in particular has been highlighting the campaign of Cynthia McKinney, the U.S. election’s green candidate. Wall quotes Sanda Everette, co-chair of the Green Party of the United States, saying: More »

Tags: campaign, Caroline Lucas, Cynthia McKinney, Derek Wall, green, Journalism, politics, research, video

Climate change bill passed (in the night)

Well I think I spoke too soon. There was very little coverage of the Climate Change Bill passing its commons stages. Perhaps this was due to the Brand-effect, or that most journalists are still deployed onto credit crunching topics. Prince Charles did make it into the papers yesterday talking about the ‘climate crunch’.

But so far I’ve found only two MSM reports on the passing of the climate change bill; a bill which is a world-first in setting legal targets for nation-state government:

• Historic, yet nothing has been done (The Guardian)
• Companies face mandatory CO2 reporting (The FT)

The same angle on companies reporting their CO2 emissions was reported in The Telegraph prior to the vote on the bill.

What’s the reason for such a low level of coverage?
There are probably a few. More »

Tags: business, campaign, Caroline Lucas, climate change bill, coverage, ecology, environmentalism, green, Guardian, news, reporting, scientists, WWF

More on the Daily Mail’s plastic love affair

Following my opinion piece over on Journalism.co.uk about the hypocrisy that would entail if the Daily Mail really were to win the Press Gazette Environmental Press Awards campaign of the year, I came across another link to a story, published by the Press Gazette, from last year.

My argument is that the Daily Mail’s “Ban the Bags” campaign was a co-opt of an already running and successful campaign that was building its own momentum. Other than that, of course, the DM’s coverage is so invidiously contradictory and generally anti-environment, particularly against legislation to combat climate change (the Kyoto Protocol, the UK Climate Change Bill), that any award would be tough to swallow; and particularly this award for the Ban the Bags campaign, as it has barely added anything new.

And so the link and quote is worth publishing:

Editor of the Mail on Sunday Peter Wright defended his newspapers’ use of covermounts and other promotions to boost circulation.

“When the history of newspapers is written, it may well be that the greatest innovation of our generation is the humble polybag,” Wright said.

And if that point is not clear enough, Wright continues:

“Any editor who wants his paper still to be here in 2020 needs to be constantly thinking about what he can add to his paper and what he can put into his polybag that will make his newspaper better value to the reader.”

How about a nice manufaturing-intense polyeurythane statuette of Janus for the average Daily Mail reader’s mantelpiece? (And before any criticisms of prejudice, I’m thinking here of my mother, who still buys the paper after working there as a clerk in the 1960s).

Tags: campaign, coverage, Daily Mail, environmentalism, Mail on Sunday, news, newspaper, newspapers, Peter Wright, Press Gazette Environmental Press Awards

Selective nominating: Daily Mail the greenest of all?

The Press Gazette Environmental Press Awards shortlist was announced Monday, with some familiar and surprising names on the list.

Can-Do Attitude
Up for Environment Journalist of the Year is Fiona Harvey, at the Financial Times, who I spoke to earlier this year. I admire Fiona: she has been a recipient of awards before, and ploughs a lonely furrow for environment coverage at the FT. She was reasonably recalcitrant to begin with, and unsurprisingly, as she’s had some difficult time with interviewers. (I’m also a fan of Media Lens, however.)

One of her reasons for continued nominations in awards such as these is the approach she, and the FT, take to reporting on the environment, which is both consistent and positive. This is what Fiona said:

Positive coverage is very much an FT outlook. We’re very solutions focused—we won’t just present the problem. Our readership is generally in positions of power. They don’t like to be told there’s a problem without some way of dealing with it. So we like to think we’ve got a very can-do attitude, it’s not just ‘oh dear’ and that’s with all issues, not just the environment.

Choking on my toast
There isn’t a single paper, and certainly not the FT, that isn’t in some way hypocritical and/or contradictory in terms of its coverage of environment and climate change. Very often, for example, stories appearing in the same paper take totally different positions, whether written by the Political Editor or Environment Correspondent.

None more so than the Daily Mail, which is up for ‘campaign of the year’. I nearly choked on my toast. Why? More »

Tags: campaign, coverage, Daily Mail, economics, environment, environmentalism, green, kyoto, media, news, newspaper, newspapers, politics, press gazette, reporting, scepticism, tabloids, water

Independent’s top 100 environmentalists

The Independent on Sunday has published a list of the top 100 environmentalists, as decided upon by its panel of four judges. And the winner?

Britain’s most successful transport campaigner has come top of the first comprehensive list of the country’s most effective greens, compiled by The Independent on Sunday.

The little-known John Stewart, who leads the onslaught against a third runway at Heathrow, soundly beats far more high-profile figures – from Jonathon Porritt to Zac Goldsmith, from Sir David Attenborough to Prince Charles – to take the honour. He does so in the wake of an important breakthrough for his campaign – the announcement by the Conservative Party that it plans to scrap the runway in favour of high-speed rail links that would supplant short-haul flights.

The runners-up are also unconventional choices, not normally found heading such lists: Professor Robert Watson, the chief scientist at Defra; Jane Davidson , the Welsh environment minister; the broadcaster Monty Don; and the polar scientist Peter Wadhams. They, and the other greens on the list, were selected for the recent impact they have made rather than for their fame by a panel of judges from inside and outside this newspaper.

The judges were: Nicholas Schoon, editor, the ‘ENDS Report’, Britain’s leading specialist environmental journal; Alex Kirby, former environment correspondent of the BBC; David Randall, assistant editor, ‘IoS’; and Geoffrey Lean, environment editor at The IoS.

Tags: campaign, environment, green, newspaper, newspapers, scientists

Local & Green 1: flicking the switch

Each day this week I’ll be posting on Local & Green: why environmental journalism is best at the local level, and can help grow a renewed local media industry. Today I’m looking at…

Flicking the Switch: which newspapers are making the leap to communal green media?
Inspired by last month’s Carnival of Journalism, I blogged about why local media should take the opportunity to connect with its community through environmental action and campaigns. I picked up on a number of examples that were delivering a positive “communal address” to help people take small actions in their lives: however, none of the examples were from local media groups. And it left me wondering why regional media were not using green to drive growth. More »

Tags: campaign, climate change, environmental journalism, Journalism, local & green, local media