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Pachauri’s blog and President Obama

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has launched his own blog.

It’s a curious thing for someone already so well known, well positioned, to do (hence the exclamation marks from Wattsupwiththat). It is also not that sophisticated as a portfolio site.

Perhaps the process of leading the IPCC through tortuous negotiations processes around the text of each IPCC report has been so painful that Pachauri feels the need to communicate without so many restrictions. If Pachauri thinks opening up a blog is anything of a nicer experience, he might want to think again.

The latest blog post from Nov 5 looks at President-elect Obama’s positioning on climate change. As chair of the IPCC, Pachauri’s views are worth accounting for: More »

Tags: barack obama, blogging, blogs, Canada, Congress, coverage, economics, environment, environmentalism, green, greenpeace, Guardian, IPCC, news, politics, reporting, science, US

‘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

Guardian launches Fred Pearce greenwash column

Back in June I interviewed Fred Pearce for a book chapter (to be published next year). My first question was if coverage of climate change had slowed. No, he said, and his employers (magazines such as New Scientist) were looking for more stories from him. He also said that the Guardian was increasing its pool of freelancers and wanting more copy from him.

And so this week launches Fred’s new Guardian column: Greenwash. Fred has been writing on environment and cimate change for years (see his book Confessions of an Eco Sinner), and there’s probably no-one better to tackle this subject in the UK. This is why, in his own words:

My job is to keep a broad perspective of the science as well as the policy, and be a bit of a policy wonk I suppose, and be in place to blow the whistle if someone is talking rubbish. And that can be around climate change or biofuels or if maybe the IPCC aren’t telling us how bad it really could be. It’s my job to focus on the sniffing around and explaining the boundaries of the debate.

His first column looks at the greenwashing of energy companies and their eco-friendly tariffs which, Fred says, are nothing of the sort (at least not for the big players E.On, British Gas and EDF). This is the heart of the issue: More »

Tags: activism, coverage, environment, green, greenwash, Guardian, IPCC, jobs, magazines, news, science, scientists

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

Ecuador first nation to give rights to nature

Missed in the mass coverage of the G8, on Monday this week the Ecuadorian assembly approved a draft rewrite of its country’s constitution that would give enshrined rights to its nature and ecosystems within Ecuadorian territory.

This is, potentially, a pretty big story. Read the full draft of the rights given to nature. A couple of highlights:

Every person, people, community or nationality, will be able to demand the recognitions of rights for nature before the public organisms (courts and government agencies).

The State will apply precaution and restriction measures in all the activities that can lead to the extinction of species, the destruction of the ecosystems or the permanent alteration of the natural cycles.

To do so at a national level is unprecedented, but it has happened elsewhere at regional level. For example, the Tamaqua Borough Council in Pennsylvania, which in September 2006 recognised the rights of nature. In the US it’s called ‘Wild Law’.

Here is Lovelock (1994) on the point in relation to climate change: “We must, in our own interest, theorise that the planet is at least as important as we are. If we continue to pollute and destroy for our own interest, we could bring about the end of the Pleistocene and the dawn of a new hot earth. First in our thoughts should be the need to avoid perturbing Gaia and exacerbating its present instability.”

The Ecuadorian vote to ratify the draft will come some time in August/September. A good friend of mine is down there at the moment working on some environmental projects, so I’ll try to get hold of him and get some local views on the issue.

Tags: climate change, Ecuador, green, media reporting, nature rights

Green & Local 3: ‘what it means for Iowa’

Looking at how low-carbon living can play a role in renewing growth in local media, this example of a focussed campaign from the Des Moines Register caught my eye. It has a couple of flash pages that analyse temperatures (summer and winter), precipitation and global trends:

It starts out with its strap “a look back and what could be ahead”, noting that Iowa has warmed by about 2 degrees over the last 135 years (with two cold snaps). As the Society for Environmental Journalists says, its focus is on Iowa “while giving enough national and global context to provide perspective.”

Look at the article that follows the graphs, and you’ll see 201 comments (at time of writing), many of those aggressively sceptical, as is usual on comment boards, some supportive, some overwhelmed by the problem of climate change.

It’s an excellent piece of regional media coverage on the issue of climate change, at a time when (thanks to Adrian Monck for the link) the US metropolitan dailies are suffering. This from Toronto’s Globe and Mail:

…metropolitan dailies, especially in the ultra-competitive U.S. market, are suffering. The losses have put some media organizations on the brink. The Tribune group, whose holdings include the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times and The Baltimore Sun, is weighed down by $13-billion in debt, and advertising revenues declined 15 per cent in the first three months of this year. Some analysts question whether the company can survive beyond mid-2009.

(The same Baltimore Sun both credited and ‘busted’ for breaking and following a story on the Mayor’s questionable dealings… worthy journalism, but in danger of going under).

As I’ve been writing about this week, local media franchises with low-carbon living as one of they central pitches may be a way for the media of the metropolis, either in the US or UK, to renew and grow. And that may go hyper-local. This story in the US shows how suburbia is surviving, despite the high oil prices. Maybe the article’s premise (that people need to be near the city centre) no longer holds as we choose to go local, work from home, and live a lower-carbon life (either by choice or through high carbon/fuel costs). Worth thinking about.

Tags: climate change, green, local media, low-carbon living, US media