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Shell undermine protection for endangered whale

In a 48-hours where the ideas of geo-engineering gain prominence, it was a story in this weekend’s Observer Business and Media section that caught my eye for good environmental journalism. Oil giant Shell is accused of influencing–editing–an environmental report on the impact of the Sakhalin II oil project, which threatens the habitat of the western grey whale.

What’s good about the journalism in this story is that, while offering a balanced report and quoting perspectives from both sides, the journalist, Nick Mathiason, makes the editorial decisions to provide fundamental facts of the story that place the project in a larger context. For example, he informs the reader that the Sakhalin project will “also release 1.6m tonnes of carbon dioxide, three times the UK’s annual carbon footprint.” Identifying the wider impacts of Shell’s activities in this way is an important contribution to revealing the externalised/hidden costs (generally environmental ones) in the production of consumable resources. More »

Tags: climate change, environmental reporting, Observer

Twenty years on: covering climate change

I wonder what the long-term impact will be on my personality of writing about climate change.

I am writing a chapter for a book provisionally entitled ‘Media and Climate Change’, an academic text, and my focus is on the reporting of the policy texts: how the Kyoto Protocol, IPCC reports, UK Climate Bill, etc, have been received and dealt with in the press, and what impact this has had on effective action.

It can be upsetting and depressing work. It would be fair to say I’m struggling this week. One example why: read this intro to a news story I was anaylsing:

SCIENTISTS, politicians and journalists are part of a conspiracy to predict catastrophe through global warming, a Channel 4 programme suggested last night. The programme claimed that disparate groups were making this claim for their own reasons and presented data allegedly demolishing the greenhouse theory. Scientists from the Meteorological Office meet today to decide whether to complain to the Independent Broadcasting Authority.

Sounds familiar? The Great Global Warming Swindle from last year, right? No. This was The Greenhouse Conspiracy, broadcast by Channel 4, which I found while researching media coverage of the first IPCC report in 1990. Watch it on Youtube. More »

Tags: climate change, Congress, Guardian, James Hansen, newspaper, Observer