Media and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO)
November 2018 Summary

November media attention to climate change and global warming was down 8% throughout the world from October 2018, and up about 33% from November last year. Radio coverage held steady from October 2018 but was up 27% from November 2017. Across all sources, regionally an increase was detected in Europe (up 11%). Elsewhere, moderate decreases from October to November 2018 were found in North America (down 8%), Asia (down 14%) and Central/South America (down 17%), while more substantial downturns in the quantity of coverage were found in the Middle East (down 21%), Oceania (down 34%) and Africa (down 39%).

In January of this year, MeCCO expanded coverage to sixty-two newspaper sources, six radio sources and six television sources. These span across thirty-eight countries, in English, Spanish, German and Portuguese. In addition to English-language searches of “climate change” or “global warming”, we search Spanish-language sources through the terms “cambio climático” or “calentamiento global”, German-language sources through the terms ‘klimawandel’ or ‘globale erwärmung’, and Portuguese-language sources through the terms “mudanças climáticas” or “aquecimento global”. Figure 1 shows these ebbs and flows in newspaper media coverage at the global scale – organized into seven geographical regions around the world – over the past 179 months (from January 2004 through November 2018).

At the country level, counts held steady or decreased from October to November 2018, except for in Spain where coverage was up 22%. In the United States, print coverage was down 5% in November compared to October, though still up considerably from the previous November 2017. However, US television coverage of climate change spiked in November 2018, as it was up 71% from October 2018 and also up considerably from coverage a year ago (November 2017).

Moving to considerations of content within these searches, Figure 2 shows word frequency data in the US television media coverage in November 2018. While US TV coverage was up to its highest levels since December 2016, television media attention appeared to be driven by stories relating to President Trump rather than other stories like the US National Climate Assessment (NCA4) released on November 23 (see below for more). In US television coverage of climate change or global warming in November 2018, ‘Trump’ was explicitly invoked over fourteen times more frequently than the words ‘science’ or ‘scientists’ together and nearly four times more frequently than the word ‘climate’ itself, for examples.

In November, considerable attention was paid to scientific dimensions of climate change and global warming. For example, a new study published in Nature found that global oceans have been absorbing more heat than previously understood. This buffer to atmospheric warming was then noted, as oceans have warmed more than the IPCC previously estimated over the past twenty-five years. Journalist Matt McGrath from the BBC reported “ this new study says that every year, for the past 25 years, we have put about 150 times the amount of energy used to generate electricity globally into the seas – 60% more than previous estimates”.

A second example arose in early November through media coverage of the simultaneous release of two studies in Nature examining interactions between human activities and hurricane impacts. While one study noted increased rainfall by hurricanes Katrina, Maria and Irma through anthropogenic climate change, the second study predicted that future hurricanes will increase in intensity due to human contributions to climate change. Journalist Seth Borenstein from the Associated Press wrote, “Hurricane Harvey snagged on the skyscrapers of Houston, causing it to slow and dump more rain than it normally would, one study found. The city’s massive amounts of paving had an even bigger impact by reducing drainage. Land development in the metro area, on average, increased the chances of extreme flooding by 21 times, study authors said. A second study looked at last year’s major Hurricanes Maria and Irma and 2005′s deadly Katrina and used computer simulations to see what would have happened if there had been no human-caused global warming. The study found that climate change significantly increased rainfall from those three storms, but did not boost their wind speed.” Meanwhile, journalist Rebecca Hersher from National Public Radio reported, “A pair of studies published today in the journal Nature find that hurricanes are already causing more rain than they used to, and that cities themselves may be making the rainfall from those storms even worse”.

As a third example, in mid-November a new study published in Nature Climate Change found “traceable evidence for 467 pathways by which human health, water, food, economy, infrastructure and security have been recently impacted by climate hazards such as warming, heatwaves, precipitation, drought, floods, fires, storms, sea-level rise and changes in natural land cover and ocean chemistry”. Journalist Maggie Fox from NBC News reported that lead author Camilo Mora and team “combed through more than 3,200 studies to try to paint a broad picture of what climate change is going to do to people over the coming century. They cross-referenced their findings against known disasters”. USA Today journalist Doyle Rice wrote, “Don’t say we weren’t warned. From human health to the world’s food supply, from water scarcity to widespread migration and violence, the threats from climate change are much larger than previously thought, a study released Monday suggests. And in many places, several threats will be happening at once”.

As a fourth example, a new University of Chicago report released in mid-November articulated that particulate pollution from fossil fuel burning effectively has shortened life spans by over four years for an average Indian and nearly three years for a typical denizen in China. Washington Post journalists Bonnie Berkowitz, John Muyskens, Manas Sharma and Monica Ulmanu reported that lead author Michael Greenstone credited the 1970 US Clean Air Act for many avoided deaths from air pollution in the United States, and noted that it was why “wildfires in California triggered air quality alerts and forced school closings many miles away”.

But the most prominent example in November 2018 was the Fourth US National Climate Assessment (NCA4) that was released the day after Thanksgiving, colloquially dubbed ‘black Friday’ and a decidedly slow news day when many citizens are busy expressing their identity as consumers. This peer-reviewed report co-authored by 300 relevant expert researchers noted that climate change will continue to impact millions of people across the US and cost billions of dollars in damage. Journalist Tony Barbosa from the Los Angeles Times wrote, “The congressionally mandated report by 13 federal agencies, the first of its kind under the Trump administration, found that climate change is already being felt in communities across the United States. It projects widespread and growing devastation as increasing temperatures, rising sea levels, worsening wildfires, more intense storms and other cascading effects harm our ecosystems, infrastructure and society”. Meanwhile, journalist Steve Frank from CBS News reported, “Earth’s climate is now changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization, primarily as a result of human activities, according to a long-awaited report released Friday by the federal government”. And a significant amount of news organizations – such as The Associated Press, Reuters, USA Today, The Guardian, BBC and The Washington Post – covered US President Trump’s reaction to the report. For example, journalist Rebecca Ballhaus from The Wall Street Journal reported, “President Trump said Monday that he doesn’t believe the central finding of a report released last week by his administration that global climate change could cause U.S. economic losses of hundreds of billions of dollars a year by the end of the century. Speaking to reporters before leaving Washington for Mississippi, Mr. Trump said of the report, “I’ve seen it. I’ve read some of it. And it’s fine.” Asked if he agreed with the report’s assessment of a large economic impact, he responded: “I don’t believe it”.” Read more …

by Lauren Hamko

Lauren is a junior at University of Colorado Boulder majoring in Journalism with a minor in Political Science. She believes youth voting is extremely important because it gives us a voice.

After the recent midterm elections on Nov. 6, 2018, students at the University of Colorado Boulder are concerned that their voices and interests are not being heard with a youth turnout rate under 50 percent.

Since 1980, American voters between the age 18 and 25 have not shown a turnout rate above 50 percent. The percentage of youth voters in the United States has been following a negative trend, meaning that each election the percentages are shrinking due to less youth voters turning out to the polls.

The turnout percentages are shockingly low and students at CU Boulder are concerned that their interests are not being accounted for. However, CU Boulder students remain hopeful that youth voting percentages will increase in the future with proper encouragement.

Julia Kincaid, a student at CU Boulder, believes that voting is her responsibility as an American citizen. She thinks it is important for every other young adult to believe this as well.

“They [the youth] can get their opinions accounted for and their voices heard,” Kincaid said. “It is important that they can have representation in a government that they feel is representative of what they want.”

According to Child Trends, 39 percent of youth voters turned out to the pools to vote in the 2016 presidential election. The highest percentage of youth voters in the past 46 years was in the 2008 presidential election at 44 percent (Child Trends).

The percentage of youth voters reached a low in the 1998 midterm elections. According to the US Election Assistance Commission, 18.5 percent of voters between the ages 18 and 24 voted. This is compared to 56.5 percent of voters between the ages of 45 and 64 and 61.3 percent of voters age 65 and over.

Kaiser Family Foundation gives the total population of The United States at 320,372,000. The number of people between the ages 19 and 25 is currently at 29,814,800. This means that young adults account for 9 percent of the American population.

The low percentage of young adults in the entire population does not allow for much representation for them. Due to this, it is important that young adults vote to allow them to maximize their influence in the government.

“Maybe they [youth voters] don’t really know what issues matter and what issues affect them,” Kincaid said. “Maybe they feel like the issues aren’t things they really want to vote on.”

Rather than thinking youth voters does not have the proper knowledge and understanding of politics like Kincaid believes, Pierce Doogan, a CU Boulder student, blames the low percentage of youth voter turnout on oppression.

“I think the reason younger voters aren’t actually having as much of a turnout is because of the older generation,” Doogan said. “The older generations are making us feel like ‘who cares if you go out and vote.’”

Students at CU Boulder are encouraged to vote through many outlets. Before the 2018 midterms, campus activity circulating voting in the election was booming. Students were guest speaking in classes, setting up informational booths, and handing out voter registration forms.

“There’s all those people on campus harassing the students all the time,” Kincaid said. “It’s more in your face when it is constantly being discussed. They try to market it to students to get turnout numbers up.”

Encouragement to vote on campus is exerted mainly by students at CU Boulder. However, professors get involved as well. Professor Max Boykoff teaches Environmental Studies at CU Boulder. Throughout the month of October, Boykoff expressed the importance of voting to his students multiple times.

The Environment and Public Policy are two issues that the youth have expressed strong concern about. The future of Climate Change is a matter that is becoming more prominent with each election. In order to influence the future of both of these topics, it is important for young voters to get to the polls.

“A lot of younger people feel as though what they have tried to influence hasn’t made much of a difference,” Boykoff said. “Feeling disaffected is a logical output.”

Boykoff allowed for a group of students to start his class by handing out voter registration forms a few weeks prior to the midterm elections. The professor also included slides on his lectures that reminded his students of the upcoming election date and how to proceed with voting.

“I think it really is about approaching it [low youth voter turnout] from different ways. There is no silver bullet,” Boykoff said. “There’s a lot of upstream ways you can address it by helping people feel empowered and feel as though their voices, concerns and interests matter.”

Despite a common declining trend in the numbers of youth voters, students remain hopeful that young adults, like themselves, will positively change the trend. They are thinking of new ideas to get people to the polls on election days.

Both Doogan and Kincaid are optimistic about the turnout for the 2018 midterm elections. They believe that many of their peers voted and will continue voting. Both of the CU Boulder students think that youth voter turnout rates will begin to follow a positive trend starting with the 2018 midterms and continuing with the presidential election in 2020.

There is little data released on the percentages of youth turnout for the recent midterms on Nov. 6, 2018. However, many outlets are suggesting that early data shows an increase in turnout percentages.

Doogan is always thinking of ways to make it easier for young adults to vote and has many ideas, although, he has not figured out the functionality of them yet. He believes that the younger generation is one that will easily take four steps to do something, but if it is five, people will never touch it.

“We need to take off that extra step,” Doogan said. “There should be a way that makes it easier for us to vote. One where you don’t have to walk in and drop off a ballot.”

Whether an increase in youth voters stems from encouragement from others or an easier way to vote, CU Boulder students are confident that the percentage of youth voters needs to rise. Students like Kincaid and Doogan agree that the importance of young adults turning out the polls cannot be stressed enough.

“I am going to keep voting,” Kincaid said. “It’s a responsibility of mine to do so, and everyone else should also feel this way, too.”

Voting is the best way for the youth to represent themselves and have their voices heard. Starting with the 2018 midterm elections, the youth population of the United States should strive to reach a turnout above 50 percent. A change in the trend is long overdue.

by Cassandra Brooks
National Geographic

Last week governments met in the southern reaches of Hobart, Australia to make decisions on how to manage the vulnerable icy waters around Antarctica. They deliberated in the wake of the recent reports, which concluded with high confidence that climate change will cause dramatic environmental changes and loss of sea ice. As if to underscore the debates over managing for climate change and proposed marine protected areas designed to enhance the resilience of Southern Ocean ecosystems, a massive wedge of the Pine Island Glacier calved into the Southern Ocean. Antarctica seemed to be pleading for action and yet, the 25-member Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) failed to agree to act on climate change nor to adopt any protected areas.

Antarctica is exceptional. The coldest, windiest, iciest, driest, and most remote of continents is widely celebrated for its rich history of exploration, science and diplomacy and for its exceptional beauty.

It’s also exceptionally important. Since its discovery, scientists have since documented that the Antarctic is vital to Earth systems. And despite the extreme environment – life thrives in incredible abundance. The freezing Southern Ocean that surrounds the Antarctic continent teems with whales, seals, penguins, toothfish, and krill to name a few. This frozen seascape harbors some of the last remaining great wildernesses on the planet. However, fishing pressure, combined with cumulative impacts of climate change, potentially jeopardizes the future of marine life in the Southern Ocean.

A wave rolling in a sea ice cave in Antartica (Credit: John B. Weller).

The Antarctic, particularly the western Antarctic Peninsula, is one of the fastest warming
places on Earth. A warmer Antarctica will lead to global repercussions of sea level rise, ocean circulation, and climate regulation. And locally, climate change is driving fluctuations in ice cover, shifts in population distribution and decreases in primary productivity. Potential declines in ice-dependent Antarctic krill, the foundation of the Southern Ocean food web, could lead to disruptions throughout the ecosystem.

CCAMLR’s charter is to conserve all biota and ecosystems in the Southern Ocean. Although fishing is allowed, it is not a right and does not trump responsibility for conservation. CCAMLR’s provisions on fishing are strict, precautionary, ecosystem-based and science-based. They also demand that management should take into account the effects of environmental change.

Across the 25 members, CCAMLR scientists have stressed for many years the urgent need to better understand how climate change will affect Antarctic species, both in the presence and absence of fishing. Last year, they proposed a climate change response work program that specifies research and monitoring requirements; identifies actions to address the implications of climate change on fisheries management; and, proposes to engage climate change experts to inform CCAMLR decision-making. A multi-nation research and monitoring plan in the Ross Sea was also on the table for a second time. Yet for two years in a row now CCAMLR could not agree to adopt these plans – ignoring the consensus scientific evidence and advice – largely due to political barriers.

In 2002, in line with global international agreements and targets, CCAMLR began working towards a network of representative MPAs in the Southern Ocean. In 2009, CCAMLR adopted the first international marine MPA. Then in 2016, CCAMLR adopted the world’s largest MPA in the Ross Sea, an area deemed to be one of the last remaining healthy marine ecosystems. With the adoption of the world’s first large-scale international MPA, there was hope that CCAMLR would soon follow through on its commitment towards the network. This year, three MPAs came under negotiation, including in the Weddell Sea – an icy wilderness which trapped Ernest Shackleton more than 100 years ago and, in part because it is protected by its extreme ice, a region which has never experienced commercial fishing. A proposal for a system of MPAs in the East Antarctic was also back on the table for the 7^thyear. Finally, an MPA for protecting the rapidly changing Antarctic Peninsula – an area with increasing human activity, including fishing and tourism, that is perhaps most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change – was presented for the first time. All three of these proposals were blocked despite strong support.

Emperor Penguins in the East Antarctic (Credit: John B. Weller).

Extensive research supports that protected areas lead to greater biodiversity and biomass and, further, and perhaps most importantly in the case of the Southern Ocean, that protected areas can enhance species and ecosystems resilience to climate change impacts. The proposals that came to CCAMLR this year would enhance resilience of Southern Ocean ecosystems, and provide vitally important opportunities for research. However, CCAMLR makes decisions based on consensus, meaning that every Member must agree for any management measure to move forward. Securing fishing access, now and in the future, as well as global and regional geopolitics have increasingly challenged CCAMLR’s ability to progress on any conservation initiatives, including protected areas.

Climate change is happening now, far outpacing research and policy decisions. A global coalition of nations has started to respond, agreeing to cut carbon emissions with the signing of the Paris Agreement. Most nations have further committed to conserving biodiversity and implementing protected areas via the Aichi Biodiversity Targets and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. As the management body which governs the Southern Ocean, CCAMLR has the responsibility to work in conjunction with the suite of international environmental agreements towards conserving and protecting the Antarctic marine ecosystems. More than that, CCAMLR must take the lead, adopting policies that are both responsive and proactive. Unfortunately, since the adoption of the Ross Sea MPA in 2016, CCAMLR has not made any significant progress towards either incorporating climate change into its management or establishing necessary protections in the Southern Ocean.

Chinstrap and Gentoo Penguins in the Antarctic Peninsula (Credit: John B. Weller).

Policy can take a long time, especially in consensus decision making, but importantly, States have acted quickly in the past to address the imminent threat of illegal fishing. CCAMLR itself was formed in quick response to fears about overfishing for Antarctic krill. The roots of CCAMLR lie in the Antarctic Treaty, a peace and science agreement crafted in only six months and signed at the height of the Cold War. CCAMLR nations must wake up to the fact that climate change is as imminent a threat to Southern Ocean resources as illegal fishing. They must take quick and decisive action. They must, once again, lead.

The Antarctic is historically a place of great diplomacy, science and conservation. It is rightly celebrated as such. The future of the Antarctic ecosystems depends on CCAMLR rising swiftly to this new challenge. If they do, Antarctica will continue to be a beacon of international diplomacy, scientific collaborations, peaceful cooperation, and thriving ecosystems.

Media and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO)
October 2018 Summary

October media attention to climate change and global warming was up 43% throughout the world from the previous month of September 2018, and more than doubled (up 51%) from October last year. Upticks were detected across all regions of the world in October. Increased media coverage in October is attributed to attention paid to the United Nations (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on impacts of 1.5°C warming, and to continued impacts and reverberations from hurricane and typhoon activity. An increase was most pronounced in Africa (up 79%) and Oceania (up 76%). Elsewhere, increases were also detected in Central/South America (up 40%), North America (up 37%), Asia (up 24%) and Europe (up 43%), compared to the previous month of September.

In January of this year, MeCCO expanded coverage to sixty-two newspaper sources, six radio sources and six television sources. These span across thirty-eight countries, in English, Spanish, German and Portuguese. In addition to English-language searches of “climate change” or “global warming”, we search Spanish-language sources through the terms “cambio climático” or “calentamiento global”, German-language sources through the terms ‘klimawandel’ or ‘globale erwärmung’, and Portuguese-language sources through the terms “mudanças climáticas” or “aquecimento global”. Figure 1 shows these ebbs and flows in newspaper media coverage at the global scale – organized into seven geographical regions around the world – over the past 178 months (from January 2004 through October 2018).

Moving to considerations of content within these searches, Figure 2 shows word frequency data in the dynamic spaces of US newspaper and television media coverage in October 2018.

In October, considerable attention was paid to political content of coverage. The lead up to the 2018 US elections on November 6 have had some bearing on coverage. For example, in an article titled ‘As climate change becomes more visible, its weight as a campaign issue is growing’ journalist Evan Halper from the Los Angeles Times wrote, “for years, conventional wisdom among political strategists has labeled climate change as a politically weak issue, a concern of environmental activists but not the mass of voters. That’s still the case in many areas. But in districts around the country where warming is exacerbating natural disasters and disrupting regional economies, the anxiety of voters like Hardwick has started to shift how candidates campaign”. Meanwhile, in Canada in October, the government announced that they will impose carbon taxes on provinces that fail to create their own policies. The Prime Minister announced that the funds generated in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick, will go back to the taxpayers. Reuters journalist David Rjunggren reported on this effort at the Canadian federal level, and this story ran in many other outlets throughout the country and beyond. He wrote, “Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Tuesday said he would fulfill a promise to impose a carbon tax on provinces unwilling to combat climate change, prompting instant protests from a voter-rich part of the country. Trudeau, whose ruling Liberals face an election in October 2019, told a news conference that all the money collected would be returned directly to taxpayers in the four provinces without plans to curb the emission of greenhouse gases. Starting in April 2019 carbon pollution will initially cost C$20 ($15.27) a tonne, rising by C$10 a year until it reaches C$50 in 2022. Ottawa unveiled the proposal in 2016”.

At the science-policy interface, an early October UN IPCC meeting in South Korea – and consequent Special Report on impacts of 1.5°C warming – garnered a great deal of media attention. Media coverage focus on the IPCC Special Report warning that to avoid passing 1.5°C, emissions must drop 45% from 2010 levels by 2030, and must reach ‘net zero’ by 2050. These pronouncements also harkened back to a slogan promoted by vulnerable countries at the Paris talks in 2015: ‘1.5 to stay alive’. This was a reference to the bold emissions reductions needed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. BBC journalist Matt McGrath reported on how delegates gathered in Incheon, South Korea “to hammer out a plan in co-operation with government delegates, on the actions that would need to be taken to meet this [1.5°C] goal”. Amid considerable coverage of this report, Wall Street Journal reporter Timothy Puko wrote, “rapid, far-reaching changes to almost every facet of society are needed to avoid catastrophic climate change, reforms far beyond anything governments are currently either doing or planning to do, according to a report from a United Nations-led scientific panel”. Journalist Doyle Rice from USA Today reported, “ the world’s economies must quickly reduce fossil fuel use while at the same time dramatically increasing use of clean, efficient energy. These transitions must start now and be well underway in the next 20 years”. Read more …

by Beth Osnes
CSTPR Faculty Affiliate and Associate Professor of Theatre and Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado

There are ‘given ups,’ and there are ‘grown ups.’ ‘Grown ups’ are adults who are still in the game. They are the ones who still believe that, despite the odds, how we think and what we do in the coming years can reverse global warming. Grown ups believe we can gift the next generation with a stable climate in which they can grow and thrive. I have just spent the weekend in the company of about 200 amazing grown ups (and about 10 amazing activist youth) at the Drawdown Learn conference in New York at the Omega Institute. In 2017, I was very excited to learn about the publication of the book Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever to Reverse Global Warming because it was a solid plan that listed and explained the top 80 most impactful solutions. In the fall of 2017 I used parts of the text in my freshman seminar on climate comedy and in spring of 2018 for our ENVS course, Creative Climate Communication. In each of these courses, student groups participated in a public-facing project I created, Drawdown Act Up, which challenged students to design embodied activities/games and skits to activate the solutions for youth visitors to Rocky Mountain National Park. The activities/games physicalize the science behind a Drawdown climate solution, and the accompanying funny skit contextualizes the solution and cleverly demonstrates how to activate that solution locally in daily life. This is based on the evidence that embodying concepts is beneficial to learners. Engaging youth in a solutions-oriented performance in regards to climate change can increase youth levels of empowerment and promote commitment to positive action. This is based in ongoing research by Max Boykoff and myself into the effective use of comedy for communicating climate (see our most recent article in Political Geography “A Laughing Matter? Confronting climate change through humor”). In the summer of 2018, a small group of students led and performed these activities and skits for Discovery Day at Rocky Mountain National Park for visiting families. At the Drawdown Learn conference I presented on this curriculum, the experience of sharing it at RMNP, and on the research we did on the positive impact of this curriculum on our ENVS students.

During the rest of the conference, I was encouraged to hear very smart gown ups say that when we are told the goal seems impossible is when we become most brilliant. What calls forth the best in us all is when the stakes are the highest and the odds the toughest. It will take a mighty many of us to get this done. We each have our own unique contribution to make. As a performer, I take it literally that we each have a ‘part to play’ in reversing global warming. For me it means supporting students in writing the plays and playing the parts of a new story based on a solid plan being put to action. Although the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report may have given some of us fleeting ‘game over’ thoughts, I am fortified in my conviction that in this moment right now, each of us with our own unique and necessary talent, is more than ever before, GAME ON.

Photo: Paul Hawken, founder of Drawdown.org, highlighting the Inside the Greenhouse project, Drawdown, Act Up, in his plenary talk to open the Drawdown Learn conference Oct. 19, 2018. Credit: Beth Osnes.