Media and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO)
April 2018 Summary

April media attention to climate change and global warming was up 6% throughout the world from the previous month of March 2018. Newspaper coverage in Oceania went up 8%, and North America increased 19%. Central/South America dropped 19%, while coverage in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East held relatively steady. At the country level in April 2018, newspaper coverage went down compared to March in Spain (-4%), India (-7%) and Germany (-6%). It was up in the other countries monitored: Canada (+17%), the United Kingdom (UK) (+7%), Australia (+4%), New Zealand (+14%) and the United States (+20%). Meanwhile, US television coverage increased 26% from the previous month, while the six world radio sources monitored more than doubled from coverage in the previous month.

Global newspaper counts were about a quarter though of those (73% less) from counts a year ago (April 2017), when a great deal of global media attention was focused on the Trump Administration’s dispositions towards the Paris Climate Agreement. For example, journalist Coral Davenport of The New York Times reported that Mr. Trump intends to make a decision before the Group of Seven (G7) meeting in May 2017 on whether or not the US will follow through with its commitments under the Agreement. Davenport suggested that President Trump’s policy advisors are urging him to keep the US committed, while journalists Chris Mooney and Brady Dennis at The Washington Post reported that US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt was lobbying for withdrawal. Meanwhile, both the ‘March for Science’ and the ‘People’s Climate March’ garnered significant coverage in April 2017. The ‘March for Science’ included a large demonstration in Washington D.C., but similar protests took place in hundreds of cities across the U.S. and around the world. The Bangkok Post reported that Australia, New Zealand, and Germany also saw large turnouts as part of the ‘March for Science’.

Figure 1 shows these ebbs and flows in media coverage at the global scale – organized into seven geographical regions around the world – from January 2004 through April 2018.

Moving to considerations of content of climate change or global warming coverage in April 2018, Figure 2 shows word frequency data at the country levels in global newspapers and radio, juxtaposed with US newspapers and US television in April 2018. It is notable that the US-based media sources still continue to show signs of ‘Trump Dump’ (where media attention that would have focused on other climate-related events and issues instead was placed on Trump-related actions (leaving many other stories untold)). And as in previous months, content in media reporting outside the US context shows that this pattern of news reporting continues to be limited to the US. To illustrate, April 2018 news articles related to climate change or global warming in the US invoked ‘Trump’ 2498 times through the 426 stories this month (a ratio of nearly 6 times per article on average) in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Times. In US television sources of ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News Network, MSNBC, and NBC, Trump was mentioned 3198 times in 91 news segments (a whopping 35 mentions per segment on average). In contrast, in the UK press, Trump was mentioned in the Daily Mail & Mail on Sunday, The Guardian & The Observer, The Sun, The Daily Telegraph & The Sunday Telegraph, the Daily Mirror & Sunday Mirror, TheScotsman & Scotland on Sunday, and The Times & The Sunday Times 735 times in 557 April articles (approximately 1.3 mentions per article on average). As has been noted in previous MeCCO summaries, however, these current trends can quickly change, contingent on Trump Administration actions (or lack thereof) that could influence media attention on climate change or global warming.

Many media accounts in April focused on primarily political content associated with climate change and global warming. For example, US EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt earned a great deal of media attention (and scrutiny) for a range of accusations of inappropriate conduct and reckless spending of tax dollars. Among a number of outlets covering these stories in April, journalist Jacqueline Alemany from CBS News reported that “EPA chief Scott Pruitt met with lobbyist Steven Hart, who rented Pruitt a condo in Washington, D.C., for $50 a night … Hart’s lobbying firm, Williams & Jensen, revealed in a filing that Hart was a registered lobbyist for Smithfield Foods in the first quarter of 2018. According to emails obtained by CBS News, Hart and Smithfield Foods executive Dennis Treacy met with Pruitt in July 2017.” This and other allegations earned him a series of hearings in the US Congress later in the month, as reported by Louise Radnovsky and Heidi Vogt of The Wall Street Journal.

As another example of political content, though outside the US, BBC journalist David Shukman reported on the landmark agreement made at the International Maritime Organization talks, to cut emissions of greenhouse gases in the global shipping industry. Shukman noted that “shipping generates roughly the same quantity of greenhouse gas as Germany and, if it were accounted for as a nation, would rank as the world’s sixth biggest emitter. Like aviation, it had been excluded from climate negotiations because it is an international activity while both the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement involved national pledges to reduce greenhouse gases”.

Meanwhile in April, coverage relating primarily to the cultural dimensions continued to draw attention. To illustrate, journalist Ryan Miller from USA Today reported on marches for science around the world, commencing April 14th. The article characterized the second annual gatherings as “500 marches worldwide to send one clear message to public officials: that evidence-based policy decisions are critical and science should not be ignored”. Journalist Susan Svrluga from The Washington Post profiled a number of marchers and their motivations, while also noting that the “March for Science’s evolution over the past year has included transforming into a nonprofit with a broader mission: to support science and research policy through campaigns, outreach and marches”.

Media stories also intersected with scientific as well as ecological and meteorological issues across the globe in April 2018. For example, journalist Ben Smee from The Guardian reported on a new study in Nature that found that nearly a third of coral in the Great Barrier Reef in Australia died during a marine heatwave in 2016 associated with climate change. The study’s lead author Dr. Terry Hughes nonetheless offered a hopeful comment in saying that “the Great Barrier Reef is certainly threatened by climate change, but it is not doomed if we deal very quickly with greenhouse gas emissions. Our study shows that coral reefs are already shifting radically in response to unprecedented heatwaves.”

As May arrives and the tripod drops and the Nenana Ice Classic in Alaska ends, winter in the Northern Hemisphere draws to a close. Throughout the indications of the changing seasons, MeCCO will continue to track the ebbs and flows of climate change or global warming coverage in 74 media sources (newspapers, radio and TV) in 38 countries in seven different regions around the world. So stay tuned for further updates.

– report prepared by Max Boykoff, Jennifer Katzung and Ami Nacu-Schmidt

by Steve Vanderheiden
CSTPR Faculty, Associate Professor of Political Science and Environmental Studies at  University of Colorado at Boulder

Transparency, it is often said, acts as a disinfectant. “Sunshine” laws that require proceedings of government agencies to be made available to the public allow for oversight of and accountability for state actions. Information disclosure laws, like those requiring polluters to report their emissions or political advocacy groups the sources of their funding, can do the same for private actors. By making certain actions or relationships visible, we hope that publicity will encourage good behavior.

But what if it doesn’t, at least on its own? And what needs to accompany that information, in order to make it usable by its target audience? Scholars of “informational governance” have been asking these questions in recent years, given trends toward reliance upon disclosure and transparency rather than more regulatory approaches to environmental protection.

The shift from centrally-prescribed and binding greenhouse gas emission reductions under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to the non-binding and decentralized Nationally Determined Contributions to global mitigation efforts under the 2015 Paris Agreement offers one example of this trend. Carbon reporting on items sold in British supermarkets offer another. Both expect the publicity of information about emissions to provide an incentive for better environmental performance, whether because states wish to avoid being shamed for their overly modest NDCs or consumers wish to reduce their personal carbon footprints. Both have invited some deserved criticism of informational governance, and both point to important answers to those questions posed above.

While the Paris Agreement has been widely celebrated as a political success, having developed a treaty framework for multilateral cooperation on climate change, critics have noted an “ambition gap” in the submitted NDCs. Even if all major emitters complied with their Paris pledges – which now looks unlikely in the case of the United States, since the submitted decarbonization targets depended upon the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan and automobile fuel economy standards, both of which are currently in legal and administrative limbo – the sum total of these mitigation efforts would be insufficient to maintain the treaty’s official goal of preventing warming in excess of 2 degrees C. While disclosure and transparency may promote some level of ambition and provide some enforcement through reputational accountability, as the threat of shaming provides some pressure, that same threat can also deter higher levels of ambition, as governments don’t want to announce targets that they cannot reach.

Carbon labels on products sold in supermarkets like Tesco in Britain illustrate another challenge in the reliance upon information to incentivize environmental performance. Certainly, the sort of product life cycle analysis needed to determine the carbon footprint of a gallon of milk or container of tofu offers benefits to producers and consumers. As advocates of “ecological modernization” often note, this kind of audit can often allow producers to identify and eliminate sources of waste in their supply chains, and reducing the carbon used in transport of food from grower to supermarket shelf can save money while also reducing climate impacts. Likewise, consumers concerned about their own carbon footprints can make more informed choices about their dietary habits and food purchases, when armed with this kind of information. However, as critics have now aptly demonstrated, food miles (the main source of carbon in grocery products) are only one component of sustainable food systems, whereas the carbon label implies a more comprehensive indicator of a product’s sustainability than it can in fact offer. By presenting consumers with only one indicator, other pertinent facts that might be used to make more informed food choices are obscured, with greater transparency of one kind ironically making other relevant information more opaque. As scholars and critics have also noted, prompting consumers to choose locally-produced food over otherwise sustainable but distantly sourced food that had provided economic opportunity to economically marginalized farmers through agricultural export markets.

The answers to those questions posed above, and lessons learned by scholars of informational governance, are several. We ought to recognize the potential value of information gathering and dissemination without overestimating its power to alter behavior on its own, pairing it with other policy tools where necessary and appropriate.  Disclosure and transparency can sometimes work as a substitute for regulation, but elsewhere is more effect as a complement to it. Additionally, we must take more care in balancing the need for credible and usable information on the one hand and a more comprehensive or holistic picture from that information on the other. Too much information can become unmanageable, but too little can be misleading. Getting the right amount, and presenting it in a usable format and maintaining its actionability and credibility can be challenging, but we can learn from our successes and failures.

Transparency, that is, is not the kind of disinfectant that you can always just spray onto a problem area and watch the magic bubbles scrub away the germs and grime on its own, but can make the cleaning job easier for us when used appropriately.

A more effishient way to conserve forests and support livelihoods?

by Peter Newton
CSTPR Faculty Affiliate and Assistant Professor, Environmental Studies Program, University of Colorado Boulder

Sr. Luís tosses a handful of feed into the large pond, and the water erupts as dozens of large Arapaima fish compete for it. These freshwater fish, known here in Brazil as pirarucu, are found naturally in Amazonian lakes but are also now produced by small-scale farmers who have adopted aquaculture as part of a diversified farming system. Pirarucu are a well-known and popular fish: they taste delicious, and since they can grow up to an enormous 200lbs, they produce large boneless fillets. Sr. Luís began investing in aquaculture a few years ago. He dug two ponds on his small farm in the state of Acre, in the northwest Brazilian Amazon, and stocked them with pirarucu. He receives the juvenile fish from a large facility in the state capital of Rio Branco, rears them on his farm, and sells the adult fish back to the same cooperative when they are large enough to slaughter and process. Aquaculture brings additional income to Sr. Luís’ farm. It is also a space-efficient production system, which enables him to comply with legal environmental obligations to retain large parts of his property as native Amazonian forest. Alternative and more traditional forms of animal agriculture, such as cattle ranching, are much less space efficient and are thus much less compatible with forest conservation.

Investing in the infrastructure and training necessary to support a new industry in aquaculture is one of several initiatives designed, funded, and implemented by the Government of Acre in recent years. Acre has become famous as an example of strong subnational leadership, which is committed to a pathway of low-emissions development focused on forest conservation and sustainable socio-economic activities. The state thus contrasts sharply with many other parts of the Brazilian Amazon, where the model of rural development has been based on extensive cattle ranching and soy agriculture, which have been associated with widespread deforestation, environmental degradation, and social injustices. In addition to aquaculture, Acre’s state leadership has developed economies in other sectors that are also more compatible with forest conservation, including Brazil nuts, açai, natural rubber, and agroforestry. Each is supported through a combination of subsidies, training and capacity building, cooperatives, processing facilities, and markets, making engagement in these activities a viable livelihood strategy for rural producers.

I visited Acre in May 2017 and again in March 2018, to develop research and education collaborations with stakeholders in the Federal University of Acre (UFAC) and the Government of Acre. Acre was a founding member of the Governors’ Climate and Forests Taskforce (GCF), which is coordinated from CU Boulder, and Governor Tião Viana visited Boulder in January 2017 with a delegation of ministers and professors. An MOU between CU Boulder, UFAC, and the Acre Government resulted from this visit, and has laid the path for a growing number of collaborations.

Together with colleagues from the GCF, the Laboratory for Energy and Environmental Policy innovation (LEEP), and the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), I am conducting research in Acre to understand whether and how different sustainable development interventions that have been implemented as part of Acre’s low-emissions development strategy have had impacts on either rates of deforestation or the livelihoods of rural people. Using socio-economic panel data collected by CIFOR, and deforestation data from satellite imagery, we are quantifying changes over time in rural properties that have adopted these new production economies and those that haven’t. We hope that our work will provide the Acre Government with insights about the strengths and challenges of its policies and programs.

Acre is a global leader in innovative subnational governance, and something of a laboratory for experimental governance and the development of best practices to reconcile environmental and development goals. As such, other GCF members are closely observing Acre’s progress, successes, and challenges, and are poised to learn from its example. There is, therefore, value to be gained from documenting and reporting the lessons learned from Acre’s experiences, to guide the pursuit of socio-environmental sustainability elsewhere.

Alice Madden is a CSTPR Research Affiliate and the Executive Director of the Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy, and the Environment at Colorado Law

None of us would have guessed that the most impactful part of an eight-day, adventure filled field-trip around the Four Corners area would be a short walk around a mesa in northeastern Arizona. But that was before we met Nicole Horseherder.

Let me backup. I have the pleasure of teaching the Advanced Natural Resources Seminar at the Law School this Spring. Initiated by Prof. Charles Wilkinson 30 years ago, this unique seminar examines issues facing a specific geographic area and culminates with a field-trip. Past seminars have studied important watersheds across the southwest, the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, and the Grand Canyon.

This year, we studied the Colorado Plateau—these canyons and high deserts are home to more national parks and monuments than any place in the world. Native American Tribes hold one-third of the land. From Durango to the shadows of Bears Ears, from Glen Canyon Dam to the south rim of the Grand Canyon, through Monument Valley and the expanses of Hopi and Navajo lands – we racked up over 1,300 miles meeting with federal land managers, Native Americans, environmental organizations, land trusts, and others who shared what they know about this unique landscape.

Throughout the semester, 12 law students learned about the area’s history, culture, and current challenges such as a raging public land debate, habitat loss, grazing, increased aridity, electricity production, drilling, and mining. But walking on Nicole’s ancestral lands with her nine year-old son and 14 year-old daughter is what put everything into perspective.

Indigenous people have occupied Black Mesa since the 1500s relying on the once vast Navajo Aquifer. Nicole’s family was nomadic into her teens, moving with their sheep and utilizing the Navajo Aquifer. Long after her family settled into permanent homes, her grandmother continued to travel around the mesa with their sheep —  sleeping in small hogans.  (When we arrived at Nicole’s remote home, her grandmother had just returned from a long trek with her sheep.)

Far off the grid, the house is powered by a solar array and battery packs and we found her homeschooled kids busily working on their iPads. The seeps and springs her people relied on for years have all dried up. They now must truck water in for themselves, their horses and sheep, and a large garden.

If you ask Nicole why the water has disappeared over the last 20 years, she has a quick answer: the 2,250 megawatt Navajo Generating Station (NGS) and its associated coal mines. The coal plant was built to help push Colorado River water through 300 miles of canals to Phoenix and Tucson. Over the lifetime of the mines, it is estimated that Peabody Coal used 45 billion gallons of aquifer water to run its slurry lines. Peabody still uses an estimated 1 million gallons of Navajo Aquifer water every day.

The coal plant is scheduled to be closed in 2019, but Navajo leadership is searching for new buyers for the coal.  If the mine remains open, the aquifer will continue to be drained.  Regardless, it has little chance of recharging with only ~eight inches of rainfall a year.  Climate change has taken a toll, and these lands are now hotter and drier than in recorded history.

Yet Nicole and her family are determined to stay; she advocates for closing the mine and replacing those jobs with investments in renewable energy. “Having had the privilege of seeing the land as the Creator left it for us, I know that the wise management of the basic elements of life – land, air, water and the sun – are necessary if we are to fulfill our responsibility to ensure a decent quality of life for the next generation.”

After hiking to a former spring site, Nicole invited us into her home for tea and cornbread.  Her daughter had made the bread for her recent coming of age ceremony. The intimacy of this moment cannot be fully explained in words. I struggled to think of what gift we could leave besides the abundant research produced by the class and a heartfelt thank you note circulating among the students. Thanks to our emergency contingency planning, we had almost ten gallons of water in our cars.

So we left our water at her family’s door step and continued our journey. A little quieter than on our way in. Each one of us processing the multiple layers of complexities that led to Nicole’s battle. The student’s upcoming research papers will be that much richer having experienced how law and policy intersect with the land, water, wildlife, and people of the Colorado Plateau.

Julia Bakker-Arkema (Chemistry & Biochemistry, University of Colorado Boulder) was one of  the 2018 winners for the AAAS Student Workshop Competition. Below are comments from her workshop experience.

Over the course of three and a half days in Washington, D.C., I had the opportunity to learn about how science fits into the complex process of political decision-making. Whatever my understanding of the inner workings of our government was before I attended the AAAS CASE Workshop, it has drastically changed since I got a glimpse of the policymaking process first-hand. For the first three days of the workshop, I and almost 200 other students plunged into a crash course from science and technology policy experts about topics such as congressional committees, the federal budget process, and science communication methods. On the final day, we were able to put our knowledge to the test on Capitol Hill, where we met with our congressional representatives and their staff to discuss the importance of scientific research and to advocate for science funding and support in the then-forthcoming budget.

Congress is a complicated machine. When policymakers are deciding where to allocate funds, they have an enormous array of influences and stakeholders pulling them in different directions. Budget choices are influenced by constituents, power dynamics, politics, media, personal values, congressional rules, and countless other factors. It may be easy as scientists to sense that scientific research—both basic and applied—is crucial when it comes to setting a federal budget. But there are many groups and individuals with lots of ideas about what the government should be doing. It is up to scientists to make our voices heard among the many stakeholders at play; ultimately, the AAAS CASE Workshop helped to teach scientists like myself how to do this effectively.

Two of the most useful tips I learned regarding communicating with policymakers were to 1) know your audience, and 2) tell your story. As researchers, we tend to live in the realm of data and numbers. Very few congresspeople come from a scientific background, and thus they aren’t necessarily informed or motivated by the same methods we typically use to communicate. As in any instance of communication or advocacy, understanding the background and perspective of the other person is crucial. Furthermore, personal stories can be incredibly effective tools when communicating with policymakers. Human connections are not often stressed when scientists talk about our research, but sharing personal experiences can help us to forge lasting relationships with lawmakers and to deliver our point of view more successfully.

Our time in D.C. culminated in an impressive snowstorm as we met with our congressional representatives—luckily all of the Colorado offices remained open for the day! We had the chance to talk about our research and express our thoughts about the importance of science funding within the federal budget. And in a dramatic finale, later that afternoon congress approved the largest U.S. research spending increase in a decade. I’d like to think that the presence of 200 students with an interest in science policy on Capitol Hill contributed to the increase in research funding. I look forward to using the science advocacy and communication skills I learned at the CASE workshop throughout my career, and I would encourage other interested students to apply.

Kaitlin McCreery (Mechanical Engineering, University of Colorado Boulder), pictured right in the above photo, was one of  the 2018 winners for the AAAS Student Workshop Competition. Below are comments from her workshop experience.

I left my snow boots by the door as I departed for Denver International Airport at 4:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning, thinking the forecasted snow was a Southern bluff. From March 18 to 21, I navigated the streets and government buildings of our nation’s capitol with a fellow CU-Boulder graduate student, Julia Bakker-Arkema and a graduate student representative from Colorado State, Amanda Koch. We were three of a contingent of 193 graduate students from around the country that the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) policy workshop called “Making Our C.A.S.E.” (Catalyzing Advocacy in Science and Engineering). The goal of this annual workshop is to inform scientists how funding for science is determined by Congress, how science serves the interests of the public, and how scientists can integrate these two aspects.

Why do we need young scientists in Washington to advocate for funding? It is important to remember who is running our country, and their education background. For instance, 18 members of the House have no post-secondary education. Fifty-five percent of the Senate holds law degrees. Just 22 Representatives and 2 Senators have doctoral degrees. In all of Congress, there is one physicist, one chemist, and eight engineers. But there is no significant advantage of having a science background in Congress, as it serves two purposes: passing laws and writing checks for nearly every social and economic issue that our nation faces. If scientists want more funding, we need to show them who we are, and ask for it.

Graduate students from every state in the continental United States packed the auditorium in the AAAS Headquarters on a Monday morning. Matthew Hourihan, Director of the AAAS Research and Development (R&D) Budget and Policy Program, gave us a detailed look at the federal budget process. We heard from Rush Holt, CEO of AAAS and former U.S. Representative for New Jersey, as he discussed why scientists have untapped potential for political influence. Graduate students are some of the best science advocates because we do the grunt work in academic research while being paid with federal dollars. We have passion behind our commitment to research, and our representatives want to go to bat for us.

Some of what I learned about the federal budget surprised me. In general, Defense spending accounts for just under half of R&D expenditures. The National Science Foundation—which pays my salary, through a graduate training grant—makes up a relatively small portion of the budget. For the life sciences, the largest source of funding is the National Institutes of Health. The buzz term of the week in Washington was “appropriation season,” as the federal government was scheduled to shut down in three days if a spending bill was not signed into law. Congressmen and their staffers—many of whom were in their twenties—were charged with the task of writing and refining the spending bill that influences every aspect of the American economy.

As we prepared for our meetings, I wondered: as a scientist, what impact can I make? There are so many issues that I feel passionate about, from climate change to increasing research on gun control measures. I desired to tackle all of them with this unique opportunity. During lunch, the day before our meetings with Colorado congressmen, I approached Rush Holt (CEO of AAAS) to gain insight, and he boiled down his decades of experience while we hunched over our boxed lunches. He asked me three key questions: “First, who do you want them to think you are? Second, what do you want them to do? Third, what can you thank them for?” These questions made an excellent point. These brief meetings would be most impactful if we represent a concise group of people with a clear message: increase funding for scientists like us. Give them a face representing the people funded by the NSF.

On our final morning in Washington, I wished that I was wearing snow-appropriate shoes as we dashed out of our cab, through the snowy slush, and up the stairs of the Longworth House Office Building which houses all of the offices of the House of Representatives. We first met with congressional staffers in Jared Polis’ office, who were incredibly friendly and receptive. As we left for our next meeting, Representative Polis himself stepped into the hallway and called to us, “Hello, scientists!” We quickly thanked him for his commitment to funding research and snapped a photo before he disappeared to attend a hearing.

We followed a Congressional staffer down to the basement and hurriedly walked through the tunnel beneath the Capitol to get to our meetings with the staffers of Senators Gardner and Bennett. Each of their offices were decadently decorated with local Colorado art and memorabilia, including a Broncos poster and oil paintings of Aspen trees. Since the Senators were in hearings, we discussed federal R&D funding with young, educated, overworked staffers in decadent offices. Meeting with these staffers was inspiring in its own rite, and our discussions reminded me that we are all trying to find the optimal way we can serve our society. Spending time in these offices reinforced the idea that Congressmen work for their constituents, as our 15-minute meeting was on a long list of issues they were to address that day from constituents that traveled to Washington offices. They listened to our stories, asked about our research, and asked about how federal dollars impact our work. The staffers assured us that our representatives were opposed to cuts to scientific research, and we just needed to remain optimistic.

Just a few days after I returned to Colorado, my endless scrolling on Twitter abruptly froze when I saw an omnibus bill was sitting on the President’s desk waiting to be signed. The bill contained a 12.8 percent increase in funding for research and development, and is now law. We were fortunate to have nearly 200 student scientists strolling through the halls on the Hill advocating for research funding during a critical time in the bill’s passage. I envision a lot more nerds in Washington in upcoming years to conserve our momentum.