by Diana Dorman
Environmental Studies Program, University of Colorado Boulder

The main body of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meets every year for the Conference of Parties (COP) to discuss and negotiate measures to combat climate change. The 23^rd meeting of the COP took place Nov 6-17 in Bonn, Germany. The COP is where global agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement have been created and signed by countries around the world. Every COP has different challenges and themes as the effects of climate change become more apparent and circumstances change in individual countries. This COP was no different, and as a Master’s student in the Environmental Studies program I was able to observe COP 23 and several of the hot topics relevant this year.

Small Island States Front and Center

COP 23 was the first to be led by a small island develop state (SIDS), putting their issues regarding climate change front and center. Fiji’s Presidency at COP 23 reminded the world that for those in Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia the effects of climate change are here and disrupting entire communities. I sat in on several panels that discussed full community relocation due to sea walls no longer stopping the relentless waves, or because water sources and farmland had been corrupted by sea water encroachment. Fiji called for the global community to notice the issues of the SIDS and take action before it is too late.

Gender Equality and Climate Change

Climate change impacts are expected to hit disadvantaged groups hardest, including women. Women tend to make less than men and have more restricted access to technology and financial resources to counter challenges caused by climate change. The Paris Agreement incorporates language requiring that equality and aiding disadvantaged groups is pursued moving forward to combat climate change. Acknowledging this issue and continuing these conversations on a global stage is an encouraging first step to progress the issue of gender equality.

The USA at COP 23

After being a leading force in 2015 on the Paris Agreement the United States’ position on climate change has taken a 180-degree turn. The election of President Trump swiftly brought in the US intention to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. The United States did not have an official delegation or pavilion at COP 23, but the citizen and business community of the US did at in the U.S. Climate Action Center where “We are still in” was the tagline. Conversations around US actions seemed to express disappointment and frustration, but also resolve to trudge on and continue progress on climate change without America.

by Timothy Molnar
Environmental Studies Program, University of Colorado Boulder

The 23rd annual session of the Conference of Parties (COP 23) to the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) took place in Bonn, Germany from November 6-17. As a Ph.D. student in CU’s environmental studies program, I had a chance to observe. COP meetings provide countries a formal opportunity to convene and discuss progress and challenges in dealing with global climate change. For American environmentalists, COP23 was a particularly interesting affair. For while the U.S. remains a member to the UNFCCC, President Trump’s June, 2017 announcement to withdraw from the Paris Agreement has tainted the country’s reputation within the international climate community. Despite this setback, however, American environmentalists were out in force at last week’s Bonn climate meeting. Corporate leaders, public officials, and climate champions ranging from Al Gore to Michael Bloomberg to Senator Ed Markey gathered in the U.S. Climate Action Center – an inflatable pavilion stationed directly adjacent to the COP negotiations – to advocate on behalf of America’s continued commitment to fight climate change. Drawing on countless commitments from subnational actors and corporations, their message was clear: “We Are Still In”. It remains to be seen whether these bottom up pledges can meet the U.S.’s nationally determined contributions, set forth in the Paris Agreement; nevertheless, it’s an inspiring start.

Media and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO)
October 2017 Summary

October media attention to climate change and global warming was down just slightly (7%) throughout the world from the previous month of September 2017. This decrease was felt regionally in Africa, Asia, Europe and North America, while counts held steady in the Middle East and as they increased slightly in Oceania and South America. Compared to counts from fifty-two sources across twenty-eight countries in seven regions around the world in October 2016 (a year ago), the global numbers were up about 7%. However, coverage in the month was 37% below the average number of stories appearing each month in 2017 (approximately 3631 stories per month from January – October 2017). Scaling down from the global to monitoring in eight countries, coverage was also up from the previous month of September 2017 in Australia (20%), Spain (2%) and New Zealand (27%). Coverage was down in Canada (-19%), Germany (-9%), India (-7%), the United Kingdom (UK) (-21%), and the United States (US) (-18%).

Figure 1 above shows these ebbs and flows in media coverage – organized into seven geographical regions around the world – from January 2004 through October 2017.

With our expansion of monitoring into Spanish-language and German-language coverage in recent years, Figure 2 shows word frequency data from three representative Spanish-language sources (on left): El País (Spain), La Nación (Argentina) and El Nacional (Venezuela). These are words (four letters or more) in articles containing the terms ‘calentamiento global’ or ‘cambio climático’. Word frequency data from two representative German-language sources (on right) are TAZ – Die Tageszeitung and Süddeutsche Zeitung (both from Germany). These are words (four letters or more) in articles containing the terms ‘klimawandel’ or ‘globale erwärmung’.

Figure 3 shows word frequency data in the United States (top left), Canada (top right), Australia (bottom left) and India (bottom right) in October 2017. The five representative US sources are The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Times. The three representative Canadian sources are The Globe & Mail, The National Post and the Toronto Star. The five representative Australian sources are The Age, The Australian, The Courier Mail, The Daily Telegraph & Sunday Telegraph and The Sydney Morning Herald. The four representative Indian sources are The Hindu, The Times of India, Hindustan Times and The Indian Express.

As Figure 3 (top left) shows, in the US, media attention continued to focus on movements relating to the Donald J. Trump Administration (in)actions. While this was also the case in previous months of 2017 around the world (see Figure 2 in the February 2017 for an example of Trump coverage in Australia, New Zealand and the UK), the ‘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) – appears to be limited to the US media-scape in October 2017. In US news articles related to climate change or global warming, Trump was invoked 2399 times through the 274 stories this month (a remarkable ratio of nearly 9 times per article on average) in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Times. However, in contrast in the UK press, Trump was mentioned in the Daily Mail & Mail on Sunday, Guardian & The Observer, The Sun, the Daily Telegraph & Sunday Telegraph, the Daily Mirror & Sunday Mirror, The Scotsman & Scotland on Sunday, and The Times & The Sunday Times 535 times in 498 October articles.

These stories lead into wider considerations of attention paid to political content of coverage during the month. In this arena, Lisa Friedman and Brad Plumer from The New York Times reported in mid-October on US EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s initiation of the federal rollback of the Clean Power Plan, despite the lack of a replacement measure to propose in its place. Timothy Puko from The Wall Street Journal reported on power plants nonetheless staying the course for emissions reductions plan due to technological capabilities, consumer demand and cheap natural gas driving demand. While reports of morale being lifted in some coal companies and the coal community, widespread opposition like that reported by Oliver Milman in The Guardian effectively characterized the outdated effort like something akin to saving the eight-track tape in the age of digital music production (a major difference being that this EPA rollback cuts to the heart of carbon-based industry and society as well as to one of the greatest environmental challenges of the 21st century). And as politics met economics in October, Nathan Bomey in USA Today reported how two big US auto companies – General Motors and Ford – announced plans to introduce over thirty models combined in the next five to six years while news reports at the end of the month discussed the US Bureau of Labor Statistics new data that US solar installation and wind technician jobs are the fastest growing, with plans to double by 2026. These business trends and innovations were discussed as catalysts for policy measures to potentially follow.

In October, coverage relating to ecological and meteorological issues grabbed a great deal of attention. Stories like a piece in The Times (UK) on floods and landslides killing at least 68 people in Vietnam after a tropical depression hit the central and northern regions of the country in early October were followed by stories like an article by Jacques Leslie in the Los Angeles Times about the devastating northern California wildfires and their record-breaking human toll as well as widespread property damage, and a piece by Dino Grandoni in The Washington Post (US) linking these wildfires to economic costs to the US Federal government.

Across the globe in October, there were a range of stories that pervaded the cultural arena. Polls in October pointed consistently to willingness to support and take action on climate change around the world. For example, Seth Borenstein and Emily Swanson – in an article then run in a number of national sources – reported on a poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago that more than half of US Americans want state and local governments to step up and act on climate change in the absence of US Federal action. And amid many scientific studies on climate change and interconnected issues in October, Amina Khan from the Los Angeles Times covered a new study in Science Advances linking strains in the marine foodweb, ocean warming, El Niño Southern Oscillation and a changing climate.

Heading into the United Nations climate change negotiations (COP23) in Bonn, Germany on November 6-17, preceded by a much-anticipated US Global Change Research Program Report released by thirteen US agencies in early November (with findings at odds with the stance of the Trump Administration), November will be a fascinating month for news on climate change or global warming. We will also see if the ‘Trump Dump’ influence continues to wane in the months to come.

by Phaedra C. Pezzullo, CSTPR Faculty Affiliate

In October, I traveled to Fudan University in Shanghai, China, to co-teach a course in environmental communication. The invitation was extended, in part, because I coauthored a textbook with three-time Sierra Club President and Emeritus Professor Robert Cox, Environmental Communication and the Public Sphere (fifth edition forthcoming). I gave three lectures: Western conceptions of the public sphere; Science and risk communication; and Environmental and climate justice movements.

When we address communication and social change, context matters. In the US, democratic rights related to environmental policy are under attack: the right to know has diminished as the current administration has removed data from government websites (for example, the removal of climate data and civil rights information) and there appears to be an endless list of rolled back environmental protections (for example, these 23 regulations removed in the first 100 days). Despite the devastating impacts of neoliberal US policy, most of us hold on to democracy as an ideal driving our engagement in networked public spheres, which shape government decision-making about public goods. Yet, democracy isn’t the only system of governance for environmental action.

Like the US, there is no lack of Chinese ecological and human rights challenges. In terms of an energy transition, however, China is exceeding the US in most ways without appealing to democratic ideals. China’s solar boom is perhaps most astonishing, installing “more than 34 gigawatts of solar capacity in 2016 – more than double the figure for the US and nearly half of the total added capacity worldwide that year.” China, therefore, employs 2.5 million people in the solar sector alone, compared to 260,000 in the US (with the current administration’s focus on bringing back coal jobs). Presumably in response to US President Trump, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang stated this year:

“Climate change is a global consensus. It was not invented by China. We recognize that this is a global consensus and agreement, and as a big developing nation, we should shoulder our dual international responsibility, that is to join hands with all other countries to cope with this challenge, and realize green, sustainable, low-carbon development.”

When I asked students what modes of communication they found to be most successful for publicizing pollution concerns, they offered answers we might hear anywhere: making time lapse videos, sharing compelling images, and connecting stories to people personally. While they appreciated learning about US environmental advocates’ use of projection bombing and time lapse images of coral reefs or glaciers, I valued learning about the cutting-edge features of the tallest green building in the world (based in Shanghai) and ancient concepts such as “jingwei ziran (敬畏自然),” signifying a reverence for nature. They appeared reassured that I affirmed the global commitment to climate action, despite the lack of US leadership these days.

At COP21 in Paris, my faith in international negotiations for a peaceful solution to climate chaos was rekindled. Although we face uncertainties in the US today and no nation is perfect, cross-cultural opportunities such as this one reaffirm my hope that global environmental progress is possible. I look forward to returning to China in June to speak about the Green Public Sphere and Environmental Communication at the Second Biennial Conference on Communication, Media, and Governance in the Age of Globalization; feel welcome to apply to the CFP.

Photo caption: Professor Pezzullo at Fudan University in Shanghai, China.