The Media and Global Warming

If you haven't been living in a cave the last five or so years, you've heard about global warming. Call it climate change if you like. One professor I had preferred global climate collapse - he felt that the words "warming" and "change" are deceptively benign. Either way, the reason you've heard about this phenomenon, if you're like most of the country, is because you've read about in the papers, heard about it on television, or otherwise had a journalist inform you. If you're someone who has known all along that the climate is behaving in frightening ways and that humans are to blame, you've probably spent some time now either rolling your eyes at the "controversy" or have attempted to keep the media fires burning by jumping into the flames yourself.

As a double major in Environmental Studies and Journalism, I am constantly barraged by both sides of this issue. Yes, my shoe-less, be-dreaded, soy-gobbling Environmental Studies comrades, you're right. The media has kind of screwed this up. We pretty much ignored the scientists right up until Al Gore got on his electric expanding ladder thing before the whole nation and prevented us from ignoring it any longer. Ph.Ds who have dedicated their whole lives to studying the destruction of our climate system couldn't get our attention for more than a second, but the minute one of our own gets up there, it generates what must be a multi-million dollar media buzz. Then everything gets the prefix "green" or "eco-" or "sustainable", until suddenly the American public goes from being mildly interested to severely annoyed. I know I did. What the hell does "sustainable growth" mean, anyway, aside from being a pretty cute oxymoron?

Not only did the media industry completely wear out the phrase "global warming," but they also cast a completely inaccurate shadow of doubt on the science behind it. In what is probably an honest effort to be fair (or oil industry meddling, depending on who you ask), journalists often cite sources that straight up deny all or parts of accepted atmospheric science. Getting a schizophrenic person to comment on a story about the strange noise coming from the basement that everyone else attests is a malfunctioning boiler, and then citing him as an expert next to the plumber and the building engineer is not the way to tell both sides of the controversy. It creates a controversy where there never was one. And its been horribly detrimental to efforts to fix the hypothetical boiler.

But, my environmentalist friends, you have to admit - those crazy climate paparazzi did do some good. Nobody has even been able to run for election in the 2008 race without at least mentioning an environmental policy. More people are thinking about when they drive and why than ever before, and not just because gas prices are through the roof. "Green" is the new marketing buzzword, and in some cases, the products it sells might actually do some good for the climate.

But that's all the back patting I will shell out, fellow New York Times-toting, glasses-wearing, good-naturedly competitive journalists. Because you haven't been listening to what the hippies over at the ENVS department have been saying at all. The solution to global warming, along with most other impending environmental catastrophes, is not to consume differently but to consume less. Scientists simply aren't asking us to buy a hybrid car, or invest in schemes that offset individual carbon emissions by growing plankton, or to reconsider nuclear energy. If most logical people actually read the scientific research, they would have to conclude that the human species must completely change its lifestyle in order to avert a complete shift in the way natural systems work. We, as the teachers and informers of the nation's adult population, need to advocate anti-consumerism, not more consumerism. No car, not hybrid car; locally grown, not "sustainably" grown in Chile; turn down the heat, forget the new reactor.

I'm not sure whether this shift is even possible, given the structure of the media in this country. We don't just promote consumption, we depend on it. If people don't buy newspapers, internet access and cable subscriptions, they won't be getting our content in first place. So all I'm asking for is a little less sillyness on our part, intrepid reporters. Stop abusing the honest Environmental Studies people with "eco-" catchphrases and false experts. Maybe we really actually can slow down climate change, but only if talk of global warming stops being a trend and becomes a permanent feature in society.

Oh, and ENVS friends, please put on some shoes.