Recently in Media Category

ROTFL:

The general public are resentful, cynical and resigned when it comes to the issue of climate change, according to an IPPR report. Unless they can be persuaded to adopt lower-carbon lifestyles, it will be impossible to meet new emissions targets, says the report.

Boredom? Hardly. Fear for their wallets, concern for an out of control government on one hand or backpeddling on the other, tired of green hypocrites - maybe.

But not boredom.

UPDATE: By the way, persuade how? Add "paranoid" to the list.

UPDATE: Maybe they're just greedy and holding out for a better offer.

Moving.

My bosses often disagreed with my point of view, but they usually let me air it. But it was frustrating. My vision and that of my producers were often not in harmony. Too many stories I thought were important -- such as the land theft called eminent domain, or the FDA's endangering people's lives by withholding life-saving drugs -- were not aired. When I pushed, ABC producers often stared at me as if they were thinking, "Why would you want to do that?"

So after 28 years, it's time to move on.

Debate over the eminent domain ruling in Kelo was but a vapor in the thundering, gaseous wind tunnel that is Washington these days. Probably because phants and donks - and the big corps and bureaucracies aligned with them - both liked the outcome.

as Big Media's religion beat dies.

There have been reductions in the number of reporters who write about religion full time at all of the nation’s biggest newspapers, and the religion news beat has disappeared from multiple midsize and smaller papers. The surviving newspaper religion sections are getting smaller.

Debra Mason, executive director of the Religion Newswriters Association, told me she does not believe that the religion beat is being targeted, but that all specialty beats at newspapers, including the environment, health, and education, are suffering as newspapers, with shrinking budgets, allocate an increasing fraction of their diminished newsroom staffs to general assignment jobs.

With folks like SustainLane doing such a great job providing unfettered access to the thoughts of actual Christian greens, newspapers seem so, well, v1.0. And then there's that credibility problem...

It started with The Simposons movie, where the EPA encases Springfield in a giant dome. People laughed. Hard.

The Goode Family (by the creator of Beavis and Butthead) will finish it off.

Environmentalism is 51% parody now. Al Gore is the new Al Bundy.

Have we all been had?

UPDATE: Global warming is the new Pet Rock.

UPDATE/BUMPED: Wall Street Journal "Making a mockery of being green"

UPDATE: NY Times "Bursting the Green Bubble."

So, now that the Journal and Times are on board, I just want to note for the record that the my original "Death of environmentalism" post went up over two weeks ago.

Thou shalt not gloat.  Heh!

The 2009 Index of Leading Environmental Indicators is on the street. Here are some bits you won't find in the NY Times:

• Growing evidence that tropical rainforests may now be expanding faster than they are being cut down, though more data are needed to determine the nature and extent of reforestation trends.

• The world’s most severe environmental problems, as ranked by the Blacksmith Institute and Green Cross Switzerland, are overwhelmingly problems of poverty in developing nations.

• Stratospheric ozone, the “good” kind of ozone—akin to “good” cholesterol in blood—appears to have reversed its long-term decline and is now increasing over the United States. The level of ozonedestroying chemical compounds in the atmosphere declined 12 percent from 1995 through 2006.

• Water quality monitoring efforts are picking up steam, though it will still be several more years before we have enough data to draw a clear picture of water quality trends on a national basis. However

— The U.S. Geological Survey sampling of drinking water drawn from surface waters in 17 areas around the continental United States found very low (nonhazardous) or no presence of 258 different man-made chemicals.

— Long-term monitoring of Lake Tahoe on the California–Nevada border has detected an improving trend in the clarity of the lake’s water over the last seven years, reversing decades of slow decline.

• The health of U.S. ocean fisheries has improved substantially over the last few years, according to the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service’s “Fish Stock Sustainability Index.”

• Flat or declining global average temperatures in 2008 have ignited new controversy over climate change. The data show that 2008 was the coolest year since 2000, and there has been no discernible warming for the last decade, after two decades of steady warming between 1978 and 1998.

• Public opinion data on advertising and marketing suggest growing public weariness with “green” messages in general and messages on global warming in particular. In recent polls, 58 percent of Americans declined to identify themselves as environmentalists; 78 percent so identified themselves as recently as 1991.

And a few tables:

It would be an interesting study, wouldn't it?  Digging into the history of zoos, circuses and other wild animal shows over the past couple hundred years. 

Kisling chronicles the arrival of menageries in America and Europe in the 1700-1800s.  A cool site called CircusHistory.org has some interesting facts on The Ringling Bros.' Monster Show that included a stable of camels and elephants along side a dozen trained horses. 

In that study I'd also love to see how our understanding of animals - and a deeper concern for nature in general - paralleled Disney's humanizing of a mouse or a duck or a great dane or a cricket or a deer.  I can't help thinking that one of the reasons we became more aware of animal "rights" was the personalities he gave them in movies. Animals ceased being oddities or mere entertainment.  For the Disney generation, animals had emotions and personalities and romantic notions and dreams. Animals helped princesses with their dresses and adopted orphaned man cubs. They became our friends.

And then there was Disney's association with animal adventures and conservation.  I'll always remember Sunday evenings for two things: The Wonderful World of Disney, which immediately followed Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom.  Cynthia Chris notes that Disney was behind much of modern wildlife films. In as much as Disney began to be associated with other naturalists like Cousteau, she's certainly right.

Disneyland wasn't a step in the direction of ecology.  It was an utterly transformational leap.  Zoos in New York and Chicago and elsewhere already had cages of animals you could visit.  Disney transcended this by putting bears in music reviews, submarines full of people in an undersea world, and elephants and hippos and elephants as stars in a life-size jungle adventure cruise.  I'll never forget my first visit as a kid.  For the first time a wild animal wasn't in some far-off place on TV, or a strange visitor to my world surrounded by a cage.  I was now the stranger, a visitor to the animal's world, at least in my own fertile imagination. 

Despite the fact that the animals are not animatrons, places like the San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park seem like a copy of Disney's vision to draw us into the animals' world, not the other way around.  Even Disney resisted a foray into live animals, only building its Animal Kingdom park in the past decade.

Beyond all the magical animal imagery, one ride in particular drove home the notion of the need for conservation better than any other.  No, it wasn't Dumbo, or Pirates, or the Haunted House.  It was that boat ride that even today drives people crazy and yet strangely seduces: It's a Small World. 

If you thought you could just come to an amusement park and forget your troubles, or avoid the message that the world was a system of living things, or ignore overpopulation, Walt Disney rocks your world with the indelible notion that the human species is part of the greater whole, and the whole isn't as huge as you thought it was.  It's one thing to see tigers from India and rabbits from Wonderland.  Quite another to see hundreds of mechanical kids from every corner of the globe all singing the same, haunting song.

it's a world of laughter, a world or tears
its a world of hopes, its a world of fear
theres so much that we share
that its time we're aware
its a small world after all

CHORUS:
its a small world after all
its a small world after all
its a small world after all
its a small, small world

There is just one moon and one golden sun
And a smile means friendship to everyone.
Though the mountains divide
And the oceans are wide
It's a small small world

Like the Hebrew poets who, lacking punctuation, simply repeated thoughts for emphasis, Disney's world isn't just small.  It's small small.  If parents don't know what small small means, I can tell ya that a kid sure does.

People will look at Disney's empire now and its green credentialing and debate whether or not it is truly an environmental leader or whether it's as good at greenwashing as it is at imagineering. 

But in my mind there's no doubt that generations of children had seeds of ecology planted in their fertile brains clutching a Mickey head balloon, watching fireworks over Cinderella's castle.

More at:

Growing Up Disney, Growing Up Green

Disney's Conservation Hero 2008

Disney Sets Colossal Environmental Plans For The Future

Shaping Youth Teen Team Reflects On Disneynature EARTH Premiere

Disney And Al Gore Help Mobilize Teens To Fight Climate Change

Don't care much for Paul's by-line, but this bit of reporting is pretty disturbing if true:

Those of us who post to this blog and others in the global warming debunkification (okay, I made that word up) movement are used to being ignored — or (usually) politely being humored first, and then ignored — but this experience from last week I thought was worth noting in the blogosphere.

Last week the Heartland folks referred a reporter to me from a Midwestern weekly newspaper, who had some questions about a greenhouse gas inventory her county was compiling and where she could expect public policy to go next. I had no idea where her sentiments were on the issue, but I gave her straight feedback based upon examples I’d seen elsewhere. What she did with it after that was up to her, and I did not care much either way what she did, given my past experience with environmentalist journalists.

Turns out she sought to do a balanced article, but her editor would have none of it. I usually like to name names with things like this, but I assume the reporter wants to keep her job so I will refrain. This is what she emailed me:

Paul:
Thank you so much for your responses. I did a story, but my editor removed all references to debate about climate change, global warming or whatever they are calling it now. He didn’t tell me, which is unusual when removing such a huge chunk of  a story, but I just discovered it today after it didn’t appear in our print edition.

It is online, but is not as I wrote it. I’m so sorry. I will still try to get both sides of all issues out. That’s all I can do. Thank you, and again, I apologize.

I dropped a note to him to see if he'd divulge the name of the paper.  Any scientific issue ought to be up for reasonable debate, especially one that has such significant impacts on the planet. Any any press that isn't willing to provide both sides of an issue should already be suspect in my book.