Make Earth Day More than a Will-o’-the-Wisp

Like a will-o’-the-wisp, Earth Day captures media attention periodically before fading into the background again.

Media focus on environmental issues is somewhat like a will-o’-the-wisp. (Source: Kikasz via Compfight cc)

Why does this happen? Thomas Hayden has some ideas about why media focus on environmental topics waxes and wanes. He mapped out the coverage of environmental topics in The New York Times and found a gradual upward trend over the decades, punctuated by wild fluctuations.

These fluctuations – the jagged peaks on his graph – happen to coincide with our collective moments of excitement about environmentalism, which I have renamed:

• “hippies and whales”
• “tropical rainforests”
• “temperate rainforests”
• “climate change science”
• “climate change movie”
• “climate change reality” 

Although journalists’ interest in environmental issues may be growing over time, it is based on short-term events and catastrophes.

Do other people forget about environmentalism as often as journalists do? It’s hard to say. But an article on fads and the environment suggests social trends need to build on deeper underlying values in society to succeed.

This is an important point. If you want to build a successful environmental trend or meme, you need to speak to what already matters to people – their existing cultures and priorities.

Should environmentalists try to catch people’s attention with a series of trends and hot topics? Maybe that is not enough.

Like dieting, environmental change has to be more than a fad to succeed. If environmentalists want to achieve long-term, successful social change, that will require making structural changes to our everyday lifestyles so positive choices will lead to rewards. These rewards do not all have to be financial; they can be social. They can even involve saving time or simplifying our lives. 

Maybe environmentalists need to augment those will-o’-the-wisps of media coverage with solid structural changes behind the scenes.

My Writing Goals for 2013

In November, I withdrew into the snowy environment of northern Massachusetts to reflect on my goals for the coming year. I live next to a park belonging to the Trustees of Reservations, so bluejays and nuthatches kept me company while I wrote. Before and after work, I spent hours sifting through my ideas about what to cultivate – and what to prune back – during the coming year.

A nuthatch (Source: Terry Sohl)

I took a three-week vacation from Twitter to reduce the “noise” in my environment. Surrounded by the peace and quiet of the wildlife refuge, I made some difficult decisions about my priorities and commitments for the coming year.

• I chose to offer the services that match my personality, background and interests. So I rewrote the skills, experience and bio pages of this website – as well as my LinkedIn profile. These pages now show my commitment to working on writing and technology projects that have social benefits. They also emphasize my experience in engineering and fascination with the way things work.
• I made the difficult decision to close out my media relations contract and focus on content production – writing, website editing, and social media outreach. I gave notice to my client on January 2nd and am currently seeking a new project to replace that contract.
• Translating science content is very satisfying for me. The more technical it is, the better. Working with an MIT professor on a physics book earlier this year showed me that not only do I have the “chops” for hard science, I relish covering it. I feel confident promoting my services to academics and technology professionals. I plan to seek out more science-intensive projects during the coming year. I am comfortable working with clients anywhere in the United States.
• Although I want to keep at least one nonprofit project on my calendar at any time, I don’t plan to specialize in working for nonprofits. I am very interested in partnering with green businesses and universities and combining projects from different sectors. I recently signed up to do a long-term blogging project for a brownfield remediation business and plan to take on other similar projects.
• I’m in the process of retooling NetSquared Boston, the meetup I co-organize, to make sure that it addresses unmet needs within the nonprofit tech community. My leadership role in NetSquared Boston gives me many professional opportunities, including networking and low-cost computer training. I plan to refresh some of my web development and software skills soon to stay current with the state-of-the-art technology that is coming out each year.
• Although I was considering moving to Denver or Chicago earlier, I now plan to stay in Massachusetts for the next few years. I visited family in Chicago in early January and made the decision while I was there. Although I miss Chicago, there are many reasons for me to stay in Massachusetts.
• Finally, I have a resolution to take more risks with writing and journalism this coming year. I want to go to events like the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Boston, take the leap toward doing projects that are outside my comfort zone, and continue to experiment stylistically as a writer.

I’ve pruned back my commitments from 2012 now so that new ideas can flourish. If the flower that I am attempting to cultivate has a name, it’s a “science and technology writing flower.” It probably looks like this image:

Fractal flower (Source: 123RF)

Identifying and following my dreams was what led to my success in graduate school. After a year of freelance work, stopping to take time to smell the roses and retool my approach to my career goals was exactly what I needed this winter.

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The Many Faces of Global Warming in the United States

This post is a response to a question I received from Climate Access. How does one put a human face on images of global warming?

Local images engage audiences. In recent years, lack of locally relevant images and stories has damaged media sources’ ability to communicate about global warming. Now that we are beginning to see global warming is damaging infrastructure, flooding island communities, and displacing people, it is becoming easier to find images that capture global warming’s effects.

Potential levels of future flooding in Manhattan. (Source: Union of Concerned Scientists)

This map of projected New York City flooding is from Union of Concerned Scientists and was republished by Gothamist. Showing a map like this to New Yorkers on a downtown street – and videotaping their reactions – could create a strong wake-up call for urban residents.

Beach vacation spots are also at risk. Given that flooding maps project that the entire southern tip of Florida will be affected by sea level rise, an image of tourists on a beach like the one below could appeal to people who value their vacation destinations.

Florida beaches like this one may disappear as global warming progresses. (Source: AllBestWallpapers.com)

In Alaska, roads are beginning to crack for a variety of reasons. One cause of the damage is global warming, which is shifting the permafrost underneath the highways. The image below, from the New York Times’ Science section, shows a road in the Yukon which is starting to break. A video of a driver attempting to traverse a broken road would put a human face on global warming in the far north.

Cracking on the shoulder of the road north of Burwash Landing, Yukon. (Source: Government of Yukon)

In Texas and other states, hurricanes may increase in strength due to global warming. The predictions vary. Once more information is available, it may be true that images like the one below capture one facet of global warming. The photo below was taken in Seabrook, Texas and appeared in National Geographic. The woman in the photo returned to her home to find it flattened.

A woman standing on the remains of her house after a hurricane. (Source: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

With global warming, it’s hard to pinpoint some cause-and-effect relationships. Although sea level rise is well known, other issues, such as migrating fish populations and erratic weather, are more difficult to attribute to global warming directly. Multiple causes may be at work. As we learn more about the results of global warming, science communicators will know which images to use with confidence and which to set aside.

A Green Communication Guide

Sometimes I joke that sifting through environmental news is a forbidding task. Depending on what is going on in the world, it can be intimidating to log into Twitter, visit RSS feeds, and see what is happening.

What keeps me motivated? Among the reports of mayhem, I can see there are solutions. Environmental writing doesn’t have to be all about apocalypses. We can rewrite the stories, retool how we build things, and solve the problems we face.

Out there on the Internet are some of the answers to this question: how can we communicate effectively about environmental issues? I’ve gathered them together into a green communication guide. The guide addresses both newswriting and nonprofit communication (with an emphasis on newswriting).

Many of the articles in the guide are surprising and even controversial. From dispatches from the cutting edge of  journalism to articles on how to bring environmental views into the mainstream, this guide has tips that may be useful for a wide range of media professionals.

Of course, the guide is not intended as a substitute for attending professional conferences, joining associations like Society of Environmental Journalists, or taking journalism and public relations courses. DIY is valuable, but it only goes so far.

I encourage you to bookmark, share and/or forward the guide if you find it useful. I plan to expand it periodically as I see new resources appear online. If you have suggestions about articles to add to the list, please post a comment.

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Why We Shouldn’t Call the Climate Debate a “Culture War”

For months, I’ve been reading posts from environmental news sources saying that belief in the existence of climate change has become a “culture war.” Framing the issue this way is destructive because it draws a line in the sand, further polarizing an already divided community.

Notice that I said “a community.” Regardless of political spin, the United States is  *one* community. Our country is a composite community of many parts, some of which disagree with each other. Isn’t internal disagreement typical in any neighborhood, let alone a nation?

If one spends a lot of one’s time on the Internet – as news reporters often do – it’s tempting to generalize the polarization one sees online to the rest of the world. But people do not communicate the same way offline as they do online. Online, discussions become polarized quickly and easily. If I want to resolve a disagreement, I usually take it off the Internet as soon as possible.

I hesitate to frame *any* ideological disagreement as a “culture war.” Calling a heated discussion a “war” is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It tends to escalate the debate rather than reducing tension. And it makes it almost impossible to build bridges.

If David Roberts, Andrew Hoffman and other writers are genuinely interested in resolving the climate change debate and not escalating it, they should skip the military metaphors and start calling the conversation what it is: a controversy. Yes, it’s a culturally loaded controversy. But that is all it is. It’s not a war.

There are more than enough climate scientists receiving violent hate mail as it is. We need to use de-escalating language.

How does one de-escalate conflict to reach solutions? I’ve been studying this topic intermittently for years. Here are some ideas:

1. Find common ground. What values do you share with the people who oppose you? What can you agree on – at least, provisionally?
2. Set ground rules about civility and basic respect.
3. Don’t make assumptions about the people who disagree with you. This is especially true if you have not talked with them and don’t really understand their perspectives.
4. Take difficult conversations off the Internet. If you aren’t able to do so, moderate online conversations assertively and reduce anonymity. Research has shown repeatedly that online communication is polarizing.
5. Find ways of getting people out of the “us vs. them” mindset. There are organizations such as Public Conversations Project which specialize in doing this.
6. Stop seeing the political spectrum as a one-dimensional line between conservative and liberal. The best websites I have seen about political affiliation all agree that there are multiple dimensions to political preference. The Political Compass is a two-dimensional example. There are other models which are more complex.
7. Get to know people who are different from you in person and preferably offline. Go out in the community and talk to someone who isn’t dressed the same way as you are.
8. Stop taking things personally. (This is good advice for life in general.)

With that said, I find it completely understandable that Americans confronted with the need to dramatically scale back their lifestyles in response to an environmental threat would retreat into arguments that aren’t logical, oppose change, and dig in their heels.

We live in a country where wealth, productivity and consumption are highly valued by many people. Expecting our entire national community to suddenly put its values and materially based self-image on hold, even in response to a dire environmental need, would be extremely naive.

The environmental movement needs to offer hope, collaborate, and build constructive solutions in the face of intense fear, global risk, and polarized debate. Let’s stop talking about “culture wars” and start talking about solutions. We need new hope, better ideals, and a value system that doesn’t depend on what kind of car we own.

Data Can Empower the Nonprofit Community

Yesterday, someone asked me what unmet needs I see most often at nonprofit organizations. I responded that I’d like to see nonprofits leverage data more effectively.

Organizations like Hacks/Hackers Boston know the wealth of information that data-oriented journalists can find by digging through the Internet. From the Sunlight Foundation‘s forthcoming website on how politicians vote to the Center for Media and Democracy’s SourceWatch project, there are many resources available online which can make nonprofits’ work easier.

The Metropolitan Area Planning Council in Boston hosted an event earlier this year called Data Day. Citizens and nonprofits learned how to use data – for example, information from the Boston Indicators Project and MetroBoston DataCommon – to find out what is happening in their neighborhoods.

In general, I see many nonprofits lack awareness of how to tap into these resources and find out the dirt on pollution, income, crime, violence, health, and other social issues. Now that news organizations are understaffed, it’s becoming even more important for nonprofits to hire staff or contractors who can step in, understand the problems, and use computer-assisted reporting skills to find the answers to these socially important questions.

I am excited to see that the Knight Foundation has funded a data-sharing project for environmental justice organizations in Michigan. I’m also excited to see the growth of indicator databases in communities outside Boston. These databases track community well-being. Two of the databases are the National Neighborhood Indicators Project and the Community Indicators Consortium.

My Virtual Trip to the International Symposium on Online Journalism

I may not be able to travel to Austin this year to attend international conferences about online journalism, but I can always track down the tweets of people who are there blogging. The Nieman Center produced an in-depth online story composed of tweets from the International Symposium on Online Journalism in April.

What’s so fascinating about an online journalism conference? The talks allow visitors to peek into the future of web-based media and see new developments that may be on the horizon. Reading the notes is like watching a TED talk – it’s a way to discover new ideas.

If you’re curious about this topic, I encourage you to read the full story. But here are some highlights which attracted my interest:

1. Online, finding one’s niche is crucial because people subdivide based on their interests, values and views. (I’ve been working on rebranding this blog partly for that reason.)
2. Marshall McLuhan said, “Every medium begins as a container for the old.” We can see this in the evolution of newspaper websites as they transition toward a digital model.
3. It would be useful to create new models for in-depth journalism that are oriented toward online audiences.
4. In Africa, mobile phone use and community media are catching on, especially with younger audiences.
5. Newspapers are struggling to develop new business models and cross-pollinate their skills with technology expertise to increase their innovation.
6. Data journalism is changing how people define journalism as a profession. Some people are moving from computer science into journalism.
7. The LA Times is automating the production of some simple news stories.
8. Students in one research study were blocking out environmental news from their lives because they felt powerless to change the situations.

These are just a few ideas which caught my attention. If you want more information, here’s the live video of the event.

Science Communication Toolkit: Part 2: Using Poetic Skills

I just returned from the Mass Poetry Festival with many ideas about how poetic skills can enrich science writing.

Poetry isn’t very popular in the United States, although the slam movement has opened it to a broader audience. As a former spoken word performer, I use poetic techniques regularly in my other writing.

New Scientist magazine did a series of interviews with poets who were interested in the relationship between poetry and science. Here is one of them – with Lavinia Greenlaw. Greenlaw describes how poets use metaphors to explain the unknown.

Below are a few other poetic skills which can add clarity and interest to science writing.

Write Concisely

Trimming unnecessary words out of lines of poetry requires the same attention to detail as shortening technical explanations does. In both cases, your goal should be to distill and refine your content for maximum effect. While a poem may be intentionally vague, science writing should be clear and easy to follow.

If you’re writing about science, don’t make the mistake of falling in love with the sound of your own keyboard – keep your content straightforward and to the point.

Pick Words that Work

In science writing, it’s best not to leave concepts fuzzy. Choose words that will make your points clear. Similarly, when writing poetry, clean the fuzz out of your language. This may mean removing repetitive words, choosing original language, or picking words that will hone the effect you want to create.

Sharpening a poem is like sharpening a pencil. In science writing, you should pay attention to the emotional tone and messages your words evoke. Word choice can change the impact of an article by evoking fear, trust, inspiration, respect, neutrality or other emotions. In science writing, as in poetry, your choice of emotions may change your readers’ minds.

Frame Your Story

Poets use structure, rhyme and imagery to frame their work. Opening a poem by describing grinding machinery can create a specific atmosphere for that poem. Similarly, journalists and science communicators can frame stories by opening them with human interest anecdotes. A technical writer may frame a manual by organizing the content logically and beginning with an explanation that sets the scene.

Are there any other similarities you see between poetry and science writing? If so, what are they?

How do these styles of writing differ?

Where Gonzo Journalism Meets Web 2.0

In journalism, there’s a relatively new movement called Hacks/Hackers. I call it a movement because it appears to be more than a trend or isolated group. Journalists who are part of Hacks/Hackers seek to mix tech smarts with journalism savvy.

Is Journalism Marrying Technology?

Because I got an engineering degree before studying mass communication, it’s fascinating for me to watch this movement expand. Infographics, multimedia, Web 2.0 and other techniques of the information revolution combine with journalism’s traditional tools of the trade to create hybrid communication styles. For storytellers with graphic design and video experience, the possibilities are endless.

My first encounter with the idea of technologically advanced storytelling came via mashups. Since then, I’ve seen alternatives proliferate online. For example, Beth Kanter’s blog uses infographics and video on nonprofit communication to amplify her message. I am interested in moving this blog in that direction by adding more multimedia content.

Does Social Media Use Move Writers Closer to Gonzo Journalism?

A recent blog post reflecting on a Hacks/Hackers meetup in Boston brings up the question of how personal storytelling affects objectivity in new media journalism. Telling personal stories is a standby for me on this blog; in the world of Web 2.0, having a personality is an advantage. But this makes it difficult for writers to maintain the professional distance from their stories that many journalism organizations have expected.

While I follow rules about balance – which depend on the project I’m doing and its audience – my blog does have a personality. This doesn’t mean every aspect of my life belongs in my Twitter feed. But it does mean that social media has changed the way I write and has moved my blogging style away from traditional newswriting toward a fusion of the personal and the professional.

As a graduate student, I drew on my personal experience of living in urban communities to develop my research and thesis. That certainly colors my perspective on writing about environmental justice. In the interest of balance, I should say I’ve also worked in electronics factories and research labs which contributed to chemical pollution. I became interested in life cycle analysis while I was working in one of these factories.

There is a tradition called gonzo journalism in which writers go out and state their experiences without claiming objectivity. To the extent that social media makes journalists show their personal experiences, blogging may be bringing us closer to that style of writing. The popularity of reality TV shows that being oneself can appeal to audiences. I’m not suggesting that journalists’ lives should be open books, or that social media should make us all write like Hunter S. Thompson, but it’s interesting to watch how writers merge the personal and professional in their social media work.

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Energy Journalism: Cleaning up the Numbers

Energy journalism can be challenging for reporters. An article on SmartPlanet.com spells out the reasons energy journalism is often low-quality and offers some suggestions for improvement. Since I worked for an energy efficiency research organization for two years and wrote my graduate thesis on the media coverage of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge oil drilling controversy, I’m going to start where the author ended and provide suggestions for cleaning up energy-related stories.

Question Authorities

Uncritical acceptance of authorities’ statements can cause problems in energy journalism. Here are some litmus tests for reporters:

1. Is the authority qualified to answer the question? If one is quoting politicians on the amount of oil present in a wildlife refuge, for example, errors are very likely. I’ve seen many examples of journalists missing opportunities to fact-check numbers from non-experts.
2. Who is funding the research? If the funding is tied to a specific industry or organization, that funding agency may influence the results. The relationship will vary depending on the organization involved.
3. Is the research public or proprietary? It’s hard to check numbers if their sources are confidential.
4. Has a third party confirmed the numbers? Checking third-party statements can end speculation.

Don’t Trust Statistics

The SmartPlanet article advocates “reading the small print” and “doing the math.” While checking details is important, there are some baseline assumptions energy reporters should understand before digging into the numbers.

1. Economic calculation methods, especially discounting, can be deceptive. Financially savvy experts can adjust discount rates easily to show environmentally friendly investments are impractical. Discount rates can make renewable energy or smart grid investment appear worthless because of the time it takes to recoup the money. Would the next generation agree? I doubt it. Discount rates are a way to account for short-term thinking; this doesn’t mean they are a gold standard which we should use to make all of our decisions.
2. Many energy programs lack effective outreach and marketing. According to Dan Ariely’s comments at the Behavior, Energy and Climate Change conference in 2009, telling customers that they will save a tiny monthly amount on their electricity bills may be much less effective than telling them your company has already donated to charity in their name. The lack of social science in program outreach may mean that programs underestimate the savings they could achieve.
3. There’s a large margin of error in estimates of fossil fuel resources. For example, some organizations will say peak oil has already passed us by. Other organizations allow much more time. Typically, in evaluating how much of a fossil fuel is present underground, companies and even government organizations will not have exact numbers for your story. If someone quotes a precise number, be skeptical.
4. Statistics may not include the amount of time and money involved in transitioning to a new technology. If you hear a “before vs. after” comparison without an estimate of the transition cost, pay attention. Companies do evaluate these costs internally, but they rarely become sound bytes. For example, if a company is considering a new nuclear power plant, the cost of insuring the plant should be part of the decision.
5. Experts may omit the social and environmental cost of an energy choice. Energy experts who focus on some questions – such as availability of oil or changes in electric rates – may never mention the local environmental impacts of oil production, the cost to society of air pollution and global warming, and other effects they did not quantify. The insurance industry is concerned about global warming for a reason; these “externalities” are real expenses.

Critical thinking matters in energy journalism. Many of these assumptions and credibility issues are subtle. One can’t expect reporters to view discount rates or oil reserve estimates cautiously. I hope this post will point other writers in the right direction.

P.S. All of the opinions here are my own and are based on my experience working with science news and energy data.