Wild Ones #19: Environmental Communication Digest
Dr. Robert Bullard on the environmental justice movement, film storytelling by the Ocean Media Institute, 2019 Review of Media Coverage of Climate Change, a 'Voice for Nature, and more...
Hi everyone, welcome back to Wild Ones, a bi-weekly digest by me, Gavin Lamb, about news, ideas, research, and tips in environmental communication. If you’re new, welcome! You can read more about why I started Wild Ones here. Sign up here to get these digests in your inbox:
Environmental Communicator Spotlight 🔆
Dr. Robert Bullard is Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy at Texas Southern University and is widely recognized for establishing the modern environmental justice movement. He has written 18 books on environmental justice, including his must-read classic: Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class and Environmental Quality. Here’s a link to chapter 1.
He defines ‘environmental justice’ as an approach to environmental advocacy that “embraces the principle that all people and communities have a right to equal protection and equal enforcement of environmental laws and regulations. America is segregated and so is pollution. Race and class still matter and map closely with pollution, unequal protection, and vulnerability. Today, zip code is still the most potent predictor of an individual’s health and well-being.”
His most recent book, The Wrong Complexion for Protection, is co-authored with Beverly Wright – the founding director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice (DSCEJ) at Dillard University, New Orleans. Read the introduction to the book here (pdf). Simply put, “The framework [of environmental justice] brings to the surface the ethical and political questions about environmental protection of ‘who gets what, when, why, and how much.’”
In 2019, Dr. Bullard received the Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication.”
To learn more about Dr. Robert Bullard and his work, check out this interview he did recently with The Intercept in June: ‘The coronavirus pandemic and police violence have reignited the fight against toxic racism’
Tools & Events 🎤
Robert Bullard’s useful links on environmental justice and communication
Ocean Media Institute: “OMI serves to enrich and expand the public’s understanding of ocean science and conservation through the collaborative creation, exhibition, and open-distribution of innovative visual media as well as artistic approaches to ocean education.”
Films as a Tool in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) from Connect4Climate.org.
The Law Firm Climate Change Scorecard, created by Law Students for Climate Accountability: “From 2015 to 2019, Vault 100 firms: Litigated 286 cases exacerbating climate change; Supported $1.316 trillion worth of transactions for the fossil fuel industry; Received $37 million in compensation for fossil fuel industry lobbying.”
Terra Nostra “is a 30-minute multimedia symphony about climate change composed by Christophe Chagnard with poetry by Emily Siff and a film by Charlie Spears from Hullabaloo. It was created to Engage, Educate, Inspire, and Empower people to move for personal and policy change to protect our earth.”
Carbon Sequestration and Climate Justice in Cities (Webinar: Wednesday, October 14th from 12-1 pm MDT): “This webinar will summarize the research that indicates that urban environments can and should be prioritized for carbon capture through significant investment in urban forestry, the inequity in existing tree canopies and green space, and the policy solutions that would ensure this investment has clear climate and local benefits, particularly for communities of color.”
All Water Has a Memory: Rivers and American History. (free online conference on 10/19, 10/26, 11/2): “The present-day crisis of climate change requires a political movement and solution, not only based on science, but on an awareness of the relationship between climate change and inequality that comes from an understanding of our history. Studying the history of rivers not only shows how we are connected to nature, but also how we are connected to each other.”
Re-MEDIAting the Wild: The 16th Conference on Communication and Environment (COCE) Online June 21-24, 2021.
News 📰
How 2020 Became a Climate Election How to Save a Planet on How to Save a Planet with journalist Alex Blumberg and scientist and policy nerd Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (Podcast).
WILD BITES: How can arctic squirrels help us get to Mars? on The Wild with Chris Morgan (Podcast).
New Documents Reveal How the Animal Agriculture Industry Surveils and Punishes Critics: A respected Bay Area veterinarian endures widespread attacks following an industry “alert” about her criticisms of factory farms.
Elite Law Firms Are Helping the Fossil Fuel Industry Fry the Planet
Research 📚
A Review of Media Coverage of Climate Change and Global Warming in 2019. Special Report from the Media and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO). This is a great recap of climate coverage from month-to-month over the course of 2019.
Garbage in Popular Culture: Consumption and the Aesthetics of Waste by Mehita Iqani: “Garbage in Popular Culture is the first book to explicitly link media discourse, consumer culture and the cultural politics of garbage in contemporary global society.”
I Am Ocean: Expanding the Narrative of Ocean Science Through Inclusive Storytelling by Gianna M. Savoie. This an excellent short essay on environmental narrative and storytelling by the founder of the Ocean Media Institute (see link above).
Rebel with a cause: the framing of climate change and intergenerational justice in the German press treatment of the Fridays for Future protests: “German media coverage thus tends to reproduce existing power structures by marginalizing and depoliticizing the political agenda of a system critical protest.”
Ideas 💡
What Have We Learned in Thirty Years of Covering Climate Change? by Bill Mckibben.
Three Scenarios for the Future of Climate Change by Elizabeth Kolbert
A new YouTube series is amplifying Latino voices in the environmental movement
The Consortium of Environmental Philosophers: “We inform policy and public debate on the relationship of human societies to the world they inhabit.”
Where There’s Good Fire, There’s Good Smoke by Jared Dahl Aldern
2020's Equator Prize Winners Offer a Roadmap for Solving the Climate Crisis
Deep Intellect: Inside the mind of the octopus by Sy Montgomery. This is currently the most-read story ever in Orion Magazine.
A Voice for Nature: “The Whanganui River in New Zealand is a legal person. A nearby forest is too. Soon, the government will grant a mountain legal personhood as well. Here's how it happened, and what it may mean.”
Sierra Club vs. Morton. In learning about the recent establishment of Whanganui River as a legal person, I’m reminded of this Supreme Court case in American environmental legal history:
In 1972 the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Sierra Club’s injunction to stop the development of a Disney-funded ski resort at Mineral King Valley in California, but Justice Douglas gave a dissenting opinion:
“Justice William O. Douglas wrote a dissenting opinion in which he argued that the standing doctrine should allow environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club to sue on behalf of inanimate objects such as land. There is precedent for inanimate objects to have legal personality for the purpose of lawsuits” and, Douglas wrote, ‘those who have that intimate relation with the inanimate object about to be injured, polluted, or otherwise despoiled are its legitimate spokesmen.’”
Writings from my desk ✍️
Thanks so much as always for your interest in my work, and if you found this useful, I'd love to hear from you, what do you think about this digest?