đżWild Ones #38: Environmental Communication Digest
Eco-keyword: 'Ecocultural Blindspot' + Fresh Voices in Nature Writing + Linguist George Lakoff on Environmental Communication + More!
Hi everyone! Welcome back to Wild Ones, a bi-weekly digest by me, Gavin Lamb, about news, ideas, research, events, and tips in environmental writing and communication. If youâre new, welcome! You can read more about why I started Wild Ones here. Sign up here to get these digests in your inbox:
đ˛Environmental Keywordđď¸
âEcocultural Blindspotâ
Ecocultural blindspots are created when âfocusing on localised protections or individual rights leaves intact a cultural blind spot that conceals systemic issues threatening nature.âÂ
In a new essay in The Conversation, environmental communication scholars Tema Milstein and John Carr look into an incident involving the harassment of a manatee that happened in Florida in early January this year.
As the title of their article explains: âA manatee with âTRUMPâ scraped into its back was itself disturbing. But it reflects a deeper environmental problem.â
Manatees (related to dugongs in Australia) are a threatened species in Florida and are protected under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Milstein and Carr explore how the framing of this incident in the media reflects a common pattern in how environmental debates are portrayed in the media (especially in the U.S. and Australia), narrowly focusing on âentrenched left-right views.â As they put it,
âPolarised views dominate discussion on critical issues such as climate crisis and biodiversity protection. Typically, the left calls for more environmental protections, and the right claims these protections threaten economic prosperity or individual rightsâ
So when another disturbing incident of manatee harassment was reported in the media this year, a predictable left-right framing dominated the news, say Milstein and Carr. Both sides narrowly focused on the ânarrow threatsâ of individuals harassing and harming manatees.
There are more serious âinterconnected threatsâ facing manatees, like overdevelopment destroying their coastal habitats, or how the climate crisis is creating âred tideâ algal blooms poisonous to manatees. However, Milstein and Carr point out,
ââŚthese broader threats to manatee survival are largely ignored by news media, environmental actors and even protection laws.â
And this omission or invisibility in how we talk about and act on the âbroader threats to manatee survivalâ is what the authors mean by the environmental keyword âecocultural blindspot.â
In the case of manatees, one example where we can see evidence of an âecocultural blindspotâ is in the bizarre partnership between fossil-fuel power plants and manatee sanctuaries enshrined in Floridaâs environmental protection laws.
To explain what they mean by this, Milstein and Carr share this example from their research on manatee protection efforts in Florida:
In 2000, the âSave the manatees club,â along with other environmental activists sued to make the US comply with the Endangered Species Act and other state protections to designate several critical habitats for manatees as wildlife sanctuaries.
Because manatees depend on warm water in the winter for survival, and since much of their warm-water habitat has been destroyed by coastal development (more than 60% of it), manatees increasingly seek out alternative (human-made) places to warm up.
This includes 3 sites where warm wastewater is discharged from coal-fired power plants, like the Big Bend site in the city of Tampa.
Because manatees congregate in the warmer waters around these power plants, these power plant sites are now designated as manatee sanctuaries. Fast-forward to today, andâŚ.
âŚBig Bend is part of a larger network of power-plant warm water discharge effluent channels now essential to manatee survival and incorporated into state and federal regimes of endangered species protection.
In sum, the authors conclude, it seems that efforts of environmental activists to save the manatees have âeffectively locked fossil fuel-fired power plants into the ecosystem, even as a broader environmental movement seeks to retire them.â
This example reflects a âdeeper environmental problemâ as the authors point out in the title of their article. What is that deeper problem? According to the authors, itâs the widespread belief that humans are separate from nature, which is connected to a belief in human exceptionalism. The belief that humans are somehow not a part of nature underpins many forms of environmental activism, dominates environmental debates in the media, and informs how environmental protection laws are written and implemented.
An important task ahead, then, is to notice when this belief is informing our environmental communication and actions. And that means checking for what is being left out, ignored, or actively silenced, in other words, taking stock of our ecocultural blindspots, even for those of us that are already committed to environmental action and justice. As Milstein and Carr succinctly put it,
âLooking past the false separation of humans from nature is necessary, but confronting. It means seeing, questioning, and addressing the systems many of us â both on the left and right â take as a given.â
Next steps? Check out these resources to delve further into the environmental keyword âecocultural blindspotsâ:
This research article on ecocultural blindspots by Tema Milstein and John Carr: Keep Burning Coal or the Manatee Gets It: Rendering the Carbon Economy Invisible through Endangered Species Protection
A short post I wrote last year on a related keyword in ecolinguistics: âerasure.â
I think this might be one interesting example of a wildlife conservation effort (focused on grizzly bears in California) that takes a wider lens on addressing âinterconnected threatsâ and âecocultural blindspots.â
đ° News and Events
When Words Arenât Enough: The Visual Climate Story (Streamed live on Mar 2, 2021, posted the link to this before but a video of the workshop is now available online in case you missed it).
âWhile IPCC risk assessments and emission projections can help us understand climate change, they donât exactly inspire the imagination or provoke a personal response to the crisis. The solution? A growing league of storytellers who use photographs, films and the human experience to breathe life into the cerebral science of climate change and conservation. Images can tap into our senses and break down barriers that statistics cannot â how far can they go to inspire a global climate response? Join us for a conversation on the art of visualizing climate change with filmmaker CĂŠline Cousteau, producer and director Davis Guggenheim, and photographer Cristina Mittermeier.â
ecoAmericaâs Letâs Talk Climate Webcast, a special research episode: âPresident Biden Sees Climate Change as a Justice Issue, Do Americans?â
âIn this special Letâs Talk Climate episode, we share findings from our latest American Climate Perspectives Survey focused on Americansâ understanding of climate justice. Our report includes findings on American understanding of climate changeâs disproportionate harms, who views climate change as an issue of justice, motivations to act, and support for solutions.â
Fresh Voices in Nature Writing, recommended by Jessica J. Lee, interview by Cal Flyn.
âWriting about nature and landscape need not be stuffy or traditionalist. Jessica J Lee, editor of The Willowherb Reviewâa literary journal dedicated to diversity in nature writingârecommends five books that offer a breath of fresh air: encompassing the whole of life, from sex in the woods to birding in the city.â
Science for the World-Culturally relevant science communication workshop. Hosted by UC Davis SciComm Faculty Training Program (online, March 11)
đ Tools & Tips
Frame the Debate: Insights from Donât Think of an Elephant!
By Joel Dignam in the Commons: Social Change Library.âFraming is a crucial concept for people engaged in social change to understand. George Lakoff describes frames as âmental structures that shape the way we see the world.â Framing is the art of communicating such that oneâs language activates particular unspoken ideas and associations. Being intentional about framing as part of progressive campaigns means activating relevant values and encouraging more people to think in terms of our worldview.â
On Environmental Communication by George Lakoff in the HuffPost. This is a blog post from 2010 but thought it had some interesting tips from the famous linguist. Lakoffâs 2010 article, Why it Matters How We Frame the Environment, had a big impact on the field of environmental communication. In this blog post though, Lakoff takes aim at the political leftâs environmental communication, arguing that âThe importance of communication in politics has not been recognized sufficiently by environmentalists, and by progressives in general.â
The effects of anthropomorphism in science writing for non-experts (video) and the research behind it:
âThose who read anthropomorphic text tended to use more vivid examples and fewer generalisations. This suggests that anthropomorphism acts as an evocative, albeit potentially distracting, technique but does not cause significant misconceptions. Writers should feel free to use anthropomorphic techniques if they are appropriate for their topic and their audience.â
đ Research
Echo Chamber Effects in the Climate Change Blogosphere by Christel W. van Eck, Bob C. Mulder and Sander van der Linden
âThe aim of the current research was to provide insight into echo chamber effects in the climate change blogosphere, by investigating whether blog audiences solely consume climate change blogs that are in line with their climate change risk perceptions (i.e. echo chambers) or whether they consume content on both sides of the spectrum. Our results indeed suggest that audience members with low climate change risk perceptions primarily (but not solely) consume climate sceptical blogs and audiences with high climate change risk perceptions primarily (but not solely) consume climate mainstream blogs.â
Jessica Wapnerâs Wall Disease Unravels How Border Walls Affect the Mind. An interview with Jessica Wapner by Rodrigo PĂŠrez Ortega on the Open Notebook.
đĄ Ideas
To Scale Behavior Change: Target Early Adopters, Then Leverage Social Proof and Social Pressure by Philipe Bujold and Madhuri Karak in Behavioral Scientist
The Wild Nearby by Julian Hoffman (also the author of Irreplaceable:
The fight to save our wild places) In The Clearing.Why call recent disasters ânaturalâ when they really arenât? By Elizabeth Kolbert in National Geographic
Rareâs Lands for Life program takes a people-centered approach to climate-smart agricultureby RARE.
Report: Nobody talks about âglobal warmingâ anymore by Kate Yoder in Grist
For Planet Earth, No Tourism is a Curse and a Blessing, by Lisa W. Foderaro, in the NYTimes. âFrom the rise in poaching to the waning of noise pollution, travelâs shutdown is having profound effects. Which will remain, and which will vanish?â
The tweet below is from an interesting recent communications campaign from Sunrise Movement that explicitly mentions the need to shift the climate narrative away from cynicism and towards hope (through the Green New Deal and Good Jobs For All.)
đŹÂ Quotes Iâm thinking about
Ecocultural blindspots âare zones in which, through selective and limited focus and omission, the law treats as outside the lawâs purview the very things it ostensibly is intended to interrogate and regulate, including systemic anthropogenic ecological destruction.â
- John Carr & Tema Milstein (2018). In Keep burning coal or the manatee gets it: Rendering the carbon economy invisible through endangered species protection.
âIâd be hard-pressed to think of a story thatâs not a climate story. Just like the âpâ at the beginning of a word. I mean, itâs there! Weâre just not pronouncing it!â
â @maryheglar
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