It’s always a special day when I find myself reading a research paper about how journalism, my profession, is bumming everybody out about climate change. Everyone who complains about how those of us who write about climate are total Debbie Downers? This study is just for you.
In 2013, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, a progressive think tank, set out to study the ways that journalism about climate change either engages citizens in climate issues or makes them feel passive and helpless. The researchers selected 53 residents of the Vancouver area, all of whom believed that climate change was real, but who weren’t part of a political movement to do anything about it.
Then they asked those people to read four articles:
- An overview of the annual global climate negotiations titled “FAQs: UN Climate Change Conference in Durban,” which presented a fairly blunt assessment that the UN climate talks weren’t going anywhere.
- An article about how a carbon tax in British Columbia had actually done a nice job of reducing carbon emissions without damaging the economy.
- An article about a Vancouver resident who got tired of donating money to big national environmental organizations and started a local climate-focused environmental group […]
Although climate change is real, the phrase itself is not exciting. I suspect that one reason international agreements are hard to conclude is because it is largely a US project, and lots of people will be inclined to resist for that reason alone. Things that may happen in 50 years aren’t of much interest to people who won’t be alive then.
Indifference to climate change is one of the unintended consequences of concentration of income. Most people are so busy paying for rent and food that they have little time for big issues.