Swindle me this: should climate skeptics be heard?

So New Zealand finally got to see climate-skeptic “documentary” The Great Global Warming Swindle, which aired on Prime. There’s really nothing I can add about the programme itself, with its cherry-picked, debunked science and straw-man arguments (see also Grist’s comprehensive How To Talk to a Climate Skeptic). I find it incredible that anyone can take it seriously when it makes the quite ridiculous claims that our current concern about climate change arises out of a) Margaret Thatcher’s attempts to weaken miners’ unions, b) evil, money-grubbing scientists duping governments in order to get more research money and c) a conspiracy by environmental groups to halt development in poor nations.

The studio debate afterwards was interesting. I thought David Wratt and Martin Manning did a reasonable job of pointing out the programme’s flaws and deflating some of the piffle being put forward by Leighton Smith. Reading some of the comments on other blogs, though, it seems that what you got out of the programme and subsequent discussion depended entirely on your prior opinion. I suspect that for most people who had no strong opinions one way or the other, it would have just ended up confusing them further. As the panel discussion got further into technical scientific details, panelist Cindy Baxter made the point that this type of programme only really serves to further the impression that there is a debate, thus playing into the hands of the skeptics and delayers.

When it previously aired overseas, The Great Global Warming Swindle attracted considerable controversy and complaints to broadcasters. Some claimed that it shouldn’t be broadcast at all, with others saying that although it represented a minority view to ban it would be tantamount to curbing freedom of expression. Should climate skeptics have a voice in the media? I would say a guarded yes, if put into their proper context. Two of the BBC’s environment reporters wrote an interesting piece on how to report on climate skeptics:

We do not need consistently to ‘balance’ the reports of the IPCC. When we broadcast outlying views we should make sure we do not over represent them and we should keep a rough balance of views from either side of the IPCC. If we do not, we will distort the issue and risk misleading or confusing our audience.

We must also be more savvy about the way we treat outlying views – and we should make it clear to our audience when an interviewee holds a minority position.

I think that skeptic viewpoints can be reported with several provisos:

• the affiliations of sources are made clear
• they are put in the context of the weight of scientific evidence
• they are not over-represented, or used as an automatic counterpoint to the mainstream view

The Great Global Warming Swindle fits none of these, as it is a polemic built around a preconceived idea with facts distorted or fabricated to suit.

Mainstream news media have, on the whole, been getting better at reporting on climate change, with most reports, at least in Australasia, not acknowledging the skeptic position. If there is to be a public debate about the causes of climate change, it should be in the context of the affiliations and credibility of the various parties involved rather than getting into scientific details. These aren’t understood my most journalists, let alone the general public, and it is far too easy for the debate to get hijacked and unnecessarily prolonged. Many of the scientific arguments in TGGWS sound credible to the lay observer (I include myself here); it is only when they are put into a broader context that they begin to fall apart.

Climate change campaigns in the media – can they possibly work?

Issues around climate change, sustainability and the environment have become much more prominent over the last few years, both in the media and, seemingly, in the public consciousness. There are many awareness-raising initiatives, from the large-scale global events like Live Earth and Earth Hour to much more specific or local campaigns. While on the surface this trend seems only positive, questions remain. How effective are these campaigns? Is simply raising people’s awareness enough? If our goal is to move to a truly sustainable society – and it should be – are current strategies for raising awareness and changing people’s behaviour likely to move us in this direction, or are they simply a way to make us feel better as we continue to do further damage to the planet?

It seems to me that the best answer is to not only raise awareness of what the problems are, but try and build understanding of why they are occurring. With that would hopefully come the realisation of the need to change the way our society conceives of and uses resources, moving from the current ‘take-make-use-waste’ model to a sustainable, closed-loop system.

Most mainstream campaigns, however, seem to focus either only on awareness-raising, or else promoting change through small, individual choices. Save the planet – all you have to do is get new light bulbs! The implicit message seems to be that we can keep doing what we’re doing, we should just do slightly less of it. Many campaigns address people primarily as consumers, with the idea that change will come about through individual purchasing decisions.

There is merit to this, of course. Consumers should take more responsibility for the consequences of their purchasing. My concern is that if such decisions are not backed up by proper knowledge, the action taken will be, at best, ineffectual, and at worst, harmful. If the campaign is simply designed to encourage more consumption, albeit with a green tinge, it doesn’t go any way to addressing the underlying causes of climate change and will probably do more harm than good.

I’ve been involved in a few small-scale campaigns myself. One thing which comes up often is the linking of sustainable behaviours to saving money. The main value of this, of course, is to counter perceived popular perceptions that taking the ‘eco-option’ will be more expensive. This is a common theme is many behaviour-change efforts, with slogans like “Go green and save green” and “save money – and the planet” being used often. I’m beginning to question the wisdom of appealing too much to people’s avarice, though. What do you do with all the money you’ve saved? Conventional thinking would be to blow it on consumer goods, or maybe an overseas holiday – which is what got us here in the first place and likely wipes out all the good that’s been done up to this point.

Luckily, it seems that using greed as a motivator is not necessary, and may in fact be ineffectual. A recent WWF report, ‘Weathercocks and Signposts: The Environment Movement at a Crossroads’ found that (and I’m quoting from the executive summary as I’m too lazy right now to go through the entire 42 pages)

such approaches may actually serve to defer, or even undermine, prospects for the more far-reaching and systemic behavioural changes that are needed. There is little evidence that, in the course of encouraging individuals to adopt simple and painless behavioural changes, this will in turn motivate them to engage in more significant changes.

It argues that appealing to materialistic values cannot form the basis for motivating systemic pro-environmental behaviour changes:

Individuals who engage in behaviour in pursuit of ‘intrinsic goals’ (of personal growth, emotional intimacy or community involvement) tend to be more highly motivated and more persistent in engaging in this behaviour than individuals motivated by ‘extrinsic goals’ (for example, of acquisition of material goods, financial success, image and social recognition). Moreover, more materialistic individuals tend to have higher ecological footprints.

It can be difficult, though, to orchestrate a campaign built around intrinsic values through traditional communication channels. The dominant paradigm in mainstream media is very much built around extrinsic values; the satisfaction of individual desires through consumption. It is not only that the media are structured this way because of the requirements of advertisers. The public has come to expect that this is how they will be addressed. It may be difficult to appeal to values of “personal growth, emotional intimacy or community involvement” without it coming across as wishy-washy greenie tree-huggery.

The prospects of the mainstream media properly informing the public of why environmental problems are occurring, and the necessity of moving to a more sustainable society, also seem remote. Most campaigns sponsored or championed by the media, such as Earth Hour, do not tend to encourage this type of thinking. Views seen as ‘radical,’ especially those which challenge conventional economic wisdom, tend to be marginalised in the news. Journalists, for their part, do not seem willing to go down this path. A 1994 study of science and environment reporters found a clear consensus amongst journalists that their role was to provide interesting, informative and entertaining coverage, not to educate the public on matters of scientific or environmental literacy. And perhaps it is not their place to do so – maybe this is better left to schools and other education providers. There is also evidence to suggest that behaviour-change campaigns are much more effective at a grass-roots, inter-personal level. The nature of the mainstream media, however, means it could be an obstacle to widespread acceptance of the need for change, although by no means one that’s impossible to overcome.

Emissions Trading Shenanigans

The corporate domination of the news media is a familiar catch-cry of all manner of groups and social movements who feel they are not adequately represented in the news. This type of influence is quite hard to pin down. Examples of direct intervention by advertisers or corporate owners, while by no means unheard of, are not widespread or systematic to the extent that they can account for overall patterns of news coverage. By most accounts influence operates at a more subtle level, in the form of self-censorship by journalists and the accepted occupational norms of what counts as ‘news’ and how it should be communicated. Most news media are now components of larger corporations, and depend on advertisers for the vast majority of their income. Even if these groups don’t directly interfere in the news, it is clearly in the ultimate interests of news media not to piss them off too much.

Recent scuffles in the New Zealand media over proposed Emissions Trading legislation provide and interesting example. The proposed scheme has been attracting a lot of negative attention in recent days. First the government pushed back by two years the time when the transport sector would be covered by the ETS, over concerns the fuel price rise would annoy voters be a burden on hard working families. Then it was the turn of the business lobby, with Rio Tinto threatening to close down its Tiwai Point aluminium smelter and the forestry sector warning of hundreds of millions of dollars in losses if the ETS went ahead.

Most media coverage seems to have been overwhelmingly sympathetic to the business case. Possibilities of massive job losses and huge harm to the New Zealand economy if the ETS went head were splashed across TV and newspaper reports. Seemingly in awe of the high-ranking Rio Tinto executives flown in to put their case to the select committee, the major news media did not offer any competing claims to those made by the corporates. Nowhere was it mentioned the cost to the economy – never mind the planet – if we don’t act to reduce our emissions (Climate Change minister David Parker finally, on Thursday, mentioned a figure of $1.5 billion to the economy, though this, as yet, hasn’t made it onto TV).

The only outlet I’m aware of that questioned Rio Tinto’s claims was, of all places, Radio NZ National’s Afternoons with Jim Mora [mp3]. Panellist Ben Thomas of the NBR offered a ‘back-of-the-envelope calculation’ of the actual costs to the smelter of the ETS. He estimated that the increase in electricity costs due to the ETS would only affect 10% of the smelter’s total electricity. With electricity prices set to rise by about 8%, this would mean a 0.8% increase in the smelter’s electricity costs – somewhere in the region of $2-5 million a year, set against an annual profit of around $130 million. Further casting doubt on Rio Tinto’s claims is that fact that they signed a long-term electricity deal with Meridian two weeks after the details of the ETS were announced.

None of this, of course, made it onto TV news. I’m not saying the claims made by Rio Tinto and other business groups are unfounded, but it’s the sheer lack of competing voices that is worrying when there is clearly another side to this. Much criticism was directed at the news media for its coverage of the climate change “debate,” with equal weight being given to climate skeptics despite them being in the minority of scientific opinion. This overuse of journalistic ‘balance’ seems to have given way to one-sided reporting – and in both cases it is business interests who come out better off.

The ETS doesn’t seem to be nearly as “controversial” as Simon Dallow would have you believe – a recent survey, also presented to the select committee, found that 60% of businesses supported the ETS, 71% thought that large emitters should pay, and 77% of business decision makers thought that climate change should be dealt with now or urgently (numbers were similar for the general public). This didn’t stop TV3’s Duncan Garner graphically comparing the scheme to a “boxer on the ropes – it is bleeding, but not yet knocked out” and saying the government was “vulnerable” on the issue. Duncan obviously knows more about the political process than I do, but most indications I’ve seen suggest that the ETS is likely to be passed into law before the election.

This situation is not exactly unique, with business groups vehemently opposing all kinds of environmental measures on the grounds they will be bad for the economy. This illuminating post on Grist demonstrates that not only do businesses wildly overestimate the costs of environmental measures, so too do the government agencies that promote them. The news media don’t have a good track record here either, having been found in many studies to consistently slant environmental coverage in favour of business and under- or mis-report environmental problems. Is it a coincidence that the one major media outlet to offer an alternative perspective was a public broadcaster? One example doesn’t in itself prove much, but the overall picture isn’t encouraging.