This article by Jim Hansen—The Threat to the Planet—in the New York Review of Books (via this post at Hullabaloo) demonstrates just how much hangs in the balance when we let our media values break down. In a word: Everything.
Hansen provides a concise and convincing summary of the “global climate change” issue and references key moments in environmental media history, such as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. In doing so, he touches on an often ignored dimension of the problem (and its potential solution): the media represent our best hope of changing course and—perhaps, if we’re lucky—not trashing the planet forever. (Well, all right, maybe just millions of years, but who’s counting?)
Thus, the warping of our media—as represented by, say, Bush administration flaks who purposefully spread disinformation— imperils literally hundreds of millions of people who live near the worlds coastlines. Plus literally half the life on the planet. Plus literally countless generations of humankind. Kind of a big deal. I’m going to go out on a limb and say this is worth paying some attention to.
Allow me to be dramatic, but not unrealistic: we need to coordinate ourselves as a species in order to save the planet. And we need to do it soon. Read Hansen’s article and see if you don’t agree.
Did you see that? That’s how this media thing works. You’re at this Web site, and I link to an article that connects you to several books that will perhaps lead to public pressure on politicians who will be covered on TV. Kind of nifty. Books, articles, television programs, emails, Web groups; these tools (and more; and ones we haven’t invented yet) will all need to be marshalled for the ultimate media campaign.
Along with other more manageable social strata, such as the nation-state, the political action committee and the IM chat, the global conversation will soon be turning to issues of the environment, whether we like it or not. The way things are going—ice sheets teetering on the brink, the potential loss of half the life on earth—it looks as though we might not like it.
If a popular movement is going to emerge with the force and clarity to influence the U.S. (and societies around the globe), it is going to have to win the media. What other means could there possibly be to get the message out to billions of people? Instead of thinking of “the media” as the new fall lineup on Fox or the latest Oprah Reading Club book, let’s pull back and look at the global communication network.
According to Hansen, we may be on a ten-year shot clock to get ourselves organized; the only way to reach a sufficient number of people will be through massive, powerful and versatile media campaigns. Since that’s some pretty fluffy copy, let me define those terms.
I say massive because there’s little evidence that the world’s financial titans are going to get in the game in time; we have to go old-school and force the issue from the bottom up and with every channel we can dream up. “Powerful” is a squishy word, I realize, but the way we communicate about this issue has to command the attention and motivate the action of millions of people. Is such a thing even possible? Well, a Berlin wall here, an American Idol there, maybe throw in a Mahatma Gandhi-type, and pretty soon you’re talking about a real movement. Versatility will be required to carry the message from culture to culture, around the globe, linking us conceptually in ways that our language and history haven’t.
It won’t be easy, of course. Just for starters, let’s play with some themes: instead of “global climate change,” let’s call it…. hm, how about “Global flooding”? Maybe “Human climate destruction”? Or, should we get right down to it and call it “Mass death”? Not so catchy, really. And that’s a big part of the problem right there: the worse the situation gets, the less people want to hear (much less talk) about it.
Every now and again, the public imagination is captured by an environmental issue, such as the hole in the ozone layer caused by CFCs. When enough pieces fell into place, that media campaign worked: we stopped the problem and turned it around. Unfortunately, as dire as it was, that was the kiddie pool compared to what we face now. To get real momentum behind the issues at hand we’re going to need more than An Inconvenient Truth, as good as it is.
We will need talk radio about the environment (more than a scattering of shows here and there, and probably more than a dedicated channel). We will need not just books but dedicated publishers in greater numbers; and not just academic books, but thrillers and mysteries, fat airport novels and teen series. (Michael Crichton is not invited to the “We Saved the World” Ball.) We will need films, from haunting little indie pictures to the next Day After Tomorrow.
That’s a big shopping list, of course, and no one person or media conglomerate would be able to make it happen (wouldn’t it be fun to imagine a media mogul whose soul was as green as Rupert’s is black?). Unfortunately, however, we will have those things. Why unfortunately? Because, much as the media have turned to terror as a subject since September 11th, they will turn to the environment when we reach a critical mass of disasters. Gore’s film is the latest in a slender string of media successes that have come before things get seriously apocalyptic. Call me crazy, but I say let’s work on getting more of those in the pipeline.
My inner pessimist fears that the “We really need to do something about this now, guys” meme just isn’t sexy enough. Perhaps, somehow, the issue will pick up momentum and become a public demand before we pass the real tipping point. It’s hard to imagine that the news we have received already isn’t enough, but there it is. It’s possible that Gore’s film represents the start of a new level of popular awareness. If so, it will be a bit of a tragic irony, because Gore, of course, is the perfect icon of this media/environment disconnect.
Impending environmental disasters are showing Al Gore to have been prescient (or at least, you know, paying attention) throughout his life-long campaign. The demonstrably false and unfair mugging he suffered at the hands of the media in 2000 takes on an even darker tone when considered against a backdrop of Bush administration policy toward the environment.
The impact of the media’s approach to Gore (and the propping up of the Bush campaign, likewise demonstrable and unfair) cannot be measured as accurately as oceanic temperature increases. But we can assume that Gore wouldn’t have been making cabinet appointments of corporate lawyers whose career goals involved destroying the agencies they were heading. When the margin for error gets down to a decade one way or the other, you have to wonder what has already been lost during the Bush/Cheney fantasy of global dominion.
For all these reasons—and many more—the world needs smart, dedicated, passionate media creators to be addressing these issues. The stories we tell now will help determine what kind of stories we tell in the decades and centuries to come. If you know young people who are interested in the media and open to environmental issues, steer them there and show them the ropes.
It’s all hands on deck; iceberg dead ahead. And things are about to get very interesting around here.
Tipping Points
This article by Jim Hansen—The Threat to the Planet—in the New York Review of Books (via this post at Hullabaloo) demonstrates just how much hangs in the balance when we let our media values break down. In a word: Everything.
Hansen provides a concise and convincing summary of the “global climate change” issue and references key moments in environmental media history, such as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. In doing so, he touches on an often ignored dimension of the problem (and its potential solution): the media represent our best hope of changing course and—perhaps, if we’re lucky—not trashing the planet forever. (Well, all right, maybe just millions of years, but who’s counting?)
Thus, the warping of our media—as represented by, say, Bush administration flaks who purposefully spread disinformation— imperils literally hundreds of millions of people who live near the worlds coastlines. Plus literally half the life on the planet. Plus literally countless generations of humankind. Kind of a big deal. I’m going to go out on a limb and say this is worth paying some attention to.
Allow me to be dramatic, but not unrealistic: we need to coordinate ourselves as a species in order to save the planet. And we need to do it soon. Read Hansen’s article and see if you don’t agree.
Did you see that? That’s how this media thing works. You’re at this Web site, and I link to an article that connects you to several books that will perhaps lead to public pressure on politicians who will be covered on TV. Kind of nifty. Books, articles, television programs, emails, Web groups; these tools (and more; and ones we haven’t invented yet) will all need to be marshalled for the ultimate media campaign.
Along with other more manageable social strata, such as the nation-state, the political action committee and the IM chat, the global conversation will soon be turning to issues of the environment, whether we like it or not. The way things are going—ice sheets teetering on the brink, the potential loss of half the life on earth—it looks as though we might not like it.
If a popular movement is going to emerge with the force and clarity to influence the U.S. (and societies around the globe), it is going to have to win the media. What other means could there possibly be to get the message out to billions of people? Instead of thinking of “the media” as the new fall lineup on Fox or the latest Oprah Reading Club book, let’s pull back and look at the global communication network.
According to Hansen, we may be on a ten-year shot clock to get ourselves organized; the only way to reach a sufficient number of people will be through massive, powerful and versatile media campaigns. Since that’s some pretty fluffy copy, let me define those terms.
I say massive because there’s little evidence that the world’s financial titans are going to get in the game in time; we have to go old-school and force the issue from the bottom up and with every channel we can dream up. “Powerful” is a squishy word, I realize, but the way we communicate about this issue has to command the attention and motivate the action of millions of people. Is such a thing even possible? Well, a Berlin wall here, an American Idol there, maybe throw in a Mahatma Gandhi-type, and pretty soon you’re talking about a real movement. Versatility will be required to carry the message from culture to culture, around the globe, linking us conceptually in ways that our language and history haven’t.
It won’t be easy, of course. Just for starters, let’s play with some themes: instead of “global climate change,” let’s call it…. hm, how about “Global flooding”? Maybe “Human climate destruction”? Or, should we get right down to it and call it “Mass death”? Not so catchy, really. And that’s a big part of the problem right there: the worse the situation gets, the less people want to hear (much less talk) about it.
Every now and again, the public imagination is captured by an environmental issue, such as the hole in the ozone layer caused by CFCs. When enough pieces fell into place, that media campaign worked: we stopped the problem and turned it around. Unfortunately, as dire as it was, that was the kiddie pool compared to what we face now. To get real momentum behind the issues at hand we’re going to need more than An Inconvenient Truth, as good as it is.
We will need talk radio about the environment (more than a scattering of shows here and there, and probably more than a dedicated channel). We will need not just books but dedicated publishers in greater numbers; and not just academic books, but thrillers and mysteries, fat airport novels and teen series. (Michael Crichton is not invited to the “We Saved the World” Ball.) We will need films, from haunting little indie pictures to the next Day After Tomorrow.
That’s a big shopping list, of course, and no one person or media conglomerate would be able to make it happen (wouldn’t it be fun to imagine a media mogul whose soul was as green as Rupert’s is black?). Unfortunately, however, we will have those things. Why unfortunately? Because, much as the media have turned to terror as a subject since September 11th, they will turn to the environment when we reach a critical mass of disasters. Gore’s film is the latest in a slender string of media successes that have come before things get seriously apocalyptic. Call me crazy, but I say let’s work on getting more of those in the pipeline.
My inner pessimist fears that the “We really need to do something about this now, guys” meme just isn’t sexy enough. Perhaps, somehow, the issue will pick up momentum and become a public demand before we pass the real tipping point. It’s hard to imagine that the news we have received already isn’t enough, but there it is. It’s possible that Gore’s film represents the start of a new level of popular awareness. If so, it will be a bit of a tragic irony, because Gore, of course, is the perfect icon of this media/environment disconnect.
Impending environmental disasters are showing Al Gore to have been prescient (or at least, you know, paying attention) throughout his life-long campaign. The demonstrably false and unfair mugging he suffered at the hands of the media in 2000 takes on an even darker tone when considered against a backdrop of Bush administration policy toward the environment.
The impact of the media’s approach to Gore (and the propping up of the Bush campaign, likewise demonstrable and unfair) cannot be measured as accurately as oceanic temperature increases. But we can assume that Gore wouldn’t have been making cabinet appointments of corporate lawyers whose career goals involved destroying the agencies they were heading. When the margin for error gets down to a decade one way or the other, you have to wonder what has already been lost during the Bush/Cheney fantasy of global dominion.
For all these reasons—and many more—the world needs smart, dedicated, passionate media creators to be addressing these issues. The stories we tell now will help determine what kind of stories we tell in the decades and centuries to come. If you know young people who are interested in the media and open to environmental issues, steer them there and show them the ropes.
It’s all hands on deck; iceberg dead ahead. And things are about to get very interesting around here.
This entry was posted on June 25, 2006 at 8:19 am and is filed under Color Commentary, Foreshadowing, Phantom News. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.