I felt the earth move

A subtle yet seismic shift in environmental perceptions and actions seems to be underway

Every time I opened the Guardian this past week, I saw a news story which gave me hope and satisfaction. On the 27th, there was an article about a UN study of people’s opinions on whether on not we should act on the climate crisis. Fully two thirds of people on the planet think action is needed as matter of urgency. People are becoming aware.

On the 28th, there was a Guardian article on economic costing of the environment, a subject I wrote about last week. A few interesting tidbits from the article were that 1/2 of global GDP is reliant on high functioning biodiversity and that one forest elephant provides services worth $1,750,000. The article also carefully pointed out that just because we can place a price on nature doesn’t mean we should treat it as commodity. Rather we should use these costs to help the public understand nature’s value. Color me ecstatic. There was also a discussion of the impactful risks to humanity according to The Global Risks Report 2021. The top eight were infectious diseases, climate action failure, weapons of mass destruction, biodiversity loss, natural resource crises, human environmental damage, livelihood crises, extreme weather, debt crises and IT infrastructure breakdown. No environmental risk made it into the top 10 of The Global Risk Report 2010. Okay, doom and gloom, but recognized doom and gloom.

Also on the 28th, there was a Guardian article about the efforts to recreate the lost meadows of Britain. Britain has lost 97% of its original meadows with consequent losses to biodiversity. But many meadow projects around the country are seeing manifold increases in biodiversity. One site now hosts over 1000 invertebrates, none of which were present when the site was a barley field. Restoration projects are becoming more common and are succeeding.

But perhaps the most exciting of all was the article on Wednesday, the 27th, about President Biden signing the executive order “Tackling Climate Change at Home and Abroad”. This order aims to replace the fossil fuel economy with a clean energy economy. Wow. Holy wow. This is to be achieved over the next 29 years starting with a pause in new drilling leases on federal lands and in fossil fuels subsidies, a federal switch to zero-emission vehicles, and commitments to build more off shore wind capacity. The final kicker is an aim to increase protection from 12% of American lands and oceans to 30%. When I read all of this, my eyes welled up, and my voice cracked as I tried to talk about it.

The Tackling Climate Change at Home and Abroad executive order is big news, and I wondered how the AP, Fox News and CNN approached this development versus the story in the Guardian. I found one article from each news source which covered the basics of the January 27th order, with their links in the last sentence. Each described the pausing of new leases to drill on federal land as well as the commitment to an zero-emissions vehicle fleet for federal departments. Some mentioned the plan to establish a Civilian Climate Corps to restore land, such as places that have been damaged by wildfires or mining, while others talked about the Justice40 initiative which aims for the 40% of climate change governmental funds to go disadvantage communities. Both these efforts would help communities with job losses related to shutting down of the fossil fuel industry.

One difference between the four articles stood out for me. The Associated Press and the Fox articles included lengthy discussions about the tension around jobs, while CNN and The Guardian didn’t. Upon publication of the Executive order, republican leaders immediately decried the damage that would be done to the fossil fuel industry and the economy in general. While both Fox and the AP included some of these negative comments neither of the articles contextualized the issue. And it is in the combination of job creation and environmental recovery that Biden’s plan excels. His initiative will reduce wealth inequality and environmental stresses. This is just as the UN, and countless other humanitarian groups, as well as development experts, have stated is our best way forward. I could have sung for joy when I saw all these elements combined, by our president no less.

Of course, I didn’t only wander in happy news land this week. I lost the link to the Fox article discussed above and it took me about 2 hours to find it again. In my searches, I came across a number of disturbing headlines about the Tackling Climate Change executive order on Fox News. These include: “It’s a full-out assault on the oil and gas industry”, “Biden climate policy emboldens opponents and enemies”, “Biden ending Keystone Pipeline project is ‘totally politicized’”, “Biden’s ‘radical left agenda’ with no focus on jobs ‘hurt family after family’”, “Biden’s climate policies ‘destructive’ to American economy”. While the original Fox News story I’d read was fairly well balanced, these other headlines used incendiary vocabulary in their headlines, to attract readers with a very misleading sliver of truth. Remember The commodification of our thoughts newsletter? The headlines were technically true, someone did say something worrying, but the something that person said was not necessarily true. All the quoted headlines above are misleading in one way or another, for example the alleged assault on the oil industry is patently false. Biden’s plan is a phasing out of the oil industry over 29 years, for which the auto and fossil fuel industries are already planning. The industry has known this is coming for some time as highlighted by GM’s recent announcement that they will only manufacture zero-emission cars by 2035. And the energy and car sectors will no doubt take a large slice of Biden’s green stimulus package. Biden’s plan is not an attack on fossil fuels but a plan to avert the sever damage to the biosphere and ourselves if we do not significantly reduce our carbon emissions.

So did I learn anything from this comparison? Or the deeper dive into Fox News? I was delighted to find the main articles all quite similar if each leaned a bit. But I got kind of bogged down in the despair of how some new agencies use misleading headlines. I’ve mulled on how one goes about fighting this for days, practically forgetting that I’d written about this 2 weeks ago. And I almost lost sight of the fact this was a great week for environmental activism. And it’s important that we recognize this watershed moment in our efforts to protect nature. Think about it. The conversation has shifted. A full 2/3rds of people want urgent action on climate change. The value of the environment is being recognized, by economists. Gulp. Zero-emission cars and a fossil fuel free future are becoming mainstream goals. Conservation actions are underway. The US president wants to protect 30% of US lands and oceans. A green new deal has been proposed to pull the US economy out of the COVID slump. Climate AND biodiversity goals are being set, tied to economics! I feel the earth has moved under my feet this week. And it is a good thing.