Chapters 8 and 9 of Environmental Communication covered two important topics relevant to environmental journalism:  environmental justice and the legitimacy of science.  Environmental justice is crucial for science journalists to be aware of so that they can see not only what environmental problems are being addressed, but also those that are not and should be.  The validity of science is also fundamental to a science journalists’ background, as politics often threaten cloud the waters of ecology and scientific understanding.  Cox provides a broad background of each issue in chapters 8 and 9.
 

A key theme brought up in regards to environmental justice is the concept of nature.  The first is that the environmental justice movement challenges the traditional view of nature.  Early environmentalists (before 1970) viewed nature as some wild and far off place that should be protected.  Marginalized groups saw the many flaws of this view because of the impacts it has had on their communities.  Environmental justice proponents broke from this limited perspective, considering themselves as an integral part of nature, and demanding the quality of life that we all deserve. 

 Demanding equality has not been easy, however, as depicted by the story of Rose Marie Augustine.  She was called a “hysterical Hispanic housewife” by a public official because of her concern about the health of her community’s environment.  This is unfortunately not a rare occurrence—government agencies are all too ready to overlook environmental justice issues rather than deal with them properly. 

 This same dilemma is encountered in the relationship between politics and science, as Ian Thomas found out the hard way.  He was fired from the USGS after posting a map of caribou calving grounds in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.  Scientific findings are not always politically convenient, and have been watered down, altered, or deleted by government officials.  More subtly, politicians and members of industry have sought to affect the public’s perception of the legitimacy of science, itself. 

 Science has significant challenges in keeping pace with environmental degradation, and also in communicating its findings to the public without being discredited.  Many scientists argue over their role in society:  does it lie in advocacy or neutrality?  To me, it seems ridiculous and impossible to remain neutral—what good are scientific findings if they are not put to proper use in decision making. 

 These chapters bring up several important questions for me.  How much science should go into decision making without creating a technocracy?  Where is the environmental justice movement today in relation to the traditional environmental movement?  Is there any reconciliation taking place between the two movements?

The assigned chapters in Environmental Communication and Science in Public this week explore the realm of environmental risk communication.  The definition of risk communication presented by Robert Cox is “any public or private communication that informs individuals about the existence, nature, form, severity, or acceptability of risks.” Questions to help analyze risk communication include:  Who controls the discourse with the public about environmental risks?  Who is at risk?  Who benefits from this risk being taken? 

Entities such as the EPA are responsible for determining whether or not a risk is “acceptable”, and use a 4 step assessment process to make this decision.  While there is science that drives this process of analysis of a risk, the final judgment on the acceptability of a risk is subjective.  For instance, dioxin in sewage sludge used to irrigate farm fields was not considered a high risk because only 22 people in the next 70 years would likely get cancer from it.  Is this acceptable?  Why do we accept that anyone at all could get cancer from a substance such as dioxin being used to fertilize crops? 

Oftentimes it is difficult even to link a chemical with a certain illness that it may cause.  This was the case for a Massachusetts community that inspired the book and film A Civil Action—even though children were getting leukemia at unusually high rates, it was difficult to tie that illness to specific chemicals that a company dumped into the water years ago. 

Another theme of these chapters was the disparity between perspectives on environmental risks and hazards.  Scientists, on the one hand, do not dwell on low-risk situations that could have enormous consequences, but the public does.  This conflict involves both the technical risk communication and also the cultural model of discourse between science and the public.  Technical risk communication is straight forward and aims to educate and inform the public.  Cultural risk communication, however, takes into account the worldview of the audience, and aims to involve the public more in risk communication and decision making. 

Finally, the media’s role is discussed here.  The media tends to cover the most dramatic aspects of a risk, rather than taking a holistic look at the potential problem and informing the public.  Alternative media is, again, stepping up to fill this niche where mainstream media is lacking. 

In conclusion, I am left wondering how much dioxin is too much?  What are our core values about what the health of the environment should be?  Also, what are some ways that the media can improve in an effort to bring science and public together in the area of risk communication?

I would also expect another trend to continue– that levels of environmental literacy in this country will remain low.  Environmental and science journalism will continue to fail at improving public understanding of environmental issues.  Amateur blogs will likely fair even worse.  Why? 

Reading stories about environmental issues certainly have their place in improving one’s sense of place on the earth, but it is incomplete without practical, real world experience of the environment.  And who has spare time to take a field trip to a landfill or become well-trained in assessing the health of a stream based on the macroinvertebrates present?  The structure of society in the United States does not allow for this type of experience unless one’s profession involves constant interaction with the environment.  Until more of the natural world is injected into the secular and profane, environmental literacy levels will remain pitifully low. 

To demonstrate my point, I will share an exerpt from Charles Frazier’s recent novel, Thirteen Moons:

          “Back in green youth, Claire became an advocate for flavored kisses.  She would break off new spring growth at the end of a birch twig, peel the dark bark to the wet green pulp, and fray the fibers with her thumbnail–then put the twig in her mouth and hold it there like a cheroot.  After a minute she’d toss it away and say, Now kiss me.  And her mouth had the sweet sharp taste of birch.  In summer, she did the same with the clear drop of liquid at the tip of honeysuckle blossoms, and in the fall with the white pulp of honey-locust pods.  And in winter with a dried clove and a broken stick of cinnamon.  Now kiss me.”

This character’s experience of birch twigs and honeysuckle blossoms is much different from reading about when birch sap starts running or when honeysuckle blooms.  It is also much different (and perhaps more memorable) than looking at pictures of these plants on a computer. 

This phenomenon is not limited to natural history, and applies to global climate change, as well.  Alaska Native hunters have seen the visible effects of a changing climate for 30 years as seal populations have become more difficult to hunt.  It is the experience that teaches the best. 

At last, what is my point?  That while environmental journalism does serve an important role, the structure of society in the U.S. prevents environmental knowledge from becoming a real part of everyday life.  Environmental literacy therefore remains low in this country.  While there are hopeful trends in environmental education, the decline of the newspaper and the rise of the amateur blog do not seem like an appropriate and effective solution to environmental illiteracy.  We need to track environmental issues through real experiences in addition to newspapers, magazines, and blogs to become more knowledgeable about our home, our planet.  This is my hope for the future.

How is science incompatible with traditional journalism and the mainstream media? There are a range of views regarding the level of urgency in presenting environmental issues, but on the whole scientific stories are rarely breaking news. Additionally, many environmental issues or scientific research are very long-term phenomenon, and journalism is geared towards single events. This is part of a greater phenomenon identified by Downs called the “Issue Attention Cycle”, where environmental issues’ importance in the minds of the public waxes and wanes. Other challenges are that some news entities such as CNBC are owned by companies such as General Electric. The owners of these stations are biased in their presentation of environmental issues in an attempt to improve their own public standing. Journalism is also very influenced by politics. For example, U.S. cities covered the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge story in differing quantity and with different angles depending on the percentage of democrats or republicans that comprised the population.

Can these differences be overcome? In 1999 the Seattle Post-Intelligence did a story about the extraordinary environmental injustice in Libby, Montana. This story helped the incident gain needed publicity to address the health issues of the community. While this was more breaking news than many scientific stories, it shows that it is possible to present environmental issues in the mainstream media. Many scientific issues are very factual and therefore can make for interesting, straightforward stories. Environmental issues can also be “piggy-backed” with more breaking news or popular issues.

At the core, however, even science journalism is more about journalism than science, the authors of Science in Public argue. It is here that alternative environmental media have come into play. Publications like High Country News in the Rocky Mountain region specializes in covering environmental issues in the west, and has been very successful. At least to some degree, these publications have filled a vacant niche in giving extensive coverage to environmental issues.

There are many questions that remain unanswered regarding the relationship between science and journalism. How does journalism shape public perception of environmental issues? How could one ensure that the media presents environmental issues objectively? If environmental issues cannot be incorporated into the mainstream media, what does that mean for the environmental literacy of the public?

 Daniel Quinn, in his novel Ishmael, asserts that traditional Western science is its own mythology.  Everything from the Big Bang Theory to the extinction of dinosaurs and evolution of human beings is a story that is told by scientists.  While this way of seeing traditional science does not foster a full appreciation of the intricate process that characterizes scientific investigation, it is a potent reminder that science is inexact.  This is one of the conundrums that Chapters 3 and 4 of Science in Public grapples with.  Science is a broad and complex field, divided over many issues and processes, and seemingly confused as to whether sharing itself with the public is a positive or negative experience.  The authors examine science in this context in the two chapters, raising important issues and questions. 
 

Though erratic, the general focus of Chapter 3 seems to be the composition of science—what does the field consist of?  There are figures such as Stephen Hawking who, in the late 1980s, brought his brilliant work in physics to the public via his book A Brief History of Time.  At the extreme left of popular science, however, there are New Age and alternative theorists who challenge traditional scientific explanations of the phenomena of this world.  Many in the traditional scientific community view this extreme left wing of science as “anti-science”.  This chasm of left and right gives birth to questions about the validity of traditional scientific epistemologies and about objectivity and subjectivity.  How do we know what we know, and do we really know?
 

Gregory and Miller then examine science in the context of power.  Science has a large impact on the economy and therefore politics, and so carries clout.  Who wields this power that science possesses?  Many argue that men, particularly white men, are in control of the scientific world.  This has resulted in scientific contributions to a domination of nature by western culture and therefore to the environmental problems that accompany such a quest. 
  

The authors delve more deeply into the popularization of science in Chapter 4.  They describe unofficial rules among scientists that govern their interaction with the public sphere.  Generally, these norms suggest that scientists not enter the popular realm until they are retired from a distinguished career in research.  If there is an opportunity to better the public image of science, however, a scientist may consider popularization.  Few scientists, such as Carl Sagan and Margaret Mead, have been able to enjoy successful and respected careers as scientists and communicated their research well to the public. 

 Science journalism finds itself amidst scientific and public spheres, each distrustful of the other.  Fortunately, the role of the science journalist can be viewed as somewhat simple—to communicate the ideas of scientists to the public in a lucid manner.  The authors quote Lievrouw, who defines communication like this:   “the purpose of communication is to reconstruct one person’s idea in another person’s mind.”  In so doing, perhaps journalists can rid the world of the hierarchy of knowledge that the authors describe.

 Chapters 3 and 4 of Environmental Communication discussed public involvement and participation in environmental issues.  Chapter 3 gave an overview of the ways in which citizens are able to participate in government actions that determine environmental policy.  Cox also provided a history of why things like public hearings and citizens groups are able to be involved in such processes.  In Chapter 4, Cox delved into specific information about collaborative and consensus processes, one of the more comprehensive types of public participation in environmental issues.  

 Cox identified three main tenets of growing public participation in environmental decision making:  greater access to information for the public, the mandate of a public comment period for government agencies, and the right of citizens to litigate against government agencies.  He goes on to provide the history of laws that made those three tenets possible.  Important laws include the Freedom of Information Act of 1966 and Right to Know Act of 1986, as well as the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970 and 1994 Executive Order on Environmental Justice.  Cox also develops the concept of standing and asserts that the specific meaning has been interpreted differently by the Supreme Court in the past 40 years.  The Supreme Court has come to determine, most recently, that a citizen does not have to endure injury to have standing in court.  

 The final section of Chapter 3 is dedicated to depicting how public participation, particularly in environmental issues, has changed since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.  The United States government continues to struggle to maintain transparency and also ensure the safety of the nation, and this conundrum is reflected in policies governing access to information.  This complex issue may take a long time to be resolved. 

 Delving into the realm of community collaboration and consensus-based decision making, Cox presents many of the advantages, challenges, successes, and failures encountered in this field.  He presents a case study regarding water quality standards in Ohio as an example of successful collaboration.  A group of 25 stakeholders reached consensus on a staggering 99 issues centered around water quality in the Great Lakes.  Cox also depicts that consensus-based public dispute resolution is not always the proper democratic tool to use.  A shipping company in Savannah, Georgia, essentially tried to use a consensus process to get what they wanted rather than truly participating in a collaborative process with community members. 

 While successful collaboration usually involves a government agency participating as a stakeholder, this is not always so.  The Quincy Library Group of Plumas County, California, had to take the document they produced through consensus process to Congress, circumventing the slow moving US Forest Service. 

 The main point of the chapter is that, while collaboration is not always the appropriate tool to use in decision making, it can be a powerful experience that brings people together who may have previously viewed each other as enemies.  It is above and beyond the public comment mechanism for public involvement in environmental issues, and if used correctly, collaboration can produce incredible results.

The first two chapters of Environmental Communication introduce the field of environmental communication and frame it in the context of the realms of general communication, American history, and culture in the United States.  These introductory chapters explore why words like “environment”, “nature”, and “wilderness” have come to carry the connotations that they do, and the role that environmental communication has had in building those connotations.

Chapter 1 introduces environmental communication as an important part of the general field of communication.  Cox explains that environmental communication came about because of conflicts such as the conservation vs. preservation discourse of the 19th century regarding the fate of the Yosemite Valley.  There are many types of environmental communication—from environmental and science journalism to advocacy campaigns and the representation of nature in pop culture.  The field is also broad in the sense that it is both pragmatic and constitutive.  This is to say that it serves as an educational and persuasive tool, but also shapes opinions, worldviews, and perceptions of the natural world.  Cox points out that this powerful communication takes place on the many stages of the public sphere—everything from private conversations of neighbors to presidential addresses.  Finally, in the first chapter, Cox identifies the main “voices” encountered in environmental communication.  These include environmental and anti-environmental groups, scientists, science journalists, the business world, and citizens groups, and they all have a role in shaping the public’s view of the environment. 

Chapter 2 focuses mainly on the rhetorical aspect of environmental communication.  Cox opens this topic by contrasting an American colonists’ hostile view of the wilderness with a more biophillic perspective of Julia Hill, an ardent preservationist.  Why are there such varying views and beliefs about the natural world?  This is the guiding question for the chapter.  Interestingly, the answer lies partly in the fact that the environmental movement in the U.S. has grown out of antagonisms, or conflicts in worldviews.  Cox gives four good examples of this, the first of which is the old debate between John Muir and Gifford Pinchot of preservation vs. wise use of natural resources.  That environmental communication has been historically characterized by conflict and a clash of worldviews is very significant when considering the role of environmental journalism.  It makes the task of presenting all sides of an issue objectively very difficult and perhaps impossible, at times.  Not only do these conflicts occur on the scale of a single story, but pervade in entire discourses throughout time. 

As these conflicts have defined an American sense of place and views towards the “environment”, so has the rhetoric of environmental communication.  Each of the voices mentioned earlier presents environmental issues in a different way in an effort to persuade people to believe different things about issues such as building dams inside of the Grand Canyon.  The use of photographs, videos, and other visual media has long been an important part of forming public views of the environment.  The stories not told can be equally as important. 

In conclusion, I am left with questions about environmental journalism’s use of rhetoric in communicating environmental issues.  Is it used, or should journalists be aware of the other “voices” employment of persuasive tactics in presenting environmental and scientific issues to the public?  In the end, however, what would environmental journalism seek to instill in the minds of Americans about words such as “nature” or “wilderness”?

Though some writers are able to make environmental journalism look easy, the process of writing a good article is anything but easy, according to Elise Hancock.  In Chapters 4-7, she offers experienced-based advice and troubleshooting for the in-depth process of writing a sound scientific journalism article. 

Chapter 4 offers information concerning how best to structure an article.  Hancock first points to the importance of having the facts entirely correct so that they may be presented clearly.  She compares this aspect of writing an article to painting a room—it often takes more time to prepare a room than it does to paint it.  She also offers a few templates for the structuring an article, and advises writers to draw these looped or branched structures that the story will follow.

Chapter 5 focuses on the finer and more in-depth components of writing a solid article.  Key suggestions include postponing the “polishing” process until a later draft, getting the bulk of the information on the page before a lot of grammatical and structural tweaking is done.  Hancock also suggests using action verbs and what she calls “raisins”, which are funny quotes or catchy phrases.  Finally, she asserts that quotes should be used to highlight the main text of the article, rather than forming the backbone of the piece. 

Working with and refining drafts is the focus of Chapter 6.  This chapter begins with an insightful and applicable quote from Paul Anderson, who says, “The first law of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.”  This is to say that as sentences or paragraphs may be discarded or rearranged throughout the evolution of an article, it is useful to keep all of these parts until the final draft emerges.  Writers should be selective, however, in what ends up in the final piece, avoiding redundancy and questionable material.  Articles should not include general or abstract language and figures, being as specific as possible in the presentation of scientific information.  Structurally, Hancock suggests, writers would do well to place emphasis at the beginning or end of sentences, paragraphs, and the story as a whole. 

In the final chapter, Hancock reminds readers of many of the points made throughout the book.  These reminders come in the form of questions in Chapter 7, designed to help writers avoid getting stuck at some point throughout the process or to troubleshoot problems.  She provides guidance for remaining objective—making sure that there is not a hidden emotional agenda or a particular bias that has emerged in one’s descriptions of a certain character. 

Hancock’s examples and experience-based advice continued to be insightful throughout the last 4 chapters.  One aspect that escaped her suggestions, however, was the element of time.  How does a writer follow her advice with a quickened pace, if necessary?  Also, the place of emphasis that she suggests is contrary to what I have encountered before—if emphasis should be placed at the beginning and end, what should occupy the middle?