Session Type: 90-Minute Symposium
Number: 090-061
Title: Hot and Hotter: Media Coverage of Climate-Change Impacts, Policies, and Politics
Session Start/End Time: Friday, Feb 13, 2009, 10:30 AM -12:00 PM
Hotel: 
Room: HRC Grand A
Admission Policy 
Synopsis: Over the past two years, human-induced climate change has become one of the hottest topics in the news, with evidence mounting that it poses a growing global threat and that its damaging consequences are already occurring around the world. In 2009, the national and international debate about what to do about climate change -- and how soon -- will be in high gear. Media coverage is likely to heat up in the United States and abroad, with pressure in Washington, DC, on a new administration and the U.S. Congress to take action after eight years of inaction by the Bush administration. Internationally, there will be a push by the United Nations to pull the United States into crucial negotiations over a new post-Kyoto treaty, with a two-year roadmap laid out in Bali in December 2007 scheduled to end in Copenhagen in December 2009. The media face a daunting challenge in covering not only the environmental and human impacts of climate change but the complex world of alternative energy options and policy proposals for reducing carbon emissions. The temptation will be to once again shift to political style, horse race–type coverage of who’s winning and losing, pitting big business against environmentalists or the United States against the European Union or developing countries like China and India. This symposium will explore how the media can improve coverage of climate change so that the public can better understand, and act upon, the complex science, technology, and policy choices ahead.
 

Cristine Russell, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA;John P Holdren, Harvard University and Woods Hole Research Center, Cambridge, MA

Symposium Organizer--Cristine Russell, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

Symposium Co-Organizer--John P. Holdren, Harvard University and Woods Hole Research Center, Cambridge, MA

Moderator--Cristine Russell, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

Coming in from the Cold: Covering Science, Policy, and Politics from the Arctic to Bali--Peter N. Spotts, The Christian Science Monitor, Boston, MA

Taking the Temperature of Climate Change and the Media--Bud Ward, Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media, New Haven, CT

Global Coverage of Climate Change: The Challenge Ahead for World Journalists--Pallab Ghosh, BBC News, London, United Kingdom

Discussant--John P. Holdren, Harvard University and Woods Hole Research Center, Cambridge, MA

Discussant--Stephen H. Schneider, Stanford University, Stanford, CA