Fort McMurray and the Canadian Oil Sands: Local Coverage of National Importance

Understanding resource-based communities (RBCs) as potential casualties of Canada's economic proclivity towards resource extraction projects may help us to generate political support for these communities at both local and national scales. The media has a critical role to play in promoting the development of this type of political discourse. This study examines how traditional print media coverage affects Canadians' perceptions of the Athabasca oil sands. A quantitative media analysis examines scope and thematic content of articles appearing in major Canadian newspapers between 2003 and 2013. We find that most coverage concerning the Athabasca oil sands over this period appears predominantly in western Canadian newspapers, with coverage primarily focusing on specific events. We argue that this geographic disparity in coverage does not provide Canadians with the adequate coverage necessary to develop an informed opinion on what the implications of ongoing oil sands development are at both a local and a national scale.     

Re-thinking oil: compensation for non-production in Yasuní National Park challenging <Emphasis Type="Italic">sumak kawsay</Emphasis> and degrowth

The Yasuní-ITT Initiative was an innovative development proposal based on the non-production of oil in Yasuní National Park in Ecuador, in exchange for international compensation, eitherin the form of direct payment or payment for environmental services. My aim is to investigate how the different actors understand this compensation for non-production of oil in Ecuador, an oil dependent country. Using a chronological review of the Initiative and forty in-depth interviews with key players, I critically engage the ‘environmental narrative’ around the Initiative inspired by sumak kawsay -a philosophy of life based on non-mercantilist values, known as “well living” in English or “buen vivir” in Spanish- and degrowth. In this article I argue that understanding the Initiative as an environmental matter and not as a problem of oil rent dependency exemplifies the limits of sumak kawsay and degrowth as proposals for an alternative to development. Results from Yasuní show that the Initiative ended up reproducing the fictions of nature valuation instead of de-linking nature from the valuation process. By drawing on a critical political economic framework, this paper shows that categories such as “dependency” and “rent” are fundamental in understanding the challenges of moving away from extraction-based development in developing countries. In summary, failing to differentiate between payment for the non-production of oil and compensation from the environmental services, Yasuní was a ´lost ‘opportunity for a bottom-up debate on what to produce and what not.     

Nature's Nation: Improvisation,Democracy, and Ken Burns' National Parks

In his recurrent examination of what makes Americans “American,” documentary filmmaker Ken Burns has particularly focused on the twin themes of democracy and improvisation. The National Parks: America's Best Idea links the national park ideal with America's “democratic spirit.” Through an examination of its visual methods, I argue that the “Ken Burns gaze” is more consistent with the contemplative and magisterial visuality that shaped the origins of the national park movement—a visuality that sees nature as “out there” and a “finished product”—than it is with the improvisational spirit that both democracy and ecology demand in our time.     

“Ethereal Carbon”: legitimizing liquefied natural gas in British Columbia

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the provincial government of British Columbia's recent proposal of building a Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) industry, in which natural gas extracted through hydraulic fracturing will be liquefied and then exported to Asian markets. Drawing upon the growing literature on energopower, petro-state, and petro-culture, selected texts and images from “LNG in BC”—the project's official branding website—were analyzed through a multimodal critical discourse analysis. The results reveal two primary strategies of legitimation: the first emphasizes the economic benefits of LNG development in terms of employment and taxation revenues; the second defines LNG as a means of strengthening B.C.’s environmental leadership. The second narrative depends heavily upon the symbolic values of natural gas, contrasting its “clean” appearance (as a colorless and odorless gas) with the material density and “toxic sensuality” of other “dirty” fossil fuels (such as coal, oil, and bitumen). The website also presents a linear and simplified “storyline” of the generation of LNG which emphasizes the simple, “clean” process of liquefaction to distract attention from the ecological and health risks of hydraulic fracturing.     

Anthropomorphic Anthropocentrism and the Rhetoric of Blackfish

The documentary film Blackfish has made a splash at the box office, impacting millions of viewers and prompting calls to legislatively prohibit orcas from being held in captive environments. This essay analyzes Blackfish in terms of its anthropomorphic communication techniques that attribute human qualities to orcas. We introduce the term “anthropomorphic anthropocentrism” to argue that the anthropomorphic construction of orcas in Blackfish may well be a story that is more about what it means to be human than a story about what it means to be orca. Furthermore, we explain the importance of anthropomorphic anthropocentrism as an analytical tool that navigates environmental and ecological frameworks. We conclude that anthropomorphic anthropocentrism’s analysis of anthropomorphic rhetoric and the human epistemological assumptions it reflects, when taken together, offer significant insights into the ways environmental communication creates and/or disrupts human–nature relationships.     

“The End of the Ice Age?”: Disappearing World Heritage and the Climate Change Communication Imperative

Rapid environmental change in vulnerable destinations has stimulated a new form of travel termed “last chance tourism” (LCT). Studies have examined the risks of LCT, while leaving potential opportunities within this new tourism market largely underexplored. Results of survey (n?=?399) research in Jasper National Park, Canada reveal that a LCT motivation influences decisions to visit this iconic Canadian destination, and suggest that this motivation is linked to a desire to learn about the impacts of climate change on the Athabasca Glacier. Findings suggest there may be short to medium term opportunities associated with LCT, including promoting climate change ambassadorship through management interventions. This paper discusses a range of possible education, interpretive, and outreach activities that might be employed at LCT destinations. It outlines the relative merits (or what we refer to as “uneasy benefits”) of promoting the glacier and other LCT destinations within a protected areas management and climate change adaptation context.     

Wilderness and the Media Politics of Place Branding

It is 30 years since the Australian environmental movement enlisted the term “wilderness” to protect Tasmania's remote Franklin River from hydroelectric development. Environmentalists deployed “wilderness” strategically during the conflict to build public support for their no-dam campaign, aided by national and international media who used the term liberally, while Tasmanian news media and pro-development elites acknowledged the term's inherent political qualities by suppressing its use. Our interest is in the political and media framing of “wilderness” since the concept was “branded” by government and industry at the turn of the twenty-first century. Drawing on continuing environmental conflict over Tasmania's remote Tarkine region as a case study, we ask to what extent media portrayals of “wilderness” have changed since the Franklin dam was stopped and the Tasmanian World Heritage Wilderness Area was created in 1982. Using content analysis of related articles in the local media and qualitative analysis of international travel journalism about Tasmania published over an extended period, we find that place branding has contributed to the routinization of “wilderness” and to a shift in the focus of mediated conflict from “wilderness” to “tourism.” The Tasmanian experience demonstrates that while the actions of the environmental movement can valorize place, branding can depoliticize contested natural areas. Yet brands that incorporate or allude to “wilderness” may have the unanticipated consequence of valorizing “wilderness” transnationally, in a manner that the environmental movement would struggle to emulate.     

Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency: Constructing “Certainty” as Rebuttal

Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency was the first Supreme Court opinion generated specifically as a response to the issue of anthropogenic CO₂ emissions, alleging that Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) failure to regulate is leading to environmental harms for plaintiffs. This essay examines the majority opinion of Justice Stevens and his use of presumption and burden of proof, within a logic of problematic integration, to construct “certainty” as a rebuttal to and rejection of the “uncertainty” offered by EPA. I examine how this strategically constructed rebuttal to “uncertainty” functions as a declarative act of “certainty,” advancing a proposition whose scientific, legal, or political acceptance could function as a tipping point away from the claims of “uncertainty” used by opponents on this contentious issue. Because of the court's influence, the implications of their “certainty” extend beyond the case and into the broader discussion of climate change science and environmental communication.     

Contemporary Environmental Art in China: Portraying Progress,Politics, and Ecosystems

Art has long been an important force in environmental movements. In China, environmental art is a fast-growing sector of the art scene. This new area of emphasis is expanding the function of art and aiding in China’s environmental movement by challenging both imported Western practices and Maoist era philosophy, thereby opening up new ways of considering the relationship between human “progress,” political systems, economic practices, and their repercussions on existing ecosystems. I turn to artist Xu Xiaoyan’s paintings to explore how the notion of “progress” can be challenged through art. I use Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of deterritorialization and reterritorialization to map how Xu’s art offers viewers space to think outside dominant paradigms, creates the potential for changes in human consciousness, considers the environment as a composition of relationships and interactions, and provokes discussion concerning the impact of linear notions of time on human conceptions of nature.     

Quoting “the Environment”: Touchstones on Earth

Media influence public awareness through agenda setting and framing of news by selecting what is published, how frequently and through what frames. This content analysis compares portrayals of climate change based on political ideology of the media. It examines daily coverage of climate change in Santiago, Chile by the conservative, El Mercurio, newspaper, and the liberal, La Nación. Twenty percent of the 1,628 articles published in 2003, 2005, and 2007 which included the words “cambio climático” (climate change) or “calentamiento global” (global warming) were analyzed for frequency, content, images, and frames. The liberal newspaper published twice as many articles that were twice as long, with four times as many illustrations about climate change. They presented more thematic and diverse frames than the conservative newspaper. Government sources and conflict frames dominated both newspapers, reflecting some similar maturation processes of climate change coverage found in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere.     

Flood risk and climate change in the Rotterdam area,The Netherlands: enhancing citizen's climate risk perceptions and prevention responses despite skepticism

Effective communication about climate change and related risks is complicated by the polarization between “climate alarmists” and “skeptics.” This paper provides insights for the design of climate risk communication strategies by examining how the interplay between climate change and flood risk communication affects citizens’ risk perceptions and responses. The study is situated in a delta area with substantial geographic variations in the occurrence and potential impact of flood risk, which has led to initiatives to make the area more “climate proof.” We developed a research model that examines individual differences in processing information about climate change related flood risk, based on the postulate that individuals often make an implicit trade-off between motivation to know “what is real” and motivation to maintain prior beliefs. A field experiment, embedded in a survey (n = 1887), sought to test out how the participants responded to risk frames in which a story on flood was either or not combined with climate change information. The results show that it was possible to increase the participants’ local climate risk perception in combination with increased motivation for flood damage prevention, despite a certain level of climate change skepticism. A general implication of our study is that relevant and diagnostic information about local climate-related flood risks can stimulate citizens’ need to know “what’s real” and their willingness to take responsibility for preparedness.     

Species of the Month: Anti-Whaling,Mediated Visibility,and the News

Paul Watson, founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and captain of anti-whaling ship the Steve Irwin, has emerged as one of the world's most visible environmental protesters. This essay, based in part on a long interview with Watson in Australia in 2009, analyzes his mediated visibility and thus capacity to participate in public debate by isolating various components of his strategic activities under four themes: mediated protest, symbolic power, media practices, and celebrity. It argues that Watson's visibility involves a complex flow of information and meanings across various “old” and “new” media form, but remains reliant on news media. Thus, despite his generally astute media practices and strategies, Watson's visibility is contingent on a set of professional practices and logics unlikely to provide sustained news access or long-term legitimacy to a political “outsider.”     

Narratives,Rhetorical Genres,and Environmental Conflict: Responses to Schwarze's “Environmental Melodrama”

The appearance of Steven Schwarze's essay, “Environmental Melodrama” (Schwarze, 2006) as the lead article in a recent issue of The Quarterly Journal of Speech marks an important moment of recognition for environmental communication scholarship. Schwarze's essay demonstrates how studies of environmental rhetoric can contribute to rhetorical theory more generally, while addressing practical questions regarding the rhetorical aspects of environmental conflict. The contributors to this forum respond to Schwarze's arguments, drawing in part upon their own case studies of rhetorical action and narrative in environmental conflict.     

Blogging about Climate Change in Russia: Activism,Scepticism and Conspiracies

The article explores the new media’s role in climate change communication in Russia. By providing an open space for the expression of very diverse points of view, the internet creates a substitute media reality where both climate activists and climate sceptics can question the established discourse. Analysis of 374 entries published on the LiveJournal blogging platform has resulted in the identification of four discursive categories: “conspiracies of climate change,” “climate change impact,” “political games of climate change” and “online (anti-)environmentalism.” Each category demonstrates how the same topic can be framed in very different ways depending on bloggers’ worldview rather than the nature of the discussed environmental problem. The findings also show that the blogs act as “echo-chambers” for both climate deniers and climate activists reinforcing their behold beliefs. Finally, the analysis discovers some parallels with the traditional media coverage in their minimal critique of Russian state policy on climate.     

Audiences for Science Communication in the United States

ABSTRACT

The US National Science Foundation collects biennial data on views about science and technology (S&T). Analyses have typically focused on the degree to which demographics, knowledge, and attitudes predict S&T support or views about specific technologies or issues. Published efforts do not appear to have focused on identifying latent classes within the data. Initial analyses using latent profile analysis suggests that Americans can be categorized into six substantive audience groups when it comes to views about S&T. These groups vary by demographics, including scientific background and ideology, as well as in views about S&T. Post hoc analyses explore how “class-focused” analyses may provide additional insight beyond what can be obtained from “variable-focused” analyses.     

Sporting Nature(s): Wildness,the Primitive,and Naturalizing Imagery in MMA and Sports Advertisements

This essay examines two Nike commercials, a TapOut commercial, and the proliferation of mixed martial arts (MMA) t-shirt visual culture, all of which symbolically link wildness and “nature” as primitivity to their particular sport contexts. MMA in particular, it is argued, is more symbolically available to symbolic discourses of the “natural” and the “primitive” because of the sport's technological minimalism. The MMA t-shirt is posited as a safe, masculine primitive performance, functioning as an expressive personal substitute (or supplement) to the analogous tattoos “worn” by many fighters and fans. Additionally, this paper reviews and connects several disparate bodies of literature, moving from a discussion of eco-critical principles for critiquing the cultural production of nature / the natural, to an assessment of “nature” as primitivity, and finally to highlight how critical analyses of sport and MMA implicate related categories. While environmental communication has addressed the place of “nature” in advertising, little has been written about how discourses of nature, gender, and the environment intersect with the highly mediatized culture of sports. This article adds to the subfield by initiating just such a critical discussion. Finally, I contend that one of the main ideological functions of the employment of nature imagery here is to implicitly authorize notions of wildness or the “primitive” in close association with a male animal ideology, and also to symbolically reinforce existing narratives which naturalize aggression. These advertisements posit, I argue, a metaphysical rather than realist ecological discourse, enabling an unsustainable narrative of the naturalness of human-on-human violence and aggression.     

Measurement and Meaning in Environmental Communication Studies: A Response to Kassing,Johnson, Kloeber,and Wentzel

This essay represents an invited editorial response to Kassing, Johnson, Kloeber, and Wentzel's “Development and Validation of the Environmental Communication Scale” in Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture. Kassing and his associates use an apt review of the status of the environmental communication field as the basis for developing a protocol and instrument to measure the actual practice of engaging environmental subject matter in daily life. Although their factor analytic work is laudable in its intent, their approach to empirically exploring environmental communication in action further institutionalizes a number of conceptual and methodological shortcomings in our discipline. In particular, what researchers and respondents think constitutes “environmental” content per se poses a significant barrier to using the proposed tool in applied settings. After critiquing the Kassing et al. work in terms of a number of issues related to the validity and reliability of their research, I conclude by suggesting that the research may provide a needed springboard for exploring the dynamics of interpersonal settings that mediate important dialog and action regarding the environment.     

Twelve-year trends in ambient concentrations of volatile organic compounds in a community of the Alberta Oil Sands Region,Canada

Environmental exposure to volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in ambient air is one of a number of concerns that the First Nation Community of Fort McKay, Alberta has related to development of Canada's oil sands. An in-depth investigation of trends in ambient air VOC levels in Fort McKay was undertaken to better understand the role and possible significance of emissions from Alberta's oil sands development. A non-parametric trend detection method was used to investigate trends in emissions and ambient VOC concentrations over a 12-year (2001 − 2012) period. Relationships between ambient VOC concentrations and production indicators of oil sands operations around Fort McKay were also examined. A weak upward trend (significant at 90% confidence level) was found for ambient concentrations of total VOCs based on sixteen detected species with an annual increase of 0.64 μg/m³ (7.2%) per year (7.7 μg/m³ increase per decade). Indicators of production (i.e., annual bitumen production and mined oil sands quantities) were correlated with ambient total VOC concentrations. Only one of 29 VOC species evaluated (1-butene) showed a statistically significant upward trend (p = 0.05). Observed geometric (arithmetic) mean and maximum ambient concentrations of selected VOCs of public health concern for most recent three years of the study period (2010 − 2012) were below chronic and acute health risk screening criteria of the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Thirty-two VOCs are recommended for tracking in future air quality investigations in the community to better understand whether changes are occurring over time in relation to oil sands development activities and to inform policy makers about whether or not these changes warrant additional attention.     

Multi-stakeholder process of co-designing small-scale fisheries policy in South Africa

In 2005, a group of researchers, community-based organizations and lawyers got together with small-scale fishers to launch a class action law suit against the government of South Africa in its allocation system of Individual Transferable Quotas, on the ground that the system was unfair to small-scale fishing communities and threatened their right to practise their livelihoods. This effort resulted in the cabinet adoption of a new small-scale fisheries policy in 2014, with amendments being made to fisheries law (the Marine Living Resource Act 18 of 1998) to accommodate the issues and concerns of small-scale fisheries. Draft regulations and an implementation plan have recently been released, paving the way for the implementation of small-scale fisheries allocations in 2016. These legal and policy shifts are of great significance for small-scale fisheries, both in South Africa and elsewhere, and deserve careful examination. This paper discusses the processes leading to the development of a new small-scale fisheries policy and what has followed since. Specifically, the analysis focuses on a variety of collaborations between scholars from different disciplines; researchers from multiple fields; community practitioners representing diverse professional and community perspectives; and community organizations across local, state, national and international levels. The paper uses a model of change that crosses research and practitioner boundaries based on three key strategies: getting noticed; organizing at scale; and getting a seat at the negotiation table. It also considers the “transdisciplinary” process of involving all relevant actors in strategic, collective, reflection–action–reflection–action “from below”, which was crucial in the co-designing of this small-scale policy formulation in South Africa.     

Dividing and Uniting Through Naming: The Case of North Carolina's Sea-Level-Rise Policy

Opponents of a proposed sea-level-rise policy in North Carolina, USA, reasoned rhetorically to promote a narrative claiming that the policy supporters’ efforts had failed to meet the criteria of “good” science and the American dream expectancy of “progress.” The critics worked to hinder policy adoption by naming as “villains” scientists who provided research to support the proposed policy. In addition, the opponents named their own efforts to prevent policy based on “bad” science that would “destroy” the American dream as “heroic.” To more effectively respond to such narratives, scientists and policy proponents need to shift away from reporting just climate change “facts” in the attempt to gain stakeholder support for mitigation and adaptation initiatives. They need to move toward reasoning rhetorically to construct narratives that encourage the public to name them as the “heroes” who will achieve the American dream by their actions to mitigate climate-change outcomes.