Hi. Welcome to the blog for my IB English B class at Jur Hronec High School in Bratislava, Slovakia. Below you will find links to other websites and discussion questions. My students are required to comment on one of these postings every month and also respond to each other's comments. Feel free to add your two bits, but be aware that all comments are monitored before being posted.
What do you think is behind the lack of interest in climate
change which this article reports?Is
the media partly to blame?Should the
role of the media be simply to report facts, or does it also have the
obligation to encourage action?
People tend to consume media that they themselves like. If they're not interested in climate change, chances are it's not going to pop up on their news feed. What it can do however is prompt action to those who already are interested in actively helping the situation. Although that’s going to help only a little bit since those people were interested in helping even before reading the news.
Moreso as much as we like to think that individuals can bring change, the power of actually influencing the situation is mostly in the hands of governments and businesses. imagine maybe a few hundred or even a few thousand average middle class people trying to minimise their already negligible carbon footprint. Now compare that to the effect that a handful of large factory owners switching to more sustainable sources of energy would have. Therefore a handful of people can make equal or greater change than the efforts of many. Thus trying to convince the public through the media has a minimal effect if the handful in power won’t decide to do anything about their behaviour.
Hence we can see that media coverage is not only inefficient in convincing individuals, convincing individuals is inefficient in helping climate change. Making the news more optimistic however would at least lighten the mood and make many young people less depressed than they already are.
Filip, while I agree that the power of influencing the situation concerning climate change lies mostly in the hands of influential organizations like governments and business, I have to disagree with your statement that convincing individuals is inefficient in helping climate change. We often forget that businesses have influential people at the top too, so imagine one of them being convinced and motivated enough to make a change. In addition, you mentioned in your comment that media coverage is not efficient in convincing individuals, with which I agree. Much-needed changes in media coverage have to be made, as the severity of this problem is still not being translated into effective engagement. For these reasons, if some changes on the media’s side come, people might get more intrigued by the topic of climate change. Moreover, larger crowds demanding change will have to be heard, since it is in the best interest of business to be appealing to their customers. Additionally, being interested in climate change could potentially encourage people to go into politics and present some new solutions to this matter. It takes only a few individuals with strong goals to make a difference. Sometimes, if businesses won’t budge, governments can make them. Furthermore, with a large enough support, changes will come. In the end, I would not underestimate the power of media and the impact that each individual can make.
The most objective source of information is generally considered as the most reliable one. However, when getting purely facts, it is important to correctly deduce the implications and possible consequences. And this can sometimes be difficult especially when dealing with a complex problem as in the case of climate change. The article states, that journalists should “Shift from being guardians of truth to being change makers”. I believe that media should not report purely facts. However, the way of encouraging action is maybe even more important. Everywhere we hear slogans like “Reduce, reuse, recycle!” and the suggestions to live more sustainably are many times the same. Limit the usage of single-use packages, travel less by car, buy local products... These are straightforward suggestions. Yet in reality they are not as simple to achieve. And the feeling of standing in a supermarket surrounded by the huge amount of plastic just adds to this climate anxiety and hopelessness. That is why I think, the appeal should be to producers and government rather than individual consumers.
Soňa, while I agree with your points for the most part, I believe that there are potentially some better alternatives to solving the problem of climate change. You have mentioned “nudging” the population into changing their way of living by using and popularizing green slogans or sustainable living options. This can be sufficient for some, but as this is a problem of severe complexity, I feel like we will need more than that to be able to counter it. The article suggests to “sneak in” climate change into other trending topics (e.g., employment, welfare, et cetera …) and have people read about it semi-subconsciously, but could easily backfire and even discourage the readers as you could argue that: “the talk about climate change would be everywhere, even if it might not necessarily be contextually appropriate”. Therefore, I believe we should go for a median approach, which is less passive than what you have suggested, but less harsh than shoving it in people’s faces without a justifiable reason. This could be done through the use of government subsidies on green products or universal positive advertising which would appeal to not just one demographic, rather to all which are able to make a difference. Similarly, to what you have mentioned, I would also restrict the use of polluting materials in packaging and other various industries and encourage both the producers and consumers to look for more eco-friendly alternatives either through stricter pollution laws or potential rewards for those which decide to change for the better. I understand that this would not be something easy to achieve, and it would certainly be expensive and also inconvenient for some, but considering the circumstances, we will have to switch to a greener system sooner or later; so, we either suffer through it now or go through it when it is much worse later, which can be hard for some. This directly relates to the quote in the article: “People choose to avoid small but certain losses in living standards now, risking potentially huge but uncertain losses in the future.”
People tend to consume media that they themselves like. If they're not interested in climate change, chances are it's not going to pop up on their news feed. What it can do however is prompt action to those who already are interested in actively helping the situation. Although that’s going to help only a little bit since those people were interested in helping even before reading the news.
ReplyDeleteMoreso as much as we like to think that individuals can bring change, the power of actually influencing the situation is mostly in the hands of governments and businesses. imagine maybe a few hundred or even a few thousand average middle class people trying to minimise their already negligible carbon footprint. Now compare that to the effect that a handful of large factory owners switching to more sustainable sources of energy would have. Therefore a handful of people can make equal or greater change than the efforts of many. Thus trying to convince the public through the media has a minimal effect if the handful in power won’t decide to do anything about their behaviour.
Hence we can see that media coverage is not only inefficient in convincing individuals, convincing individuals is inefficient in helping climate change. Making the news more optimistic however would at least lighten the mood and make many young people less depressed than they already are.
Filip, while I agree that the power of influencing the situation concerning climate change lies mostly in the hands of influential organizations like governments and business, I have to disagree with your statement that convincing individuals is inefficient in helping climate change. We often forget that businesses have influential people at the top too, so imagine one of them being convinced and motivated enough to make a change.
DeleteIn addition, you mentioned in your comment that media coverage is not efficient in convincing individuals, with which I agree. Much-needed changes in media coverage have to be made, as the severity of this problem is still not being translated into effective engagement. For these reasons, if some changes on the media’s side come, people might get more intrigued by the topic of climate change.
Moreover, larger crowds demanding change will have to be heard, since it is in the best interest of business to be appealing to their customers. Additionally, being interested in climate change could potentially encourage people to go into politics and present some new solutions to this matter. It takes only a few individuals with strong goals to make a difference. Sometimes, if businesses won’t budge, governments can make them. Furthermore, with a large enough support, changes will come. In the end, I would not underestimate the power of media and the impact that each individual can make.
The most objective source of information is generally considered as the most reliable one. However, when getting purely facts, it is important to correctly deduce the implications and possible consequences. And this can sometimes be difficult especially when dealing with a complex problem as in the case of climate change.
ReplyDeleteThe article states, that journalists should “Shift from being guardians of truth to being change makers”. I believe that media should not report purely facts. However, the way of encouraging action is maybe even more important. Everywhere we hear slogans like “Reduce, reuse, recycle!” and the suggestions to live more sustainably are many times the same.
Limit the usage of single-use packages, travel less by car, buy local products... These are straightforward suggestions. Yet in reality they are not as simple to achieve. And the feeling of standing in a supermarket surrounded by the huge amount of plastic just adds to this climate anxiety and hopelessness. That is why I think, the appeal should be to producers and government rather than individual consumers.
Soňa, while I agree with your points for the most part, I believe that there are potentially some better alternatives to solving the problem of climate change. You have mentioned “nudging” the population into changing their way of living by using and popularizing green slogans or sustainable living options. This can be sufficient for some, but as this is a problem of severe complexity, I feel like we will need more than that to be able to counter it.
DeleteThe article suggests to “sneak in” climate change into other trending topics (e.g., employment, welfare, et cetera …) and have people read about it semi-subconsciously, but could easily backfire and even discourage the readers as you could argue that: “the talk about climate change would be everywhere, even if it might not necessarily be contextually appropriate”. Therefore, I believe we should go for a median approach, which is less passive than what you have suggested, but less harsh than shoving it in people’s faces without a justifiable reason.
This could be done through the use of government subsidies on green products or universal positive advertising which would appeal to not just one demographic, rather to all which are able to make a difference. Similarly, to what you have mentioned, I would also restrict the use of polluting materials in packaging and other various industries and encourage both the producers and consumers to look for more eco-friendly alternatives either through stricter pollution laws or potential rewards for those which decide to change for the better. I understand that this would not be something easy to achieve, and it would certainly be expensive and also inconvenient for some, but considering the circumstances, we will have to switch to a greener system sooner or later; so, we either suffer through it now or go through it when it is much worse later, which can be hard for some. This directly relates to the quote in the article: “People choose to avoid small but certain losses in living standards now, risking potentially huge but uncertain losses in the future.”