There is so much tedious – which does not mean unimportant, but is tedious anyway – debate these days over how to get the world's politicians and rich, powerful people generally to get off the dime and forswear fossil-carbon and other greenhouse emissions more or less now. For just one example, take this tome over at the very serious Yale e360 by two ex-pols who feel bad about how things are going and have, truth be, a pretty good analysis of the state of play in climate politics for readers who can stay awake through it.
Below is a lighter, more digestible and diverting example of a way that regular reporters might move the needle of public opinion. Just ease off with reporting almost as fresh news that some brainiac committee of PhDs just said, again, that climate change is real, is here, is bad, and is getting worse. I am a fan of brainiac PhD-people and media have to report those things, of course. But additional coverage ought to assume such things as about as close to truth as it gets (you're darned safe, as a reporter, when assumptions have the backing of every bloomin' national academy of science and professional society of climatologists in the world that is worth beans).
Then report how this actuality is already visible in daily life:
- Philly.com (aka Phil. Daily News) Joe Sixpack: In the age of climate change, trouble is brewing ; Wherein the outlet's beer writer recounts examples of beer makers having troubles due to calamities that can be blamed directly or indirectly on the changing climate. One place in Philadelphia called the Manayunk Brewery got flooded and largely wrecked after an intense cloudburst and despite a 13-foot seawall (the beer tanks themselves, being waterproof, came through fine as did their contents). Another brewery in Southern California nearly got incinerated by wildfire. Others have their favored water sources going dry. And so on.
Joe Sixpack, it is no secret, is not only a leading beer writer but a pen name for the Daily News's long time columnist and feature writer Don Russell. Read more about him here.
As for moving the needle on public opinion I just checked the public comments for Don Joe Sixpack Russell's story. Yikes, the climate trolls are frothing over it in full voice. There is even one reference to the "scientists in the 1970s who predicted an Ice Age," a nugget of untruth I had half-hoped yesterday's post on Peter Gwynne's exasperations would have buried forever.
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