Journalists on the Environment Beat Look Ahead

I was invited by the Wilson Center to participate on Friday in a discussion with other journalists of environmental issues that will be in the headlines this year and going forward. (The session was co-sponsored by the Society of Environmental Journalists.)

The participants were Larry Pearl, director of environmental news, Bloomberg BNA; Douglas Fischer, editor of The Daily Climate; Coral Davenport, energy and environment reporter for The New York Times; Dennis Dimick, executive editor of National Geographic Magazine; Suzanne Goldenberg, the U.S. environment correspondent for The Guardian; and Cheryl Hogue, senior correspondent for Chemical & Engineering News.

We discussed everything from President Obama’s regulatory push to cut power plant emissions of carbon dioxide to instances in which invasive and overabundant species are complicating conservation efforts.

Coral Davenport, the new Washington environment and energy reporter for The Times, amplified on her recent articles on big corporations that are taking climate change seriously (here and here). She noted how some shifts in companies’ stances have a subtext that is not often appreciated, including Exxon Mobil’s big move into natural gas.

The video has been posted on YouTube.

I’ve set the video to a point at which I describe how blogs may be a better tool than conventional coverage for exploring the complex underlying issues shaping 21st-century environmental risks:

Here’s that snippet:

I started the blog at The New York Times to explore these questions that don’t fit into the normal news cycle. How you head toward 9 billion people with the fewest regrets is not a news story. It’s an ongoing question. And anyone who says there’s a single answer is not being truthful. So the only form of journalism that really captures that well is an ongoing conversation, which is a blog….

It’s a world of slow drips that set up hard knocks. I’ll just give you one example from the Philippines. The big typhoon. It got a lot of attention. Is this global warming? But what was largely missed in conventional coverage and discourse was that the population of that city that was hit tripled in the last 40 years…. It’s not all about environmental change. it’s about our change.

But there’s much, much more. I’m hoping to add a transcript here when I can.