Health care reform dominates the news as Dems struggle to
push their reform package through Congress. I applaud the effort, but can’t
help wondering why climate change is being left out of the debate.
Research shows that
climate change is harmful to our health, raising rates of cancer and of
respiratory and neurological diseases. So why aren’t climate scientists taking advantage
of healthcare reform to spotlight these very real and worrisome connections?
What better platform from which to advocate for their own favorite cause: comprehensive
climate legislation that sets a strict limit on greenhouse gases.
Puzzled by the silence, I called Dr. Matthew Nisbet at
American University in Washington, D.C. Nisbet is a strategic communications
specialist who focuses on science, the environment and public health. Since his freshman science writing class
at Dartmouth College, Nisbet has been intrigued by how media portrayals of
science issues, particularly controversial ones such as climate change, can shape
public opinion and behavior and also public policy debates. Since then, he’s
been fascinated by the “intersection” of science and policy. “How could
government agencies, science organizations and environmental groups, and also
journalists, be more effective at engaging the pubic, communicating about the
relevance of these issues, motivating and enabling learning, and empowering
members of the public to participate politically and in their local
communities?” asks Nisbet. Good question, but first things first:
Q. A climate policy that
limits the environmental pollutants that cause cancer, respiratory and other
diseases would save billions of dollars—not to mention lives. That seems like
a win-win, no? So, why has the climate science community been largely absent
from the healthcare reform debate?
Matt NisbetAmerican UniversityA. In the 2007 IPCC report [that’s the United Nation’s
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change], in the sections on human dimensions
of climate change, the public health consequences are detailed. The authors
also talk about the deeper adaptation strategy in order to protect against
these health consequences. The CDC [Centers for Disease Control] and Howard
Frumkin in particular, has written a series of articles in places like the Journal of the American Medical Association and the American Journal of Public Health discussing the connection between climate change and public health and the need
for adaptation. The Lancet has
published a whole series of synthesis articles on the research. So the efforts
within the academic literature are there.
Oftentimes, with any social problem, and climate change is
no different, once a particular narrative or frame of reference becomes locked
in about that issue it’s very difficult to break from that narrative. The
dominant narrative has been that climate change is an environmental problem
with environmental impact, or it’s a political fight. That’s how it’s generally
been reported on by mainstream journalists. Conservatives have been focusing on
the uncertainty of the science and the alleged devastating economic impact of
any action.
Those are the narratives that have come to dominate news
coverage and commentary. Those are the mental boxes that the public and policy
makers apply to the issue. There’s a lot of momentum and traction to those
interpretations, and it takes a lot of effort to interject new interpretations.
Only recently has there been an emphasis on how climate
change connects to other problems and other sectors in society. For example, there’s
been a lot of focus on the economy, and action on climate change as a way to
grow the economy. Climate change and public health has been dramatically under-communicated,
historically. Taking action on climate change should really be thought of in
terms of preventive health measures that make our communities better places to
live, make our lives healthier, and also reduce costs in the long run. I’ve
mentioned to journalists the fact that the public health consequences of climate
change have gotten very limited attention. An analysis I recently completed finds
that historically The New York Times and the Washington Post have
mentioned public health consequences in fewer than 5 percent of articles about climate
change.
Q. So, there’s lots of evidence
and awareness about the link between climate change and public health in the
scientific and public health communities, but that isn’t being mirrored in the
mainstream press coverage of either. How can we introduce new
“interpretations,” as you put it?
A. It takes a kind of a top down stimulus from institutions
and opinion leaders, starting with the White House and major government
agencies. Imagine, for example, if you were to introduce new attention to the
issues with a Surgeon General’s report on the health consequences of climate
change. Those reports have had a lot of moral authority in the past [think
tobacco], and they gain a lot of media attention. It’s a way to spread the
discussion of climate change across different segments of society.
Q. You write about
“framing” the scientific discussion, putting scientific findings in a more
understandable and personally relevant context. If you were a paid media
consultant advising the climate science community, how would you suggest they take
advantage of the current attention on healthcare reform to re-frame the debate
and advance their cause for action on climate change? Who should they be talking
to? What should they be saying? And how should they be saying it?
A. Right now there isn’t an easy answer. There hasn’t been
enough specific work done on connecting climate change to public health or
healthcare reform. The first recommendation is that accomplishing that goal
will take a lot of resources, because there’s so much competing noise around
the healthcare debate and around climate change generally. Resources first need
to be spent on careful audience research and message development around climate
change and public health. [Nisbet is studying just that.]
Some of the general principles would be to first understand
the segment of the public who are very concerned about healthcare reform but
also ambivalent about climate change. That could be a number of different
groups: it could be non-college educated suburban mothers who are concerned
about health insurance for their families; it could be minority mothers living
in urban areas, who are concerned about health access for their kids and also
asthma, allergies and respiratory problems that their kids face; it could be people
primarily concerned about the long-term cost of health insurance—male
independents, who have more of a fiscal conservative orientation, who haven’t
dismissed climate change but don’t see it as a leading priority.
Then the strategy would be to come up with a message design
that connects the dots for those groups who are already sensitive to the
healthcare debate, but not necessarily concerned about climate change. [You’d want] to push this
group of people into the coalition of groups around climate change by way of
the health insurance debate. The key there is to identify the information
sources they use (news outlets, entertainment media, etc.), and design a
message that isn’t too focused on climate change as a problem, but rather the
actions on climate change need to be talked about in terms of their clear,
tangible benefits to health and healthcare cost.
Q. We’ve been talking
about climate scientists doing more to explain the ramifications of climate
change and promote action. But has the ongoing Climategate controversy hurt
their reputation and credibility? If they were to suddenly join the debate,
would anyone even pay attention?
A. Despite the conventional wisdom that they’ve lost the
public trust in the wake of Climategate, all the polling indicators both before
and after Climategate show that scientists generally, and climate scientists
specifically have almost unrivaled public trust. Scientists are admired as a
profession. Science is strongly trusted as an institution. The challenge is how
to use that communication capital successfully and not undermine it.
In the health reform debate, any efforts by scientists that
appear too partisan are likely to undermine the public trust. So, if scientists
started running TV ads saying, “Support healthcare reform NOW,” brought to you
by a group of scientists, that’s probably not a wise activity. On the other
hand, if scientists were to partner with other opinion leaders in their
communities, such as business leaders or clergy, and sponsor community forums
about the health risks of climate change and possible policy solutions, without
a partisan agenda, that’s probably the role best suited for them.
Q. So, the ongoing,
high-profile debate over healthcare reform is a great opportunity to start a
contextual discussion about climate change; a kind of “teachable moment” to
explain how climate change has very tangible and very personal health
consequences. Are there other “teachable moments” out there, in disciplines
other than healthcare, that the climate community should target?
A. The White House has been pushing
climate change as an economic issue. Insurance companies, businesses and others
have added climate change to the criteria by which they make decisions about
health and health coverage. There’s going to be a trickledown effect. The fact
that climate change is a criteria is becoming institutionalized and will, down
the road, influence members of these organizations and the wider public and
begin to be reported on in the news media. [Stories about climate change] will
stretch beyond the science and environment beats, and become part of the health
and business beats and constitute more of the political coverage.
But one area not getting enough
attention is the focus on how the faith-based community is responding to
climate change; not just religious communities discussing climate change as a
moral issue, but also ethics experts at universities discussing the ethical
implications of climate impacts. The idea that climate change is one of
society’s leading moral and ethical dilemmas is under-communicated. There’s
some work on the part of ethicists to try and engage journalists about how to
cover these questions substantively. There’s an opportunity for environmental leaders,
scientists, and public health leaders to partner with religious leaders [on
this issue].
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“The Conductor (Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi),” is the first of a six part video installation. “The Conductor (Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi),” contains two chapters: "O Fortuna" and ""Fortune Plango Vulnera". The 3:55 min. digital video loop is made up of footage from various hip-hop videos. All the footage is digitally enhanced and re-edited to track the motion of the hands of the artists. The audio is a composite of sounds consistently heard in artist deemed Hip Hop music greats from a survey conducted with local New York radio stations Hot 97 and 105.1 These sounds are then weaved in and out of Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana”. The seeming fluidity of the image belies the painstaking nature of the production process: over 5000 individual video frames have been enlarged and repositioned to create the moving image.
-- FROM THE ARTIST'S STATEMENTHow many enviros can you spot in this picture?Photo: Salina CanizalesI grew up in a family that sorted recyclables, reused
containers until they were no longer reusable, and walked whenever and wherever
we could. We turned off our lights and carefully monitored our energy
consumption. We made sure that we didn’t leave the water running, and my
sisters and I competed to take the shortest showers possible. Our travel often
took us to nature preserves and national parks, where we learned about the
importance of wildlife and conservation.
Sounds like a typical childhood for a kid in an
environmentally conscious family, right?
It was typical—except that my parents spoke Tamil at home and
had only just emigrated from India
a few years before my oldest sister was born, while my friends and neighbors
spoke English at home and had families that had lived in Spokane, Wash.,
for generations.
Mine was and continues to be a classic immigrant family,
blending the best of the American dream with traditional values and beliefs
from India.
It never struck me as odd to be an immigrant and an environmentalist.
So after I began working in the environmental community, I
was disturbed to find that when friends and respected colleagues talked about
immigration and the environment, it was often (albeit unintentionally) from an anti-immigrant perspective.
Much of this seems to stem from large anti-immigrant
organizations “greenwashing”—using
environmental messaging to cloak anti-immigrant sentiments. Publicly, the
mainstream environmental community has largely remained silent on immigration
issues (with the exception of a couple of contentious debates in 2004 and 2005 that
sprang up around Sierra Club board elections). In this silence, anti-immigrant
groups have co-opted the
green messaging and started gaining public support from those who generally
ascribe to environmental values. These groups suggest
that limiting immigration would be a good way to slow the population growth
of the U.S.—and without any prominent environmental voices countering them, they’ve had
plenty of room to make the case that immigration is a main driver of
environmental degradation.
While their argument might sound green at first, it is far
from it. The argument blames individuals rather than focusing on the main
causes of degradation—polluting industries, bad policies, and rampant
consumption. Author Betsy Hartmann calls this “the greening of hate—blaming
environmental degradation on poor populations of color.”
There are good reasons for environmentalists to be pro–immigrant
rights:
First, people who are invested in and connected to their
communities are more likely to value things that will impact them and their
families over the long term: clean water, clean air, parks and open spaces. When
our broken immigration system keeps families split apart for years—children
without parents, spouses without partners—their lives are marked by
impermanence and uncertainty. It’s hard
to raise your children to be good environmental stewards when your family is always
wondering if they will still be in the same place tomorrow. If we care about healthy environments, then
we need to care about making sure that families stay together, investing
themselves in their communities and building stable futures.
Second, most environmental protections are funded by tax
dollars, and immigrants contribute a lot of those dollars. The 14 percent of U.S.
residents who are foreign-born and the additional U.S. citizens who live in
mixed-status families foster environmental protection every day, by paying their
taxes and contributing to economic growth that generates still more tax
revenue.
Third, the demographics of our country are changing. We have
a president who is the son of an immigrant. In recent elections, the votes of
new Americans have been tipping outcomes—electoral power that will only
continue to grow. If the environmental
movement were forward-thinking, we would be strategizing—like both the
Republicans and Democrats—about how to court immigrant voters. For environmentalism to be relevant to the
future voters of America,
we need to proactively seek to diversify our movement and connect with new
Americans who could support pro-environment candidates and sustainable policies.
Fourth, in the coming years, immigration pressures are likely to increase as climate change disproportionately affects people living in developing countries. Environmentalists should help poorer nations adapt to the effects of climate change and work to develop compassionate immigration policies so those who must leave their homelands have a decent chance to rebuild their lives. To be effective, we must build partnerships within immigrant communities now so that we can address this future challenge. If we turn our backs on immigration reform, we are not just enabling but creating a future in which climate refugees become one more forgotten byproduct of an unjust political, social, and environmental system.
Finally, our global challenges are big enough that we need
everyone working together to solve them. Our movement should be about taking
care of each other while taking care of the environment; we must act on these
values and advocate for the rights of our immigrant friends and neighbors.
Immigration reform and climate change are both poised to get
attention in Congress over the coming months. Is the environmental community going to engage in one debate and
completely ignore the other?
I believe we environmentalists must take action on
immigration reform. If we truly want to
build a long-term movement reflective of the entire United States, we need to
understand that immigrants are an essential part of the future. Unless we
recognize the changing demographics of the country, support immigrant
integration that helps people build stable and connected lives, and take an
active role in promoting a more just immigration system, the relevance of the
environmental community—and our ability to affect real change—will never reach
its full potential.
I
have three young nieces whose parents are raising them with strong
environmental values. I hope when they are
older, they won’t find a divide between being pro-immigrant and
pro-environment. Instead, I hope they
find an environmental movement that promotes equity and justice for all and embraces
the pro-immigrant culture on which this country was built.
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Cheer up, kid—the chicken nuggets and tater tots are sticking around. In a move that could signal a serious fault line in the argument for more vegetables as a tonic for childhood obesity, drafters of “Healthy Schools” legislation pending before the D.C. Council have scuttled a push for additional produce in school meals after school officials said they cannot guarantee their kitchens can prepare vegetables that kids will actually eat and not throw in the trash.
“More vegetables” has become a mantra of advocates for healthier school food, including First Lady Michelle Obama, whose White House vegetable garden created a sensation. The “Healthy Schools” bill, scheduled to come up for a hearing next week, had embraced standards proposed by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) that would require larger servings of fruits, vegetables—especially green and orange vegetables and legumes—and whole grains as part of an upgraded school nutrition package designed to bring school meals in line with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
The IOM panel that made the recommendations, working at the behest of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, warned, however, that requiring more produce and whole grains would drive up the cost of school meals, and that there could be no guarantee that children would eat them. The requirement for heftier vegetable servings was dropped from the “Healthy Schools” bill after D.C. school officials asserted they did not want to spend precious resources on food that would only end up being thrown away.
“We heard from many that if schools are serving mushy, flavorless green beans that students are simply throwing away, that doubling the portion size would simply double the amount of mushy, flavorless green beans that are thrown away,” said an aide to Councilmember Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3), author of the bill. “Instead, many have said that we should focus our energy and money first on improving the quality of the foods being served before we consider mandating an increase in portion sizes.”
Advocates of farm to school programs here and across the country contend that schools can serve meals that are more healthful and appealing by using more locally grown produce. But vegetables traditionally are a hard sell in school cafeterias. The foods most favored by children are pizza, all forms of potatoes, and corn, in that order. As I found while spending a week in the kitchen of my daughter’s elementary school here in the District, vegetables typically are cooked to death and rejected by kids. A 1996 nationwide survey of school food service managers by the U.S. General Accounting Office revealed that 42 percent of cooked vegetables—and 30 percent of raw vegetables and salad—ended up in the trash.
The move to eliminate additional vegetables from “Healthy Schools” legislation suggests that mandating better school meals may not work without funding improvements to school kitchens. In fact, the trend in school food service for years has been in just the opposite direction—to reduce labor costs, which represent half of food service costs, by hiring less skilled kitchen workers who do not work enough hours to qualify for benefits. Frequently, school kitchens are staffed by “warmer-uppers” whose sole skill is being able to re-heat foods that have been pre-cooked in distant factories and shipped frozen. Sensitive perishables such as vegetables suffer as a result.
“If we’re going to win Michele Obama’s war on obesity and if her ‘Let’s Move’ campaign is going to be successful, then we need to ensure healthy delicious food. We need funds to pay for cooking kitchens, to train staff, and to market to kids to eat the food,” said Ann Cooper, noted school food activist and director of nutrition for schools in Boulder, Colorado.
“That seems like nonsense about kids not eating the veggies ... of course they won’t if it looks and tastes like cardboard,” said Debra Eschmeyer, director of the National Farm to School Network. “Kids will eat fresh tasty veggies if they have a chance to access them and learn about them. I didn’t believe it until I saw it with my own eyes hundreds of times. Kids will eat chard, broccoli, beets, etc. and love it when they have a chance to grow it and have a real learning experience.”
The IOM report suggested there might be funds for school kitchen upgrades in the “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” [PDF] program instituted last year by USDA Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan. Merrigan has said that nearly $1 billion in federal grant funds used in the past for building rural fire stations, hospitals and community centers could be allocated to food-related projects, such as building storage facilities for locally grown produce, food markets and school kitchens. But schools would need to apply for the money.
In a separate development yesterday, legislation making its way through the U.S. Senate would provide an additional 6 cents per school meal—something less than $500 million more annually—but that money would be contingent on federally-subsidized meal programs adopting the IOM standards. The School Nutrition Association, representing food service directors across the country, has asked for a minimum increase of 35 cents per meal. But others, such as Cooper, say anything less than $1 a day for each child in the program falls short of what is actually needed.
Still, the retooled “Healthy Schools” legislation sets forth substantial increases in local financial support for school meals, some of which could be used to purchase more vegetables and other healthful ingredients. The bill would provide an additional 10 cents for each breakfast served in D.C. public schools and 10 cents for each lunch, plus a bonus of 5 cents for lunches that include local produce. In addition, the District would fund 50 cents for students who qualify for reduced-price breakfast and lunch, meaning those students would not have to pay for their meals at all.
The bill also provides for construction of a local “super kitchen” where city schools could store and process local produce. The kitchen could also house a greenhouse, bakery, or other features and provide a culinary training center.
Significantly, the “Healthy Schools” bill still does not identify funding to pay for the improvements it outlines, but Cheh has vowed to find it.
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Since coming out in
support of climate legislation in October, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham
of South Carolina has faced a lot of vitriol from groups on the right, including
Tea Party activists in Charleston. This criticism culminated in a formal censure from
Charleston County that lambasted Graham for subverting “Republican
leadership and party solidarity for his own benefit” and defiling “the ideals
of freedom, rule of law, and fiscal conservatism.”
But one unlikely group is coming to Graham’s defense: the
Christian Coalition. The group released a radio ad last week defending the senator’s
actions.
The ad begins with an audio clip of President George W. Bush
lamenting America’s addiction to oil as a “serious problem.” (You can listen
to it here.) It continues with
narration from Roberta Combs, president of the Christian Coalition:
President Bush was right: our addiction to
foreign oil threatens our national security and economic prosperity. America
spends almost a billion dollars a day on foreign oil and a lot of that goes to
countries that do not like us and harbor terrorists. Washington’s failure to
act puts our national security at risk, and drains our economy. I’ve heard from
so many Christian Coalition supporters that energy is one of the most important
issues we face today. America is a can-do country. We’ve got to take the lead
to explore energy alternatives and protect our national security. We have to
make our country safer by creating jobs with the made-in-America energy plan. I
would like to ask you to call Sen. Lindsey Graham and encourage him to continue
fighting for our families.
Could the Christian Coalition give fledgling climate
legislation the leg up it needs? The
organization boasts 2.5 million supporters, largely conservative Republicans;
if they embraced the cause, they could give a big boost to efforts to build a
bipartisan coalition for a clean-energy and climate bill.
Meanwhile, dozens of
South Carolina veterans are also saluting Graham for his climate activism in an ad [PDF] running in
local South Carolina newspapers, funded by the Pew Project on National
Security, Energy and Climate:
As U.S. military veterans, we share Senator
Lindsey Graham’s strong belief that our national security depends on more than troops
and arms. America must also reduce its dangerous dependence on foreign oil and
develop its own alternative energy sources.
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Pam Worner runs a business near Seattle helping home builders adopt “green” building practices. She’s fond of the phrases “tangled up in green” and “I don’t care what your countertop is made out of.” There’s a lot packed into those sayings—the first pinpoints a classic problem with green building, while the second suggests a solution.
“Tangled up in green” gets at the overwhelming array of eco-friendly building options. A given structure might have high-efficiency appliances, state-of-the-art insulation, a solar water heater, eco-certified hardwood floors, a permeable driveway, indigenous plants in its landscaping, easy access to a light-rail station and grocery store, and on and on. All these elements are well and good, but some are energy-efficiency features, others save water or improve its drainage, and another protects tropical forests halfway around the world. And some are definitely more significant than others.
“I don’t care what your countertop is made out of” reflects Worner’s conclusion about what building features are most important. If climate change is the biggest environmental threat to human welfare, then reducing energy use is the most important goal of green building—by far. This is the consensus view among green building experts (for a good explanation of the energy-trumps-everything argument, see Auden Schendler’s book Getting Green Done). A countertop made of recycled paper is nice, but a highly efficient furnace is going to pay much higher environmental (not to mention financial) dividends over the years. If homeowners can cut energy use, Worner figures, they don’t have to sweat every small thing.
So far so good. When I spoke with Worner at a Built Green trade show in Bellevue, Wash., last week, these struck me as helpful but orthodox ideas. But then she continued.
Her company, Green Dog Enterprises, advises construction companies to approach green building by helping their customers answer the question “What does green mean to you?”
What it means to customers turns out to be a lot of different things. The top priorities that they give often include indoor air quality, foreign-oil dependence, global warming, polar-bear habitats, rainforests, supporting local businesses, and reducing auto-dependency. Those could point to all different sorts of building features.
“You can’t do everything,” Worner said. “Most of the certification programs give equal weight to lots of different things. That gets really difficult, because you can’t do all of them. And sane homeowners would not want to do everything. You’ve got to help people feel good about what they’re doing, and that means helping them do what gives the biggest bang for the buck on what matters to them.”
But you steer them to the “right” priorities … right? You explain why energy efficiency matters more than anything else?
“That’s the ‘greener than thou’ condescension creeping in,” she said when I asked about this.
This seemed to contradict her energy-trumps-everything position. What if my personal “green” preference is exposed beams in my house from virgin old-growth trees? (Hypothetically, of course.)
“I’d say great. Let’s talk about salvage,” she said. Turns out there are divers who retrieve logs from the bottom of the Columbia River, where they fell off barges decades ago. If you’ve got the money, there are more sustainable options than you might think. Worner’s business helps builders and customers sort through those options (it also provides verification for several building certification programs).
“Greener than thou” is another of her favorite phrases. It’s her label for the environmentalist scolds who remind well-meaning homeowners that they’re always falling short in some regard. “Ah, I see you’ve done X, but why didn’t you think about Y?” your eco-jerk friend might say. Who’s motivated by that?
“People will only take a second step if they feel good about the first step,” she said. “So we should be in the business of making people feel good about what they do. That means getting rid of the guilt and the judgment. We have to meet them where they are. That’s what any kind of social change and behavioral change is about.”
Meeting people where they are sounds nice, but what if where they are is fretting about their countertops? Shouldn’t a responsible green-building professional direct clients toward the features that make the most environmental difference?
Worner advocates pointing customers to rebates for high-efficiency furnaces, tax credits for solar water heaters, and other federal and local incentives. So there’s a balancing act involved—not belittling the green steps the customers want to take, but steering them toward high-impact features as well.
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When Pulitzer Prize–winning music critic Tim Page was in second grade, he and his classmates went on a field trip to Boston. He later wrote about the experience as a class assignment, and what follows is an excerpt:
“Well, we went to Boston, Massachusetts, through the town of Warrenville, Connecticut, on Route 44A. It was very pretty, and there was a church that reminded me of pictures of Russia from our book that is published by Time-Life. We arrived in Boston at 9:17. At 11 we went on a big tour of Boston on Gray Line 43, made by the Superior Bus Company like School Bus Six, which goes down Hunting Lodge Road where Maria lives and then on to Separatist Road and then to South Eagleville before it comes to our school. We saw lots of good things like the Boston Massacre site. The tour ended at 1:05. Before I knew, it we were going home. We went through Warrenville again, but it was too dark to see much. A few days later it was Easter. We got a cuckoo clock.”
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