Week 7-Climate Communication

Week 7-Climate Communication and Science in the Post-Truth Era

This week, we introduced another form of media activism: podcasts! I listened to Think 100%'s Episode 41: State of the Climate Movement. I've listened to a few podcasts before, but this one surprised me a bit. Think 100% markets themselves as the "coolest show on climate change", which I find very accurate. Media about climate change can tend to be pedantic and inaccessible to people who don't have a background in climate change. 

Think 100 discusses how people of color are marginalized within the climate justice movement and why race cannot be ignored in the fight against climate change. In a political sense, the podcast also discusses the need for increased voter participation of people of color. Increasing these rates would help elect political candidates of color who care about the environment. This podcast argues that more politicians of color who care about the environment are essential to furthering the environmental justice movement. 

One of this week's readings, "Environmental Data Justice and the Trump Administration:Reflections from the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative", was rather upsetting. It outlines the Trump administration's efforts to make accurate information about climate change inaccessible to the public. These efforts include defunding environmental agencies and removing information about climate change from governmental websites, essentially demonizing science. Scientists struggle to keep publicly-available data publicly available, and many analysts question the accuracy of environmental data reported under the Trump Administration.

Keywords: 

EDGI- Environmental Data and Governance Initiative-works to obtain accurate data about climate change despite today's environmentally dishonest climate. 

Data Rescue-groups of people who archive websites and datasets from federal environmental agencies and to maintain their public accessibility.

politics of evidence-the idea of creating policy based off of scientific evidence