WEEK 7 reflection

The readings this week focused a lot on more contemporary issues compared to some of the more historical information we have been learning previously.  Some articles this week explained how we got here as a country in terms of the political divisions over climate change in regards to the 2016 election and what current activists such as AOC are doing to urgently try to repair and rebuild our efforts to fight climate change.  The Trump administration has been openly hostile towards the EPA and has been deemed to pose a threat to our nation in terms of his administration’s efforts to roll back climate change protections. According to several readings this week, the Trump admin has been undermining important scientific practices and policies in favor of supporting the oil and gas industry for financial gain. The GND is important because while we criticize the republicans for openly ignoring and even rejecting the realities of climate change, the democrats had not yet made any tangible plans to address climate change in a timely or comprehensive manner.  The readings this week, especially in terms of mobilization, also emphasized the importance of using Twitter to create a digital space that promotes and compliments real life events while connecting all those involved and all those who would like to be informed. This week, I also listened to a Think 100% podcast called “Our Oceans X The Earth’s Lawyers.” This particular episode mentioned the Bayou Bridge Pipeline, which was especially interesting because it hits so close to home living in Louisiana. The podcast was very informative and came across as extremely credible because one of the guests was an actual lawyer and one was a scientific expert on the ocean.  I think it is important in media such as podcasts to use credible sources such as these, especially because in today’s society where anyone can voice their opinions online, sometimes it is hard to differentiate informed perspectives from personal opinions disguised as fact.

Emotions ran high even as I was skimming some of the readings this week because it really is so infuriating that someone like Trump could erase years and years of scientific research and policy and practice simply because the scientific truth and his own financial interests do not align.  It is also terrifying how quickly he was able to debilitate the EPA. A friend of mine was working on a project related to Cancer Alley last semester and noticed tons of information from the EPA’s website had been taken down. This kind of censorship, especially in regards to indisputable scientific fact, is truly terrifying especially considering that there are millions of Americans that have been brainwashed into believing that climate change is a hoax or just a general non-concern.  When people are so willing to blatantly ignore facts in favor of their own problematic, uninformed, biased views, it makes it hard to believe that we will be able to overcome that ignorance as a country any time soon.

Some keys words this week included EDGI, identity campaigns, and big-tent movement.  EDGI stands for the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative. The EDGI was created after Trump was elected in November 2016 in response to Trump’s active hostility towards the EPA and ongoing refusal to accept or acknowledge climate change as a major threat to our nation and world.  Identity campaigns are essentially based on the idea that environmental messages created by using cognitive science are most effective at influencing public opinion and therefore affecting legislative action. This approach, however, is less effective in terms of large scale mobilization and only really renders results in the short-term.  Big-tent movement is a concept related to a self-consciously inclusive event which links different organizations and movements. One challenge with these is that they must balance inclusion with creating a coherent message amongst all of these different streams of activists that is appealing to the media regarding the event’s goals.