Great news from Scientific American the other day. Researchers figure that by 2050 ships will be able to travel, unimpeded, over the top of the world. That is, go from Barrow, Alaska, to Tromso, Norway, in a relatively straight line on the kind of boat usually seen in rap videos. The upside is that a trip to the Arctic will be fun for the whole family. The downside is that, according to The Guardian, most of the family will be eaten by their relatives during the expected food riots.

Anyway, it’s doubtful we’ll even make it to 2050. Oregon State University Scientists pointed out last week that the Earth is heating up faster than a thirteen-year-old boy at a bikini convention. At least when we get around to snacking on our weaker family members they’ll be evenly cooked. Of course, chasing your cousin around the neighbourhood with a fork and knife will be greatly hindered by the hacking cough you developed due to all the air-pollution in the place you live.

Your neighbourhood, by the way, will be part of a feudal system established by financial industry overlords who, as Bloomberg points out, have finally come around to believing in climate change. Their belief became obvious when they started finding ways to make money off of the planet circling the drain; essentially short-selling our ability to redeem ourselves. They’ll lord over urban areas that are so-over-populated everybody will have to sleep standing up, which may solve the food problem without getting the family involved.

All this conjecture is based on ten days of environmental news-gathering. I haven’t even mentioned the fact that we’ve somehow lost our bees, or that we’re going to have to scrape the dirt off of our bodies with twigs due to extreme water shortages.

Oh, and one other thing: It’s all your fault.

And therein lies the problem with the environmentalist narrative: No matter how you try to explain how precarious things are right now — no matter what scientific measurements, studies and graphs you have available — you come off sounding like the town loony; screaming hysterically while waving your dirty underwear under the noses of embarrassed-looking passerby.

Part of the problem, I think, is that the people that truly care about the environment don’t have a sense of humour about it, and it’s hard to take people seriously who take themselves too seriously. The other problem is if you constantly scream “We’re all going to die!” and nobody does, first you’ll be hated, then you’ll be ignored. People have short attention spans, and climate change is — was a long-term problem. The effects occur in increments; it gets a little warmer, there is a little more desert, the water level is a little higher, a few more hurricanes make off with a few more houses. Seen at the speed of life passing, it’s the movement of a sand dune; barely noticeable — unless, of course, you’re neck-deep in flood waters. Seen at Benny Hill comedic double-time speed; yeah, we’re screwed.

That’s why it’s helpful to have respected media institutions like The Guardian, Le Monde, Die Welt and The New York Times supplying us with well-written, tightly researched insight — not only on how screwed we are, but how we can, and are, mitigating that screwedness. That is, until they go and lose their environmental blog the way the Times did recently.

For environmentalists this is what’s known as ‘a kick in the biosphere’. For the Columbia Journalism Review it was justification for some news-journal-on-news-journal violence. Interesting, because the Review is not exactly known for being green, so imagine how the more environmentally conscious reacted to the news.

Type in ‘New York Times Green Blog’ in Google and you get around 240-million hits, many of them environmental blogs, niche sites and news aggregates freaking out so much they are at risk of never freaking back again. Personally, I try to avoid comment sections anywhere online for fear of nurturing a hatred towards humanity so intense I have to shoot myself in the face. However, in the interest of actual journalism I decided to have a look at what people had to say. What was interesting — and not so interesting — was that the people who are commenting on these sites are people who were environmentally concerned. Makes sense, right?

So then I started scanning the comment sections of the Green Blog. Of course I put all sharp objects well out of reach, but it turns out I could have read them standing on a stool with a noose around my neck. It was a beautiful thing; blog after blog free of nitwits, thugs, fools, rednecks, douchebags, racists or creeps sputtering post-lobotomy vitriol into the comment sections. Instead, it was full of thoughtful insight and well-conceived questions. It was filled with the comments of people who are concerned about the environment. Which says something about The New York Times’ demographic, but more importantly, it says something about the blog’s audience: Only people who care about the environment read it.

That is to say: The people who need to read it the most, never do.

It’s obvious, but people seem to forget this. We’re afraid of scary things. We want our own world-view confirmed, so we hang-out in our own communities. The result is that the environmentally conscious — the reporters authors and people who write and comment on a green website function in a bubble. It’s a self-perpetuating place where information is nurtured and developed and nobody on the outside cares or gives a damn.

No, The Times is not furthering the cause by dismantling their blog, but they’re not hurting it the way people seem to think they are. And, just for the record, the actual ‘Environment’ section is still around, it’s just hiding behind the ‘Science’ section.

Which reminds me of the Die Welt, also the third most-read daily news publication, but in Germany — a place that may not be the most green county in the world, but they are definitely trying, and they are doing a hell of a lot better on the Environmental Performance Index than the Americans. Their environment section is tucked behind the ‘Knowledge’ section. There is also Le Monde which calls their Environment section ‘Planète’. They keep it behind their ‘International’ section alongside other geographic locations including ‘Union européenne’, ‘Asie Pacifique’ and ‘Al-Qaida’. ‘Planète’ Earth, of course, being a geographic location itself. I’m not sure what ‘Al-Qaida’ is doing there, but the EPI ranks France better than Germany.

The point is, when it comes to environmental reporting and the drive to make people more aware, it’s not the header that matters, it’s who reads what’s beneath it. In fact, if you can slip some environmental news in under some other heading than ‘Environment’, or ‘Green’, or ‘Sustainability’, the wrong people might accidently read it and learn something.

http://emajmagazine.com/2013/03/18/if-a-blog-falls-in-the-forest-does-it-make-a-sound/