Environmental Messaging: Five Steps to Having a Conversation with a Conservative
It’s Thanksgiving and it’s snowing outside: the kind of big, soft peaceful flakes that make you think of your childhood. Then Uncle Ralph puts his hand on your shoulder and says, “Maybe Trump fixed it. Doesn’t look like global warming to me?” Your mother shouts from the kitchen trying [...]
Environmental Messaging: The Balance of Fear, Hope, and Action
We are all going to die. That’s a fact. All of us also need to lose ten pounds, exercise five times a week, quit smoking and stop listening to identity politics media. As humans, we are one of the few species that can project and imagine the future. And [...]
Environmental Messaging: A Poverty of Words
I love words. I listen to their songs for hidden stories. Like the sounds of water laughing over rocks. The forests speak to me. Yellow aspens chatter. The pines whisper. White clouds are clean and pure. So in the environmental movement, why do I often hear, “We catch more [...]
Environmental Messaging: All Stories Are True
Once, I was traveling through Qamani Tuaq in the Kivalliq region of what is now Nunavut, the former Canadian Northwest Territories. I met an Inuit native there whose name was Ikutaq (or some close approximation). He might have been twenty or seventy, the elements chiseling their harsh breath on [...]
The Bear
Cradled between three birch trees is where they will find me. I look at my rifle. A bolt action 30.06 manufactured by the Savage Arms Company of Connecticut. It has a Redfield 4x telescopic sight and is accurate to 200 yards. It can kill anything from prairie dogs to [...]
Environmental Messaging and Values: Beavers Can Save the Human Race!
Imagine waking up one day, and being faced with another new environmental crisis… say, saving the beavers, who might be faced with extinction. Imagine that you call attention to the plight of the beavers, and scientists do some research to uncover the causes of the beavers’ demise. Then people, [...]
Moral Hierarchy in Environmental Messaging
Most of my friends are apoplectic over actions taken by the current administration toward the environment. They can’t understand why anyone in their right mind would remove stream protections or “OK” the Dakota Access Pipeline. To them, that makes no sense. In my last post, I talked about frames [...]
Messages from the Fossil Fuel Industry You’re Already Accepting
In my last post I talked about failure of the environmental movement’s messaging. It’s no secret that the other side, the fossil fuel industry, is investing in think-tanks to shape public policy. Since energy policy and the environment are complex issues, you may not even be aware of the [...]
Environmental Messaging is Failing
There’s an old adage that says you should never be the first one to tell someone their baby is ugly. Yet, someone has to be first. The messaging of the environmental movement is failing. There, I said it. It’s just an observation. I know it sounds like a criticism, [...]