Ben McAteerAs the second instalment of Northern Slant’s Eco Centenary series, this article examines how the way we discuss the environmental breakdown happening around us must change.
At current rates the world’s temperature is set to rise to 3.8C by 2100. Climate Central, an independent organisation of leading scientists and journalists, assert that urgent action is needed to prevent this rise of temperature from severely damaging large parts of Belfast. They suggest that within the next 80 years higher temperature will push sea levels to a level where the River Lagan will burst its banks, leading to flooding in parts of the Ormeau Road, Cromac Road and Oxford Street, creating huge social disruption. Belfast’s harbour, meanwhile, is likely to be completely submerged by the end of the century unless major preventive action is taken.
Despite these worrying predictions – added to the growing list of climatic impacts that have already been felt in NI, including increasingly severe flooding, storms, heatwaves and droughts – the environment remains a side note for most media outlets in Northern Ireland. Although public interest in the environment has increased over recent years, commentary is mostly sporadic and lacks critical and accessible analysis on NI’s performance in relation to climate change targets.
Moving sustainability up the agenda
Whereas traditionally richer and more developed countries have framed climate change as a political issue, poorer and less developed nations, where the impacts of a changing climate are often more pronounced, tend to frame it as an international issue that the world at large needs to address. NI has been seen to strongly align with the former, allowing political disagreement and vested interests to delay any form of meaningful, holistic action against climate change.
Whilst there is consensus that climate legislation in NI is needed, politicians differ on how far and how fast NI needs to be going. On one side are Sinn Féin, the Ulster Unionists, the SDLP and the Alliance Party, who all back the private member’s bill (PMB) introduced last month by Green Party leader Clare Bailey. On the other is the DUP and its Agriculture and Environment Minister Edwin Poots, who is drawing up his own departmental bill.
Critics of the PMB, namely the DUP, have made use of the media to argue that the PMB could reduce livestock numbers, hit farm incomes and “decimate NI agriculture”. These assertions are deeply misrepresentative of the cross-party bill and appear to be deliberately misdescribing it in an attempt to stoke up fears amongst farmers and the wider public. These scaremongering tactics are sure to become more prominent over the coming months as both bills continue to progress. Whatever the outcome, this will ensure that climate change remains a divisive issue in NI and will do little to incentivise any form of collective climate action.
If climate change is to be taken more seriously by the NI public, the media must begin to more accurately reflect the magnitude of what’s at stake. It is a climate emergency, as Belfast City Council among others have declared, and thus deserves to be discussed as one. As we look to the next 100 years, NI’s media must reframe the climate change narrative and work to better inform their audiences of the need to prioritise sustainability. This means giving greater support for science, being more responsible when it comes to tackling misinformed opinions, and ensuring that climate breakdown isn’t only a headline in the aftermath of an event or the centre of a political debate, but a mainstay in our daily discussions.
This will help to embed sustainability within political discourse and position it at the centre of policy-making that is supportive of both the conservation and restoration of our natural environment. If we want the public to have a better awareness of climate change, we need to have media imparting the immediacy of the need for action. The onus to broadcast the true reality of climate change often falls on environmental charities and activist organisations, like Friends of the Earth or Keep NI Beautiful, yet their remit can be restricted to associated members.
The main media outlets in NI too commonly discuss climate change solely as an environmental problem, one that can be tackled by new conservation initiatives, a switch in energy production and individual behavioral changes. They fail to note how it is structural change and a movement away from capitalism that is needed to truly tame a changing climate. The creation of climate change correspondents who aren’t afraid to point fingers, instead of using environmental editors to cover all of the politically entwined topics associated with agriculture, energy and nature, could be one solution.
There shouldn’t be a more exciting time to be writing and reporting on climate issues. That may sound strange, considering how much suffering lies in store from the impacts that are already locked in, but critically unravelling stories of climate mismanagement and proposing alternative solutions are a critical part of the story. This is a key aspect of what is missing in the current media coverage of climate change in NI and it is imperative that this void is filled.
Reflecting, and tackling, the emergency through policy
From businesses to schools, institutions to individual citizens, we are all influenced by the media. By improving the framing of climate change, the media can help to make it a priority that is reflected in policy and shifts in the behaviour of all societal actors. As a 2019 Columbia Journal Review special report illustrated, the mainstream reporting has failed spectacularly to perform the essential journalistic task of describing how to mobilise the government and economy to fight climate change.
We have a duty to ourselves, and those who are yet to come, to leave the earth in a better place than when we inherited it. To do this, we need to be honest about the situation that we are in and forthright about finding the way forward. If journalism doesn’t get the climate story right — and soon — no other story will matter. The media’s past climate failures can be redeemed only by an immediate shift to more high-profile, inclusive and fearless coverage. After all, the role of a free press is to inform the people and hold the powerful accountable. These days, our collective survival demands nothing less.
