The role of Politics and Climate Change
From issue to political issue
The issue of climate change was first theorized by Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius in 1896. While earlier environmental conferences focused smaller and reversible forms of pollution, starting around 1972 with the Stockholm Conference, long-term and irreversible problems such as depletion of the ozone and greenhouse warming started to emerge as a major political focus in the 90’s.
At first, around 1979, policy makers were not interested in participating in climate change issues. Climate change issues were faced by non-governmental forces such as environmentally oriented scientists. Between 1988 and 1990 there was a change where governments started to get involved. Still, while some governments decided to take action in how they could reduce greenhouse gases, others wanted to wait until further research, or simply stated that national circumstances were not taken into account when regarding changes.
Click on the image below to read the full research
The scientists were the ones to bring the issue into light, but without government, policies cannot be made. Without the policies made and without changes nationally or globally in trying to reverse climate change, the research proves that results would be irreversible and catastrophic. Therefore, no matter how big or small the matter, the government is the all-important factor.
How media fits in
When researching about climate change, most people would read an article that is quick and to the point. For example, when searching whether or not climate change is actually real, as a test, a quick 'answer' can be found. While climate change itself is a much debated topic even to this day, the media provides a perspective:
Not only is information found quickly and abundantly, but the information is recent. The day that the question was typed was the day that articles was written. It is short, concise, and get the point across. Furthermore, the title itself gets to the reader on a personal level. Either they have said that, believed that, or heard someone else say that. Therefore, they read.
Media and politics go hand-in-hand, simply because the way the public is informed about politics is through the media.
Whether you agree with the result or not, Canada had one of the most important moments in the past few years on October 19th, 2015: a Liberal majority government and Justin Trudeau as Prime Minister. While it may seem biased to focus on the Liberals and not the other parties, it is not. The focus is on the media, politics, and climate change, not the difference between the parties. Furthermore, the importance of the historic event of Liberals winnign allows for a better showing of examples with media, and how current policy makers deal with the climate.
While an official bibilography, how he generally intends to run the country, and this photo can be found on the government website. The historic event means that the media had their own opinion on him. While it is good to have different views on things, the media can influence others because of the fact that it's opinion can be so widespread. The same way Canada's now current PM can be viewed in the harshest of light, so can climate change issues.
Justin Trudeau - Canada's Prime Minister
The above example shows how the media can influence society's views on policy makers, helping or hindering them. Regardless of what people say about the PM, how will he run the government? Specifically what will be done about the environment? Of course, before the electoin happened there were many promises that parties made in their campaign. Usually divided into major categories for people to look into. One of these major categories is the environment. Since Justin Trudeau was elected, it means that alongside the other major promises, people resonated with his promises regarding the environment. Why? Here are just a few example promises from each party about the environment taken from a single site that described the promises in short form:
Environmental campaign promises put into bullet points from a conservative lenient media source:
Party Platforms/website
vs.
Conservatives - Stephen Harper
NDP - Tom Mulcair
Green Party - Elizabeth May
Liberals - Justin Trudeau
A link to find all the parties' platforms as documents via CBC:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-party-platforms-1.3264887
It's not just about the promises themselves. It also has to deal with how the media presents the information.
What is most important to notice now, is not only the actual campaign promises. But how they are presented. This all comes from: http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-politics/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-parties-platforms
The national post, who prefer a conservative government, uses words such as "Opposes" when mentioning non-Conservative campaign promises. While it is in fact true that, for example, the Liberals and the NDP 'oppose' the Northern Gateway Pipeline, the presentation causes other parties to look worse, since they oppose, than the Conservatives. And because this post would be highly viewed, since reading each individual campaign promise booklet would take too long, this affects the minds of the readers, and possibly their vote.
The Liberals, for example, had 88 pages of campaign promises. Why read what the liberals promise when you can read a 2 page view on what they promise (even if done by a conservative?
Now that the election has passed, and the Liberals hold the majority, they have promises to keep.
Just how Media can inform about politics, politics can use Media to inform as well.
Because it is such a great tool to spread information, opinion, and much more, it is important for politicians and governments to use media.
Al Gore, for example, is a politician and environmentalist. He stars in 'An Inconvenient Truth', in which his speeches on Climate Change are filmed and presented to a vastly bigger audience. It is often a well known occurence that politicians lie to get what they want. When talking about the environment and climate change, there is no room for lies. To many, it may seem odd to listen to a climate change talk from a politician (regardless of whether he/she is known to be honest or not), but it adds a layer of importance to the subject if a policy maker is talking about it. Although the film came out in 2006 the essence of it, which is a politician informing the public about the dangers of 'global warming' (climate change), stresses the fact that people need to be made aware of the problem in order to help solve it.
An Inconvenient Truth Clip
The way the government reaches the public is not only through their official website, which has a bit on how climate change is in fact real, and contains all of their promises regarding the environment, but they also use social media.
On the official website page on climate change, the first links shown are of Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter. And why not? Many people prefer to use social media to find out what is going on, rather than news. Why read an entire 100 page document about political promises when you can take a quiz on what political party suits you? This is how media affects politics in the greatest way, is by reaching out to the public.
Not only does the government use media to inform, support, or otherwise comment about various subjects, but the media also covers the government. Media sources can give a public member’s opinion on politicians and their efforts. In terms of the environment, media sources often give their opinion on what should be done, or simply give an alternative view on what is being done.
Note: The article about politicians and their promises on Climate Change spreads via Social Media, with options to Share, Like, Tweet, Pin, Submit, and Connect.
Because media sources, such as huffington post covers the environment, it only serves to promote a feeling that the subject matter is important and has to be dealt with. Therefore, more attention can be brought to the subject, and promises are kept, or made by the policy makers.
In summary, the media affects political matters. The pipelines are examples of this.
While media can help bring people together on a subject, and work towards something like stabilizing climate change globally, it can also tear people apart. For example, there are many media sources on the different pipelines that are being continued or opposed, such as Keystone XL and NG. If a person reads an article about the good of these pipelines, such as from the official website, that could influence something as important as their vote for a political party. The same can be said if it was the other way around, and someone read an article about the negative environmental consequences of oil sands and the dangers of constructing a pipeline, not to mention the cost.
Keystone XL Pipeline - Overall route map
Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline - Overall Route Map
Again, different sources of media will tell the reader what they think of the pipelines. The pipelines themselves address concerns and give detailed information on their own websites. Enbridge in particular assures that it has taken the necessary precautions to minimalize environmental impact, which is the biggest point of argument against pipelines.
Regardless, different political parties have their own views. This can be seen in their campaign promises. For example, the Conservatives approved Enbridge Northern Gateway while the Liberals opposed it. Furthermore, while the Liberals opposed that, but approved of Keystone XL and Energy East, the NDP opposes ENG and Keystone XL. In other words, each party has different views on even similar environmental projects, and there are many parties who have different, similar, or the same views. What makes the difference about the matter is the public opinion, of which can be influenced by what media sources they are exposed to. While something such as the oil sands pipelines will naturally have pros and cons, and therefore groups approving or opposing of the subject, political actions covered by the media can be of a similar nature. The media is the cause of opposing views on political action, but the media is also the policy makers’ tool to give their reasoning for their decisions.
It's all very important
For example, information can be found on the official government website, yet they also have links to their Twitter accounts. Meanwhile on Twitter, Environment Canada posts subjects such as air pollution emission reports, black Carbon emission reports, or even how many species of birds are in Canada. This information would not typically be read by a public member, but the fact that it is found in a tweet makes it easy to access and entices curiosity. Because of this, anyone can see hard evidence of what is happening in the environment due to the choices made by the government.
Because of the power of Media to change minds, that power in the wrong hands can lead to a devastating effect. The snowball effect and the scope of the tool causes misconceptions and bandwaggoning. Just look at the amount of Likes and Retweets from the following images:
It matters how the media is used, especially regarding politics and political matters.. As seen, the governments can use media to inform the public about matter-of-fact problems, or give out information about national subjects, or about government action/plans. Yet, it can be used to decieve, to express both meaningless and meaningful (depending on how you look at it) personal opinions. In some instances, such as above, the media is worth listening to more than the politicians. Yet, often is the case that the media can get it wrong. Such as with the campaign promises, or with government action on the pipelines, it is hard to know what to follow, but the original source of information, such as the official websites, must always be considered.
Credits
http://www.wired.com/2016/01/please-stop-saying-humans-arent-causing-climate-change/
http://www.ecojustice.ca/election-2015-comparing-federal-party-policies-on-climate-change/
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/3-major-pipeline-projects-where-do-things-stand-1.3415768
http://climatechange.gc.ca/default.asp?lang=En&n=72F16A84-1
http://www.keystone-xl.com/home/keystone-xl-kxl-oil-pipeline-maps/
http://www.gatewayfacts.ca/About-The-Project/Project-Overview.aspx
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-party-platforms-1.3264887
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOrHnctozrY
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-federal-parties-election-promises-1.3246986