Global warming is hot, in more ways than one. There are those preaching about the consequences of this ecological situation (from Al Gore and his film "An Inconvenient Truth"
to evangelical Christian leaders in a rare dissention with the White House) and those who actively insist there is no crisis (the thinktank Competitive Enterprise Institute
is running advertisements defending carbon dioxide emissions).
"The increased media attention is making it easier to be heard, though there is still a gap between what our research tells us and what the coverage is conveying," says
Elizabeth Braun, director of communications at the Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC), an educational environmental organization based in Woods Hole, MA.
Braun adds that although the public media is finally taking global warming seriously, the issue is still being covered like a trendy story. Yet she also notes that may not be
such a bad thing, since the "hot topic" packaging of the stories winds up making the issue of global warming more understandable to the general public.
"Noticeable changes in the Arctic and the recent intense hurricane seasons provide the camera-ready images and the sound-byte clips that can be easily translated into a short
piece that appeal to a more general public," she observes.
So with all of this discussion of global warming awareness, is there any kind of backlash occurring against this seemingly newfound public interest in the subject?
"If anything, the trend seems to be towards a broader acceptance that global warming and climate change are real issues," Braun says. "Events like the 86 evangelical churches
who acknowledged the reality of environmental concerns and major marketing campaigns like General Electric's 'Ecomagination' and General Motors' 'Think green, go
yellow,' while perhaps not yet fully realized, are laying an important foundation upon which consumers can learn to make substantially different choices about how they live their
lives."
This new awareness has also lead to PR advantages for WHRC: Recent articles in theNew York Timesand the Boston Globe, a segment in an upcoming BBC
documentary, and op-ed environmental pieces in the New York Times and the Christian Science Monitor.
Contact: Elizabeth Braun, [email protected].