Two recent articles from major media organizations demonstrate that we are not near to exhausting creative and proactive ways of making the threats of climate change feel concrete and understandable to the ordinary citizen. They come at the issue from opposite sides of the spectrum, but together suggest how technology and education can help shift our perspective on local and global environmental threats.
Vox has published an overview of three tree species — the Brazil nut tree in the Amazon region, the stilt mangrove in Indonesia, and the African teak tree in West Africa — that play vital roles in keeping their ecosystems healthy and climate chaos at bay. Scrolling visuals provide a bird’s eye view of these trees and the surrounding forests; clean, concise descriptions discuss how they help protect the environment. It’s an unexpectedly intimate perspective on forests, giving us a fresh look at these trees and the scientists who study them. It also does something that we could use a lot more of: remind us that there are people around the world who are as concerned about climate change as many Americans are, and that we are all part of a global movement that summons forth our common humanity and interests. And though it is easy to be haunted by what we are losing around the world, the Vox piece reminds us that there’s still much of nature left to save; it brings a powerful sense of our larger, shared world to our computer and smart phone screens.
From The New York Times comes a bleaker but also effective use of technology to communicate what might otherwise seem abstract. An exposé of methane leaks from oil and gas facilities in west Texas uses infrared video to show plumes of this greenhouse gas escaping into the air, alongside normal-spectrum shots in which the gas is completely invisible. It’s like getting a peak into a hidden, toxic reality that lives alongside our own. The fact that this gas ends up in the atmosphere, where it can be up to 80 times as effective as carbon dioxide in trapping heat, means that these haunting, sci-fi images document harms to us all, not just to workers at the facilities or residents in the immediate area. They also convey the degree to which those who benefit from the pollutants that drive climate change rely on the unseen nature of the threat to obscure the price they inflict on the rest of us. The Times piece gives us eyes to see what’s been in front of us all along.
These articles are a good reminder that there’s no silver bullet to informing and inspiring the public to take action on climate chaos. Multiple and fresh perspectives are called for as we stand at the dividing line between action and despair.