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Missed Opportunities: the Absence of Climate Change in Media Coverage of Forest Fire Events in Alberta

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Missed Opportunities: the Absence of Climate Change in Media Coverage of Forest Fire Events in Alberta Climatic Change https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-019-02378-w Missed opportunities: the absence of climate change in media coverage of forest fire events in Alberta Debra J. Davidson1 & Anthony Fisher1 & Gwendolyn Blue2 Received: 21 August 2018 /Accepted: 16 January 2019/ # Springer Nature B.V. 2019 Abstract Extreme weather events that may be associated with climate change drivers offer valuable opportunities for public discussion of climate change. Such events tend to draw a high level of public attention, and they represent acute and personal impacts of climate change, unlike most climate-related information to which members of the public are exposed. Media coverage of such extreme events, however, appears to avoid linking such events to climate change. In one of few media analyses of the inclusion of climate change discussion in coverage of extreme events that are linked to climate change, we provide the results of an analysis of media coverage of climate-related threats to forests, including in particular forest fires in the Province of Alberta. This is a region in which forests, which are threatened by the impacts of climate change, are an important contributor to the regional economy, livelihoods, and lifestyles. Newspaper articles were collected from Alberta’s two largest regional papers, the Edmonton Journal and the Calgary Herald. Our findings show that coverage of forest issues in the media is dominated by fires, while discussion of pest outbreaks and forest sustain- ability are far less prevalent. While climate change is a topic that is covered in these newspapers as frequently as forest-related issues, there is very little overlap in this coverage and the articles that do discuss both forests and climate change are not associated with extreme events. In subsequent thematic analysis, we find that forest fire coverage tends to be restricted to discussion of single themes, particularly, risk or the economy, while avoiding discussion of multiple themes and their interactions. Mention of the causes of climate change is rare in coverage of either of these forest- related issues. Possible explanations for avoidance of climate change discussion in forest fire media coverage are discussed. * Debra J. Davidson [email protected] 1 Department of Resource Economics and Environmental Sociology, University of Alberta, 515 General Services Building, Edmonton, Alberta T6G2H1, Canada 2 Department of Geography, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada Climatic Change 1 Introduction TheFortMcMurrayfireinnorthernAlbertastartedMay1,2016,andovertheensuing 15 months, burned 5895km2 (McDermott 2017). For several weeks that Spring, Albertans were captivated by a barrage of dramatic television and print news media showing images of a giant wall of fire bearing down on a line of escapees on the two- lane highway out of town, and the anecdotes of devastated residents and exhausted and shell-shocked firefighters. The Premier declared a state of emergency, and Albertans donated money and opened their homes to the evacuees. Several years prior to that, to much less fanfare but packing a socioeconomic wallop on par with the fire, a mountain pine beetle outbreak affected some 180,000 km2 of forest in neighboring British Colum- bia, imposing an estimated loss of 752 million cubic meters, or 58% of merchantable pine by 2017 (Natural Resources Canada 2017). These pest populations are now pushing eastward into Alberta. Scientists anticipate increases in the frequency and intensity of both such events (Bentz et al. 2010;Kirchmeier-Youngetal.2017; Sambaraju et al. 2012), rendering Alberta’s vast forests acutely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, and adaptation a high priority for forest management, given the likelihood for fire suppression capability to be surpassed (Cerezke 2009; Wotton et al. 2017). Making such projections in trends, however, is not equivalent to attributing a single event such as a forest fire to climate change. Climate scientists rather refer to the extent to which climate change increased the likelihood for the occurrence of such an event. Researchers in one study nonetheless do attempt to trace a direct connection between the Fort McMurray fire and climate forcing, noting that the extremely warm and dry seasonal conditions at the time were generated by increased variability in synoptic circulation patterns that produce dynamic and thermodynamic conditions favoring warmer and drier weather conditions, and this variability in circulation patterns is induced by anthropo- genic emissions (Tan et al. 2019). As with many policy domains, investments of public resources to support any new initiative require public support for those initiatives. The boreal forest covers 58% of Alberta, a number of Albertans live in forested communities, and the forest industry plays an important role in the provincial economy, yet with over 80% of residents living in cities, public attention to forests may be limited to dramatic but limited moments in time such as May 2016. Such moments might thus be particularly valuable opportunities to introduce public discussions about the threats posed to forests by climate change (see also Carmichael and Brulle 2016). And yet, there was a notable absence of discussion in the media of the role of climate change in producing the Fort McMurray fire and the mountain pine beetle has yet to grace the front page of any mainstream newspaper in the province. The challenges of garnering public support for climate change adaptation and mitiga- tion are certainly not limited to Alberta. Social science research has consistently observed a gap between the urgency expressed by climate scientists and the relative complacency of publics in places like Canada and the USA, many of whom rank other concerns of higher importance (Lorenzoni and Pidgeon 2006). Indeed, a small but notable minority continues to disagree with climate scientists and skepticism even appears to be on the rise in some places (Engels et al. 2013; Tranter and Booth 2015). Concern levels do vary; one consistent but modest indicator of concern is gender (McCright 2010; McCright and Dunlap 2011), and emerging as one of the strongest predictors over the past decade is Climatic Change political ideology (McCright and Dunlap 2011; Unsworth and Fielding 2014; Whitmarsh 2011), but by and large, most westerners feel they have more important things to worry about. The fact that most of us do not personally experience the impacts of climate change has been identified as a contributor to complacency (Spence et al. 2011). Anthony Giddens identifies this phenomenon as the Giddens’ Paradox (Giddens 2011). Personal experiences with changes in weather and extreme events have been observed to be associated with increased climate change concern in some studies (Egan and Mullin 2012; Lorenzoni and Pidgeon 2006; Spence et al. 2011). And yet, according to other studies, even personal experience with climate-related events like flooding fails to elicit higher levels of concern for climate change (Brulle et al. 2012; Whitmarsh 2008). One factor that also strongly shapes public discussions of climate change is the media, with increases in the level of media coverage of climate change being linked to increased public concern (Sampei and Aoyagi-Usui 2009). Across several studies, media coverage has been shown to influence the legitimacy of the issue of climate change among the public and the amount of coverage is positively associated with issue salience (Andrews and Caren 2010; Brulle et al. 2012; Carmichael and Brulle 2016; Gamson and Wolfsfield 1993; Greenberg et al. 2011). The influence of the media on public discussions of climate change has been extensively researched, for good reason. Media continue to have a prominent place in setting the agenda, if not the direction, of public opinion, particularly mainstream media, despite the rapid expansion of availability of alternative media through the internet (Boykoff and Yulsman 2013; Ford and King 2015;Kormos and Gifford 2014;McCombs2005; Sampei and Aoyagi-Usui 2009). Media coverage is a particularly important vehicle for shaping public understanding of scientific issues like climate change (Lidskog 2014; Schäfer and O’Neill 2017), and yet, climate change and other environmental issues are especially difficult for journalists to cover, given their complex and often uneventful character (Boykoff 2007;Yin1999). In an effort to capture readers, journalists prioritize stories that capture attention and tend to favor episodic events, with limited attention to the broader context and complexity of those events (de Vreese 2005; Iyengar 1991). As a result, Bushell et al. (2017)arguethat journalists have failed to articulate climate change and the necessary solutions in a compelling manner. In some ways, they may well do more damage than good, such as when journalists lend credence to climate skepticism by giving equal voice to its proponents, despite high levels of agreement in the climate science community (Boykoff 2011; Boykoff and Boykoff 2004; Brossard et al. 2004). To make matters worse, the challenges posed for journalists by the complexity of the issue itself have been further exacerbated by political economic pressures that have imposed upon journalists the need to Bdo more with less^ (Boykoff and Yulsman 2013). Other researchers have delved beyond quantifying climate change coverage to analyze the frames employed, or particular aspects of reality drawn upon subjectively to construct a particular interpretation of the
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