Media, Messaging, & Public Opinion

Climate change arrived this summer for the beloved TV characters and landscapes of Sesame Street, in a special episode where Elmo, Big Bird, Cookie Monster, and friends have to get ready for extreme weather, then learn to help each other through the aftermath.

The proportion of Canadians who identify environment and climate change as a top-three concern has jumped 50% in the last four months, from 14 to 21%, as a summer of epic wildfires, heat domes, and flooding creates what the Angus Reid Institute calls “thorny challenges” for Prime Minister Mark Carney...

Climate change might not be a top priority for U.S. voters, but keeping quiet about it may backfire.

As a weather service in the United States combats mis/disinformation about wildfires in Canada, a Canadian economist is urging provincial and federal leaders to weigh the mounting cost of wildfire smoke and other public health impacts against any benefits, real or imagined, of fast-tracking new fossil fuel infrastructure.

As experts warn that misinformation and disinformation are existential threats to Canadian democracy, communities watching hyperscale data centres move into their neighbourhoods say they are being stonewalled by local leaders while the federal government lags on regulation.

A Leger poll of 1,505 Canadians found 81% worry AI data centres will raise electricity bills and 79% fear environmental harm, while opinion is split on building them domestically for data sovereignty.

A new social media platform in Europe, W Social, has gone online with a mission to counter mis- and disinformation in all its forms, including climate change denial and myth-making.

Fewer than half of Canadians know a heat pump can heat a home in cold weather, and just over half don't realize it can cool one too. Clean Energy Canada's answer to the awareness problem: get Canadians talking about it at summer barbecues.

As wildfire season ramps up, a global coalition combating climate disinformation warns that climate “disinfluencers” are spreading falsehoods online, and that social media companies could do more to prevent them from disrupting access to critical information.

A small team of laid-off United States government scientists has rebuilt a climate information website that the Trump administration took offline last year, recruiting 80 volunteer researchers and re-linking more than a thousand reports and datasets.

About 200 communities in the United States have introduced moratoria on local battery energy storage system (BESS) projects. Here’s what it will take for Canadian developers to do better.

Misinformation about renewable energy fuels local pushback to proposed energy installations and could threaten farmers’ livelihoods.

As many as six in 10 Albertans don’t want taxpayer money to support a new oil pipeline, and two-thirds say their province’s economy is too dependent on oil and gas, according to new polling released this morning by the Pembina Institute.

National Public Radio—better known as NPR, a widely-venerated non-profit radio network in the United States—disbanded its climate desk in late May, citing financial strain linked to the Trump administration's public media funding cuts.

Influencers want the public to think climate change is up for debate, not established fact, said Philip Newell of Climate Action Against Disinformation, in a webinar hosted by Toronto Public Library. “What disinformation is meant to do (is) keep that debate looking like it's 50:50, because then they can block...