Local communities are on the front lines of the effort to deliver practical climate solutions and combat the mis- and disinformation that impede the response to the climate emergency, veteran CBC Radio journalist Laura Lynch told a sustainable communities conference in Fredericton last week.
“I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know,” said Lynch, host of CBC’s What On Earth climate podcast. “Because you’re involved at the street level, you can literally see what others at the provincial and federal levels might not notice so easily: What will work. What people want. What people will embrace.”
She added that “cities and towns and villages and First Nations are often at the forefront of taking action, finding ways to be innovative,” and “sometimes taking a stand—and I know that isn’t easy.”
But that effort is undercut by a wave of mis- and disinformation that sows doubt and confusion about the reality of climate change and how to respond, Lynch told the closing plenary of the conference, hosted by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities’ Green Municipal Fund.
At What On Earth, “we tackle the misinformation, the disinformation, the greenwashing head-on and expose it for what it is,” she said. “Those who purvey it are getting better at playing to people’s fears and prejudices, so we dedicate resources to exposing it.” She invited participants to reach out by email if they see examples for the show to look into.
Countering Climate Disinformation
In an interview on the sidelines of the conference, Lynch said she’d like to see more people equip themselves to embrace storytelling around climate solutions and confront the myth-making that slows down local solutions.
“We’ve done more than one episode that looked at specific examples of misinformation, disinformation, and more generally at how to give people the tools to check the information for themselves,” she told The Energy Mix. One of those shows, featuring a one-time climate denier who’d been “a conspiracy theorist by her own admission,” pointed to the importance of in-person conversations where “we can actually talk to each other as human beings.“
The guest on that show came from a “relatively low-income household, which she thinks is part of how you get to that point,” Lynch recalled. “Then she went to university and started to understand, and now she’s an advocate.” That personal history “has been the key, because she comes from that space and can speak to people face to face and shift minds.”
Journalism In Jeopardy
Although climate communication and education face serious obstacles, Lynch said news coverage of the climate emergency has shifted dramatically in the five years since she first pitched What On Earth as a nine-week summer replacement program. “We felt we were pretty much the only ones in Canada when it started, but then it seemed to come on like gangbusters in the last two or three or four years,” with legacy news outlets devoting serious resources to climate reporting and independent news outlets making their own powerful contribution online.
But journalism, especially local journalism, still faces dire circumstances.
“We have expanded our climate coverage, but it’s happening despite the economic frailties of the news media in this country,” Lynch told The Mix. “There’s always the worry that another local newspaper is going to go down, or that there are going to be more layoffs at a news organization,” with the result that the quality of journalism suffers.
“That should preoccupy us,” she added, because “a vibrant news landscape is essential to a healthy democracy. That’s not a controversial thing to say.”
Telling the Climate Story
Since it launched, What On Earth has told many dozens of local stories on all aspects of the climate emergency and its solutions, Lynch told participants—from emission reductions and carbon sinks to climate finance, insurance, the arts, sports, critical mineral mining, electric vehicles, heat pumps, and much more. Many of those stories have addressed climate and environmental justice for people who’ve contributed the least to the greenhouse gas emissions causing the climate crisis, but are living with its worst impacts.
Some of the show’s greatest hits have focused on:
• Polluting industries and landfills located near Black, Indigenous, or other racialized communities that also have less access to air conditioning or outdoor shading in a heat wave;
• Forced relocations that subjected some Manitoba First Nations to near-annual flooding;
• A New Brunswick First Nation trying to buy back the traditional land it was forced to leave in the 1800s, after homes at the new location were lost to sea level rise.
She said the show has also highlighted the possibility that citizens will file lawsuits against municipalities for failing to protect them from climate change impacts.
