Hey News Media, Inspire Us!

Environmental Examiner recently challenged the generally accepted notion that wind turbines are a significant cause of death for birds. The crux of the blogger’s argument is that, yes, some birds do die at the rotor blade of a wind turbine, but in fact not enough to dismiss the great potential of wind power. In Wind Power: Bye Bye Birdie?, the blogger identifies one cause for such a widespread belief:

Media coverage of the few massive bird kill incidents in which astonishing numbers of birds died, spread the notion that all wind turbines in every location are deadly structures.

There is an important underlying message nestled in the above statement: that the media heavily influences not how but what we, the public, think about. Here’s my quick two cents on this “agenda-setting” process: If it is inevitable that the media, particularly the news media, is going to play a significant role in determining what we think about, it should give us something worthwhile—something that encourages us to embrace unconventional thinking that might better the world around us. After all, on an average evening, the three traditional broadcast television networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) alone receive around 20 million viewers. Clearly network television news, a reliable microcosm of general news media, has an incredibly large audience and thus a lot of people it can influence. But as the saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility.

Last year, the top five stories on the three network evening newscasts were the following:

As a warning, this next question of mine may reveal my maybe too strong sense of idealism. Not that these five stories aren’t important—they are—but what if them was replaced with something like “Ideas that Inspire?” I can admit that topic title might fall on the cheesy side, but I’m sure you get the point. What would it say about our national culture if such a topic was deemed a top priority to share (even more, if we demanded it be a priority)? What kinds of conversations would it spawn? What kinds of ideas might it generate?

In sticking with the realm of alternative energy sources, for example, let’s hear more about companies like Carbon Engineering and its attempt to build the “world’s first air capture plant” that will remove carbon emissions directly from the sky.

In For Our Next Trick, We Will Make Carbon Dioxide Disappear, Lawrence Karol asks the perfect question:

“So if we’re having troubling limiting emissions, why not try and capture them?”

This question, as inherently suggested in the very work of Carbon Engineering, epitomizes the kind of critical thinking we should all be practicing. It’s the kind of thinking that may very well combat our globe’s climate change crisis, and it’s the kind of thinking that the news media should highlight to its audiences. After all, we’re all this together, right?

Carbon Engineering became incorporated in 2009. It is a privately held company funded by angel investors such as well-known philanthropist Bill Gates. Its vision is to become a pioneer in what will hopefully become a large-scale air capture industry, reducing the amount of carbon dioxide that so threatens our earth.

I am not blindly accepting that this is the way to solve our climate change crisis, but I think at the very least it is admirable to take such a novel (and complex!) approach to solving such a longstanding problem. If we want to fix the world’s pressing problems that lie before us, we need to hear stories about the projects, organizations, businesses, etc. that are attempting to do so right now. As one of the most popular storytellers among us, the news media should assume some of that responsibility.