CU Offers New 'Environment, Media & Culture' Class

New for Spring 2006, CU-Boulder students have the opportunity to look critically at media coverage of environmental issues in an interdisciplinary course that examines the intersection of communication and culture with the environment. In an era when environmental policy debates are among the most significant global discussions engaging nations, and in which much of the public gets its knowledge and ideas about environmental issues through media channels, the class explores the key role media institutions play in that arena.

The university has long had a strong reputation for its programs in environmental studies and environmental journalism. Through the former, students study environmental science and policy, while the School of Journalism and Mass Communication offers a master's level specialty in environmental reporting. The new "Environment, Media and Culture" special-topics course (JOUR 4871/ENVS 4100/5100) provides the first media-studies focus on the environment.

Designed and taught by Dr. Wendy Redal, former program coordinator for CU's Center for Environmental Journalism, the course emphasizes the social construction of environmental issues and ideas. "While on one level the environment is a natural, material reality," Redal says, "the way it is understood, interpreted and acted upon is a product of how people think and talk about it, often through media channels."

Students in the class use theories about culture and rhetoric to investigate how environmental stories are told, paying special attention to journalism as well as other forms of popular media such as television and film. Case studies are used to focus inquiry, ranging from old-growth logging in the Pacific Northwest to genetically modified crops to climate change. The course highlights political dimensions of environmental issues, looking at how issues are "framed" by various interests, including industry, activists and government, in order to communicate with strategic effect.

While the course is intended to be of value for any student interested in communication and environmental studies, it is also designed to benefit journalism students by providing an analytical understanding of the media's role in covering the environment. Knowing more from within a theoretical context about the forces and pressures on communicators and audiences alike, journalists can be better prepared to cover environment issues more effectively, Redal says.

She is excited by her students' range of interests, which are evident in the subjects they have chosen for their final research-paper assignment. Asked to investigate a topic that brings together the course emphasis on environment, media and culture, projects include an analysis of the discourse used to market organic, fair-trade coffee; a survey of how the term "junk science" is fought over by competing voices on the global warming issue; rhetorical battles over how wolf reintroduction is framed in Idaho news stories; and scrutiny of way nature is employed and depicted in SUV ads.

For a detailed look at the content of the new course, see the syllabus for Environment, Media and Culture.

Climate Change Could Push Colorado Skiing Downhill

Crawford wrote this story for Tom Yulsman's Science Writing course (JOUR 5812) and it ran in Freeskier Magazine.

By Patrick Crawford

Every spring, when winter loosens its grip on the base of Arapahoe Basin ski area, the parking lot of North America's highest ski area turns into what locals call "the beach." Skiers and boarders still arrive at the ski area early, only instead of jockeying for first chair, they fight for a front-row parking spot at the beach.

By mid-day, an oddball collection of diehard skiers and boarders, frequently clad in shorts and baring their pale winter chests to the spring sun, are a few drinks deep into a massive tailgate party at 10,780 feet. Late in the season, more of the day is reserved for drinking, grilling burgers and playing Frisbee than for skiing. Depending on the year, the scene at the beach gets rolling sometime in mid-April and lasts through the Fourth of July.

Beaching it at A-Basin (Photo/Unknown)

While "the beach" is one of Colorado's great spring traditions, nothing scares the ski industry more than the thought that global warming could make the beach more typical of President's Day than Memorial Day.

With a business that survives on the few degrees of difference between rain and snow, some scientists estimate that Colorado's $2.5 billion-per-year ski industry may be facing a meltdown by the end of the century. But ski areas won't concede defeat. Instead, the state's resort operators are using their unique position as business leaders who sell a healthy environment to fight climate change on multiple fronts.

"In the ski industry, we see this as a global issue," says Melanie Mills, Executive Vice-President of Public Policy for Colorado Ski Country USA. "What we can do is to educate, advocate and implement. In other words, educate the public about the issue, advocate at the legislative level, and implement changes at our own resorts."

For the public, discussions about a few degrees of warming on a global scale may seem esoteric, but for skiers and a massive state industry that survives on Colorado's legendary "champagne powder," climate change is a life and death issue.

Every year evidence that the Earth is experiencing human-caused warming grows. According to a 2001 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations-sponsored assessment of the state of climate science, the global average temperature has increased about 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit over the last century. The bad news for Colorado's ski industry is that the warming has not been uniform, and the Rocky Mountains have seen a higher-than-average temperature increase.

In September, the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization, a regional environmental group concerned with climate change, released a report that analyzed temperature and snowpack records in five major river basins of the western United States. It found that the upper Colorado River basin, which encompasses much of Colorado's high country, has seen an increase of 2.1 degrees Fahrenheit over the long-term average.

Given current trends, most climate scientists say warming is likely to intensify. Human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide have been on the rise for a century, and with industrialized nations struggling to control their emissions while developing nations burn ever-larger amounts of fossil fuels, the levels of greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere are likely continue to rise along with temperatures through the end of this century, according to the IPCC.

Now scientists are working to understand what that means to people on a local and regional level. A 2004 study by a team of scientists using a climate model developed by the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., estimates that the Colorado River basin will warm by 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit by 2070. The study's authors called this a "best-case scenario," and other models have produced higher estimates. For example, the Canadian Global Coupled Model pegs the increase in the Rocky Mountain and Great Basin region at 5.9 degrees Fahrenheit by 2050. Models like these are used because they successfully predicted observed historical climate changes when scientists ran tests on past scenarios.

One thing all models agree upon is continued warming in the Western U.S., which would cause a shortened snow season.

"Looking forward about 70 years into the future, the runoff will occur about a month earlier, with more rain at the beginning and the end of the winter," says Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and a lead author for the United Nations' upcoming 2007 IPCC report.

However, scientists insist that long-term climate modeling is complex, and uncertainties increase as models become more localized. Climate models can account for major geographical features like the Rocky Mountains, but not the specific topography of an individual ski area, for example. And, all estimates of future warming work off assumptions about the amount of carbon dioxide humans put into the atmosphere. Tweaking the assumptions about the level of greenhouse gas emissions changes the predictions.

"I think there is less change coming our way than some other people would say," says NCAR researcher Klaus Wolf. "I remain skeptical that the models have a good handle on regional-scale climate change scenarios."

And as far as snowpack is concerned, Wolf says Colorado's elevation works in its favor because the state's high-elevation mountains are so cold. "I'm convinced that we are less vulnerable here at the higher elevations than places that are lower, such as the Pacific Northwest or even the Sierra."

While scientists at climate research centers around the globe continue to improve their ability to make long-term predictions about climate and how weather patterns might change over the next century, the snowsports industry feels that it cannot just wait to see what happens.

Skiing's glamorous image belies the fact that the ski resort operator in some ways has more in common with the Kansas wheat farmer than the New York hotelier. That's because ski areas are massively expensive resort operations fully at the mercy of weather.

"People who own and operate ski resorts do it because they ski," says Molly Cuffe, Director of Communications for Colorado Ski Country USA, the trade organization of Colorado's mountain resorts.

"They love the mountains, they love the mountain environment, and they know that their guests do as well. They know that they're selling the environment, so climate change is something that's very important to the ski industry. "

Keeping Colorado's ski slopes white is integral to the state's winter economy, which climate change may put in jeopardy (Photo/Copper Mountain Ski Resort)

According to Geraldine Link, Director of Public Policy for the National Ski Areas association, the ski industry is somewhat limited in what it can do to adapt to a warmer climate. "There are two things we can do, both of which we're already doing. One is to develop the resorts into year-round destinations by building our summer capabilities. The other is to maximize our snowmaking capabilities."

Unfortunately for Colorado's ski industry, in addition to producing a shorter snow season, warmer temperatures would also make it more difficult for ski areas to compensate for reduced natural snowfall by blowing the manmade kind.

"It's much more economical to make snow when it's cold out," says Auden Schendler, Director of Environmental Affairs at the Aspen Skiing Company. "A degree or so of temperature difference can mean hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs in efficiency,"

Aspen Skiing Company has also added another consideration for the four mountains under its ownership: download lift capacity. In the early and late season, when the snowline is higher on the mountain, many ski areas use their lifts to shuttle skiers up and down from the base area to the snow. If snow stops falling at the base area of resorts, Schendler says, "we may be skiing the tops of the mountains, like we do in early and late season."

But most who make a living off skiing or snowboarding know that downhill lift capacity and snowmaking are just band-aids on a potentially massive problem. Major climate changes could cripple the sport, so many in the business feel that the most important work for the ski industry is to use its sway to affect national and regional environmental policy.

"The ski industry is an interesting, sexy business," Schendler says. "We have a significant amount of lobbying power, and we should be using that."

Colorado's ski industry was a major player in the state's 2004 passage of Amendment 37, which mandates that Colorado public utilities produce a percentage of the state's energy from renewable sources. On the national level, 70 ski areas have put their weight behind the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act, which, if passed, would force the United States to limit industrial greenhouse gas emissions to 2000 levels by 2010.

Many resorts, especially Schendler's Aspen Skiing Company, have been major innovators in developing environmentally friendly building practices. Aspen aims to have the new base village planned at its Snowmass ski area earn green-building certification by the U.S. Green Building Council. Currently, there are only two buildings in Colorado that meet the strict criteria, one of which is owned by Aspen. Schendler also helped institute a unique system that uses heavy spring runoff to create hydroelectricity.

As global warming raises temperatures in the Rockies, epic powder days like this one may become rare (Photo/Dave Lehl, Vail Resorts)

All of this may signal the beginning of a potentially powerful alliance of what would once have been strange bedfellows: ski areas and environmentalists. That would hardly have seemed possible even a few years ago, when relations between the Colorado resort industry and environmentalists reached a nadir after the radical environmentalist group Earth Liberation Front claimed responsibility for burning down Vail's Two Elks Lodge. Many far less extreme environmental groups have battled ski area expansions in Colorado in the courtroom.

Today the ski industry has teamed with the National Resources Defense Council on its "Keep Winter Cool" climate change educational program, and the NRDC has assuaged environmentalists about the ski industry in several instances.

"If you look at difference between the relationship between the ski industry and the environmental community 10 years ago and now, it's a sea change," Schendler says. "Part of that is this climate issue. We've found common ground."

But as much as the snowsports industry is doing to promote its own survival, even ski area employees like Schendler know that in a major climate change scenario, the loss of snowsports recreation would hardly be the worst consequence.

"The discussion that the ski industry is threatened by 2050, it's almost silly," he says. "It's like saying, 'you know, if there's a nuclear war, our milk is going to spoil.' The implications of climate change are so profound for society." Compared to problems for agriculture, potentially more intense hurricanes and other possible impacts from climate change, "the ski industry is one little blip. It's important that people say that societally, we're not going to be worrying about skiing. We're going to have a lot bigger problems to talk about."