Humans are naturally playful. So why shouldn't we make sustainability more fun? (Photo by Norma Desmond.)

Cross-posted from Sightline Daily.

On some level, most of us are in the business of behavior change — whether we’re trying to lose a few pounds ourselves or whether we’re promoting energy efficiency. It goes without saying that habits are hard to break, even when someone has gone out of their way to make the better choice fairly easy.

By tweaking their language, scientists can communicate better with the public on climate change.

Let’s face it: Few of us speak in perfect, clear, stirring, and memorable soundbites. But scientists are particularly apt to load their communications with so many caveats and so much detail that non-scientists have a hard time determining whether they’ve said anything definitive at all.

Scientists have good reason to be cautious in their communications — and in a politically charged environment, climate scientists are particularly gun-shy. Too much simplification — let alone personal or emotional appeals — may tread too far outside the scientific norms of dispassionate objectivity, and put a scientist’s credibility on the line. For many scientists, the moral dimensions of their work are self-evident. But articulating them is risky.

The problem is that political opponents of climate action often portray the caveats and caution as evidence that scientists are unsure of their findings.

So, what should a scientist do?

Richard C. J. Somerville and Susan Joy Hassol offer some tips for climate science communicators in the October issue of Physics Today [PDF], along with a good overview of the most common pitfalls of climate communications, and the political and cultural context in which climate scientists must operate.

Four of Somerville and Hassol’s recommendations seem most important and most appropriate for scientists. I’ve boiled them down here.

1. Emphasize what is known. (Stop leading with unknowns, caveats, and disclaimers.)

When communicating with colleagues, scientists tend skip over the basics (which their colleagues already know), lead with caveats, and then dive straight into details — especially new, cutting-edge findings. But when communicating with the public, scientists often forget how little people really know about climate change; they forget the perception that even the basics are unproven or disputed among scientists. As Somerville and Hassol put it, “It’s … important to repeat what is scientifically well understood to a public for whom the well-established older findings may still be mysterious.”

When asked about climate and extreme weather, for example, many scientists will start off with a disclaimer, such as “We cannot blame any particular event on climate change.” But following Somerville and Hassol’s advice, a scientist could start the conversation emphasizing the well-understood connections between climate change and the increasing likelihood of extreme weather. There’s no need to exaggerate, and no point in fear mongering — stick to what’s solid and defensible. The key is to leave the disclaimers until later — or else they’re all anybody will hear.

2. Invert the standard order for reporting. (Start with the main point, then give the background.)

Scientists are accustomed — even trained — to start with background information, then add supporting details, and finally deliver their conclusions — the main point — at the tail end of their communications. This is how it’s done at a conference or in a paper.

But for talking with anyone other than their peers, it’s better to “invert that pyramid” and begin with the main point.

Image: Richard Somerville and Susan Hassol, Physics Today.

3. Less is more.

An academic conference is worlds away from an interview with a reporter, where an expert may only have 30 seconds — or one short quote — to convey what’s important about scientific findings to mainstream audiences. Even if you have the opportunity to say more, people can have trouble sorting out what’s important. As Somerville and Hassol point out, scientists who know a lot about a topic tend to “overdo the level of detail.” They recommend that scientists craft simple, clear messages about what’s important and repeat them often. Less is more.

4. Stop speaking in code. (Choose plain language over technical terms, insider jargon, and acronyms.)

We can cultivate much greater understanding of climate science by using words that more people understand. Rather than “anthropogenic,” it’s better for scientists to say “human-caused.” Drop “spatial” and “temporal” for regular old “space” and “time.” Use familiar units of measure; for the American public, that means using feet instead of meters and Fahrenheit instead of Celsius.

There is also scientific “code” to indicate likelihood and certainty. Unfortunately, this language can totally backfire when non-scientists hear it. Indeed, Somerville and Hassol point out that some words and phrases, commonly used by scientists, lead to confusion among lay audiences. In fact, they write, “many terms mean completely different things to scientists and the public.” Here are a few of the biggest offenders:

• “Consensus” sounds to laypeople like mere opinion.
• “Uncertainty” sounds like head-scratching or ignorance.
• “Theory” sounds like a mere hunch or speculation.
• “Likely” and even “very likely” translate as: not going to happen.
• “Inevitable” can sound like nothing can be done.

Somerville and Hassol offer better choices for reaching clarity among non-scientists. Here’s a full list:

There are some other messaging tips in the article, including recommendations that I’ve highlighted in the past for just about anybody charged with communicating about climate change — the need to frame climate change not just as an environmental issue but also as a question of our economic security and human health, for one, as well as the importance of talking about solutions — both our ability, and the necessity, to solve the problem — when we talk about the science. Somerville and Hassol also encourage climate scientists to “let their passion show.”

But for many scientists, I fear all that may be too much to ask. While I don’t discourage scientists from considering those recommendations and employing them whenever appropriate, I picked out the four tips above because I think scientists are more likely to actually employ them — which is the ultimate test of their usefulness. These four are powerful, I think, because they represent fairly small changes in the way scientists present information, but represent the potential to dramatically change the way non-scientists hear and absorb that information.

That’s my take. If you are a scientist, please let me know what you think!

Green tea: Is there a little Tea Partier in all of us?Photo: Czajnik Zielony

Striking up a conversation about climate change with somebody who denies the science? Usually I’d say, “Don’t bother.” But if I’m right and there’s actually a little Tea Partier in all of us, maybe there’s a thing or two hard-core science deniers can teach us about climate communications more generally.

First things first. Where is the so-called Tea Party on climate change? Recent polling shows that it’s not a voting bloc that we’re likely to persuade. Indeed, research by Yale and George Mason University [PDF] found that among conservatives, it is mainly members of the Tea Party who do not believe climate change is occurring. While the majority of Democrats (78 percent), Independents (71 percent), and Republicans (53 percent) believe in global warming, only 34 percent of the Tea Party agrees with them — and 53 percent are pretty adamant it is not happening. When you ask about human-made climate change, “belief” drops even further for the Tea Party: While 62 percent of Democrats say that global warming is caused mostly by human activities, most Tea Party members say it is either naturally caused (50 percent) or isn’t happening at all (21 percent).

That’s no big surprise.

And here’s further evidence from the Yale/George Mason research that piling on more facts and data with this group doesn’t get us very far:

Tea Party members are much more likely to say that they are “very well informed” about global warming than the other groups. Likewise, they are also much more likely to say they “do not need any more information” about global warming to make up their mind.

But what could move the needle with these folks? And why do I care?

Like I said, I honestly think that when it comes to climate change, there’s a little Tea Party in all of us. Denial (or call it compartmentalization, coping, prioritizing, ignoring, fearing change in how we live, or freaking out on such a massive scale that the only way to deal is to completely push it out of your mind … you know who you are!) is pretty pervasive even among the most progressive, pro-science folks I know. If it weren’t, we’d probably be a lot closer to having public and political will for mitigation policies.

My point is, effectively talking to Tea Partiers about climate might not be that different from talking to my own eco-friendly, politically savvy Seattle friends and neighbors who “get” climate on an intellectual level but haven’t necessarily felt the urgency of the situation nor invested in it on an emotional level.

So, here are some tips that apply to just about everybody — thanks to FrameWorks Institute.

Go for the gut, not the brain. “To build support among climate change deniers,” FrameWorks researchers write, “it is important to start the conversation by invoking the values that these groups embody. By starting the conversation with a commonly held value (rather than unframed information), advocates can gain more communicative traction on this issue.”

Here are the top-level values FrameWorks identifies:

Prosperity:

Tea Party members value economic prosperity. A recent Nature article about organizations that promote climate skepticism, such as the Heartland Institute, shows that skeptics are most often concerned about the economic costs of implementing climate change solutions.

In other words, like many Americans, Tea Party folks aren’t crazy about any kind of change. Maybe fear of the impacts of climate policy solutions trumps our fear of more abstract and unimaginable climate impacts. FrameWorks suggests that “by talking about clean technology solutions to climate change in a way that illustrates the benefits to our domestic economy, advocates can more effectively engage these groups in a constructive assessment of the situation.”

David Roberts has been saying this for years, too. While climate communicators take the bait and keep bickering about the science, the other side is winning on values, identity, and raw emotion. He writes, “we need to be out there arguing that beating global warming will make us more prosperous, more healthy, more just, and happier. We need to make this fight appealing. Science is not going to do the work for us.”

Stewardship: According to Frameworks, “framing global warming in terms of stewardship” or as “creation care” can also be an effective reframing approach. They point out that “the Yale report mentions that Tea Party members are more likely to be evangelical Christian, and thus, integrating values of Christian stewardship for the planet can be a stronger starting point that can lead to productive conversations on climate change solutions.” (Note: FrameWorks uses the term “future generations” in their language recommendation — a common refrain that I’m hoping we can entirely eliminate from our messages and our thinking — because the fact is that climate change is happening now — to our generation and to our kids. “Future generations,” in my opinion, reinforces the counterproductive idea that climate change is distant in place and time.)

Solutions: FrameWorks says: Focus on pragmatic solutions. We transcend petty political divides and eschew the science debate frame altogether when we talk solutions — and the myriad co-benefits of steering our economy off the dirty fuel roller coaster.

All kinds of people get behind solutions — even the ones who deny the science and arch against liberals, government, and the like. I’ve noted this before — many times, in fact. But, FrameWorks points to the Yale study to reinforce this idea, noting that “the majority of all four parties expressed support for specific climate solutions, such as research funding for renewable energy and providing tax rebates for purchases of solar panels and energy efficient vehicles.”

In other words, talking about no-brainer solutions works with Tea Partiers and all kinds of other audiences too.

I agree on all those points. I’d also add that we should have an accurate, direct, and balanced conversation about impacts that are already happening right now, including extreme weather, as a way of talking about climate change in concrete, local, and visual ways.

Now, you may be thinking that the average Tea Partier has long since walked away, u
nmoved — and probably annoyed. That may be true. But, let’s keep thinking about that Seattle (or Portland, or Boise, or Vancouver) neighbor who prides herself on meticulous recycling and who brings reusable bags to the grocery store, but who gets kind of irked when you incessantly bring up climate change at her cocktail parties. (What a downer!) What about the tiny slice of Tea Party in her?

Here are more tips that work for anybody with strong opinions:

Start by making people feel confident about their personal strengths (a.k.a. butter them up). And show pictures!

Why? As Chris Mooney explains over at DeSmogBlog, there’s a funny thing political science researchers call “motivated reasoning” — where “people’s subconscious emotional impulses lead them to respond, in a biased way, to information that challenges their deeply held beliefs and worldviews.” Studies have shown that when confronted with politically inconvenient or world-view-clashing information, it can actually have a “backfire effect” where subjects actually cling even more tightly to existing beliefs in the face of contrary evidence.

But, new research on “the power of political misinformation” by Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler, shows that when contradictory information was presented in the form of a convincing graph, showing a clear trend, the subjects were more likely to accept the new information — or less likely to get defensive and refute it than when they read about the same data without a visual. (You can see the wonky text that failed to convince with the graph that worked, here.)

And, as Mooney explains, when subjects went through a “self-affirmation” exercise, “in which they were asked to describe a positive character attribute or value that they possessed, and talk about a situation in which showing that attribute or trait made them feel good about themselves,” they were far less likely to reject the information that discredited previously held beliefs. As Mooney explains, “what this shows is that people are clearly resisting facts because these threaten their identities — which means that arguing back at them factually will only make them more defensive and engender a backfire effect. By contrast, approaching them in an emotionally sensitive and aware manner, and making them feel less threatened, will open them up. (Sometimes, at least).”

Mooney is quick to point out that the findings aren’t without some problems — especially when it comes to climate change. The study wasn’t conducted “in a really partisan context that would have gotten people’s political emotions firing,” for one thing. Talking about climate change or Obama or — heaven forbid — Al Gore, might throw the “backfire effect” back into high gear for many whose identity is defined in large part by their political views (and against others’ views). These are likely the same folks who will also go to great lengths to trash perfectly legitimate graphical representations of climate information.

Still, there’s no reason not to try these approaches — even if you never talk to a real live Tea Partier. Try it on your best friend!

So, once again, here’s the checklist (in no particular order):

1. Take your climate change conversations from the intellectual to the emotional level and talk in terms of core values;
2. Use faith language when appropriate and when it’s authentic;
3. Talk solutions (and their benefits for health, economic stability, and quality of life);
4. Talk about impacts happening here and now;
5. Tell your audience how smart they are (or have them tell you why they are smart);
6. Show them some charts and graphs.

And … if all that doesn’t work, ask your friend to watch the Republican primary debates with you! Why? According to Jon Krosnick, a political science professor at Stanford University, Americans are forced to think about their stance on global warming when watching conservatives debate climate change. He credits a rise in overall belief in global warming — from 75 percent last year to 83 percent [PDF] in a September 2011 Reuters/Stanford/Ipsos [PDF] poll — to a backlash against all the highly publicized climate science denialism going on in the political arena.

Remind your groovy friends that, as Reuters reports, “Republican presidential candidates, aside from Jon Huntsman, have mostly blasted the idea that emissions from burning fossil fuels and other human actions are warming the planet. The current front-runner, Texas Governor Rick Perry, has accused scientists of manipulating climate data while Michele Bachmann has said climate change is a hoax.”

No wonder Bill Clinton recently said “We look like a joke!”– talking about American climate science denial. The point is that it’s not only the deniers who look bad here; we all look like a joke when the rest of us are complacent about what’s going on.

Extreme weather can be an opening to talking about the climate-weather connection.Photo: Ani Carrington

In the movie, the first rule of Fight Club was “you do not talk about Fight Club.” (That was also the second rule, in case anyone overlooked rule No. 1.) There’s long been a similar but unspoken rule for journalists and scientists when it comes to making a connection between extreme weather and climate change. Don’t talk about it.

But that’s changing. As one of the world’s top climate scientists, Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research — who has been exploring for years how greenhouse pollution influences extreme weather — testified to the joint presidential session on “Communicating Climate Change” (January 2011 in Seattle): “The odds have changed to make certain kinds of events more likely … It is not a well-posed question to ask, ‘Is it caused by global warming?’ or, ‘Is it caused by natural variability?’ Because it is always both.”

He notes that the media continue to issue highly misleading stories about how cold outbreaks, snow events, or one cold month nullifies global warming models, when “the big picture continues to indicate otherwise.”

It’s time to view all weather through the climate change lens, not least the extreme events that are costing us in lives and property.

So, here’s the first rule for talking extreme weather and climate.

Rule No. 1: Do talk about the climate-weather connection.

And here’s why, as concisely as I can …

People love to talk about the weather: The weather is not just for small talk anymore, but talking about it remains a favorite pastime (especially among Americans). In fact, I’d say we are a weather-obsessed culture. Why else would there be a Weather Channel and a slew of TV shows about extreme weather? Just about everybody talks about it, making the topic as good an entry point as we’re likely to see for a while into a broader conversation about climate impacts.

Weather is fundamental — and local: We talk about weather a lot, likely because it’s something that every one of us experiences in immediate, visceral, physical, and emotional ways. Weather is central to our sense of place, even our identity. It is something experienced and understood at the level of our core values: family, community, health, security.

Twisters and other disasters are one thing — emotionally wrenching, not only for the communities affected, but certainly for all of us empathetic onlookers as well. But consider, also, how a plain old summer day spent in a place you love can conjure profoundly personal emotions: happiness, well-being, hopefulness, nostalgia. If freakish weather and ever bigger extremes threaten our favorite places, our sense of security, our family, community, and our very identities are suddenly on the line.

One need only glance at the newspaper to get the feeling that something is going on when it comes to weird weather. So, it may well be that a broader swath of the public is tuning in in new ways. It’s time for a conversation about what current trends mean for our quality of life and our security — today, tomorrow, in five years, and in our kids’ lifetimes.

Doubt isn’t just for “big D” science deniers: One of the biggest challenges for climate communicators is shrinking an abstract, complicated, and global problem in time and place in order to instill a proper sense of urgency as well as a sense that action is both worthwhile and possible. In fact, this is one of the fundamental “brand challenges” of global warming, and the reason that I’ve long pleaded with climate communicators to stop talking about polar bears and stop saying “future generations.” It’s happening now. Our kids’ lives will be defined by climate impacts.

We know that climate change is abstract enough already, and even without our help it seems far away and distant. Even those of us who are fully committed to solutions and knowledgeable about climate science have a hard time imagining impacts during our lifetimes or in our own hometowns. (In fact, an inability to imagine a future different from the present may be a fact of how our brains are wired — and yes, that includes Climate Nerd brains.)

All that makes it difficult to stress the urgency of action to curb climate-warming emissions. For most of us, there are many more pressing concerns (jobs, rent, food, schools, gas prices) that take priority. Here’s how Andrew Revkin put it a year ago:

The sociologists speak of “issue salience” (read Helen Ingram), and global warming has little of this, no matter how many undistorted articles might be written. They also talk about humans’ “finite pool of worry,” and it’s hard to fit global warming, in which the clearest risks are still someday and somewhere, into that pool.

The weather takes a problem of astronomical proportions and makes it local and current — and far more concrete. Perhaps by agreeing on the more immediate imperatives required to protect ourselves and our assets, it’s easier to come to terms with the problem and to become more deeply committed to mitigation when seeing is believing.

It’s irresponsible not to mention climate change: It used to be that a person looked foolish if they mentioned weather and climate in the same sentence, so we shied away from making any links whatsoever. But that, too, is changing.

Weather is not climate. (Here’s NASA on the distinction: “The difference between weather and climate is a measure of time. Weather is what conditions of the atmosphere are over a short period of time, and climate is how the atmosphere ‘behaves’ over relatively long periods of time. When we talk about climate change, we talk about changes in long-term averages of daily weather.”) But, as time ticks on, it’s becoming nearly impossible to talk about one without considering the other — particularly in light of a mounting saga of extreme weather event
s made more likely or severe by a moister, warmer atmosphere.

As researchers for Center for American Progress put it, climate factors — including human influences — shape weather patterns. Trenberth went so far as to say that when we talk about the unusual weather that’s going on, it is “irresponsible not to mention climate change.”

Stay tuned for a discussion of how scientists and journalists who are making the climate-weather connection are framing it up. Also — weather and climate rule No. 2 is on the way.

No one denies that it’s hot. But public debate about climate change is still highly politicized.Photo: Joe Chung

In late July, officials put nearly half of the U.S. population under heat advisories, and an unusually prolonged streak of day and nighttime temperatures broke more than 220 records. At least 22 deaths were heat-related. In Canada, temperatures broke records in two dozen cities across Ontario and Quebec on one day, and Toronto saw its hottest ever July temperature: 100.2 degrees F.

Based on the available data, we can’t officially blame the 2011 heat wave, nor recent disastrous flooding and wildfires, directly or solely on climate change. But a large and growing body of scientific evidence tells us that human-made climate change makes for a hotter, wetter atmosphere where droughts, floods, and heat waves are going to be more frequent and more intense.

The climate science on that score is clear.

In fact, physical science is far clearer than political science, especially when it comes to measuring popular attitudes and beliefs!

For example, even in the face of overwhelming scientific consensus, the issue of human-made climate change is highly politicized in the United States. One recent poll shows that more than two-thirds of Democrats believe “the effects of global warming have already begun to happen,” versus just one-third of Republicans. This partisan divide is even more marked among elected officials. As Joe Romm reports, Wonk Room research shows that well over half (56 percent) of the Republican caucus in the current United States Congress denies the validity of climate science, and 35 of the 47 Republicans in the U.S. Senate publicly question the scientific consensus. That’s an astonishing 74 percent of the party of Lincoln in the U.S. Senate questioning science. Of the 242 Republicans elected to the House of Representatives, 128 (53 percent) publicly question the science.

As one National Journal analysis put it, “The GOP is stampeding toward an absolutist rejection of climate science that appears unmatched among major political parties around the globe, even conservative ones.”

Public attitudes are quite different north of the border, where 80 percent of Canadians believe there is solid evidence of global warming. Still, as the CBC reported a while back, “climate change is becoming the most divisive issue in this country since the fight over energy pricing in the 1970s and ’80s,” and polls suggest that the ruling Conservative Party is out of sync with the Canadian public on climate. Despite clear popular support for strong action, some say that “the Canadian government continues to justify its inaction on climate change by asserting its need to be in lock-step with Washington [D.C.].” And Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper (a Conservative) has shifted back and forth between science denial and supporting climate and energy policies.

Partisanship about scientific facts is one thing. There’s also a quirky opinion research phenomenon called “visceral fit,” where people are more likely to say they believe in the science of global warming if they happen to be “experiencing warm temperatures at the moment the question is asked — even if they’re indoors.”

It makes you wonder what public opinion about climate change might look like today in communities that have suffered extended streaks of 100-degree-plus weather, dust storms, or flood evacuations. Hopefully pollsters are in the field taking stock of the effects extreme weather events may have had on attitudes about climate change.

Meanwhile, at least one fairly recent poll examining views on religion and natural disasters shows that a healthy majority of Americans — nearly six in 10 — say that the severity of recent natural disasters is evidence of global climate change. (On the flip side of that, the same poll found that 44 percent of Americans believe the severity of recent natural disasters is evidence of what the Bible calls the “end times.” Among Republicans, 52 percent believe that natural disasters are evidence of what the Bible calls the “end times,” compared to 41 percent who see it as evidence of global climate change.)

The most recent installment of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication and George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication’s “Six Americas” studies (in the field April 23 – May 12, before the Joplin tornado, before the current heat wave) found that roughly half of all Americans say that global warming is already causing or making the following events worse in the United States: coastline erosion and flooding (52 percent); droughts (50 percent); hurricanes (49 percent); rivers flooding (48 percent); and wildfires (45 percent).

The partisan divide basically vanishes — at least among the general public — when pollsters ask about solutions that would get families and businesses, and our whole economy, off the dirty fuel roller coaster. For example, in an interview with Tony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, Andrew Light of Center for American Progress points out that while the research shows that on the one hand, 64 percent of Americans believe global warming is happening, with only 47 percent believing humans to be the main cause, research from the same month showed that “71 percent o
f Americans said addressing global warming should be a very high, high, or medium priority for Congress, and a whopping 91 percent of Americans — including 85 percent of Republicans — said developing clean energy should be a very high, high, or medium priority.”

Notably, large majorities (including Democrats, Independents, and Republicans) say it is important for their own community to take steps to protect the following from global warming: public health (81 percent), the water supply (80 percent), agriculture (79 percent), wildlife (77 percent), and forests (76 percent).

Additionally, Americans indicate they want more renewable energy even if it costs more. The study shows that 68 percent of Americans (including 82 percent of Democrats, 64 percent of Independents, and 58 percent of Republicans) support requiring electric utilities to produce at least 20 percent of their electricity from renewable energy sources, even if it costs the average household an extra $100 a year. And as of March 2011, a majority of Canadians indicated that they would support policy options like a carbon tax or cap-and-trade even if they cost individuals up to $50 per month in energy expenses.

The Yale/George Mason research also sheds light on which messengers Americans are more likely to trust (or mistrust, as the case may be) when it comes to information about climate. In a nutshell: “Much of the broad information many Americans absorb about climate change is disseminated by the two sources they trust the least — the mainstream news media and their own congressional representatives.”

Who do Americans trust? Perhaps surprisingly, government agencies and scientists in general scored well. For instance, three-quarters of Americans say they have high regard for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as well as scientists overall. The Environmental Protection Agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Park Service, and the Department of Energy got decent marks as well.

For his part, David Roberts doesn’t think that a single disaster (or even a few big “climate disasters”) will likely be enough to change big, entrenched systems — like our economy or our political structures — let alone people’s minds. At least not very dramatically. He’s probably right (and we’ve certainly seen that borne out when it comes to national policy efforts). After all, we have seen Hurricane Katrina and the Gulf of Mexico oil spill come and go from the public mind, creating initial waves of concern about fossil fuels and climate change that fairly quickly dissipated into mere ripples and then all but disappeared. (Here’s an interesting New York Times analysis of this phenomenon among California voters.)

But one or two disasters (even enormous or devastating ones) here and there seems quite different to me from the relentless chain of weather events we’re seeing that are lacerating people and places — both familiar and far off — over the past months and even years. One event is too easy to shove aside as a fluke. But it’s the bigger picture — or tableau of weird weather — that is harder and harder for people to ignore.

Still, as I’ve written before, humans may be hardwired for foot-dragging — and that is unlikely to change dramatically, even in the face of more and more weather-related tragedies. Sadly, it looks like the majority of the people running the show — the ones deciding everybody’s fate even as they seal their own — are particularly prone to inaction and denial. That is, white guys.

As David Roberts wrote recently, “there’s a study running soon in the journal Global Environmental Change called ‘Cool dudes: The denial of climate change among conservative white males in the United States.’ It analyzes poll and survey data from the last 10 years and finds that … are you sitting down? … conservative white men are far more likely to deny the threat of climate change than other people.”

Photo: Chris Toombes

Cross-posted from Sightline Daily. This is part two in the series “Talking Weather and Climate.” Read part one.

If you’re like me, you’ve been mentally cataloging a bunch of weather events that have seemed weird and extreme, wondering to yourself: Is this normal? Am I the only one who thinks this is odd?

Prompted by those feelings, and spurred on by a nascent conversation about the connections between extreme weather and climate change, I started asking the question: Just how should climate change communicators be talking about the weather?

One possible answer came from national climate action guru Bill McKibben.

Sidestepping (stomping on?) the standard-issue disclaimer that “no single weather event can ever be directly tied to climate change,” in a Washington Post op-ed called “A link between climate change and Joplin tornadoes? Never!,” McKibben pours on the sarcasm and tops it with a big helping of irony. He insists that we should absolutely not, under any circumstances, make connections between climate science and the devastating storms, fires, drought, bug infestations, crop failures, or floods we’re witnessing at home and across the globe. Nope! “Best not to ask yourself if there’s a connection,” he writes, “because then you’d inevitably have to wonder about all kinds of other things that you probably don’t want to wonder about, for example, whether President Obama really should have opened a huge swath of Wyoming to new coal mining,” or if Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should really “sign a permit this summer allowing a huge new pipeline to carry oil from the tar sands of Alberta?”

My initial response: Yes! Go, Bill McKibben! He articulated exactly what a Climate Nerd like me was feeling — and said it all without really saying anything at all that science deniers could attack. Why didn’t I think of that?! (Incidentally, McKibben’s op-ed makes for a chilling voice-over script for this video montage by Plomomedia.)

Still, there was inevitable backlash. Even from within the “climate community,” McKibben took some heat for “making overwrought assertions.”

Was it too snarky? Is dark humor inappropriate in this context? Were his claims exaggerated? Climate policy advocates get antsy when one of their own goes on the attack or strays from those ubiquitous disclaimers. Indeed, there are many climate communicators who are gun shy after 2009 polling by Gallup that showed that a record-high 41 percent of Americans thought that media coverage of the threats of global warming were exaggerated. That’s when many of us swore off messages about scary “gloom and doom” climate impacts, instead focusing on solutions and opportunities.

Despite the backlash — or perhaps because it prompted extreme reactions — I’m thinking that McKibben’s approach probably worked best to fire up tried and true climate activists — and it did get a charge out of the science denial set as well. That’s McKibben’s job, after all. But not all of us can pull that kind of thing off. Still, it’s our job to acknowledge and communicate about the fact that climate scientists are increasingly seeing the “fingerprints” of human-made carbon overload of the atmosphere at the “crime scenes” of weather events.

Who else is talking about it?

Timothy Egan weighed in. (The tornado in Joplin, Mo. seemed to be a tipping point for a lot of folks who’d largely been standing on the sidelines on the issue of climate change.)

Egan’s was a zero-snark appeal to American common sense. By way of analogy, he writes that faced with information about risks to our health, “sensible people change course.” Whether that’s really true is up for debate.

Egan continues with a fairly straightforward but serious caution, delivered with the briefest possible overview of the scientific and political landscape: “The consensus of fair-minded research — ignored by those who assume to know better in the Republican Congress — is that an earth warmed by an excess of man-caused carbon emissions will cause more weather extremes.” The forecast is simple, he writes. “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

A surprisingly assertive treatment by Newsweek pointed to a tableau of weird — not to mention tragic and expensive — weather events unfolding in the United States and across the globe, and then echoed Egan’s warning in equally stark terms:

Even those who deny the existence of global climate change are having trouble dismissing the evidence of the last year. In the U.S. alone, nearly 1,000 tornadoes have ripped across the heartland, killing more than 500 people and inflicting $9 billion in damage. The Midwest suffered the wettest April in 116 years, forcing the Mississippi to flood thousands of square miles, even as drought-plagued Texas suffered the driest month in a century. Worldwide, the litany of weather’s extremes has reached biblical proportions. The 2010 heat wave in Russia killed an estimated 15,000 people. Floods in Australia and Pakistan killed 2,000 and left large swaths of each country under water. A months-long drought in China has devastated millions of acres of farmland. And the temperature keeps rising: 2010 was the hottest year on earth since weather records began.

From these and other extreme weather events, one lesson is sinking in with terrifying certainty. The stable climate of the last 12,000 years is gone. Which means you haven’t seen anything yet. And we are not prepared.

Then there was an excellent three-part series by Scientific American which pulls no punches. “Extreme Weather Is a Product of Climate Change,” the headline reads, and the introduction asserts that “more violent and frequent storms, once merely a prediction of climate models, are now a matter of observation.” The author asks: Is the recent spate of extreme events all those dire climate predictions turned into cold, hard reality?

Increasingly, the answer is yes. Scientists used to say, cautiously, that extreme weather events were “consistent” with the predictions of climate change. No more. “Now we can make the statement that particular events would not have happened the same way without global warming,” says Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo.

That’s a profound change –
the difference between predicting something and actually seeing it happen. The reason is simple: The signal of climate change is emerging from the “noise” — the huge amount of natural variability in weather.

Finally, I would be remiss leaving out The Onion’s take on extreme weather and climate change, which takes the form of a mock press statement issued by The Earth and addressed to Humankind:

Following a recent series of disastrous floods along the Mississippi River and destructive tornadoes across much of the United States — as well as a year of even deadlier natural catastrophes all over the world — the Earth said its options for strongly implying that it no longer wants human beings living on it have basically been exhausted.

So, what approach works best?

If McKibben’s (and surely The Onion‘s) fires up the base but turns off the less engaged, Egan, and probably Newsweek, too, likely speak to an important segment of the public who are fairly well-versed in climate science, accept climate change is happening, and are dismayed by extreme weather events, but who haven’t yet experienced a real sense of urgency about global warming and who, in any case, remain mystified about an appropriate response. They likely come away still wondering just how to react.

For its part, Scientific American‘s reasoned look at the science gives the others’ words crucial credibility.

I’ll consider later in this series the effectiveness of particular frames that are emerging in these responses: “a new normal,” a “snapshot of what’s to come,” a “climate wake up call,” “you ain’t seen nothing yet,” to name a few that have cropped up. But for now, let’s consider the key elements that make for effective messages about climate and weather.

In my opinion, Elizabeth Kolbert’s take in The New Yorker is a model to strive for. In a short article, she gives us a snapshot of the extreme weather that’s wreaked havoc here at home and across the globe for real families and real communities (Joplin, Mo., Texas, China, Colombia). She then explains, in simple terms, how all these events are related to a warming climate, pointing to carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels as the primary cause and lamenting a new International Energy Agency report that global CO2 emissions rose by a record amount last year. Then — and this is key — she calls for political and moral accountability:

Obama knows — and, indeed, has stated as much — that if we continue along our present path we’ll guarantee our children a much more dangerous future. Taking the steps that would reduce the risks of climate change is not going to be politically popular, which is why it is the President’s obligation to press for them.

The necessary elements are all there, without any unnecessary snark or wonk or overstatement: the weather, the science, the culprit, and an insistence on policy that does the right thing.

Photo: Tom Magliery

Talking about the weather has always been a favorite American pastime. But recent extreme weather events seem to have propelled us into a post-chitchat era. With droughts, heat waves, dust storms, tornadoes, wildfires, and floods dominating the headlines, many folks are starting to talk about the weather with a sense of mystification — if not dread. And some are even beginning to connect the dots between extreme weather and scientific warnings about global warming.

Like many of you, I’ve been trying to sort out what extreme weather means for those of us who communicate regularly about climate and energy policy.

The post-chitchat era poses both opportunities and risks. On the one hand, extreme weather is exactly what scientific climate models have predicted, and we shouldn’t shy away from pointing that out. On the other hand, while there’s data showing that temperatures are rising, it’s impossible to attribute any single weather event to climate change. There’s a risk of overstating the case or being accused of alarmism, opportunism, or exaggeration.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be looking at how public figures, researchers, scientists, journalists, and regular American voters are talking and thinking about the links between climate and severe weather, with an eye to developing some basic messaging guidelines for climate policy champions.

But first, the lay of the land.

Even with the sun (finally … occasionally) shining in the Northwest, it’s been hard to ignore the unusual flooding, wildfires, and drought that have been pummeling American communities lately — or, for that matter, the weird weather wreaking havoc across the globe. But it took a rash of tornadoes in the American heartland to draw mainstream attention to “weird weather” more generally. What’s emerged is a new kind of conversation about the impacts of climate change. (It should be noted that I made this assertion once before, way back in 2007 — admittedly a bit prematurely.)

Of course, it was tornadoes — with all their gripping, heartbreaking violence and drama, that shocked us to attention. As Pew reported, the “tornadoes that ripped through the Midwest at the end of May dominated the public’s news interest” — by a wide margin — and received much more coverage than any other story that week. And Joe Romm at Think Progress wrote, “the devastation of Joplin, Mo. has led to a super-storm of media stories on the link between climate change and extreme weather, including tornadoes.”

But there’s a bit of a snag; while a warming atmosphere indeed creates the right conditions for more intense storms, when it comes to connecting extreme weather and climate trends, scientists have far more data linking other recent weather phenomena [PDF] to a warming atmosphere. As a result, in the path of the “media storm” Romm describes was a lot of back and forth among climate insiders about tornadoes — particularly around what can and can’t be said conclusively, and dissecting media coverage of the science.

But tornadoes are only part of the story. Heavy rainfall, drought, crop failures, and heat waves also take an enormous toll on human life and property.

One need not get too far into the science to understand the basics. The New Yorker‘s climate specialist, Elizabeth Kolbert, describes it succinctly:

For decades, climate scientists have predicted that, as global temperatures rose, the side effects would include deeper droughts, more intense flooding, and more ferocious storms. The details of these forecasts are immensely complicated, but the underlying science is pretty simple. Warm air can hold more moisture. This means that there is greater evaporation. It also means that there is more water, and hence more energy, available to the system.

And the Center for American Progress makes the important link to human-made, climate-warming pollution:

Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas pollutants are turning up the heat on our planet. Scientists agree that the string of disastrous weather extremes this past year are the types of severe weather that will become more frequent or ferocious as the planet continues to warm.

But many scientists and journalists are still cautious — as are policy folks like me.

But the weather is happening. Thus the conversation is happening. So, the time is now for climate communicators to play a proactive role in parsing the science for laypeople and helping connect the dots — not only between climate and weather but also between weather and policy solutions to curb climate-warming emissions.

Stay tuned for a whole slew of reasons why it’s time to stop erring on the side of caution and to begin addressing the weather-climate connection in earnest in our communications, along with examinations of some possible approaches and frames, at look at public receptiveness to the weather-climate conversation, what messaging experts are saying, and — ultimately — my take on best practices.

Are climate scientists the Milhouses of America?

I encourage you to check out a downright awesome analysis of the treatment of global warming on The Simpsons, over at The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media.* Meanwhile, here’s my take.

The Simpsons phenomenon is a reminder of the power of pop culture to reflect — and shape — political attitudes. But, as Sara Peach concludes, the longest running (hardest working?) show on TV hasn’t exactly moved the public forward on the issue of climate change — in terms of basic knowledge about the actual phenomenon or the possible solutions, nor empathy for those who are concerned about it.

Still, for anyone, like me, trying to communicate about climate change, the analysis (and clips) can be instructive. The Simpsons‘ caricatures of American attitudes about global warming are not only sobering reminders of exactly what we’re up against, but also illustrate well (and I think, accurately) how messages about the highly-partisan issue can fall on deaf ears — or worse: backfire.

Of course, all this may come across as an exercise in setting unreasonable expectations for a sitcom — a cartoon no less! — to serve a greater, more meaningful function tackling society’s big political challenges. But, the fact is, The Simpsons is kind of uber-mainstream, and for all its bathroom humor, it’s indisputably political.

(Why uber-mainstream? In a media landscape where audiences are increasingly fractured by differing worldviews, the once wildly popular adult cartoon show remains consistently popular across audiences, regardless of the usual demographic or political chasms that can separate American viewing blocks — and despite its consistent, satirical and political content.)

That said, while global warming has been addressed on the show, it hasn’t received nearly as much attention or been as pointedly tackled as the writers’ “pet” political issues (recurring topics like religious intolerance, the dangers of nuclear power, and the excesses of capitalism, for example.) As Peach reports, of more than 475 episodes aired, The Simpsons has mentioned climate change in fewer than 10.

What’s instructive, nonetheless, is watching how our well-intentioned messages about climate change run the risk of further entrenching previously held views or minimizing both risk and urgency — even if it all plays out among the bright yellow citizens of a fictional town. It’s an exaggerated but correct look at Main Street America.

One example: Polled a year ago by Gallup, two-thirds of Americans said they believed global warming will not affect them in their lifetimes. Is a certain ambivalence about whether or not the effects of climate change are actually happening reinforced when, for example, Homer Simpson (however buffoonish) points to a heavy snowfall as a reason to laugh off Lisa’s warnings about the problem?

In the same vein, Tony Broccoli, a climate scientist at Rutgers University who Peach interviewed for her analysis, points out one of the challenges that has plagued climate communicators from the beginning, namely that “warming” might not actually sound very bad. Illustrating this problem, The Simpsons‘ news anchor Kent Brockman asks: “Could this record-breaking heat wave be the result of the dreaded greenhouse effect? Well, if 70-degree days in the middle of winter are the ‘price’ of car pollution, you’ll forgive me if I keep my old Pontiac.” Joke or not, this kind of message reinforces peoples’ uncertainty about the severity of the threat. When we can laugh about something like this are we off the hook for worrying or taking action?

Sadly, it may simply be that The Simpsons is a less powerful political entity than it once was — and climate change politics may be the biggest casualty of its decline. As Sara Peach writes, scholars of The Simpsons lament a deterioration of the show’s writing in general, and particularly the biting political commentary. The 1990s “golden years,” when The Simpsons hit a pinnacle of hard hitting political satire, is over.

One result, according to The Simpsons scholar Chris Turner,* has been that The Simpsons writers have relied increasingly on the most extreme and negative stereotypes of environmentalists — always good for a laugh, but not great for building empathy or issue understanding. In recent years, for example, “Lisa has been characterized as a shrill doomsayer” — not one of her more endearing roles.

Climate communications research has shown that gloom and doom messages can overwhelm people to the degree that they simply shut down and don’t want to think about the issue. The annoying, shrill, extreme environmentalist is perhaps the worst messenger to deliver information about the science of global warming. It may be that for all her good intentions Lisa — the character we’re all counting on to educate the public about climate change — serves merely to reinforce the fairly widespread public sentiment that the threat of climate change has been exaggerated (48 percent of Americans in March 2010).

Entertainment is entertainment. No one ever asked more of the show. Nonetheless, there is a sense that opportunities have been missed. “Their take on climate change has been pretty weak,” says Turner. “That’s a bit of a shame, because if there is anywhere that climate change could get a great hearing in pop culture, it would be in The Simpsons.”

*[Correction, 14 Feb. 2011: This article originally called the publication the Yale Forum on Climate Communications. The publication is The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media.]

*[Correction, 14 Feb. 2011: This article originally stated that Tim Delaney argued that The Simpsons writers now rely on stereotypes of environmentalists. In fact, Chris Turner made this argument.]

(Jon Stewart illustrates better than anyone how poorly this line has fared—as far back as the Nixon years!)

And Yglesias isn’t alone. My colleagues in the climate policy communications arena have long known that it’s hard to argue with the drill, baby drill (or dig, baby dig) mentality when you’re pushing independence. Tapping nationalism and an already ramped-up fear of “evil-doers” has had its allure. But it blunts the issue, weakening calls for a shift away from dirty energy altogether.

But, I’m not sure that I agree with Yglesias when it comes to lumping “security” and “independence”—I think these are two distinct frames that work quite differently, especially in light of the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster. And security works well with another powerful frame that’s been floated a lot lately: oil addiction.

Addiction works within a larger security frame because addiction is reckless, unhealthy, mindless, irresponsible, out of control…a clear threat to our security. Addiction means vulnerability, it’s a roller-coaster ride, an accident waiting to happen. Addiction is short-sighted, greedy, lazy, morally-corrupt. And a major, catastrophic, and unstoppable oil spill is a wake up call.

The bottom line is that Americans agree when national leaders convey that fossil fuels are dirty and dangerous on many levels—the BP fiasco, along with recent coal mine and oil refinery tragedies, is a sobering illustration of that. Polling confirms that the public is receptive. Now where are the leaders?

Sadly, as Ezra Klein points out, in Obama’s big Oval Office speech the other night on BP and energy, he failed to actually mention climate, making only vague allusions to the “great challenge.” (Klein: I’m just not sure how you do a response to climate change if you can’t really say the words “climate change.”) But, Obama did—at least in part—switch up his message from independence (though he did say ‘energy independence’ once) to addiction. 

Still, Obama could have made a much stronger case for comprehensive energy policy. The public is all ears. As Matthew Nisbett points out over at Framing Science, the BP disaster has lead to a marked shift in public opinion about domestic oil vs. environmental protection. :

Over the last three months, Gallup polling finds that the Gulf oil spill has led to an expected shift in Americans’ views on the balance between pursuing energy supplies and environmental protection. As Gallup reports, in March, by 50% to 43%, Americans said it was more important to develop U.S. energy supplies than to protect the environment, continuing a trend in the direction of energy production seen since 2007. By mid-May, following heavy news and public attention to the oil spill, the majority had shifted to favor environmental protection, by 55% to 39% — the second-largest percentage (behind the 58% in 2007) favoring the environment in the 10-year history of the question.

Perhaps more tellingly, an early June poll by Benenson Strategy Group, on behalf of the League of Conservation Voters, found that 66 percent of Americans polled agree with the statement that, “British Petroleum must pay for the damage they’ve done. But our addiction to oil threatens our security and we need more than a band-aid for that. Senators need to pass real reforms to hold polluters accountable and invest in clean American energy.” (emphasis added)

I should mention that an “energy independence” frame didn’t do badly in the Benenson poll either. The good news is that the poll still showed strong support for the energy bill–by 64 to 25 percent–even after respondents heard an opposition text packed with all the standard anti-climate legislation buzz phrases: “cap and tax,” “job-killer,” “pay more at the pump,” “cost for struggling middle class families,” “taxpayers’ hard-earned money for a wasteful Washington program,” yada, yada, yada.

Clearly the spill is intensifying the public’s desire for action. Maybe at a certain point any message works as long as it’s clear, honest, and strong. The problem is finding national-level leaders willing to stand up. 

Photo courtesy MorgueFile.

This post originally appeared at Sightline’s Daily Score blog.

Still, most experts still agree that breast milk is the healthiest choice for both moms and babies. That’s probably why parenting magazines and doctors’ office pamphlets rarely mention chemical contaminants in human breast milk: they want to encourage breastfeeding, rather than sow doubt about it. And as a result, moms are exposed to a lot of information on the health benefits of breastfeeding, yet hear little about the industrial toxics that contaminate human milk.

But as Sandra Steingraber (author, biologist, and breastfeeding advocate who’s written and lectured extensively on the subject) points out, breast milk commonly violates Food and Drug Administration levels for poisonous substances in food. She writes: “Were it regulated like infant formula, the breast milk of many US mothers would not be able to be legally sold on supermarket shelves.”

Yikes! Okay, so that information did not appear on the ubiquitous breastfeeding “pros and cons” lists in my baby books.

But even armed with this information, we face a tough choice. Just because the scales still tip toward breast milk in the bulk of available risk-benefit analyses, it doesn’t mean the risks from chemical contaminants go away. And rather than silence on the issue, our society desperately needs an open, public conversation about keeping breast milk safe—and about strong community standards that can prevent dangerous toxins from getting into our bodies in the first place.

Unlike a lot of moms, I did know a bit about the industrial-age compounds that likely contaminate my own body—and that I would be feeding to my baby through my breast milk. I’d read Steingraber’s book. Sightline had conducted a study a few years back that found frighteningly high levels of PBDEs in northwestern moms’ milk.

Despite those risks, I decided to breastfeed my baby anyway. My rational side factored in the apparent much-lauded benefits of breastfeeding (and not just breast milk, but all that nursing entails, including physical contact between mother and baby), weighing them against the risks that I knew of. But, ultimately, it was far from a rational decision: I felt a deep, instinctual, emotional—and dare I say chemical—drive to breastfeed. It seemed as if there was really no other choice: nursing felt like sacred rite of motherhood that I was duty-bound to fulfill.
 
Okay, now that I just wrote that out (sounding like a bit of a militant “lactivist” myself), I begin to question how much of this is coming from my own “maternal instincts” and how much of it is manufactured by what a colleague here at Sightline calls the Cult of Breastfeeding—a.k.a. the prevailing societal force that insists that breast feeding is the “ultimate badge of responsible parenting” (and anything less is equivalent to feeding your newborn soda pop.) Either way, I shudder to think of how I would have reacted—hormones raging—if I were told that toxics levels in my milk were too dangerous to feed to my child!! What would other moms do if they were told that they shouldn’t nurse their babies? The image of all those bouncing babies ripped from their mothers’ arms underscores my belief that toxics in our bodies should never, ever become the deciding factor.

So, even if I admit the drive to nurse is complex, the benefits of breast milk are lauded as legion. According to Steingraber (based on her review of countless studies), “breastfed infants have fewer respiratory and middle-ear infections, are less prone to diarrhea, and are less likely to succumb to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Breastfed infants grow into children who suffer less than their bottle-fed counterparts from juvenile diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, obesity, dental malocclusions, and some leukemias. They respond more vigorously to vaccinations. They have better hearing and visual acuity. They develop balance and gross motor coordination more quickly. Some studies show higher IQs. Plus, breastfeeding may protect a woman against some breast and ovarian cancers.

On the flip side, some of the toxics that are found in our milk have been linked to cancer, behavioral disorders, learning disabilities, and a host of other serious health problems. 

Again, what evidence there is seems to be stacked in favor of breast milk as a food source for infants. But, as a side note, it’s worth pointing out, as Hanna Rosin did in her—sobering and yet quite hilarious—article, “The Case Against Breast-Feeding,” in the Atlantic last year, that studies on breastfeeding, while profuse, do not always make the clear cut case for breast milk that pervades mainstream Baby Lit…for various reasons—a big one being the inability to have a control group due to obvious ethical concerns. Another one is that women who breastfeed are self-selecting and it’s hard not to confound factors in outcomes like a child’s health or IQ.

Rosin, among other breast is best skeptics, points to research that shows that breast feeding is probably just slightly better for the health of the child. That may be. But it’s also difficult to separate the physiological benefits of breast milk from benefits that are reaped from the physical and emotional act of breastfeeding itself—basic skin on skin contact and just plain dedicated time spent focused on the baby, for example. The distinction is worth making—benefits of milk as a food source aside, dangerous concentrations of toxics could discourage important physical and emotional bonding that’s difficult to quantify. I think of all the hours that I’ve already spent with my 4 month old, nursing her, but also singing, cooing, and talking to her, smiling at her, playing with her feet, rocking her, etc. Again, hard to quantify, but certainly of value in a child’s development.

(By the way, Rosin’s main argument is that our cultural insistence on breastfeeding has hobbled progress on women’s equality in marriage and in the workforce, but that’s a discussion for another time.)

Whew! So what it boils down to is that weighing all the potential risks against breastfeeding and breast milk’s many benefits is essentially impossible, even for an army of experts. It’s also beside the point. The choice is a personal one, but a choice there should be! And it should never be a question of choosing the lesser of two evils. We have a shared responsibility to safeguard the basic human right to grow up untainted by damaging chemicals. Put another way, chemical risks in today’s environment aren’t a matter of choice; they’re an assault on basic rights.

But if we’re silent about this chemical assault—if we hide facts about what’s in our bodies and our breast milk out of fea
r that we’ll turn some moms off from breastfeeding—we could simply hasten the day when breastfeeding simply isn’t safe (again, picture in your mind the babies being ripped from their mothers arms!). Steingraber says it best:

…I still felt strongly that we needed to have an informed public conversation about the presence of persistent toxic chemicals in breast milk. We cannot solve public health problems by keeping secrets.

The reason I believe that these kinds of risk-benefit analyses are an unhelpful approach to the problem of chemical contaminants in breast milk is that they offer no solutions. The usual recommendation that follows from them–”just keep nursing because the benefits outweigh the risks”–means that we nursing mothers should take no action until our milk becomes so contaminated as to pose as many risks to pediatric health as formula. 

Risk-benefit analyses imply that as long as one danger (breastfeeding) is less than another (failure to breastfeed), we should accept the lesser danger—even though it still necessitates endangering our children. The narrow duality of the risk-benefit equation leaves no room for the proposition that the feeding of babies should be a risk-free activity. Period. 

To move toward collective outrage that might lead to policy solutions, moms should be informed that human breast milk is contaminated with all kinds of stuff we’d never dream of feeding our babies: insecticides, PCBs, PBDEs, flame retardants, fungicides, wood preservatives, termite poisons, mothproofing agents, toilet deodorizers, dry-cleaning fluids, gasoline vapors, and dioxins. As Steingraber has written, “some of these are known human carcinogens; some are known immune suppressors; some are powerful endocrine disrupters. All are fat-soluble which means mother’s milk is a perfect carrier.”

As a nursing mother, I banished the ugly facts from my mind and did what felt right for me. I’m not in the camp that tries to make moms feel guilty if they don’t breastfeed. Not at all. I can list as many reasons to do it as there are not to! And, like Hanna Rosin wrote, I have no grandiose illusions that I’m making my baby that much leaner, healthier, and smarter with my milk, but as she so eloquently put it, “breast-feeding does not belong in the realm of facts and hard numbers; it is much too intimate and elemental.”

Whatever the benefits and risks wrapped up in my own choice, whatever sacrifices of time, money (because my time is money after all), and sanity I’m making to work and continue to breastfeed, I believe my baby has a right to breast milk that’s not laced with chemicals as well as a right to the comfort and psychological needs that nursing meets for her. Just as I have a right to choose to nurse her. So, I simply can’t say enough times that breastfeeding shouldn’t merely be the less risky choice. More alarmingly, if we don’t set higher community standards for pollution, to stop chemicals and toxics from getting into our food, water—our bodies—in the first place, there may not always be a choice. Breast milk could become too poisonous to feed to our babies.

At some point, it’s not a question of whether or not we can or should let that happen—but what it says about our society if we do.

Photo courtesy Flickr user fikirbaz under the Creative Commons license.

This post originally appeared at Sightline’s Daily Score blog.