The true cause and effects of climate change: The most under-reported story in science and the environment.

April 19, 2019

Seeing is not always believing. I’m writing this just minutes after hundreds of police officers closed in on Extinction Rebellion protesters on the fifth day of largely peaceful demonstrations in central London. More than 500 people have been arrested at protests on Waterloo Bridge, outside Parliament Square and in Oxford Circus. Police surrounded a pink boat — yes, you read that right — in Oxford Circus with the words, “Tell The Truth” emblazoned across its hull, moments after the actress Emma Thompson told activists that her generation has “failed young people” — the same message 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg, 44 years Thompson’s junior, impressed on MEPs, members of the European Parliament, earlier in the week.

“We are here in this little island of sanity and it makes me so happy yo be able to join you all and add my voice to the young people here who have inspired a whole new movement,” Thompson told the crowd, in what sounded like pre-prepared, carefully rehearsed comments. She’s an actress, after all.

The police, London mayor Sadiq Khan and newspaper editorial writers don’t see it that way, of course. Drivers inside London’s fee-generating Decongestion Zone — the clue is in the name — should be allowed to drive unimpeded, it appears. Making money is more important than the environment. Gas guzzlers are fine, thank you very much, as long as you’re willing to pay the surcharge on your gas-guzzling older model vehicle, on top of the charge you already pay for driving through the centre of London.

The police were certainly pre-prepared. BBC reported many of the officers were wearing high-vis jackets sporting the words “Protestor Removal Team,” something they wouldn’t have bothered with had they no intention of removing protestors.

It’s worth remembering that it’s now the weekend, and a long weekend at that. Or, as they call it in Britain — irony unintended — a “bank holiday weekend.”

The protests come at a time when many of the same media outlets that are criticizing the demonstrations with op-ed pieces headed, “The Extinction Rebels have got their tactics badly wrong,” have said — in separate pieces, written by other writers — that climate change and, more importantly, the cause(s) that lie behind climate change, is the single most overlooked, under-reported story in media today.

That will doubtless sound counterintuitive to anyone reading this page, or who follows groups like SeaLegacy and the Rare & Endangered Species Trust (REST Namibia) on Facebook, where the news seems to be nothing but climate change. For all their passion, though, these are niche audiences — the mainstream news, even on Earth Day weekend, is all about Trump, Brexit and Notre Dame Cathedral, and who’s going to be named “Head of Household” this weekend on Big Brother: Canada.

And the news on Trump has nothing to do with his stance on climate and the environment (“HIs ignorance is startling,” according to the journal Oil Change International) but rather his propensity for corruption, obstruction of justice and currying favour with his country’s traditional enemies in order to win an election against an unpopular opponent — two years ago.

“Hearts and minds will not be won with protest puppetry, guerrilla gardening and talk of climate justice,” the protest’s detractors say, citing the usual bromides: Blocking bridges, disrupting public transport and gluing themselves to fences outside politicians’ homes is no way to effect change, leaving aside the fact that street demonstrations in Paris in May, 1968 did exactly that, and shaped French society for decades — decades — afterwards. The May 1968 street protests in France are today considered a cultural, social and moral turning point in that nation’s history. The 1968 Paris demonstrations succeeded in part, activist and then-protest leader Alain Geismar — a physicist sentenced to 18 months in jail for his actions — would point out, because they were “a social revolution, not a political one.”

The Extinction Rebellion protests might yet mark a turning point in what to date has been a struggle for climate activists to seize the public conversation. The old simp about how meaningful and long-lasting change requires more talk and less direct action no longer holds water — pun intended. The climate crisis is no longer a crisis but an emergency. The time for talk is over. Climate model after climate model shows that the process of global warming is accelerating at a pace beyond even the most pessimistic — some would say realistic — projections. It’s no longer enough to say Canada’s Northwest Passage will be free of summer ice in our lifetime — it is already ice-free in the summer months. As the David Attenborough Netflix program Our Planet documented painfully in its episode about the polar regions, Arctic sea ice has vanished to the point where walruses are dying from jumping off rock cliffs, thinking they’ll land in water. This is happening now, today, not in some abstract future. And that’s what the Extinction Rebellion protests are about. They’re a call to action. And whether you choose to believe 60-year-old Emma Thompson or 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, it’s time for everyone to wake up.

Here are the ways climate change has gone unreported by the mainstream media in the past year, according to a study by the NGO Care International that analyzed more than one million online news stories.

Climate change was directly responsible for the majority of humanitarian disasters over the past year. Entire populations were affected by food crises caused by drought or hurricane flooding in countries from Ethiopia, Sudan and Chad to the Philippines, Madagascar and Haiti, and yet few of these crises generated more than 1,000 news stories each.

In Madagascar, more than a million people went hungry as corn and rice fields withered in a drought exacerbated by severe El Niño conditions. Today, almost half that country’s children suffer from stunted growth, according to CARE International, but their suffering has generated scant few headlines. Across the globe, extreme weather events claimed more than 5,000 lives in 2018 and left 25 million people in need of humanitarian aid and emergency assistance.

As Asad Rehman, executive director of the NGO War on Want, told The Guardian, “Climate change reporting prefers pictures of polar bears to those who we are killing with our inaction.”

Dr. Viwanou Gnassounou, assistant secretary general of the Africa Caribbean Pacific (ACP) group of states and the point person on ACP’s program for sustainable development, told The Guardian that donor countries often link aid to an agreement to remain silent on the climate change.

“We try always to show that these disasters are linked to climate change but we have to fight to get our points heard. We have not been very successful until now. The media coverage is poor and reported in terms of ‘disaster’ — not linked to climate change or its consequences.

“They will never say it formally but it is part of the conversation,” Gnassounou told The Guardian. “They prefer that you condemn yourself by saying you did not have a proper policy to prevent disaster and now you need their support.”

Contrast that with what some of the demonstrators were telling local papers these past few days in London.

Here was Cathy Eastburn, 51, who told reporters she decided to take a stand for her teenage daughters. “I don’t want to be here today, and I’m really sorry for the disruption, but I feel I have been forced to do this,” she told The Guardian’s Matthew Taylor and Damien Gayle. “I have two daughters and I can’t sit by while their future is threatened … The government is doing nothing. We have to force them to act.”

Given the stakes involved, an extra weekend of traffic disruption in central London seems a small price to pay to get the rest of world to wake up.

http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/articles/entry/as-trumps-climate-denial-continues-a-global-rebellion-spreads?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIiazbxKDc4QIVCNVkCh3FkgiPEAAYASAAEgIQq_D_BwE

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/19/extinction-rebellion-climate-change-protests-london

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47976184?fbclid=IwAR2FXxfzQqQTi1N23u5VAgPAliGA4i20ozZGp1MNNBT_krBuI9F6YAL3sWk

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/29/world/europe/29iht-france.4.12440504.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/06/climate-manifesto/

https://theconversation.com/why-covering-the-environment-is-one-of-the-most-dangerous-beats-in-journalism-105477

The “eye of the beholder” and award competitions: When seeing is not always believing.

March 25, 2019

Another internationally juried photo prize, another controversy — another scandal.

Malaysian photographer Edwin Ong Wee Kee’s haunting image of a partially blind Vietnamese woman carrying her baby won top honours — and the USD $120,000 prize that came with it — at the 2019 Hamdan International Photography Award (HIPA) in Dubai.

Ong’s vision was judged to be the most representative of this year’s theme, “Hope,” and there’s an undeniable human quality to the image, its depiction of sadness and loss, coupled with one person’s determination to survive, despite the challenges.

As reported on PetaPixel, though, according to those who were there at the March 12 ceremony, the announcement was greeted with several eye-rolls, mutterings and murmurs of thinly veiled irritation. Here we go again with the poverty porn, they seemed to be saying.

The term “poverty porn” has been used to describe photographers’ fixation on images of people struggling to survive desperate circumstances. These images are considered safe to do because to dismiss the image is to dismiss the subject, and who in good conscience would do that?

There’s a growing feeling in the photography community, though, that creativity — looking at familiar subjects in new, unfamiliar ways — should count for more than always taking the safe and obvious route, especially when it comes to internationally recognized competitions.

Any announcement of a major award, especially one with money involved, is bound to be greeted with catcalls. Judging is subjective, after all. My choice may not be yours. Cynics are everywhere, and it’s always easier to disagree than to agree. Safe choices are safe for a reason: People like them, and photo juries tend to agree. When a rare, controversial choice is made — South African photographer Brent Stirton’s image of a slaughtered rhino winning the prestigious 53rd annual Wildlife Photographer of the Year award being a prime example — the resulting public disagreement, and the bad press that comes with it, can scare future juries away from making similar choices.

The Wildlife Photographer jury opted for a much safer image in this year’s awards, picking Dutch photographer Marsel van Oosten’s portrait of two rare golden snub-nosed monkeys in China's Qinling mountains, over a field of nominees that included SeaLegacy photographer Justin Hofman’s unforgettable — and hard to look at — image of a starving polar bear in Canada’s far north.

The Hamdan International Photography Award was bound to have its detractors, in other words, no matter what image was chosen.

But then the other shoe dropped, and a controversy became a scandal.

It turns out the photo was probably staged. The seemingly natural image — with its echoes of Steve McCurry’s famous National Geographic cover shot of “the Afghan Girl” — was one of several taken by a group of photographers at a photo-op session organized by fellow photographer Ab Rashid.

Ong defended his image to the Malaysian daily The Star, telling the paper, “In this trip to Vietnam, we (photographers) went to the rice field and there was a mother (with her children) that passed by. We never told her to stand up or sit down.”

Strictly speaking, Ong never violated any rules of the contest: Unlike some juried photo competitions, the Hamdan Photography Award doesn’t require photographers to sign a claim that prohibits staging or, in the case of nature photography competitions like the London Natural History Museum’s Wildlife Photographer awards, that the subject be free-ranging, in its natural habitat. Unlike the World Press Photo Awards — itself a lightning rod for recent controversy — the Hamdan Award doesn’t demand that photographers follow the principles and ethics of professional photojournalism, with its emphasis on hard news.

Recent past winners of the Hamdan Award show an understandable bias towards photojournalism, though, and it’s easy to see why: These are the images that reflect the world as it is, not necessarily as we want it to be.

©Mohammed Alragheb/Hamdan International Photography Awards

Even so, there’s something unsettling knowing that an image was, if not staged exactly, certainly posed, when comparisons to actual, genuine photojournalism are not just implied but obvious for all to see.

In a thoughtful essay on PetaPixel, Yale University graduate, iTunes podcaster and PhotoShelter co-founder Allen Murabayashi suggests the problem isn’t the contest but us, as a society.

“We feel duped,” he wrote, “not necessarily because the image may or may not have been directed. We feel duped because Ong took the image with a gaggle of other photographer of a young, impoverished mother in a way that feels creepily reminiscent of a mid-20th-century all-male camera club hiring a female model.”

We live in an Instagram culture of algorithm-generated clicks that encourages “likes” and feeds on our collective vanity and search for validation.

“The same people who decry contests use platforms like Twitter and Facebook to build their own followings,” Murabayashi said, “while chasing retweets and likes of their own.”

Our collective fascination with the pain and suffering of those less fortunate than ourselves is harder to reconcile. A powerful image of someone in distress can raise awareness and generate much-needed funding for relief efforts — we can’t rely on Western and particularly US politicians to do the right thing — but there’s also that disquieting feeling that it’s amoral to celebrate suffering in the form of competitions that provide a cash prize — in some cases a significant cash prize, as with the Hamdan Award — to the winners.

Perhaps, as some have suggested, any monetary reward should go to the subject, at least in part.

There’s an upside to the Hamdan Award as is, Murabayashi suggests.

“If nothing else, maybe increased awareness of the world’s richest photo contest will attract a whole new wave of photographers doing important, long-term work.”

Perhaps. As long as photo captions — and juried competitions — don’t explicitly explain whether an image was natural or posed, though, questions will remain. Troubling questions.

https://petapixel.com/2019/03/18/the-winning-photo-of-the-120k-hipa-prize-was-apparently-staged/

Later: Here’s an interesting thought.

In the stream of comments posted on PetaPixel and other sites in the wake of the “posed photo” revelation, more than one person suggested the behind-the-scenes image below tells a more topical, relevant story than the actual image that won the Hamdan Award.

It has certainly kickstarted a more far-reaching conversation about the relationship between photographer and subject, and how the haves often exploit the have-nots for their own purposes, regardless of motive.

That’s not news, of course — or won’t be to anyone with even a rudimentary grasp of how the world works — but it’s worth talking about in the open, in online chat forums and other public spaces, and not behind closed doors in sequestered photo-jury rooms.

Another interesting question: How many of these photographers pictured here got exactly the same image, but didn’t think to submit it to an international photo competition?

How original is originality supposed to be, anyway?

After all, the eye of the beholder doesn’t add up to much if everyone sees the same thing.

Food for thought.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2018: The experts have spoken. Now it’s the people’s turn.

October 28, 2018

It’s a known fact: People trust customer reviews more than they do critics. As one influencer posted recently on Review Trackers — not exactly an unbiased source, as any objective, professional journalist worth their salt, would point out — “So it’s between the New York Times and Yelp.”

The academia website academia.edu recently asked — somewhat rhetorically — if consumer critics write differently from professional critics, while the self-explanatory site “Coaching for Leaders” (coachingforleaders.com) named “3 Differences Between Feedback and Criticism” (the Dale Carnegie principle: ‘Don’t criticize, condemn or complain’).

All of which is a roundabout way of taking a second look at the 54th annual Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards, announced just last week.

I was fairly critical — and I stand by my criticism — of the judging committee’s choice for the top image this year, which favoured the safe and comfortable over last year’s daring and, some would say, controversial and inappropriate choice of a poached rhino, slaughtered for its horn, worth an estimated USD $120,000 on today’s black market. (Why ground powder from rhino horn, made of the same material — keratin — as our fingernails, should be so valuable to a primarily Asian market, and it is strictly an Asian market we’re talking about here, is a topic for a whole other debate.) One idea holds that wildlife photography awards should celebrate the beauty of nature; the other holds that, in the environmental catastrophe facing humankind and planet Earth today, the top award is better suited as a deliberate provocation, urging us to wake up and shake us out of our complacency.

Any award calling itself “the People’s Choice” wears its intention clearly and on its sleeve, though. Every year, following the WPOTY’s black-tie awards dinner at London’s Natural History Museum, the “Oscars of wildlife photography awards,” as they’ve been called, the judging committee announces 24 images shortlisted for the People’s Choice Award, which is announced the following February (voting for this year’s edition closes Dec. 13). Each visitor to the Natural History Museum’s website is allowed one vote, and one vote only. (This isn’t America’s Got Talent, where you can vote early and often, in almost as many different ways as you can think of.)

Anything open to the general public is driven by emotion, not reason.

That’s positive emotion, though. One of this year’s shortlisted finalists, of a starving polar bear, went viral around the world earlier this year. It sparked a lively and at times bitter debate about humankind’s effect on climate change in the polar regions. (Climate deniers refused to accept that the melting polar caps could have anything to do with a starving polar bear, et alone that humans might be responsible.) The image, by SeaLegacy conservation photographer Justin Hofman, is undeniably powerful, and has already proved influential, but I suspect it won’t win the people’s vote. (In his caption, titled “A Polar Bear’s Struggle,” Hofman admits his entire body was pained as he witnessed the starving bear scavenge for food at an abandoned hunter’s in the Canada’s high Arctic; the bear could barely stand under its own power, Hofman recalled.)

There’s nothing wrong, in this case, with favouring beauty over fragility. Inspiration works in wondrous, often mysterious ways. In a world beset by grim, increasingly bleak news — everything from climate change and dwindling food resources to a new mass extinction — one can’t fault people for looking for a ray of light in the darkness, wherever that light may be found.

As the Natural History Museum’s own guidelines for the Lumix People’s Choice award points out, they’re looking for a winning image that “puts nature in the frame,” something that reflects the beauty and fragility of the natural world — with the emphasis, I’m guessing, on “beauty.”

A conservation-photographer acquaintance and occasional travel companion tells me he’s doubtful of people’s choice awards as a rule, since a public vote tends to favour those finalists who have a sizeable social media following, and he has a point.

Still, as someone who pays attention to customer reviews — I’ve personally known a number of professional critics, in different fields, who are so screwed up I’m not sure I’d trust their judgment of anything, let alone something I care about — I’m always curious to see where popular tastes lie.

I’ve yet to decide which image I’ll be voting for myself, but I have narrowed my choice down to three or four candidates. I have until next month to make my final decision — and you to, too, if you choose to participate.

As with any vote, though, remember: If you don’t vote, when you had the chance, you can’t complain afterwards, if the vote didn’t go the way you want.

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit/wpy/community/peoples-choice/2018/index.html

Wildlife Photographer of the Year is the world's most prestigious nature photography competition (WildlifePhotographerOfTheYear.com). This year’s finalists and winners, some 100 images in all, are on display at London’s Natural History Museum from now until June 30, 2019. See nhm.ac.uk/wpy for tickets.