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Environment Reporting
threatening to resign to make my point.
And in that time, I’ve succeeded in
explaining the NIMBY (Not In My Backyard)
syndrome and done follow-ups
on international conferences on energy,
global warming, ozone depletion,
dangerous waste, health hazards,
all the while working on the national
TV news. Difficulties arose when I tried
to explain scientific phenomena such
as ozone depletion, or tried to give
progress reports on these subject during
daily newscasts, when most of the
time was devoted only to hot, hard
news.
After a while I realized that if I wanted
to educate people about the environment,
I needed to work in a different
format than daily news. My reporting
would work better in a weekly program
about ecology. Then, an opportunity
for this seemed about to appear.
Five years ago, SRC created RDI, a CNNtype
all-news network. They had
planned a weekly show on the environment
and even considered me for the
position of anchor. But the project did
not materialize because the editors
thought that it was too costly. They
decided instead to create a fashion
show.
Now I am the SRC correspondent
on Canada’s West Coast, where I use
most of my free time to assess the
impact of global warming on the environment,
mainly in Northern Canada
and in the Arctic. In four years of reporting
on climate change in the north,
in the Yukon and Alaska, I’ve covered a
wide range of issues—the impact of
the melting of the permafrost on structures,
cities and roads; the movement
of the tree line north to where there is
only tundra, and the loss of newborns
in the porcupine caribou herd because
of increased snowfall. I’ve also followed
the research being done by scientists
from Canada, Japan and Denmark on
Mount Logan, the highest peak in
Canada, to determine through ice cores
whether there was a cycle of warmer
temperatures 150,000 years ago.
This summer, I visited the Arctic to
assess how the melting of ice in the
Northwest Passage is threatening the
sovereignty of Canada, since the United
States now wants its ships to use this
shorter seaway rather than the Panama
Canal. I did stories about Tuktoyaktuk,
a Canadian village on the Beaufort Sea,
which would be the first human settlement
to be moved inland because of
global warming. Soil erosion up there
has been accelerated by the lack of ice
cover. I also showed how builders in
Alaska and the Yukon, as temperatures
rise, are reacting to the melting of the
permafrost by using thermosyphons—
20 foot tubes exposed to air filled with
carbon dioxide that freezes the permafrost
back.
I’ve devoted a lot of reporting time
to covering what I believe is the most
important issue in the environmental
field today—global warming and its
impact on the northern structures and
habitats. If we are dealing with a temperature
increase of one degree at our
latitude, in more northern regions the
difference could be more than five degrees.
And this change could affect not
only the structures created by man but
natural habitats, such as forests, and
animals.
After the Rio conference in 1992, I
encountered a lot of problems on my
beat. After the many promises made
about resources to help developing
nations reduce global warming gases,
they were not fulfilled. My editors, who
paid for my trip to Rio, now considered
all this fuss to be about almost nothing.
It was, it seemed, almost impossible to
make rich nations, already fighting
budget cuts, assist in the environmental
needs of poor countries. For me, it
meant a daily fight to give our viewers
environmental information.
Using a New Strategy to
Cover the Environment
More recently, as public opinion polls
suggested that economy and health
care were the issues that interested the
most people, I decided to propose
economic and health-related stories
that were, in fact, environmental reports.
My strategy worked. For example,
the incidence of asthma in children
living in big cities is now endemic, and
costs to the health care system are
enormous. One contributing cause is
atmospheric pollution. Another example:
A special police force has been
set up to try to stop the theft of oldgrowth
trees in British Columbia. Each
year, $20 million in timber value is lost.
I told this environmental story as it is
seen through the economic scope. Both
stories were very well received because
they were sold as health and economyrelated
news and not as environmental
reports.
Also now because of the debate regarding
the ratification of the Kyoto
Protocol, it has become easier to sell
environment stories. This is because a
majority of our Canadian viewers want
Canada and the United States to ratify
the agreement, even if it is going to be
tough for the economies of the Western
world. Public interest in climate
change and global warming is why I
take the opportunity while on the West
Coast of Canada to go north on a regular
basis. There I can assess the impact
of global warming on these very sensitive
ecological regions that are already
the most affected by climate change.
With the opposition to Kyoto coming
from Washington, and the push for
ratification in Europe, our viewers are
more interested than ever in getting
up-to-date information on global warming,
a situation that could impact future
generations as nothing else ever
before.
My hope is that there will be more
specialized journalists covering environmental
stories. I also hope the networks
will air environment stories on a
regular basis to give viewers a sense of
continuity in the information they receive.
The best way to do that is through
a weekly program, one I still think the
SRC should create, one like “Earth
Matters,” which CNN recently decided
to kill. ■
Jacques A. Rivard, a 1996 Nieman
Fellow, is the national TV correspondent
on the West Coast of Canada
for Société Radio-Canada, the
French arm of the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation.
Jacques_Rivard@radio-canada.ca
Nieman Reports / Winter 2002 75