Break In Case of Emergency

Emergency Marker 4: Tell the Truth (w/ Donya Ziaee, Chris Hatch & Seth Klein)

• Climate Emergency Unit

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Episode 4 turns to one of the most foundational markers of emergency leadership: telling the truth. Host Erin Blondeau brings together Donya Ziaee, Chris Hatch, and Seth Klein to examine why honest, urgent communication is essential in a crisis, and why Canada isn’t getting it. They dig into the failures of mainstream media, the rise of independent outlets, and the influence of fossil fuel advertising. The conversation makes the case for clear, evidence-based reporting that includes context, solutions, and a sense of agency, not doom. Truth-telling, they argue, is what allows societies to mobilize, and what’s been missing for far too long.

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More on the 6 Markers of the Climate Emergency:

Credits:
Produced by Erin Blondeau and Doug Hamilton-Evans. Written and hosted by Erin Blondeau. Music by Anjali Appadurai. Audio editing by Blue Light Studios. Artwork by Geoff Smith.

Hello and welcome back to breaking case of emergency, a podcast about mobilizing Canada for the climate crisis with audacious solutions rooted in justice and workers' rights. I'm your host, Erin Blondeau, and this episode is part of a special series where we're breaking down the climate emergency unit's guiding framework, our six markers of climate emergency, we've been exploring what it means when our governments shift into genuine emergency mode, and what it looks like when our leaders truly understand crises to be the emergencies that they are, and act accordingly. In today's episode, we are digging into marker number four. Tell the truth about the severity of the crisis, and we've got a very exciting panel lined up to help us understand to the today's media and information landscape. We have Donya Ziaee, Chris Hatch and this climate emergency unit's own Seth Klein. Donya is a progressive communications and research strategist. She is the former senior editor at the award winning independent media outlet, the breach, and a former producer at CBC Radio. She also directed research and communications at the Council of Canadians. Hi, Donya,

hi. It's great to be here.

And we also have Chris Hatch. Chris is a columnist with Canada's national observer, where he writes an exceptional Sunday newsletter called Zero Carbon. He is the former executive director of rain Coast action network, as well as the former executive director at Canada's national observer. He's also an associate with reclimate, a Canadian hub for climate communications and engagement research based at Carleton University, where Chris focuses on Canadian public opinion and the media landscape. Hi, Chris. 

Hi, 

and we are also joined by Seth Klein. Seth is the team lead and Director of Strategy here at the climate emergency unit. He is the author of a good war mobilizing Canada for the climate emergency. And he too is a regular columnist at Canada's national observer. He spent many years as the director of a progressive think tank, and currently serves on the board of the BC society for policy solutions. Hi, Seth, Hi, Erin, good to be back with you. For years, the climate crisis has been downplayed or ignored. We've been told that governments have it under control, that institutions are taking it seriously. Meanwhile, they pass hollow or incremental climate policies while continuing to subsidize fossil fuels and building pipelines. And our media have also failed to sound the alarm. They've done a poor job of educating the public about the severity of the crisis, about what's causing it, and what we can do, or when they do offer solutions, they emphasize individualistic rather than collective solutions. When governments and institutions fail to tell the truth about how bad the crisis actually is, we are effectively invited to just continue on with business as usual. Meanwhile, climate disasters and unaffordability continue to climb. We need honest communication about the scale and the urgency of the crisis, including the causes like fossil fuels and militarization, deforestation and artificial intelligence. We can't mobilize at the speed and scale required without telling the truth, and that is why we are diving into marker number four, which is, of course, tell the truth. So Seth, I want to start by asking you a question. The climate emergency units framework is built on the idea that we need to shift institutions into genuine emergency mode, like we saw during the mobilization of the Second World War. What can history tell us about the importance of telling the truth in times of emergency.

Well, not surprisingly, I think history can can offer us a lot. You know, as listeners of these these segments, know I've spent a lot of time looking at the emergency mobilization in the Second World War. It's funny, when I was writing my book, and I would tell people that I was using this world war two frame, very often, people would say to me, oh, yeah, but back then, everybody understood the threat to be a clear and present danger. And the thing is, that's not true. I mean, if you were in Europe or Asia, it was a clear and present danger. If you were in Canada, the war was on the other side of two oceans, it took leadership and a lot of work to to explain the severity of the threat to the public, and I think both government and the media played a really important role. There was leadership from government, for sure, in the in the media landscape in the United States, the public was definitely not in favor of joining the Second World War. And the news team at CBS News, led at the time by the famous journalist Edward R Murrow, are credited with playing a vital. Role in shifting public opinion in the US in favor of joining the fight against fascism. Here in Canada, we were lucky, you know, we had just created the CBC as our public broadcaster three years before the war, and so by the time the work arrived, it was just a radio service then, but it had reached to most Canadians, and it really played an important role. The lead broadcaster at the time was this guy, Lauren Green, who went on to become a famous Hollywood actor. If you're my parents generation, you think of him as Paul Cartwright from bonanza. But if you're I don't know if you're like Chris in my generation, we remember him as Commander Adama and the original Battle Star Galactica. But in the Second World War, Canadians affectionately referred to him as the voice of doom. He had this incredible deep voice, and every night, you know, Canadians gathered around their radios and they heard him, and the CBC helped to mobilize the public explaining the urgency of the threat. You know, it was a little propagandistic, for sure, and I don't think we want that today. We want our news media to be evidence based and science based. But you know, in the fate of civilization in the balance, I think we also rightly want the media to pick a goddamn side and the side of science and human survival, and that's what the CBC did in the war. And Canadians, I think, would have been appalled if they had done otherwise, yeah,

well, and Chris, you do great work about telling the truth about the climate crisis, maybe not with like, a voice of doom, like, like Seth was just describing. But what, what does polling show us about how Canadians understand climate change? Is there a gap between what scientists are saying and what people actually understand? Like, what is the overall state of climate literacy in Canada?

Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't say there's a gap. There's a chasm, really. I mean, you know, if you go out and poll Canadians, you'll get two thirds, three quarters of people saying they're worried about climate change and that something ought to be done. Depending on how you frame the question, you might even get a higher response than that. But scratch the surface, and things get very, very weird on this issue, and really unlike a lot of issues. So you know, most Canadians want something done, and also, and have very little idea what needs to be done. And, you know, this gets us to the media, I think in some ways, because people don't understand what's causing the problem. They don't even really understand what problem is, like the picture people have in their heads. If you talk to people in focus groups or that kind of thing, you know, and ask what should be done about climate change. The number one thing is going to be recycling. You know, we did a poll just last year where we gave people a menu of options for, you know, which of these things cause climate change, right? And so I'm guessing the audience for this podcast notes that it's overwhelmingly fossil fuels, right? 90% of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere comes from burning fossil fuels, but less than half of Canadians, even when given that as one of the options, will pick it as the cause of climate change. So you know the whole picture that we have in our heads, a whole mental model of how the problem works is really murky and fuzzy, and I think it has a lot to do with the media, you know, not having been willing to connect the dots. And it's really quite a strange situation. You know, it's like the first thing you get taught in Journalism School is the five whys, you know, if you're any good story tells you, you know, what happened? Who did it, where, etc. And the fifth is, why did this happen? And that's just super rarely explained. You know, so I was just saying like 90% of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is coming from burning fossil fuels. Less than 10% of media stories that even perfunctorily, you know, mention climate change, will mention the cause of climate change. So from you know, one perspective, it's not even that much surprising that the public is so confused about, you know, the problem, about the solutions to the problem, because it's just an incredibly murky and information environment.

Yeah, you know, it strikes me, if I if I may, that I like, I think the. Polling results that Chris describes speaks to how and why there's this apparent contradiction, right? Like when you ask Canadians, should there? Should we do more about climate? And overwhelmingly, people say yes. And then, well, what do you think about this pipeline or this LNG project? And people also are supportive of that. And people, and those of us who follow this are like, Well, how could that be? How could they simultaneously hold these views? And it's because of this problem underlying it, of climate illiteracy and the failure to connect the dots to to the burning of fossil fuels. There is also another interesting thing you see in in the polling, and it's true in Canada, but also in many countries. The Guardian has recently done some interesting work on this, that if you ask people you know, should governments be doing more, and are you worried? Yes, absolutely. But a similarly high percent, majority, percent feel themselves alone in harboring those views. So the fact that we're not talking about it, they're not hearing the truth from media and from their leaders. You know, we all take our social cues from what's going on around us, and it and it leads people to think that as worried as they are, they're alone in feeling that way.

That's right, they're out there alone and feeling that way. And also, they're bombarded by information coming from the other direction. You know, about how fossil fuels are necessary for the economy. You know, the alternatives don't really work,

you know? And it's just, you know, the sheer volume.

You know, where I live, the busses are wrapped in ads for LNG. You know, being a solution to climate change. You know when, of course, liquefied natural gas is a fossil fuel itself.

Yeah, I think it's exactly like a lot of what you're talking about, Chris. It also just makes me think about, you know, how many people think that recycling is the way that we can beat the climate crisis, and it makes me think about the push from Big Oil about really putting that on the individual instead of looking at the systemic problem. And Donya, I want to bring you into the conversation, because you've worked at the CBC and you've worked in these institutions that should be sounding the alarm. So like from your experience, did you see those institutions treating climate like the emergency that it is?

Well, I'll speak to my experience in a second, but we're also very lucky to have this very quantitative report from the climate emergency unit. I'm referring to the report, a quiet alarm that was done a few years ago about CBC reporting on the climate emergency. And the findings really echo everything that's been said so far. I mean, of the stories, I mean, there's already only about half of the stories in the number of stories on the different programs that were monitored that even had a single climate item when they did, the majority tended to be about extreme weather events. And then the majority of those stories about extreme weather events failed to mention that climate change makes extreme weather more frequent. Only 9% of all of these items mentioned the burning of fossil fuels at all as the primary cause of climate change, and only 22% really discussed any solutions. And then when solutions were discussed, they really were individualistic, consumer based solutions, rather than systemic ones. And so really just echoing everything we've been saying so far about that kind of lack of literacy that's happening, and the job that our media institutions could be doing and are quite clearly failing to do. And I have an anecdote from my time at CBC that I think is also really illustrative of the kind of thinking that permeates some of these newsrooms back in 2019 when the Guardian had just announced that it would no longer use the term climate change in its coverage, that it would replace it with climate emergency, climate crisis or climate breakdown. And also it would not stop it would no longer use global warming and would refer to it as global heating. Instead, the Guardian explained that this language would more accurately and truthfully describe the catastrophe that was taking place, and that this was, quote, no time for passive terminology. And so at the time, I was a radio producer at CBC, at a marquee weekly show, and I invited the head of the journalistic standards and practices at CBC to come to our show to discuss whether the CBC would would take similar measures. Our request was declined, but the language guide was updated and. And at the time to say that, yes, we can use words like climate crisis and climate emergency sometimes, but not always, because we should remember that these terms can quote, carry a whiff of advocacy in certain political coverage. And when I invited when I had called the head of journalistic standards to come on our show. I spoke to him on the phone, and he repeated similar things. He said, You know, if we use terms like emergency or crisis, you know, right now, we're in the middle of an election, and we're going to seem biased towards particular parties over others. And of course, the irony being completely lost on him, that by using the more passive language. They were also, in effect, echoing particular political narratives. But more importantly, it's the job of the public broadcaster to use accurate and truthful language, regardless of the political winds of the day. And to me, this illustrates a larger problem, which is that the CBC and as well as the corporate media, have historically tended to reflect the narratives and opinions of the establishment, be it in relation to climate, pipelines, militarization, foreign policy, the most obvious recent example of that Being Gaza or labor, or a whole list of other issues, and there are ideological biases that permeate these newsrooms. You know, as far down as individual journalists and producers, up to their editors, execs, managers, and all the way up to the board of directors at the top. And when I say that, it's not to overlook some of the good work that is being done in reporting and educating on the climate crisis, whether it's by individual journalists or specific programs, but these are really the exceptions that actually prove the rule. And when you look at the amount of resources that an institution like the CBC has dedicated to covering something like the climate emergency. You know, it wasn't even until just a few years ago that there was even a climate beat, you know, and even then, it wasn't set up as like a fully functioning, well resourced content unit of its own, compared to, say, the business unit, which, from what I understand, is the biggest employer at CBC. Or, you know, there was all this noise made about CBC naming its first international climate correspondent, but, you know, a lot of us noticed she wasn't doing a whole lot of climate centered reporting as part of that job. So I think overall, the CBC to use it as an example, has largely failed in covering the climate crisis in a way that connects the dots, as we say, that holds those who are responsible to account, tracks and exposes the reach of the fossil fuel industry, and then offers people systemic solutions, forward looking positive visions for what's possible beyond fossil fuels and what is a burning planet.

But, you know, Donya's example from her time inside the CBC, is so telling. Like, I feel like there is this, you know, there's always this tendency in mainstream media, and I think particularly in the CBC, there's this deep seated nervousness about appearing to engage in advocacy, and it defaults to this kind of two side ism but you know, as I was trying to get at before, like there's, there's no virtue in neutrality when confronting a civilizational threat and And when the CBC or other media default to, you know, using dispassionate language and talking about this in a passive or inconsistent way that's in Congress with the scale and scope of a catastrophe that looms. It's it's problematic that the ubiquity of climate news and the language we use should align with the gravity of what we're facing.

Yeah, and so from inside the media world like Chris, maybe I can bring you in to this conversation for a sec. What would it take for CBC, or any any outlet, to genuinely shift into emergency mode. Like, is it a policy change issue resource allocation, or maybe an issue of leadership?

Yeah, well, I think even before you take a step to emergency mode, you know, we're talking about the kind of language that gets used around climate change and that kind of thing, I think there's a problem even within the existing coverage that would not be so hard to fix, which is that there's an old saying that content without context is just noise, and that is so much. Average of the existing coverage is noise, in the sense that there is no context, you know, in what is ostensibly a climate story or a story about, you know, say, the carbon tax, which got, you know, a lot of coverage. It's almost never. So you got a story about climate policy that will almost never mention climate change, you know, and to the extent that it does you know, it will almost never really articulate the state of climate change itself. Like how many Canadians know that we're in the midst of skyrocketing temperatures, for example, and it's not that hard to put that context into a story. In fact, it's very weird that we don't, you know, like, if you think about, like, the kind of coverage that goes on about, say, housing, odd issue right now, right like, can you imagine stories about housing that don't actually talk about what's the situation with housing. It's like we're, you know, reporting on policies or politics without even naming the problem that we're trying to solve and putting it into any kind of context. And the same goes true, I think, for the coverage of any kind of solutions or policies aimed towards solutions. You know, you never, almost never will, hear about how Canada is performing relative to other comparable jurisdictions in the world, right? Our emissions are still, you know, arguably, going up, maybe have flat lined. Well, all the other g7 have reduced them, you know, it's just basic contacts that you think, you know, could go into a story. Why do you think that is back the EV mandate? Well, I think, in part, you know, it's the parochial nature of Canada and Canadian media, that's the generous part. But I think when it comes to naming the context, putting Canada into context, there's a real fear, actually, to be honest, that news outlets are going to get pushback if you say, you know, Pierre poilievre talking about acts of the tax. You know, wants to get rid of the carbon tax, but carbon is the main source of, you know, global heating, and it comes from burning with fossil fuels. Suddenly, you know, you're offside with the car advertisers, the oil and gas industry is going to be pissed off, and it's just so much easier for editors and reporters to just not go there, right? You know, because the industry, and you know, the politicians, many of which we could easily name off software heads, have made it such a hot button issue. So I think there's, you know, just the path of least resistance is to, Let's just not talk about fossil fuels. You know, Let's not mention the fact that the oil and gas industry is, you know, skyrocketing our emissions and is putting us way offside with all of our allies around the world.

I think the carbon tax, I think the carbon tax is such a good example, because it's really an illustrative example of how, even when they are ostensibly covering a climate issue, they're really more covering it as a political issue. So they limit themselves to what is, as you say, the hot button issue of the time and and so, you know, the first instinct isn't to ask, you know, what are policies that would actually slash emissions or keep people safe or, you know, much larger systemic ways of thinking about climate change. Instead, the frame is incredibly narrowed to what the major parties are willing to debate in the moment, and when you have two dominant parties that are both committed to, you know, fossil fuel extraction and maintaining corporate power, the coverage tends to stay within that tiny box as well. And so with the carbon tax, we had these months and months of coverage, round the clock coverage about where the different parties stood, you know, the Conservatives calling it, you know, a cash grab, the liberals defending it as climate leadership, and the media totally took the bait, you know, instead of actually covering climate related stories that were meaningful, you know, we were fixated on this like half measure that, you know, the right in particular was like stoking public anger about. And I think this is what happens when the media limits itself to basically elite consensus and doesn't have the political imagination to go beyond that. It really there's this, you know, invisible, almost like baseline truth that they stick to. And then, as you say. Everything outside of it becomes seen as, you know, unrealistic radical or activist talk. And of course, those are not credible voices that we can include to the same extent as we do politicians and so on, and so, yeah, I think part of the problem here is, in addition to not giving the context, is this refusal to actually interrogate power and the powerful forces that are shaping the debate right now.

Yeah, and Seth, what about you? What do you think that major news outlets, like, what do they need to do to get into emergency mode? Or even, like Chris was saying, like before that, what? What do they need to do to actually just cover this at the extent that they need to be is it a policy change? Is it leadership? What do you think?

Well, often it's leadership. I mean, I think there's so much more the media in general, and CBC, especially, as our public broadcaster, could and should be doing so, you know, dunya was referencing our report a couple of years ago, quiet alarm about the CBC and just to take a step back and explain that we had, we had, I think, about 30 volunteers across the country spend two weeks carefully Monitoring the flagship national and local shows for climate coverage and carefully tracking it all. And you know, what you basically see is that the CBC coverage, you know, it's improved actually a little bit, but, and every once in a while, it's excellent, but on the whole, it remains sporadic, inconsistent and really quite absent from daily programming, like they the CBC has these shows like what on earth, and they've created a climate dashboard, but you have to be interested and seek them out. And what matters is what is going on on the national, the current, you know your morning CBC radio show, that's where the bulk of the audience is. And so the report does make some clear recommendations about what should happen there. First of all, connect the dots to come back to our earlier conversation when we cover these extreme weather events connected to climate, connect it back to the burning of fossil fuels, even if CBC journalists or other journalists employed language like when they're describing these things, calling them climate induced extreme weather caused mainly by the burning of fossil fuels, just those few words would do, would just go a long way in terms of enhancing public understanding. But the second, really core recommendation was that we need a daily first of all, we need a unit of climate of climate reporters with depth on the issue, and then they need to be feeding a daily climate emergency report that runs on the flagship local and national news and current affairs shows like you know, for those of us who listen to CBC in the morning, if we can have hourly sports and business reports, then surely to God, we can have A morning climate emergency report telling us how this battle for our lives is unfolding at home and abroad. To Chris's other point, and a report that provides a real balance, a mix of the bad news the hopeful stuff, a report that gives us insight, but also a sense of agency, and tells us what we can do, not in a trite way, but in real and transformative ways, lets us hear about what other countries are doing, you know, many of which are kicking our ass. And so that, you know, gives us this sense of possibility as we confront this crisis, all of that would help a lot.

Yeah, this is making me think a lot. You know, we've been talking about kind of traditional legacy media, and something that Donya was saying earlier made me think about the media fragmentation, and how many people are really kind of fed up with the way that legacy media covers these issues. And so we're seeing information come from so many different sources. Now there's influencers, independent media, podcasts and social media. And I'm wondering, like, do you guys think that this fragmentation is helping climate communication, or is it hurting it? Maybe I'll pass to you.

Chris, well, I think the fragmentation is, is is, is not helping at all, because it's just so easy to end up in if you're not interested in these issues already, like we were just talking about, you know. If you are interested, you can go looking, you can find the information. If you're not, it's not coming to you, you know. So, yeah, I mean, like on. Many issues. And this isn't, you know, just about climate change, the fragmentation is a huge problem. I do think that the legacy media, you know, even in this world, plays an incredibly important role that sometimes we forget about when we start talking about, oh, everyone gets their, you know, news from Tiktok and smartphones nowadays, because a lot of that information is actually grounded in the news gathering function that's going on at traditional news outlets, you know. So you got someone on YouTube ranting about whatever story was in the Toronto Star, right? Or maybe they don't even cite the story that they're upset about. But at some you know, the ground level information, news gathering function still remains important, and then independent media, yeah, are super important in a bunch of ways. For one thing, you know, tend to have more nuanced, more contextualized coverage. You know, you're, you know, I'm thinking about the national observer, or I do some work, and, you know, a bunch of great outlets now in Canada. But also they, they feed into the larger narrative. You know, so often, you know, what we'll see happen is some story comes out at the National observer, and, you know, doesn't get a huge amount of play, but, you know, a bit. And then slowly, over the next weeks, months, years, you see those, those kind of narratives reshape and trickle into all kinds of other news coverage. So, yeah, I think that independent media is super important thing for people to support that want to sort of, you know, find ways to inject more urgency and more context into coverage.

Yeah, I think that's a really good point, because, yeah, just like you said, I think a lot of times news on Tiktok is kind of taking on this news aggregate role where they're just taking news that's already being reported on, and then they're analyzing it or amplifying it further to their audiences. And so Donya, I wanted to pass the mike to you to ask the same question and maybe to kind of tack on, do people generally trust content creators? Do you think more than the legacy media?

Well, I don't know about content creators, but I want to agree with Chris' point about the importance of independent media and the fact that we have such a thriving landscape of independent media in Canada right now and elsewhere. And I think that's not a coincidence. I think it's because of the failure of legacy media that this space has been created for these other alternative outlets to step in, because people can see with their own eyes that the media has stopped reflecting back to them the reality that they see around them, whether it's with the climate emergency or I mentioned previously the example of the genocide in Gaza, or whether it's labor struggles that are happening around them, you know, they're turning on the news and getting, you know, a version that's tiptoeing basically around the reality that they see. And so in that vacuum, they're finding independent media that actually is telling the truth. You know, outlets like the National observer, like the breach, the narwhal, Briar Patch, the maple press progress, the tie. There's so many, I'm probably forgetting to mention some of them, but there's a reason why they're thriving, and it's because they're speaking to, you know what people already know in their bones and want to see reflected back at them, and people appreciate their honest and sometimes adversarial, often adversarial journalism, and the fact that they're not pretending to be neutral in the face of everything that's going on. And they're doing all of that with just a tiny fraction of the budget of these legacy outlets. And they're doing some of the actually best investigative work out there, you know, on climate stuff, for example, like tracing fossil fuel influence and lobbying and exposing green washing, talking to communities who are on the front, front lines. And, you know, I think what they're giving us is basically a blueprint of what public service journalism could look like, you know, in a time of emergency and, and in general, and, and I think it's also true that, yes, their reporting often ends up, you know, getting reflected back in legacy media. Often, they break a story that then gets picked up by a mainstream outlet and also the I do hear the point about fragmentation, but I think you know, it's also true that they are informing the public and our social movement. Movements with they're empowering our social movements to be stronger on the ground. And I think that legacy media outlets and the journalists within them respond to those changes in broader culture and broader public opinion as well. There are lots of examples of this. I mean, the primary one was that, you know, in the aftermath of the Idle No More movement, for example, the CBC introduced the indigenous reporting unit, you know, in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd in the US, which prompted conversations across North America about journalism and objectivity. You know, I was there at the CBC, and I witnessed the internal shifts that were taking place. Of course, some of these changes are cosmetic, but it is true that these legacy outlets do respond to changes on the ground and the strength of social movements on the ground. So as we keep building up public opinion public power, we keep shifting that Overton window, we embolden and empower journalists from within these newsrooms as well to do more courageous, truthful reporting.

Yeah, that's a great point. It's like a mutual relationship. And I love that you brought that up. And it also, you know, it makes me think of the myth of neutrality and how, you know, I've done a little bit of work with some legacy media as well, and there's this idea about, yeah, you don't, you don't, you can't be biased. But being biased is also in what you're not saying, right? So if you're leaving things out of the conversation that in itself is biased, like there's just, there's no way to be neutral, and especially covering something that shouldn't be a left right issue, like climate change and Seth, the climate emergency unit has worked on an idea, kind of in this realm. So I wanted to ask you about the idea of a climate emergency information agency. Can you walk us through what that is and what that would look like?

Yeah, sure. So, I mean, the bulk of our conversation to date has been about the role of media in telling the truth, but there's also the role of government itself. It's my contention that emergencies need to look and sound and feel like emergencies, but nothing about government communications on this issue looks and sounds and feels like an emergency. You know, we started off the shot as talking about the lessons from the Second World War and how it took work to move the public and so the government, back then created, it was called the wartime information board, in order to strengthen public mobilization, and it actually did really quite sophisticated work. It was, it was guided by experts and academics in education and social science. They crafted sophisticated messaging for different audiences and different populations. They tried to link the war effort to other societal goals and and then, and then they invested like the public. Was a wash and posters and advertisements and notices telling us all how we could contribute to the mobilization, and there was this coordinated information campaign communicating that a massive collective effort was underway. You couldn't escape it, which is certainly not something any of us feel today. Although interestingly, if you think about the early, you know, the first year of the covid pandemic, we did get a taste of that with our governments modeling emergency communication. You know, the messages were ubiquitous and consistent, and we got daily press briefings, and we listened to scientists and and health experts and all of that, but none of that consistency and coherence exists when it comes to the climate emergency and when our governments don't act as if it's An emergency, or worse, when they send contradictory messages, when they approve new fossil fuel infrastructure or subsidize, you know, highly polluting industries, they're effectively communicating the opposite. They're communicating to the public, that it's not an emergency. Back in 2022 the government, you know, released this emissions reduction plan, this whole big plan, there was a lot of a lot of focus on it at the time. That was supposed to be our path to net zero, and there was supposed to be a net zero communications plan as part of that, but there was actually never any budget or agency to lead it. And if you do look at the government's climate communications. You know, if you're lucky to see it, I mean, it's a real snoozer, like the videos are ridiculously cheery and trite, but really, no, there's no public advertising to speak of. You know, if, if anyone was going to be algorithmically. Targeted for that kind of advertising, it would be me, but it's mostly cricket. So, so long winded answer to your question, Erin, but one of the ideas that that that we have put out there is that we need, again, a climate emergency information board modeled on that wartime information board, it could lead and coordinate an ambitious program of public education and engagement and extensive and sustained efforts designed to secure public support and involve Canadians. It could produce and disseminate really well done information, ensure that the you know and ensure that the public has the climate knowledge that it needs. It could guide people to meaningful both individual and community action, offer resources for how people can adopt low energy, things like heat pumps and convert to electric you know, but it could be producing videos and print and social media and radio in multiple languages and and really develop an ambitious advertising program. It could recruit and train trusted experts to speak to those issues with different audiences. It could convene citizen assemblies and town halls. It could it could enlist the arts and culture sector to help with all of that. So those, those, those are the kinds of things that I think are just totally absent and desperately needed from this, from telling the truth.

Yeah, that's so interesting. So would it be like a separate it would be separate from the media, right? Yeah.

I mean, I'm, I'm imagining a government agency that was leading this, but as as I say, working in partnership with academics, experts, polling firms, partnering with media on certain on certain efforts.

And I guess part of the idea of telling the truth is also like Stop lying. So Chris, I wanted to turn the mic to you for a second and ask you know, on the flip side, we need to, we need to stop somehow, the falsehoods and the confusion and the climate denial narratives that that are coming out. And one of the campaigns that we've been involved in that is kind of an example of this is the campaign to boss to ban fossil fuel advertising. Do you think that this is a necessary part of telling the truth?

Yeah, well, I was just on last weekend coming off the ferry here in British Columbia, the main terminal that sort of, every tourist and every local that's traveling Vancouver, Vancouver Island would go through. And this, you come off very huge billboards for the pathways Alliance, which is, you know, the consortium of the big the big oil sands companies. And, you know, go downtown, and the busses are wrapped with ads for, you know, liquefied natural gas, LNG being some kind of climate solution, even though it is itself a fossil fuel. So, yeah, I mean, especially in the absence of any kind of countervailing force. I think you know that the average person who understandably is not, you know, super focused on politics and science and trying to, you know, untangle all of these issues that we're talking about, and just has a general sort of mental model picture in their head of how these things work. You know, it's no wonder that they're confused with all that advertising coming in. And I think it's also like you see it now in the United States, you know, like Donald Trump and the whole climate is a con job and all that kind of thing. This is like the legacy of decades of, you know, climate denial being pushed into the media and being advertised. And I think, you know, a lot of us thought those days were over, like, at least at this kind of gross, you know, really, you know, Stark climate denial kind of level, but it just festers away, you know, and then you get the wrong leaders in place and us back up. And, you know, with the fragmented media, you could easily now be living in an information environment where all you hear is that climate is a con job. Solar panels wreck the environment. You know, electric cars are bad for nature, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Can I just weigh in on just Chris's first point there that I mean advertising works. That's why industry spend so much money on it. And the fossil fuel industry. Is spending on advertising so much more than the government spends on climate advertising by a order of magnitude. It's no wonder that the public space is is so littered with confusion about what we have to do on this front and it's why it is important that we ban fossil fuel advertising, and that's where, you know, we've partnered with with cape, the Canadian Association of Physicians for the environment, who lead this campaign calling for just that, and to bring it back to the media. I think another piece of this is disclosing conflicts of interest, which should be a basic principle that a lot of our news media don't follow. So for example, there are people who appear as quote, unquote analysts on a variety of talk shows, you know, national radio shows, or who are writing op eds on our newspapers, and it is never disclosed, for example, that the think tank that they represent is funded by a fossil fuel company. And there's, you know, other examples of corporate corporations that that fund various think tanks. It's not just in fossil fuels, but it is a real problem when they appear on these programs, as you know, quote, unquote, dispassionate analysts. But have these invested or, excuse me, have these vested interests in a particular industry that's not disclosed, so in my ideal world, they wouldn't even be on these shows, because they have one purpose only, and that is to, you know, lobby on behalf of the industries they represent. But if they are going to appear, then at the very least that conflict of interest has to be disclosed.

Yeah, and I see that a lot. I see people re sharing, you know, like fossil fuel industry kind of propaganda or op ed pieces, and re sharing it on social media or in other places, and taking it as though it is like a, you know, a news reporting, like a reportage piece.

Yeah, and it's particularly frustrating when there's such a distrust of activist voices on air and in newspapers, because they're seen to be, you know, too passionate, or, you know, too biased or whatever. But that same rigor is not at all applied to industry voices, and it's, in fact, not even disclosed. And I think some of the literacy that piece that we're talking about has to extend to journalists as well, to do that research and try and understand just how powerful the fossil fuel industry is and all the various mechanisms that it relies on to spread its propaganda, including through these talking heads.

You know, a perfect example of what Donya is talking about is here in British Columbia, there's this group resource works, and they, you know, and they represent the fossil fuel industry when they get interviewed, and they get interviewed a lot on the media, including on CBC, they get introduced as a nonprofit think tank that deals with resource issues without disclosing that, yes, they are a nonprofit wholly funded by for profits, representing these fossil fuel corporations and so, but that isn't that what gets disclosed. They end up becoming this kind of proxy front group for that fossil fuel messaging. That's right, yeah.

And I think another part of this too, like another part of the opposition piece, is that sometimes critics will say that, yeah, climate change, you know, it might be an issue, but framing it as an emergency is fear mongering, and that it just causes more anxiety and despair than mobilization. So Chris, I wanted to ask you, like, how would you, how do you respond to that? Do you think that there is a risk in telling the real truth about how bad the climate crisis is and that it actually demobilizes people?

Yeah, I think there is, for sure. I think that, you know, we have a lot of pennies yet to drop in climate literacy. Sadly, I don't think people have any grasp of how bad the situation is, how hard and long of a time it's going to take to turn it around. And so I do worry about it, you know, it's, it's, it's a very long emergency, you know, it's going to be an emergency into our children's lifetimes, even if you know, you think about it, when they did the Paris Agreement, you know, 2015 they're talking about getting to net zero by 2050 like it's not going to happen. It's super, super ambitious, technically possible, you know, humanly implausible, kind of goal. So we're talking about decades until we even stop climbing. Climate change from getting worse. You know, this is one of the literacy things the public doesn't understand at all. They we still talk about reversing climate change when, in fact, you know, it keeps getting worse as a ratchet. But you know, you know, on the other hand, you got to say, like, what are you supposed to do? Not tell the truth. I mean, you know, your audience probably will have heard that just last week, you know, the world's a lot of the world's top scientists, over 100 you know, assessed that the world's coral reefs are probably past their tipping point. You know, they're gonna just die off. Now we're Pat where it's the oceans are too hot. They would just keep having heat waves, bleaching events. I mean, how many of the people, the public, you know, understand that, you know, it's basically, we've already basically set a death sentence for the coral reefs, you know, and that we're decades away from even being able to stop that kind of problem from getting worse. So yes, I think there's a real problem that, as people really come to understand the scale of the problem, you know, it becomes even more demoralizing. But on the other hand, you know, we know the solutions are out there. You know, we know we've solved big problems before, and short of grappling with the truth, I don't know how you get a response that is,

you know, on the scale of the problem.

You know, if I could just weigh in on this one too, Erin, I think you know, there is this critique that that you don't want to be guilty of doomerism. I think the part of what makes the moment in which we find ourselves so challenging for mobilizing is that it's in the nature of climate change that we are going to experience losses for a good time yet to come before things start to get better, and we're in this era where there's both simultaneous wins and losses, and it's hard to mobilize people in that context. I think the short answer to your question is we have to honor people with the truth, but I also think we have to do, you know, responsible truth telling and hold with care the psychology of the collective psyche of this moment, again, to hearken back to the world war two leaders that I like to write about, the ones we most remember, were really remarkably effective at simultaneously speaking about the severity of the threat while still managing to impart hope. That's really the balance that I think we're going for here. So often, climate communication kind of falls on a spectrum where it's either so depressing that you just want to walk away from it all, or it's sort of trite and Pollyanna and really, I don't think the public a lot of it. The public buys it. Just doesn't feel aligned with with the challenges that we're facing, and we have to land somewhere in, in the middle that is both honest about how big and threatening this is, and still gives people the feeling that this is a fight worth fighting and that and that we can make a huge difference.

Yeah, that's really well said. I would, I would say it goes also back to the the same problem of context. You know when, when the media or, you know, the public conversation in general, is talking about solutions. The solutions tend not to have any contact. We just went through this in Canada, right, where the federal government froze the rollout of electric vehicles, right, because sales had dropped to something like 8% and the goal was that next year they'd be 25% so it was totally unattainable. You know, we all understand the problem with the auto sector, Donald Trump tariffs, etc, but you would think that in that coverage, you know, this is just one micro example, right? That in that coverage, the media would mention that the world as a whole is well above 25% adoption, that China is above 50% adoption that Norway is above almost at 100% adoption of EVs that Canada, before we froze our incentives, was actually on track to hit the goals that we had. You know, the point being that it doesn't have to be demoralizing. You. If, when we talk about cutting emissions and deploying solutions, we get more of that context in as well and make it meaningful and not just sort of more Flotsam and bad news floating by.

Yeah, I really agree. It's that with this point that you know, it's really only demoralizing if it's presented as a crisis that's just first of all unstoppable or too big or too complicated to change, and our job as communicators is to to both provide that context and the solutions and the hope, but also to recognize that I think we're actually up against a lot of fear mongering from the other side, which, you know, it tells us that has been telling us for decades with quite a lot of money, that it's a really radical idea to transition off of fossil fuels, that it will fundamentally change how people live. It requires a great deal of personal sacrifice. It will drive people out of jobs. It will drive them into poverty. You know, painting this really bleak and paralyzing picture, and so, I mean, in addition to the doom and gloom of what the science tells us about climate change, we're also up against people's perceptions of what any change could look like. And our job, as much as it is to sound the alarm, is also to give people a hopeful vision for the future. And you know, the way we tell that story about the future really can't be about despair and all the things we're going to lose, but rather a story that gives people a pathway forward and establishes our agency together to actually move forward. And so I think it means starting with talking to people about the things that they love and want to protect. You know, clean air, good work, you know, safe communities, good drinking water, a Livable Future for themselves, and then clearly name who the culprits are, who are threatening that life? You know, the fossil fuel corporations, the banks, the politicians who protect them all. And then once we make that clear, then you know, there's a clear sense, clearer sense of agency for how we move past it, rather than this big, abstract problem that we can't solve. And I also think we should remember that we're the ones offering the hopeful vision, you know, and to talk consistently about what that future looks like and paint that picture of, you know, what the world could look like, you know, to have entire towns that are powered by publicly owned renewables, you know, where people aren't being gouged by energy giants, where there's millions of good jobs building transit or retrofitting homes and restoring land like it's our job to also paint that rosier picture of the future that we can all move towards together? Absolutely.

Yeah, Donya, that is like having that picture in my mind is like one of the only things that continues to inspire me is just dreaming about what our future should look like, like the path that we should be on. And, you know, our conversation is coming to a close, and I did just have a few more questions to ask. So Donya, you were kind of touching on this, but as we think about what comes next, what is one thing that you wish every journalist or independent creator in Canada understood about their role in the climate emergency?

Yeah, I think it's everything we've been saying, which is, you know, connect the dots. Show the full picture. Who are the culprits? Who is impacted? You know, what are the solutions on the table for actually addressing it? Our collective power bringing people out of that sense of isolation that someone else was speaking to and thinking they're alone, and wanting to see change, but actually showing them that actually, these are policies that a great super majority of Canadians want, and that we can achieve them together and so not just falling back on, you know, basically being sonographers to, you know, what people are in power are saying, or the sort of horse race coverage of climate policies and things like that, but actually giving people a full context and full picture, and some of that hope that we've been talking about.

Yeah, and Chris, same question to you, what is? What is something that you wish every journalist and independent content creator in Canada understood about their role?

I don't think I'm going to improve on Donya that was really a great encapsulation. But you know, to me, the context is king. You know, we whether it's about the problem, whether it's about the solutions, it's in Jack. Maintain those stories with meaning, so that people understand have a picture in their heads of why the problem is the way it is, and therefore, you know what it's going to take to grapple with it.

Yeah, and Seth, if we actually pulled this off, like if the government told the truth, and the media treated it, the climate emergency, like an actual emergency. And if institutions shifted into emergency mode, what changes in people's day to day lives like, what? What becomes possible that isn't possible now,

yeah, well, so first of all, in terms of what it sounds like, you know, just to embarrass Chris for a moment here, like I said earlier, we need our public broadcaster to have a daily climate emergency report. For me, the written version of that is Chris's weekly columns in the national observer, which I highly recommend to listeners of this podcast, because Chris is actually doing that in his weekly columns. He's, there's a deep dive onto one topic, and then a roundup of of climate news that you need. And it's a roundup that, I think, where Chris is actually doing that responsible truth telling. He's, he's giving us a mix of the good, the bad and the ugly of but there, you know, there's the bad news, there's some hopeful news, and that's what we need on a daily basis. To build on Donya's Point in terms of what this sounds like from our governments, from our leaders. You know, I find, you know one, one global leader I think really captures this is UN Secretary General, Antonio guiterras, because when you hear him talk about climate, he's doing what Donya just described. He's naming the fossil fuel companies, and he's using some very undiplomatic language, basically calling them out for their deceit and all of their nefarious efforts to block progress. And each time I hear him, I think, man, when was the when was the last time we heard a federal or provincial leader in Canada talk like that? And the answer is, never, they. Never bring on the fight with with these interests that are blocking progress. So we would hear that, and then from both our our governments and our media, we would hear answers to the questions that Donya was just laying out there, like people have all of these completely legitimate questions, what is my home and Community going to look like in this new world, post transition, how am I going to make a decent living? How am I going to get around? Where's my food going to come from? Where's the energy and electricity going to come from? How are we going to pay for it? You know, what am I going to have to change, and what kind of say am I gotta have. And the good news is there are good answers to all of these questions, but like Donya said, we need to bring that picture into focus for people in a way that isn't happening, and to set the table for our next podcast episode on marker five, which is leave no one behind. This is the point. If you're really going to mobilize a society, you can't just give them the bad news about the threat and the sacrifice. You have to make a pledge and a promise to people that the society that's going to come out the other end is going to be a good life. It's gonna be more just and more equitable than the one that we're leaving behind, and so that that needs to be part of our communications, too.

Thank you Seth for leaving us on that inspirational note, and same to you Donya and Chris. Thank you all for this essential conversation as we explored marker number four, which is, again, tell the truth. This is part of our six markers of climate emergency series. The climate emergency won't be solved by ignoring the problem or sugar coating it. It demands that we build a media landscape and culture where honesty about the scale and urgency of the crisis is the foundation for everything else. We need government that tells the truth about what's causing the crisis, things like fossil fuels, militarization and deforestation and what it will take to actually address these problems. We need media that treats climate like the emergency that it is. I'm your host. Erin Blondeau, be sure to check out our next episode in the series, marker number five, leave no one behind. If you like what you heard today, please like subscribe and share with a friend. Thank you so much for listening. Everyone. Bye. You. Shark.