Censored 2014 (3 page)

That's what makes solutions journalism so important at this point in human history.

When the myriad efforts to build a sustainable world are covered, the rapid evolution of our society toward solutions becomes possible.
¹⁵
The best innovations can travel quickly and build on one another—bike lanes in one city become a linked system of bike lanes and public transit in another. A public food forest, where all are free to harvest fresh fruits and nuts, sparks the same idea in another community. One city sets out to be carbon neutral, to reduce asthma and heart disease, and inspires other cities to follow suit. If they encounter these sorts of stories, people don't feel alone, powerless, and even foolish when they pick up a shovel and plant a tree, start an urban garden, or risk arrest blockading a tar sands pipeline. They see their work as part of a much larger fabric of change—one with real possibility for a better world.

So here's where solutions journalism is at its best. Just as an in
dividual coal plant is not the whole picture in terms of the climate crisis, the individual windmill is not the whole solution. To meet its potential, solutions journalism must investigate not only the individ-ual innovations, but also the larger pattern of change—the emerging ethics, institutions, and ways of life that are coming into existence.

UN-CENSORING SOLUTIONS-FOCUSED JOURNALISM

The change will not happen from the top down—most of the leaders of big government, big business, and even big religion are too entrenched in the status quo to offer much help on this score.

Instead, it is the actions of millions of ordinary people that have the best chance of transforming our society to one that can live within its ecological means and meet the needs of humans and other life forms. To do that, we need evidence-based stories of practical, feasible
innovations. But we also need to see the larger picture that they are a part of, the new ways of doing business
²⁸
that are rooted in community and work in harmony with our ecosystems, along with the emerging values and ways of life that create genuine well-being without compromising the life-sustaining capacity of the planet. We need to experience the democratic impulse, which, at times, can overcome the top-down power of giant corporations.
²⁹

Journalists, it has been said, write the first draft of history. In that spirit, discerning these patterns of change—which ones have promise, which ones are taking hold—is an inexact science. But a bottom-up global process thrives when the first draft is available, and all of those with a stake in the future can see that they, themselves, are its authors.

Bainbridge Island, Washington
May 17, 2013

SARAH VAN GELDER
is cofounder and executive editor of
YES! Magazine
and
Yes-Magazine.org
, which feature powerful ideas and practical actions for a more just and sustainable world.
YES!
covers issue ranging from prison alternatives to do-it-yourself culture, from climate justice to the cooperatives movement. Sarah edited
This Changes Everything: Occupy Wall Street and the 99% Movement
and coedited
Making Peace: Healing a Violent World.
She has lived in China, India, and Central America, and has cofounded a cohousing community, organized low-income tenants, and collaborated with the Suquamish tribe to win the return of the land where Chief Seattle once lived.

Notes

^1.
Suzanne Goldenberg, “Climate research nearly unanimous on human causes, survey finds,”
Guardian,
May 15, 2013,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/may/16/climate-re-search-nearly-unanimous-humans-causes
.

^2.
“Climate Change: Key Data Points from Pew Research,” April 2, 2013,
http://www.pewre-search.org/2013/04/02/climate-change-key-data-points-from-pew-research
.

^3.
Joe Romm, “An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts: How We Know Inaction Is the Gravest Threat Humanity Faces,”
Climate Progress,
September 28, 2011,
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/09/28/330109/science-of-global-warming-impacts
.

^4.
Mark Townsend and Paul Harris, “Now the Pentagon Tells Bush: Climate Change Will Destroy Us,”
Guardian,
February 21, 2004,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2004/feb/22/us-news.theobserver
.

^5.
Harrison H. Schmitt and William Happer, “In Defense of Carbon Dioxide,”
Wall Street Journal,
May 8, 2013,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323528404578452483656067190.html
.

^6.
Ryan Chittum, “The WSJ Editorial Page Hits Rock Bottom,”
Columbia Journalism Review,
May 9, 2013,
http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/the_wsj_editorial_page_hits2.php
.

^7.
Jill Fitzsimmons, “Warmest Year On Record Received Cool Climate Coverage,” Media Matters, January 8, 2013,
http://mediamatters.org/research/2013/01/08/study-warmest-year-on-record-received-cool-clim/192079
.

^8.
Margaret Sullivan, “He Said, She Said, and the Truth,”
New York Times,
September 15, 2012,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/public-editor/16pubed.html
. For more on climate change denial front groups, like the Exxon Mobile-funded Heartland Institute (
Heartland.org
), see Sourcewatch.org by the Center for Media and Democracy,
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Heartland_Institute
.

^9.
Bill McKibben, “Global Warming's Terrifying New Math,”
Rolling Stone,
July 19, 2012,
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719
.

^10.
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, “Why Food Riots Are Likely to Become the New Normal,”
Guardian,
March 6, 2013,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/food-riots-new-normal
, analyzed as
Censored
story #15 in this volume. For more on Ahmed's writing on climate issues, see the foreword of
Censored 2013: Dispatches from the Media Revolution,
Mickey Huff and Andy Lee Roth with Project Censored (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2012), 11–19.

^11.
Censored
story #2, “Oceans in Peril,”
Censored 2013,
87–89.

^12.
Censored
story #21, “Western Lifestyle Continues Environmental Footprint,”
Censored 2011: The Top 25 Censored Stories of 2009–10,
Mickey Huff, Peter Phillips, and Project Censored (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2010), 113–116.

^13.
Censored
story #15, “World Bank's Carbon Trade Fiasco,”
Censored 2010: The Top Censored Stories of 2008–09,
Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff with Project Censored (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2011), 67–72.

^14.
See
Censored
story #18, “Fracking Our Food Supply,” in this volume.

^15.
Sarah van Gelder, “Is There Inspiration in Your Media Diet?,”
YES! Magazine,
February 10, 2013,
http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/sarah-van-gelder-inspiration-media-diet-solutions-journalism
.

^16.
Christine Stebbins, “Corn Belt Fears Large Crop Loss from Heat Wave, Drought Conditions,”
Insurance Journal,
July 9, 2012,
http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/midwest/2012/07/09/254790.htm
.

^17.
Steven Lee Myers, Andrew C. Revkin, Simon Romero, and Clifford Krauss, “Old Ways of Life are Fading as the Arctic Thaws,”
New York Times,
October 20, 2005,
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/20/science/earth/20arctic.ready.html?ref=thebigmelt
.

^18.
“Methane Emissions Higher than Thought across Much of U.S.,” ScienceDaily, May 15, 2013,
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130515165021.htm
.

^19.
Oliver Lazenby, “Germany Swaps Nuclear for Solar and Wind Power,”
YES! Magazine,
June 7, 2012,
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/making-it-home/renewable-power-for-germany
.

^20.
Will Wooten, Candice Bernd, and Ron Seifert, “Why We're Putting Ourselves on the (Pipe)Line With the Tea Party,”
YES! Magazine,
August 24, 2012,
http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/why-we-put-ourselves-on-the-pipeline-with-the-tea-party-keystone
.

^21.
Jay Walljapser, “How Bicycling Is Transforming Business,”
YES! Magazine,
December 31, 2012,
http://www.yesmagazine.org/happiness/how-bicycling-is-transforming-business
.

^22.
Walden Bello, “Climate and Capitalism in Copenhagen,”
YES! Magazine,
December 2, 2009,
http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/climate-and-capitalism-in-copenhagen
.

^23.
James Randerson, “Western Lifestyle Unsustainable, Says Climate Expert Rajendra Pachauri,”
Guardian,
November 29, 2009,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/29/rajendra-pachauri-climate-warning-copenhagen
, included in “Western Lifestyle Continues,”
Censored 2011.

^24.
Mary Tharin, “The World Bank and Climate Change: Sustainability or Exploitation?,”
Upside Down World,
February 11, 2009. Also see “World Bank's Carbon Trade Fiasco,”
Censored 2010.

^25.
Nora Doyle-Burr, “How Thoughtful Farming Could Curb Climate Change, Feed the World,”
Christian Science Monitor,
March 28, 2012,
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0328/How-thoughtful-farming-could-curb-climate-change-feed-the-world
.

^26.
Juliet Schor, “Less Work, More Living,”
YES! Magazine,
September 2, 2011,
http://www.yes-magazine.org/issues/new-livelihoods/less-work-more-living
.

^27.
David Korten, “Religion, Science, and Spirit: A Sacred Story for Our Time,”
YES! Magazine,
January 17, 2013,
http://www.yesmagazine.org/happiness/religion-science-and-spirit-a-sacred-story-for-our-time
. For more on this theme, see Michael Nagler's chapter, “The New Story,” in this volume; and see the work of Kenn Burrows (with Michael Nagler) published in
Censored 2013,
ch. 10; and Kenn Burrows in
Censored 2012: Sourcebookfor the Media Revolution,
ed. Mickey Huff and Project Censored (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2011), ch. 4.

^28.
See, for example,
Censored
story #7, “2012: The International Year of Cooperatives,”
Censored 2013,
62, 79–80; and the spring 2013 issue of
YES! Magazine,
with the theme “How Cooperatives Are Driving the New Economy.”

^29.
For additional recent examples of the democratic impulse in action, see the Censored News Cluster on “Iceland, the Power of Peaceful Revolution, and the Commons,” in ch. 1 of this volume.