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SEJ 2022 Focus on environmental Justice

Christine Heinrichs

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Monday, May 16, 2022

A Roseate Spoonbill flew over our heads as our group of about 20 assembled in the parking lot of the High Island Bird Sanctuary in Texas. We caught our breath. Welcome to SEJ 2022, the Society of Environmental Journalists annual conference.

The birding tour was one of nine all-day tours to kick off the annual conference. Birds, Conservation, Diversity and Inclusion brought several of the conference’s themes together. Other tours explored sustainable fishing; the implications of climate change solutions for Houston, the Oil and Gas Capital; wildfire; clean energy; flood protection; environmental racism in Houston’s Ship Channel; corporate stonewalling to climate threats; and changes to highway construction to consider environmental justice.

Just under 600 journalists, experts in these subjects and generalists filling in their background, gathered in Houston March 30-April 3 for the conference. SEJ worked with the Uproot Project, a free network for journalists of color who cover the environment. Uproot is a professional organization to support career advancement among journalists of color. SEJ awarded 26 Diversity Fellowships to attend the conference.

In my 20^th year of SEJ membership, I greeted old friends, those who had led the organization in earlier years. Experienced conference attendees were matched with first-timers. Mine were three young women, full of energy and ideas.

That vibrant energy powered the conference. SEJ’s work to broaden its ranks with minority journalists is succeeding. More black and brown faces mixed at meals and inspired discussions during sessions.

Rice University sponsored the conference. Houston prides itself on being the Energy Capital of the World. Thanks to its location at low elevation on the Gulf of Mexico, it floods frequently. Sea level rise puts its oil, gas and petrochemical plants at risk, along with those of neighboring Louisiana. Flooding and chemical contamination disproportionately affect communities of color.

THE WORK OF REPORTING

The focus was on helping reporters do their job of standing in for the public and providing information that their audiences, in their personal lives as well as their political lives, need. News affects how the public navigates climate crises, from the immediate of fire and flood, to the policy side of breaking through industry-packed political functions.

Sessions included digital tools to deal with hacking, doxing and working with data to track toxic contamination, oil and gas extraction, mining and mapping environmental justice.

ENERGY TRANSITION

Clean renewable energy is key to reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing the climate crisis. Sessions explored various strategies forward, such as hydrogen as a green fuel. Sammy Roth, energy reporter for the LA Times, raised questions about hydrogen production products such as nitrogen oxides, which contribute to smog; as yet unknown costs; pipeline requirements; and the danger of explosion. He called it “a combination of hope and skepticism.”

Natural gas, promoted as a clean alternative to coal, is another fossil fuel. Industry lobbying has opposed laws requiring new construction to be all-electric, which can be produced from renewable sources. Advocating for substituting one fossil fuel for another prolongs the transition to clean fuel.

Carbon capture, use and sequestration sounds like a solution, but as Sara Sneath reported for Southerly, that path is fraught with pitfalls. No carbon capture plant has met its goals, and many emitted more greenhouse gas (GHG) than they captured. Preventing the production of GHG is a more direct route to reducing GHG.

OCEAN ISSUES

Oceans got attention in an all-day workshop, plenary discussion and related sessions. Oceans have absorbed substantial carbon, but at the cost of acidic changes that affect the animals and plants for which they are habitat.

Plastic pollution contaminates water and beaches. According to The Nurdle Patrol, policy and business practices, and stopping plastic production at the source can reduce this aspect of ocean trash.

Sea level rise is already causing regular flooding in coastal areas. the National Oceanic Administration (NOAA)’s sea level rise viewer shows Gulf Coast petrochemical facilities can expect to be inundated.

“Failure to plan is planning to fail,” one participant said.

Ayanna Jolivet Mccloud, executive director for Bayou City Waterkeeper, made the case for the Personhood of Water, as a way to advocate for the environment. Corporations have legal standing in court. “It sounds a little radical, but it might be what we need right now,” she said.

RELIGION AND CLIMATE CRISIS

Participants examined the spiritual side of their work in sessions on religion. Katherine Hayhoe, who has appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live, is a climate change scientist serving as chief scientist for The Nature Conservancy. She speaks from a Christian perspective.She quoted examples of Bible scripture to support stewardship of God’s Earth and caring for the poor.

WHAT'S OBJECTIVE

Journalists overflowed the session on When the Truth is Not Neutral: The Myth of Absolute Objectivity in Reporting. The panel was led by Emily Holden, founder and editor in chief of Floodlight, and included LA Times’ Sammy Roth and Sara Shipley Hiles, associate professor at the Missouri School of Journalism. Roth devoted one of his Boiling Point newsletters to discussion of the issue.

Traditional journalism required early climate change coverage to include “both sides” in news stories, even though editors and reporters understood that climate change was questioned only by a fringe group of scientists. Their efforts were later unmasked, as paid work for fossil fuel companies, in Merchants of Doubt. Journalism’s struggle to call Donald Trump’s false and misleading pronouncements “lies” indicates the continuing issues for reporters.

While environmental reporters separated themselves from the advocacy of 20^th-century environmentalists, using objectivity as a shield served the power structure and obscured the real stories. No one questions that political reporters favor democracy or that education reporters favor good education. It’s not controversial to be in favor of a clean environment.

“Advocating nothing is advocating for the status quo,” Holden said.

Framing environmental transition stories as Jobs vs. Environment is inaccurate. The workforce is not the industry. Renewable energy creates new jobs, and fossil fuel jobs are declining. Policy makers are in position to address the transition.

Holden recommended reporters read their own stories with an eye to asking, Did I miss the message? The historic journalistic View from Nowhere objectivity is being re-evaluated, to a View from Somewhere.

How reporters cover the news, what stories editors select, the words and images we choose to tell the stories, continue to evolve. One of the guidelines I like to use is, How would I tell a friend what happened? Sessions like this one, bringing thoughtful journalists together for frank, if uncomfortable, exchanges, strengthen all of our work.

TOURING AND PARTYING

Saturday afternoon mini-tours invited everyone out of the conference center, to see Prairie Chickens, paddle kayaks around Kickerillo-Mischer Preserve, bike the bayous, take a pontoon boat on Buffalo Bayou, or take a walking tour around Houston or the Rice campus.

Rice put on a party Saturday night, with art events and live music for dancing.

BREAKFAST AND BOOKS

The Houston Arboretum set up tables for breakfast under the trees. Historian Douglas Brinkley discussed the political background of his new book, out in November, Silent Spring Revolution. It’s the third in his environmental politics trilogy, from Theodore Roosevelt, through Franklin Roosevelt, to this volume, covering World War II to 1973. It explores the legacies of Rachel Carson, JFK and LBJ in the “great environmental awakening.”

A panel of Rice professors who have written books followed. Two have experienced Houston’s flooding, and wrote about how that affected them and their neighborhoods. Dan Cohan, who teaches civil engineering, found that his entire curriculum needed revision after he studied climate change.

RECORDINGS AVAILABLE

Most sessions were recorded and will be made available to the public through SEJ. Some are already available, thanks to Bernardo Motta.

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Read the full story here.

Photos courtesy of

Christine Heinrichs

Christine Heinrichs writes from her home on California’s Central Coast. She keeps a backyard flock of about a dozen hens. She follows coastal issues, writing a regular column on the Piedras Blancas elephant seal rookery for the San Luis Obispo Tribune. Her narrative on the Central Coast condor flock will appear in Ten Spurs 2021 edition.

Her book, How to Raise Chickens, was first published in 2007, just as the local food movement was starting to focus attention on the industrial food system. Backyard chickens became the mascot of local food. The third edition of How to Raise Chickens was published in January 2019. The Backyard Field Guide to Chickens was published in 2016. Look for them in Tractor Supply stores and online.

She has a B.S. in Journalism from the University of Oregon and belongs to several professional journalism and poultry organizations.

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Park Service orders changes to staff ratings, a move experts call illegal

Lower performance ratings could be used as a factor in layoff decisions and will demoralize staff, advocates say.

A top National Park Service official has instructed park superintendents to limit the number of staff who get top marks in performance reviews, according to three people familiar with the matter, a move that experts say violates federal code and could make it easier to lay off staff.Parks leadership generally evaluate individual employees annually on a five-point scale, with a three rating given to those who are successful in achieving their goals, with those exceeding expectations receiving a four and outstanding employees earning a five.Frank Lands, the deputy director of operations for the National Park System, told dozens of park superintendents on a conference call Thursday that “the preponderance of ratings should be 3s,” according to the people familiar, who were not authorized to comment publicly about the internal call.Lands said that roughly one to five percent of people should receive an outstanding rating and confirmed several times that about 80 percent should receive 3s, the people familiar said.Follow Climate & environmentThe Interior Department, which oversees the National Park Service, said in a statement Friday that “there is no percentage cap” on certain performance ratings.“We are working to normalize ratings across the agency,” the statement said. “The goal of this effort is to ensure fair, consistent performance evaluations across all of our parks and programs.”Though many employers in corporate American often instruct managers to classify a majority of employee reviews in the middle tier, the Parks Service has commonly given higher ratings to a greater proportion of employees.Performance ratings are also taken into account when determining which employees are laid off first if the agency were to go ahead with “reduction in force” layoffs, as many other departments have done this year.The order appears to violate the Code of Federal Regulations, said Tim Whitehouse, a lawyer and executive director of the nonprofit advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. The code states that the government cannot require a “forced distribution” of ratings for federal employees.“Employees are supposed to be evaluated based upon their performance, not upon a predetermined rating that doesn’t reflect how they actually performed,” he said.The Trump administration has reduced the number of parks staff this year by about 4,000 people, or roughly a quarter, according to an analysis by the National Parks Conservation Association, an advocacy group. Parks advocates say the administration is deliberately seeking to demoralize staff and failing to recognize the additional work they now have to do, given the exodus of employees through voluntary resignations and early retirements.Rep. Jared Huffman (D-California) said the move would artificially depress employee ratings:“You can’t square that with the legal requirements of the current regulations about how performance reviews are supposed to work.”Some details of the directive were first reported by E&E News.Park superintendents on the conference call objected to the order. Some questioned the fairness to employees whose work merited a better rating at a time when many staff are working harder to make up for the thousands of vacancies.“I need leaders who lead in adversity. And if you can’t do that, just let me know. I’ll do my best to find somebody that can,” Lands said in response, the people familiar with the call said.One superintendent who was on the call, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation, said in an interview that Lands’ statement “was meant to be a threat.”The superintendent said they were faced with disobeying the order and potentially being fired or illegally changing employees’ evaluations.“If we change these ratings to meet the quota and violated federal law, are we subject to removal because we violated federal law and the oath we took to protect the Constitution?” the superintendent said.Myron Ebell, a board member of the American Lands Council, an advocacy group supporting the transfer of federal lands to states and counties, defended the administration’s move.“It’s exactly the same thing as grade inflation at universities. Think about it. Not everybody can be smarter than average. If everyone is doing great, that’s average,” he said.Theresa Pierno, president and CEO of the National Parks Conservation Association, said in a statement that the policy could make it easier to lay off staff, after the administration already decimated the ranks of the parks service.“After the National Park Service was decimated by mass firings and pressured staff buyouts, park rangers have been working the equivalent of second, third, or even fourth jobs protecting parks,” Pierno said.“Guidance like this could very well be setting up their staff to be cannon fodder during the next round of mass firings. This would be an unconscionable move,” she added.

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Coalmine expansions would breach climate targets, NSW government warned in ‘game-changer’ report

Environmental advocates welcome Net Zero Commission’s report which found the fossil fuel was ‘not consistent’ with emissions reductions commitments Sign up for climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s free Clear Air newsletter hereGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastThe New South Wales government has been warned it can no longer approve coalmine developments after the state’s climate agency found new expansions would be inconsistent with its legislated emissions targets.In what climate advocates described as a significant turning point in campaigns against new fossil fuel programs, the NSW Net Zero Commission said coalmine expansions were “not consistent” with the state’s legal emissions reductions commitments of a 50% cut (compared with 2005 levels) by 2030, a 70% cut by 2035, and reaching net zero by 2050.Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as a free newsletter Continue reading...

The New South Wales government has been warned it can no longer approve coalmine developments after the state’s climate agency found new expansions would be inconsistent with its legislated emissions targets.In what climate advocates described as a significant turning point in campaigns against new fossil fuel programs, the NSW Net Zero Commission said coalmine expansions were “not consistent” with the state’s legal emissions reductions commitments of a 50% cut (compared with 2005 levels) by 2030, a 70% cut by 2035, and reaching net zero by 2050.The commission’s Coal Mining Emissions Spotlight Report said the government should consider the climate impact – including from the “scope 3” emissions released into the atmosphere when most of the state’s coal is exported and burned overseas – in all coalmine planning decisions.Environmental lawyer Elaine Johnson said the report was a “game-changer” as it argued coalmining was the state’s biggest contribution to the climate crisis and that new coal proposals were inconsistent with the legislated targets.She said it also found demand for coal was declining – consistent with recent analyses by federal Treasury and the advisory firm Climate Resource – and the state government must support affected communities to transition to new industries.“What all this means is that it is no longer lawful to keep approving more coalmine expansions in NSW,” Johnson wrote on social media site LinkedIn. “Let’s hope the Department of Planning takes careful note when it’s looking at the next coalmine expansion proposal.”The Lock the Gate Alliance, a community organisation that campaigns against fossil fuel developments, said the report showed changes were required to the state’s planning framework to make authorities assess emissions and climate damage when considering mine applications.It said this should apply to 18 mine expansions that have been proposed but not yet approved, including two “mega-coalmine expansions” at the Hunter Valley Operations and Maules Creek mines. 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He said some coalmines would close in the years ahead but was “no reason” not to approve outstanding applications to extend the operating life of about 10 mines.Galilee said emissions from coal in NSW were falling faster than the average rate of emission reduction across the state and were “almost fully covered” by the federal government’s safeguard mechanism policy, which required mine owners to either make annual direct emissions cuts or buy offsets.He said the NSW government should “reflect on why it provides nearly $7m annually” for the commission to “campaign against thousands of NSW mining jobs”.But the state’s main environment organisation, the Nature Conservation Council of NSW, said the commission report showed coalmining was “incompatible with a safe climate future”.“The Net Zero Commission has shone a spotlight. 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Now, that figure is 50 percent.”This may sound persuasive to you. But in fact, it’s a highly selective reading of the PPIC survey data linked above. What the poll actually found is that the proportion of Californians calling climate change a “very serious” threat peaked at 57 percent in 2019, fell slightly in subsequent years, then fell precipitously by 11 points between July 2022 and July 2023, before rising similarly precipitously from July 2024 to July 2025. Why did it fall so quickly from 2022 to 2023? Sure, maybe people stopped caring about climate change. Or maybe instead, the month after the 2022 poll, Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act, the most significant climate policy in U.S. history, and people stopped being quite so worried. Why did concern then rise rapidly between July 2024 and July 2025? Well, between those two dates, Trump won the presidential election and proceeded, along with Republicans in Congress, to dismantle anything remotely resembling climate policy. The Inflation Reduction Act fell apart. I’m not saying this is the only way to read this data. But consider this: The percentage of respondents saying they were somewhat or very worried about members of their household being affected by natural disasters actually went up over the same period. The percentage saying air pollution was “a more serious health threat in lower-income areas” nearby went up. Those saying flooding, heat waves, and wildfires should be considered “a great deal” when siting new affordable housing rose a striking 12 percentage points from 2024 to 2025, and those “very concerned” about rising insurance costs “due to climate risks” rose 14 percentage points.This is not a portrait of an electorate that doesn’t care about climate change. It’s a portrait of an electorate that may actually be very ready to hear a politician convincingly embrace climate populism—championing affordability and better material conditions for working people, in part by protecting them from the predatory industries driving a cost-of-living crisis while poisoning people.This is part of a broader problem. Currently, there’s a big push from centrist Democratic institutions to argue that the party should abandon climate issues in order to win elections. The evidence for this is mixed, at best. As TNR’s Liza Featherstone recently pointed out, Democrats’ striking victories last month showed that candidates fusing climate policy with an energy affordability message did very well. Aaron Regunberg went into further detail on why talking about climate change is a smart strategy: “Right now,” he wrote, “neither party has a significant trust advantage on ‘electric utility bills’ (D+1) or ‘the cost of living’ (R+1). 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Takeaways From AP’s Report on Potential Impacts of Alaska’s Proposed Ambler Access Road

A proposed mining road in Northwest Alaska has sparked debate amid climate change impacts

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GoGreenNation news

SEJ 2022 Focus on environmental Justice

THE WORK OF REPORTING

ENERGY TRANSITION

OCEAN ISSUES

RELIGION AND CLIMATE CRISIS

WHAT'S OBJECTIVE

TOURING AND PARTYING

BREAKFAST AND BOOKS

RECORDINGS AVAILABLE

Related News

Park Service orders changes to staff ratings, a move experts call illegal

Coalmine expansions would breach climate targets, NSW government warned in ‘game-changer’ report

Nope, Billionaire Tom Steyer Is Not a Bellwether of Climate Politics

Takeaways From AP’s Report on Potential Impacts of Alaska’s Proposed Ambler Access Road

New York’s Environmental Agenda Stalls Under Kathy Hochul

Suggested Viewing

Talking Trees

Just Can't Stop!

Chicken Soup for the Soil

Evangelicals for Climate Action

The Whale Guitar: Instrument of Change

Join us to forge
a sustainable future

sign up for our mailing list to stay informed on the latest films and environmental headlines.

Cookies help us run our site more efficiently.

SEJ 2022 Focus on environmental Justice

THE WORK OF REPORTING

ENERGY TRANSITION

OCEAN ISSUES

RELIGION AND CLIMATE CRISIS

WHAT'S OBJECTIVE

TOURING AND PARTYING

BREAKFAST AND BOOKS

RECORDINGS AVAILABLE

Related News

Park Service orders changes to staff ratings, a move experts call illegal

Coalmine expansions would breach climate targets, NSW government warned in ‘game-changer’ report

Nope, Billionaire Tom Steyer Is Not a Bellwether of Climate Politics

Takeaways From AP’s Report on Potential Impacts of Alaska’s Proposed Ambler Access Road

New York’s Environmental Agenda Stalls Under Kathy Hochul

Suggested Viewing

Talking Trees

Just Can't Stop!

Chicken Soup for the Soil

Evangelicals for Climate Action

The Whale Guitar: Instrument of Change

Join us to forgea sustainable future

sign up for our mailing list to stay informed on the latest films and environmental headlines.

Join us to forge
a sustainable future