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GoGreenNation news

SEJ 2022 Focus on environmental Justice

Christine Heinrichs
News Feed
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.

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 20th 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 20th-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

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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The past year was another one of record-setting heat and catastrophic storms. But across the US, the climate crisis showed up in smaller, deeply personal ways too.Campfires that once defined summer trips were never lit due to wildfire risks. There were no bites where fish were once abundant, forests turned to meadows after a big burn and childhood memories of winter wonderlands turned to slush.We asked Guardian readers to share some of the ways these changes have affected their lives this year, and how they’ve tried to adapt.The Pacific north-west dad: ‘My children have no memories of the winter I grew up with’Growing up near the Puget sound, Heath Breneman remembers his dad shoveling drifts off the roof of his garage and the powder delicately collected in his pant cuffs after a day spent sledding. He recalled how the snowplows would push enormous piles off the parking lot of his elementary school to create the perfect berms for kids to play on. He can still conjure the satisfying crunch of how it sounded under his boots and the thrill of the chill each year that made warmth feel earned.The sun shines over the Space Needle during a record-breaking heatwave in Seattle in 2021. Photograph: Ted S Warren/APNow he’s a father of four, and his kids haven’t felt the same magic. Temperatures have been steadily rising across the region, with averages expected to climb up to 6F annually by midcentury. Scientists have warned that precipitation will increasingly fall as rain rather than snow.“My children have no memories of the winter I grew up with,” Breneman says. “The shift to a true two-season climate the past 20 years has been swift and stark.”He has taken his kids, who now range from their teens to their 20s, places where they can sled, but the enjoyment and life in the moments he associated with winter “is hard to impart”, he says.“There’s a part of the world you can tell them about,” Breneman says. “But it is like the old guy next to the campfire telling us about the lights that used to be in the skies.”The Appalachian trial hiker: ‘There wasn’t any water at all’Maria Martin looked down at the cracked earth with dismay. This was the second dried stream she’d come across on a five-mile stretch of the Appalachian trail, the popular hiking route that stretches across thousands of miles and 14 states that hug the US east coast, where she spent the summer.An overlook near Great Smoky Mountains national park along the Appalachian trail. Photograph: kyletperry/Getty Images/iStockphotoMartin grew up traipsing through the backcountry in the mid-Atlantic, where she says water is typically abundant even in the warmer months. “It is famously very humid and wet,” she says. The concerning conditions stood in sharp contrast to a lifetime of memories of camping in the summers there with her family, filled with sporadic downpours and swimming holes.But on a hot morning last August, “there wasn’t any water at all. It wasn’t even mud – it was just dirt”, she says, recounting how she had to search the woods for a place to fill her empty canisters. “I heard the same thing from hikers heading north or south,” she adds. “There was one section of the trail that had a nearly 30-mile gap between viable natural water sources.”Depleted water sources and spiking temperatures aren’t the only climate extremes that have hindered those attempting the renowned through-hike. Parts of the region are still in recovery from the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene, a category 4 storm that struck the south-eastern US in September 2024. Last spring, strong storms pummeled the landscapes and flooded low-laying areas, Martin says, leaving behind the perfect habitat to help mosquitoes thrive. Hordes of the bloodsucking buzzers descended on campers for the rest of the summer, she says, sending them scurrying into tents even before the sun set.But by that August morning, pools of water were exceedingly sparse. In the span of a few months working for the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, Martin experienced the extremes flipping from wet to dry.Lashed by the heat and unsure that there would be other options to hydrate, she decided to double back to an area where she’d spotted an outflow from a nearby beaver pond. It wasn’t an ideal source: The water was tinged with orange and smelled like rotting plants. She filtered it twice.These sharp seasonal shifts are adding urgency to questions about overuse and recreation management in increasingly natural areas. They are also creating new safety issues even for those with much outdoor recreation experience. Water scarcity is a challenge that can turn dangerous quickly for hikers and campers in any environment.“I can handle it being hot,” Martin says. “But when you can’t get water, that’s something else completely.”The gardener whose growing season is shrinking: ‘The plants dry up and die’For the second year in a row, Ky Gress wasn’t able to grow a single squash. A lush home garden fills Gress’s front yard in Sacramento, California, the result of more than a decade of dedication. “Nothing tastes better than perfectly fresh food,” Gress says, adding that she doesn’t use pesticides on her plants and that’s made all the difference.But the seasons in her community are shifting. With them, the windows to grow things that once sprung to life in the warm, dry northern California enclave are narrowing.“We can’t plant in the fall like we used to,” Gress says. “The plants dry up and die.” Sometimes it’s the heat that singes her plants past the point of production. Others, an ill-timed hard freeze limits their potential. Lately, she’s noticed that pollinators are visiting less often, even with the scores of plants meant to entice them that line the perimeter of her garden.To produce the bounty she once enjoyed takes a lot more work and delicate adjustments in timing. She attunes her attention more closely to changing conditions, constantly monitoring soil moisture and sharp spikes or drops in temperature. There’s always a learning curve. Two years ago, her plums were lost to a freeze. Her root vegetables had to be pushed back after summer weather lingered longer. The planting season is growing shorter. “I have had to abandon some plants,” she says.Avocados are now easier to grow in Sacramento due to the changing climate. Photograph: Panoramic Images/Getty ImagesThe area where Gress lives was already hot and dry; now bouts of extreme heat and longer periods without moisture have put pressure on plants. The relief once offered overnight, when warmth tends to soften, is disappearing – lows aren’t as cool as they once were.To expand her garden in changing conditions, Gress has ventured into new varietals, including seeds that are common in northern Africa – cow peas and broad beans, which are drought-tolerant legumes that love warm climates and have thrived in her yard.“We couldn’t grow avocados in Sacramento – now people have 20ft trees,” she says.As the conditions shift, it’s become more challenging to produce what she once did. But she’s leaned into the change, adapting to make the most of what otherwise might be a worrying sign. Even when it’s harder, it is always worth it.“This is what we need, for kids to know the wonder of the garden,” she says.The wildlife enthusiast mourning the loss of biodiversity: ‘Every year there are less butterflies’Tim Goncharoff has always loved wildlife. “From deer to birds to the smallest creepy-crawlies,” he says.Starting when he was a very little boy, Goncharoff would venture into the world to marvel at the butterflies and the birds, all the growing things and the bugs on the ground. “I thought they were all wondrous miracles and I couldn’t get enough of it,” he says.Over his 70 years, he’s witnessed the brilliant abundance of life in the world around him grow quieter.“I think a lot of this is about the arc of a long life,” he says, “but I have noticed year by year, that there aren’t so many butterflies. There aren’t so many birds. The variety of species has diminished.”Roughly 1 million species are threatened with extinction, according to a 2019 assessment from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, including roughly 40% of amphibians and a third of reef-forming corals, marine mammals and sharks.A monarch butterfly in Vista, California. The species has seen a massive decline from the millions of monarchs that once clustered in the state. Photograph: Gregory Bull/APInsects – considered the bedrock to biodiversity and the foundation of most ecosystems on earth – are in rapid decline. About 80% of insect species have yet to be identified and some are disappearing before they can be named.The Smith’s blue butterfly, which once flourished along the California coast where Goncharoff spent much of his life, has been listed as endangered.Goncharoff dedicated his years fighting to protect things that were endangered, working as an environmental planner for the city of Santa Cruz, and he says there was always a sense that they were losing ground despite the effort. He hasn’t quit, even though he’s now mostly retired.He loves to spend afternoons near his home on the Suisun marsh, where the fresh rushing waters of the Sacramento-San Joaquin delta that flood into the salty San Francisco Bay provide habitat for scores of creatures that live on shores and sea.“I love to go down and watch the migrating herons and egrets and cranes and ducks and geese – it’s just marvelous,” he says. But even along the largest marsh remaining on the west coast, there have been severe declines. “There are times you’d expect to see them and they just aren’t there.”The animals and plants that he marveled at throughout the years are fading, he says. Goncharoff hasn’t seen a bluebird in years. There are far fewer butterflies.“I do feel a sense of loss and a feeling of mourning,” Goncharoff says. “But I am determined not to get caught up in that.”For Goncharoff, the change he’s seen among the landscapes he loves is a call to action.“There is a lot of damage baked into the system now, but we still have a chance to limit that,” he says. “There’s a lot of good work to be done to keep things from getting worse.”

Climate
Crisis

It’s easy to feel powerless about climate chaos. Here’s what gives me hope

I’ve spent six years writing about environmental justice. The uncomfortable truth is that we’re not all in it together – but people power is reshaping the fightIt’s been another year of climate chaos and inadequate political action. And it’s hard not to feel despondent and powerless.I joined the Guardian full time in 2019, as the paper’s first environmental justice correspondent, and have reported from across the US and the region over the past six years. It’s been painful to see so many families – and entire communities – devastated by fires, floods, extreme heat, sea level rise and food shortages. But what’s given me hope during these six years of reporting as both an environmental and climate justice reporter are the people fighting to save our planet from catastrophe – in their communities, on the streets and in courtrooms across the world. Continue reading...

It’s been another year of climate chaos and inadequate political action. And it’s hard not to feel despondent and powerless.I joined the Guardian full time in 2019, as the paper’s first environmental justice correspondent, and have reported from across the US and the region over the past six years. It’s been painful to see so many families – and entire communities – devastated by fires, floods, extreme heat, sea level rise and food shortages. But what’s given me hope during these six years of reporting as both an environmental and climate justice reporter are the people fighting to save our planet from catastrophe – in their communities, on the streets and in courtrooms across the world.I have always tried to use a justice and equity lens in my journalism on the causes, impacts and solutions relating to the climate crisis. For me, that has meant telling the stories of people who are often ignored or sidelined despite their lived experience and expertise – especially Indigenous people, protesters, activists and local communities fighting back. I have also tried to examine how the climate crisis intersects with – and often exacerbates – other forms of inequity, such as economic inequality, racism, misogyny, land struggles and unequal access to housing and healthcare. The uncomfortable truth is that we are not all in this together. We didn’t all contribute to the climate crisis equally, we’re not all feeling its impacts equally and we don’t all have equal access to resources that might help us cope with or even solve it.In my final piece for the Guardian, I salute the grassroots organizers, scientists, health workers, Indigenous peoples, students and youth activists, peasant farmers, human rights experts and journalists taking on governments and corporations. The climate justice movement scored major victories in 2025, and it has shown us that ordinary people power can – and is – dismantling the status quo.People power is reshaping the climate fight“While the majority of states and businesses try to continue doing business as usual, we’re starting to see cracks in that inertia as the power of the people has helped to give light to what is not working – and identify the actual actions that we need,” said Astrid Puentes Riaño, the UN special rapporteur on the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.Despite the UN climate negotiations in Belém failing to agree, yet again, to phase out fossil fuels, Cop30 did establish the first-ever just transition mechanism (JTM), a plan to ensure that the move to a green-energy economy is fair and inclusive and protects the rights of all people, including workers, frontline communities, women and Indigenous people.Activists perform the death of fossil fuels at Cop30 in Belém, Brazil, on 15 November. Photograph: Pablo Porciúncula/AFP/Getty ImagesWhile far from perfect, the JTM was agreed only after years of civil society organising, including impossible-to-ignore protests during Cop30. The mechanism represents an important step in putting people at the centre of climate policy after decades of technocratic fixes, according to Puentes.There were also encouraging signs that a growing number of states – from the global south and north – have had enough of the inertia and obstructionism blocking meaningful action, and are prepared to stand with affected communities and go their own way.Colombia and the Netherlands, backed by 22 nations, will independently develop a roadmap to fossil fuel phaseout, beginning with a conference in April 2026 in the coal port city of Santa Marta, Colombia. The plan is for states, cities, affected communities and health, science, human rights and other experts to share experiences and best practices, and implement policy ideas outside the snail-paced, consensus-based Cop process.This parallel fossil-fuel roadmap initiative could establish regional solutions and a trading bloc with the power to sanction nations – and financial institutions – that continue to support fossil fuels.Elisa Morgera, the UN special rapporteur on climate change and human rights, said the new alliance could be the gamechanger. “We now have a sizeable group of states from all regions who want to engage in good faith and make progress on phasing out fossil fuels and cannot wait any longer for the Cop process,” she said.“It is so important for people around the world to see that there is political will and political power to advance this, and to see what it looks like, as there is a big gap in imagination. We’ve been so bombarded by climate disinformation from fossil fuel companies that it is hard to imagine what our life would be like without them, but there are examples of cities, towns and communities doing it.”An Indigenous group blocks an entrance to Cop30, on 14 November in Belém. Photograph: André Penner/APBoth Colombia and the Netherlands were pushed hard by ordinary people to do the right thing.In 2023, Colombia, a major fossil fuel producer with fierce, well-organized climate and social justice movements, signed on to the fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty that now includes 18 countries, 140 cities and subnational governments, the World Health Organization, more than 4,000 civil society organisations and more than 3,000 scientists and academics.It was this civil society-led initiative that first created a blueprint to halt new fossil fuel projects and manage an equitable phaseout of coal, oil and gas.“Many political leaders are captured by fossil fuel interests or lack the courage to challenge them, while developing countries are held back by the rich world’s failure to deliver finance and technology anywhere near a fair share,” said Harjeet Singh, a veteran climate activist and strategic adviser to the non-proliferation treaty. “That’s why movements are indispensable watchdogs – naming the polluters, exposing greenwashing and demanding the funds, timelines and protections workers and communities need to transition with rights and dignity.”And change can be contagious. After mounting protests and litigation by Indigenous communities and environmental groups over Brazil’s expansion of oil and gas projects in the Amazon, Cop30 president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced the first step toward a national fossil fuel phaseout roadmap. Still, head-spinning contradictory policies are all too common among states lauded as climate leaders – and Brazil also recently passed the so-called “devastation bill”, which critics warn will accelerate deforestation in the Amazon.Courts are becoming a frontline for climate justiceFailure to transition away from fossil fuels is a violation of international law, according to an international court of justice (ICJ) ruling in July 2025, alongside multiple other international courts and tribunals.The ICJ advisory opinion, which was initiated by Pacific Island law students, confirmed what communities had argued in courts around the world for a decade. Governments have a whole host of legal duties arising as a result of the climate crisis, including phasing out fossil fuels and regulating polluting corporations.The landmark ruling by the highest court in the world can be traced back to a 2015 lawsuit when the Netherlands became the first state ordered to take stronger climate action, in a case brought by 900 Dutch citizens and the Urgenda Foundation, an environmental group.Solomon Islands youth climate activist Cynthia Houniuhi speaks during public hearings of the UN’s international court of justice (ICJ) on defining countries’ legal obligations to fight climate change, in the Hague, Netherlands, in 2024. Photograph: Piroschka Van De Wouw/Reuters“In just 10 years, climate litigation has evolved from a handful of complaints before domestic courts to a global accountability system recognised by the highest international courts and tribunals,” said Dennis Van Berkel, legal counsel at the Urgenda Foundation, in a recent report by the Climate Litigation Network. “That transformation was built case by case, country by country. Some judgments failed, but each contributed – refining arguments, strengthening alliances, raising public awareness and laying the groundwork for those that followed.”A recent judgment in South Africa halted a major internationally funded offshore gas and oil project opposed by coastal communities and environmental groups. The government has paused all other new oil and gas proposals, pending an appeal.“Access to justice and litigation is the most peaceful way to advance and help states and businesses to correct mistakes, make the right decision and advance climate action. It’s not that litigation solves everything, but it’s a very important piece in order to advance the systemic changes that we need,” Puentes of the UN said.Indigenous knowledge points the way forwardFor thousands of years, Indigenous peoples have lived in respectful harmony with the planet – using, not exploiting, natural resources from our forests, seas, rivers and land. In addition to this vast ancient knowledge, we have 21st-century tools and technologies, and innovative grassroots and regional solutions that together should be the heart of global efforts to tackle the climate crisis.Next year, like every year, it will fall on ordinary people to harness their immense power through the courts, protests, multilateral spaces and the ballot box to ensure climate-impacted communities and human rights become the centre of negotiations and climate action.“If we wait for Cop31 to save us, we have already surrendered,” said Raj Patel, a research professor at the University of Texas and author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System.“The test is not whether diplomats can craft better language in Antalya [in Turkey] next year, but whether farmers’ movements, Indigenous movements and climate movements can generate enough political pressure to make governments fear inaction more than they fear confronting corporate power.”

Climate
Food
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