My recent investigation into car manufacturers’ web sites and the message they give out about CO2 emissions has got me thinking about the web sites of other prominent groups and the way that they communicate about CO2 emissions, Climate Change, in fact everything to do with the Environment. The next group that came to mind was the press.

Whilst they have to be seen to remain (theoretically) neutral, it is the role of the press to inform the public of the latest and most important developments in world news. It is also in their interest to supply the kind of news that interests their readers, that encourages them to remain loyal. Whilst the type of news that a paper’s readers are looking for, and how it is presented, does depend on its readership, I would still have thought that the dramatic changes we are seeing in our climate and in the environment, plus the huge amount of noise being made by governments, celebrities and businesses about what many are calling the biggest problem we face today, deserves some form of regular coverage by each and every major newspaper.

With this in mind, I decided to do a tour of the websites of the major UK newspapers to see how - if at all - they are addressing the issue of Climate Change. Here’s what I found:

1. The Times: Amazingly enough I can find no permanent link on the front page that has anything to do with the Environment, Climate, Green Issues, or Global Warming. Ok, so as I write this article, there’s a link to a specific article on the UK Government’s plans to get rid of incandescent lightbulbs, but a little more digging reveals that for The Times, at any rate, the Environment does not merit an individual section - articles are just filed under one the most relevant of existing sections, eg business, or politics or science. One other point I have to make: the large ‘banner’ link to ‘Jeremy Clarkson’s guide to the Environment’. I have to admit that his petrol-headed irrelevant humour has made me laugh in the past, but this article is a total waste of space, and almost in bad taste. It does no good for Jeremy or The Times, and reinforces my feeling that their approach to this issue is (excuse the pun) behind the times…
2. The Guardian: If you don’t know about The Guardian’s Environment section, then I’m not sure why you are reading this article. The only thing that can be annoying is the fact that every piece on Climate Change or the Environment or reducing C02 is accompanied by the inevitable ‘comment battle’ between the believers and the nay-sayers. Still, at least there’s a reaction, and apart from this, there is a wide range of informative articles written by respected journalists and public figures.
3. The Telegraph: The Telegraph’s ‘Earth’ section is linked to from the home page, and contains a variety of useful information plus a small number of good news articles. To be honest, the information is pretty low brow, and there’s a heavy push for Act on CO2, the Government’s web site, but at least there is a whole section dedicated to providing readers with news and useful information.
4. The Independent: Like the Guardian, The Independent have an Environment section, linked to from their home page. This section is in turn split into Climate Change, Green Living, and Nature. I sometimes find that a few days can go by without many new articles arriving in this section, but the coverage is good and broad, treating news stories as well as providing the inevitable useful ‘how to’ guides and features.
5. The Daily Mail: I searched and searched, but…. evidently Daily Mail readers are not worried about Climate Change.
6. The Sun: this one is not very surprising - not a peep for the environment, although I reckon that both Sun and Daily Mail readers would get something out of an easy to use ‘reduce your CO2 and save money’ guide.
7. The Daily Express: Another no no. Another opportunity for the ‘reduce your CO2 and save money’ guide, methinks. Perhaps I’ll contact them!
8. The Daily Star: Ummm nope. Perhaps we could replace the ‘Babes’ section with ‘Environment’? Perhaps not.
9. Metro: ok, so it’s a daily London freebie, so I wasn’t expecting much, and certainly not Climate Watch, Metro’s very own Climate Change section. It’s not as in-depth as some of the broadsheets, but the key is that it’s there, easy to find, and communicating regularly on Climate Change news.
10. The Scotsman: I finish by checking out ‘Scotland’s National Newspaper’, but to no avail. I’m sure there are relevant articles within the pages of the website, but there’s no special link from the home page, and no particular focus on a subject that is particularly important in Scotland, a major focus for wind and wave-driven energy products among other environment-related topics.

So what conclusions can we draw from this quick analysis of UK newspapers’ web sites from a climate change point of view:

• Only 4 out of 10 of the web sites visited have an Environment or Climate Change section.
• All but one of the sites that has an Environment or Climate Change section is a broadsheet. Clearly, the subject of Climate Change is considered too complicated for the majority of the british news-reading public!
• Another way to look at it: the tabloids don’t reckon that talking about Climate Change will sell newspapers. I’m not so sure about this - certainly disaster stories will sell papers, so perhaps we will have to wait for more of the inevitable flooding that is to come!
• Metro, on the other hand, part of the Daily Mail group, judges that their readership is interested in Climate Change. Perhaps this is a reflection of the profile of Londoners and London commuters. Perhaps it’s just a test…. let’s hope it works.

Personally I’m surprised and disappointed. I enjoy the fact that the different UK newspapers treat the news in different ways, but I would have expected each and every one of them to find a way to treat this hugely important subject in some way or other. Apparently we haven’t yet reached this point, which is a pity when you consider the enormous influence that papers such as The Sun can have on the public.

I suppose there’s only one thing to say: when 3/4 of the country is flooded by rising sea-levels, will the last person to leave please turn the lights out!

Yesterday, the BBC announced that they had cancelled Planet Relief, their planned day of programmes highlighting environmental issues. The Comic Relief style programme was to be presented by various stars, with the aim of encouraging viewers and organisations to switch off enough electrical equipment to enable the national grid to shut down a power station for a period of time, in order to highlight unnecessary energy consumption leading to CO2 emissions.

The decision was made after criticisms from two senior executives about impartiality issues, although a spokeswoman denied this, saying that BBC viewers preferred documentary-style programmes addressing these kind of issues, and that they would therefore be focusing on producing a series of factual programmes instead.

I sincerely hope that the decision was not taken due to impartiality issues. Yes, there are still those who claim that climate change and global warming are not the results of human activity, but they are few and far between. What’s more, even these people can’t deny that we are all completely wasteful in the way in which we live and consume power. How could highlighting the issues possibly be described as impartial or influencing people?

The main issue with climate change today is that most of us are not feeling the effects yet - and we won’t for some time. It’s very difficult to treat an issue seriously if it is not ‘in our faces’, even though we are making it worse every day. This issue is highlighted in the recently produced Stern Review: ‘Those who produce greenhouse-gas emissions are bringing about climate change, thereby imposing costs on the world and on future generations, but they do not face directly, neither via markets nor in other ways, the full consequences of the costs of their actions’. In other words, we are trotting happily along, acting in a way that will have a huge effect on our world’s future, but we don’t know or don’t care as we are not reaping what we sow.

The BBC is above all a communications tool, one of the most important communications tools in the world. By communicating about global warming and our individual contribution to global warming, the BBC could help bring this key issue to the front of our minds, and encourage us to carry out at the least some simple actions and at the most to get more involved in reducing our CO2 emissions on a widespread basis. My understanding of the Planet Relief approach is that the BBC (in my opinion) rightly believed that the best way to get across a crucial message is via a mixture of fun and facts. This approach keeps the audience interested over a longer period, giving the message a chance to sink in.

In addition, once we put aside the ’switch off your television and reduce co2 emissions’ comments, which make me think of the 70’s - 80’s childrens’ programme ‘Why Don’t You?’, the idea of shutting down a power station gives a goal to achieve, a goal that only strengthens the message. On top of that, they should have translated the power saving into money, to show how much can be collectively saved by taking simple actions.

I think Planet Relief was a good idea, and would probably have had a far greater effect than Live Earth. Instead, we have to trust that the BBC is right about factual programming. Personally I think many people will turn off, or turn over and nothing will be achieved - well, almost nothing: those who turn off will at least reduce CO2 emissions for a short period!

Who watched Live Earth on Saturday? Who went to one of the concerts? I got to watch a bit, and I have since checked out some of the acts on the site. It was a typical mega concert - that’s to say a little bit of something for almost everyone, although as a whole a mish-mash of mostly MOR non-offensive stuff (oops am I showing my music tastes a bit?? For the record I enjoyed Snow Patrol, The Chili Peppers, the Foo Fighters and the Police).

Still, the music was not so much the reason as the means to an end. The reason, as I think we all know, was to raise awareness about CO2 emissions and global warming on a global basis. This was a chance to get the message out to the thousands attending the concerts and, most importantly, to the millions watching on tv around the world. So what was the result? Did it work? Did CO2 emissions immediately go down on a global basis?

Well during the concerts themselves they almost certainly went up: huge amounts of petrol used to get to the concerts, electricity consumed by all the bands and the megawatts of music being blasted out, and we musn’t even think about the planes and helicopters used to fly in people to the different venues from all around the world. At least we know that Boris Becker was already in London to commentate at Wimbledon…..

But that’s not really the point. I’m sure anyone would gladly trade off these emissions (and the electricity used was probably green electricity) for positive results over the next few days, months, and years. The problem is, it’s going to be difficult to measure these.

So the first answer to my question has to be: I don’t know.

The thing is, Live Earth was not like Live Aid or Live 8. First of all, we are talking about something that hasn’t yet had a tangible effect on everyone. This is sad to say, but there just aren’t enough shocking images to get people to react just like that en masse. We can talk about New Orleans, Sheffield, disintegrating glaciers, but we’re still here, still living, nothing has really changed. The second thing is that this is not a problem that can be solved with money. Live Aid asked the public to give money to help Africa. We saw the images, we understood the message, and we gave the money. Live 8 was above all about pressure on our governments to spend money. The pressure was applied, the governments reacted, and action was taken - although apparently not enough.

Live Earth was primarily about taking personal action. Lots of messages were given out: change your lightbulbs, stop using plastic bags, turn down your heating, pressurise the government, drive less, walk more, fly not at all…. These are all relevant messages, but when communicated all at once in a global event such as Live Earth with people turning off and on, watching the groups they like but not everything, it’s going to be much more difficult to perform a ‘mass conversion’. I doubt very much that 1000’s, let alone 100’s of people went out on Sunday or Monday and bought low energy lightbulbs.

To me, Live Earth was never going to result in ‘mass conversion’ and an immediate and dramatic reaction. It was much more about taking another step on the road to greater awareness of the problems, and there’s no doubt at all that this goal was achieved. I know that for many this is not enough, that we are already worrying about ‘too little too late’, but to me, reducing co2 is and always has been about combining many different elements of communication in order to reach the ‘tipping point’ when the world finally reacts en masse and we really see things changing. These different elements include governments, the media, and individuals, and Live Earth just did a pretty good job on behalf of the media.

Return on investment? Let’s talk about the effect of Live Earth in 6 months. In fact I will make a note to revisit the subject on 7th January 2008.

On 14th June, MTV launched a new campaign with the same aim as this web site - to tell the world about how important and how easy it is to reduce CO2. MTVswitch.org is a website that shows a selection of ads produced by 6 major advertising agencies, and it’s well worth a visit, as some of them are quite funny and quite good. Most of them, I’m glad to say, get over the message well for the MTV target audience.

There’s bound to be more talk about the campaign, which will of course start to air on MTV as well, this week at the Cannes Advertising festival. All the major advertising cronies of the world are getting together in Cannes to pat each other on the back and say how wonderfully they market their clients’ products, and at the end of the week the ultimate advertising trophies, the ‘Lions’ are awarded.

This year’s theme is clearly the environment as guess who’s coming to speak? Mr ‘Unpleasant Truth’ himself, Al Gore. This is a good thing, as it is whenever he pops up, as he has the power to get across a crucial message. It’s also important that he’s coming to Cannes as it means the advertising industry is taking note. However they have a LONG way to go.

Forgetting for a moment the CO2 footprint of such a gathering as Cannes Lions 2007 (how many people are travelling how many miles by plane to get there?), advertising itself has to assume some of the responsibility for getting us into the situation we are in today. After all, advertising is what persuades us to buy more, eat more, travel more, consume more, and without any form of selection between products that are good, bad, or totally evil for the environment. What’s more, think of the number of ads that are made in distant locations by large teams of people. They didn’t get there by swimming, and they need lots and lots of electricity to make a 30 second ad.

So it’s great that MTV is using advertising to get the Reduce Your CO2 message across, and its great that 6 advertising agencies are helping to do so. However, the next steps are even more important: advertising agencies need to pay more attention to what they are advertising, and how they do their work. They have a huge amount of power in their hands, and this power should be used to get across the right message.

An idea: today we have health warnings on ads for junk food, alcohol, and cigarettes. What about this message placed at the end of each travel ad and on every poster: FLYING IS BAD FOR THE PLANET. Or even MAKING THIS AD WE GENERATED OVER 2 TONNES OF CO2 EMISSIONS.