ABSTRACT
Twenty years ago the American political scientist Anthony Downs applied his “issue attention cycle” to the environmental movement. The result looked like Figure 9.1. This depicts the changing public engagement with environmental problems as they wax and wane in reality and through media coverage. To begin with, and here is the true precautionary mode, only a few knowledgeable insiders know much. They may tip off a journalist or two, or even tempt a television producer. But unless the story is “hard” it is unlikely to capture attention. The ozone hole was not news as a theoretical prediction: only when the satellite pictures revealed the purple aura of depletion. Similarly famine in Ethiopia is not “news” until a fine television journalist engulfed the public conscience with horrendous first time pictures.
