ABSTRACT
Introduction In decades hence, we will look back to the first years of the twenty-first century as the years when environmental crises accelerated, when the impacts of global environmental changes such as climate change shifted from being pervasive if intangible problems, to lived-and-felt, everyday experiences. We may well view these as the years when disasters turned from being horrific but rare exceptions to the even more heart-wrenching condition of “normal” life in a climate-altered world. Cox (2007) placed the rise of the professional field of environmental communication since the early 1980s into the context of environmental risks and degradation, and-in the face of currently accelerating environmental challenges-charged the field to serve as an ethically motivated “crisis discipline.” While this notion of a “crisis discipline” was welcomed by some and sincerely debated or even contested by others (e.g., Heath et al. 2007; Killingsworth 2007; Schwarze 2007; Senecah 2007), it would be hard to deny that much of what has been written under the flag of “environmental communication” in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century is not somehow motivated by or linked to an unease about environmental events, trends, problems, or dangers-however perceived. The rise of the subfield of climate change communication can certainly serve as “Exhibit A” for this claim (e.g., Boykoff 2011; Carvalho 2008; Carvalho 2010; Moser and Dilling 2004; Moser and Dilling 2007). From this perspective, the practice of environmental communication for many is “instrumental”: it aims to inform or help mobilize a more effective societal response to these growing dangers. In turn, much of environmental communication research has aimed and become more adept at untangling the various aspects of the communication process in an effort to make it more effective. We have tracked changing perceptions and attitudes to better address our various audiences; we have identified and tested different framings, channels, messages and messengers to reach those who might influence public and policy debates; and we have unearthed a range of influences on the communication process to render it more helpful, timely, and influential. Even the more “constitutive” approach to environmental communication, which looks at communication as a symbolic act that helps humans place themselves vis-à-vis the other-than-human life world, can be read as an attempt to reckon with the human footprint on Earth. Over the 30 years since the field’s inception, environmental communication has indeed matured significantly in doing all of this. With a well established technical vernacular in place, a strong set of methodologies to examine communication efforts, and growing geographic coverage of investigations that enables comparative insights into
the importance of culture, context, and communication practices, the field of environmental communication has become increasingly sophisticated (progress and achievements to which the contributions in this Handbook pay tribute). At the same time that environmental crises are becoming commonplace, and environmental communication has come into its own, a third trend is inescapable in our field and in our lives: the rise of the internet, the near-saturation of social media in public use, and profound technological and political-economic changes in the media industry (Brenner and Smith 2013; Rainie 2013; The Pew Research Center 2013). Communication has become faster, more distributed, more fragmented, and yet also more media-ted as a result. Dominick (2010) has well delineated the social implications of these developments, including the growing speed of “news,” the lack of gatekeepers sorting through the abundance, yes, overload of information, growing privacy concerns, the emergence of media use as escapism, and, disconcertingly, the growing social isolation despite virtual connectedness (for a visual commentary on just this effect of social media, see Cohen 2013). Environmental communication practice, without critically questioning this trend, has instead fully embraced it. These developments in technology, research, and practice entail a certain degree of reification, of distancing from that which we study and do: humans trying-sometimes desperately-to connect with each other by way of words, images, gestures, and touch. It is not unreasonable then to ask whether we in the environmental communication field may be losing touch with the very heart of communication at a crucial time. Despite all our communication options and opportunities, despite our skill and sophistication, are we still serving the deepest purpose of all communication, namely to exchange ideas and information, to hear and be heard, to create understanding and foster connection among us (some would extend the circle beyond humans (Peterson et al. 2007)), and, ultimately, to ensure survival? This question becomes ever more important to ask of the kind of communication needed most as environmental changes, disasters, and continual degradation of our life world take on a global scale. In such a time, I would submit, what is called for first and foremost is not persuasion, education, and deliberation (though none of these will lose in importance), but kind and compassionate human support. Not conversion but respect and dignity. Not a battle of the minds, but a meeting of the hearts. In what follows, I will argue that the two major trends introduced above-the increasing frequency of environmental crises and the pervasiveness of technology-based communication-open up a gap, a profound need, that an environmental communication oriented toward human welfare and connection may be able to meet. I call such an environmental communication “humanistic” and offer it here as a promising future direction for our field. In the section below, I begin by making the case for how environmental crises are beginning to emerge in our collective experience. Next, I define and sketch the outlines of such a “humanistic” environmental communication, and then focus in on how it may serve a society increasingly in dire environmental straits. I will close with an appeal to both environmental communication researchers and practitioners to issue not just warnings and clarion calls to action but to partake in the restoration of our relationships to each other and between ourselves and the more-than-human world.
