Category: News & Events

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Hot, Hungry Planet Book Launch May 3

Join me in person or online on May 3 at 3 p.m. at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. for the book launch of HOT, HUNGRY PLANET: The Fight to Stop a Food Crisis in the Face of Climate Change. The event is free and open to the public. Details are here. Please RSVP.

I will share what I have learned from my research and reporting. The book focuses on three key concepts that support food security and resilience in a changing world: social, educational, and agricultural advances; land use and technical actions by farmers; and policy nudges that have the greatest potential for reducing adverse environmental impacts of agriculture while providing more food.

For the book launch, I will be joined by experts on global food security for a panel discussion and will take questions from the audience. Copies of the book will be available for sale. This conversation is part of the ongoing “Managing Our Planet” series, jointly developed by George Mason University and the Wilson Center’s Brazil Institute and Environmental Change and Security Program. The series, now in its fifth year, is premised on the fact that humanity’s impacts are planetary in scale and require planetary-scale solutions.

9781250084200_fc– See more at: https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/hot-hungry-planet-book-launch#sthash.M30dkpxF.dpuf

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Hot, Hungry Planet is Available for Pre-order

lisa-palmer-twitter-cover-photo

Hot, Hungry Planet: The Fight to Stop a Global Food Crisis in the Face of Climate Change is now available for pre-order. Buy the book at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, IndieBound, and Powells. The book will be published by St. Martin’s Press on May 9, 2017.

Earth will have more than 9.6 billion people by 2050 according to U.N. predictions. With resources already scarce, how will we feed them all? Journalist Lisa Palmer has traveled the world for years documenting the cutting-edge innovations of people and organizations on the front lines of fighting the food gap. Here, she shares the story of the epic journey to solve the imperfect relationship between two of our planet’s greatest challenges: climate change and global hunger.

Hot, Hungry Planet focuses on three key concepts that support food security and resilience in a changing world: social, educational, and agricultural advances; land use and technical actions by farmers; and policy nudges that have the greatest potential for reducing adverse environmental impacts of agriculture while providing more food. Palmer breaks down this difficult subject though seven concise and easily-digestible case studies over the globe and presents the stories of individuals in six key regions—India, sub-Saharan Africa, the United States, Latin America, the Middle East, and Indonesia—painting a hopeful picture of both the world we want to live in and the great leaps it will take to get there.

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Climate Concerns in Boardrooms, But in Business Magazines?

Mention the words business risk and climate change to Howard Kunreuther of Penn’s Wharton School, and he’ll tell you about big changes in risk management in the corporate world. Yet major business periodicals appear to lag behind corporate boardrooms in increasing the awareness of risks posed by a changing climate.

In a story headlined Risky Business, published recently at The Yale Forum, I took a look at how U.S. businesses now are facing major changes in their assessment of catastrophic risk. Floods and droughts are increasingly coming into focus. Supply chain management is now a big concern, because natural hazards around the world can disrupt business at home. Here is how the story begins:

As little as ten years ago, few of the world’s largest corporations issued sustainability strategies to shareholders, reported on greenhouse gas emissions, or disclosed climate change risks. Today, more than 80 percent do.

But while catastrophic risk and sustainability concerns associated with climate change now are increasingly reflected on corporate agendas, leading business magazines — no doubt suffering some of the same economic and growth challenges facing mass media overall — show little real appetite for substantive climate-related reporting.

Nevertheless, climate news important to the business sector clearly is happening. For the first time, G20 leaders put disaster risk management on the agenda at their 2012 summit in Mexico. And U.S. corporations have made substantial progress on emission reduction goals, according to a September 2012 report by the Carbon Disclosure Project, a system for companies to measure and disclose environmental information. As emissions reductions and physical risks of climate change — including drought, wildfires, and floods — raise concerns in boardrooms and among finance ministers in the world’s richest countries, business press coverage appears not to be meeting needs, leaving things to specialized high-priced “insider” newsletters to fill the void.

 I admire the reporting and writing skills of many of the business journalists mentioned in my article and hope they will pursue these big stories, but they will also need the support and backing of their managing editors. You can read the complete story here.
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Green Business: The bottom line on sustainability

Last week I was in Lubbock, located in the southern high plains in West Texas, for the annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists. The event is one of the professional development highlights of my year because I get to hear lectures and a wide range of viewpoints on the latest environmental hot topics. I also get to keep company with the best and brightest editors and reporters in North America.

On Saturday I moderated a panel called Green Business: The bottom line on tackling sustainability, featuring Al Halvorsen, senior director of environmental sustainability at PepsiCo; Sharlene Leurig, senior manager of water and insurance programs at Ceres; and Clint Wilder, senior editor at Clean Edge, Inc. and co-author of Clean Tech Nation. The panelists discussed a full range of sustainability issues, from supply chains, energy use and product planning to manufacturing facilities, natural resources and waste management.

A couple of key points from the panel:

-Sustainability is no longer an option for corporations; it’s a necessity.

-Companies are now influencing their communities to conserve resources.

-Challenges with financing and long term investments in clean tech are limiting this sector from scaling up.

What difficulties are you facing with long-term sustainability planning? I hope you’ll add your comment and join the conversation.

An audio file of the panel is here.

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Another Jobs Push

Almost two years ago, I reported on President Obama’s jobs plan, which he outlined in a speech at the Brookings Institution. Time has passed, and yet my report on how to get more Americans back to work couldn’t be more relevant today. Here’s the story that appeared on Dec. 11, 2009, in U.S. News & World Report:

The Next Jobs Push
Obama unveils a three-part plan for stimulating more jobs—to mixed reviews
By Lisa Palmer

A year ago, Americans were losing their jobs at a rate of 700,000 per month. Now, even as that rate has dropped to 135,000 per month, the ranks of unemployed workers still top 11 million. So it’s no surprise that figuring out how to get America back to work has taken the spotlight.

President Obama this week announced in a speech at the Brookings Institution a new “effort to accelerate job growth [in] those areas that will generate the great- est number of jobs while generating the greatest value for our economy.” His plan outlines three main policies to spur job growth. Small businesses would receive a tax credit if they hired new workers, and they would get relief from capital-gains taxes on small-business investments. Second, the plan includes money for key infrastructure improvements, such as building roads and construction projects. Third, it proposes a “cash for caulkers” rebate program that would provide financial incentives for homeowners to make their houses more energy efficient. In addition, Obama called for an extension of unemployment insurance and more aid to state and local governments facing budget crunches.

The plan has drawn mixed reviews from economic policy experts. Labor market economist Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute says Washington insiders are starting to realize the enormity of the job crisis. “There is a strong consensus amongst economists that the February stimulus act is working,” she says. “But it wasn’t big enough to get us back on track. We need more.”

Harry Holzer, an economist at Georgetown University’s Urban Institute, is pleased with some components of the plan. “It was very important to extend money to states and localities to prevent additional job loss,” he says. But other parts of the plan are a mishmash: “It is not as well targeted to job creation as I would have liked,” Holzer says.

Both Holzer and Shierholz advocate direct job creation initiatives, which were absent from Obama’s proposal. Holzer said a $30 billion job creation plan to set up a public service employment program would put 1 million Americans back to work.

Peter Morici, a professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Business, is critical of both the original stimulus plan and the new proposal. “What businesses need are customers,” he says, arguing that a greater proportion of the plan’s funds should be directed to things like construction, which would stimulate consumption, which would in turn create jobs.

Obama did not talk about the plan’s price tag. Some lawmakers estimate it would total roughly $200 billion, the amount the Treasury Department estimates has been trimmed from the projected cost of the Troubled Asset Relief Program. But that could face resistance. Republicans, already howling that the $787 billion in the original stimulus plan was wasted, argue that any money saved should be used for deficit reduction.

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News vs. Views

Science journalism is in big decline. In 1989, 95 U.S. newspapers had dedicated science sections. Today only a third still do. Science blogging now supersedes traditional reporting.

What does the shift from mainstream media to blogs and agenda-based media mean for society’s ability to address environmental issues? Does it reduce the quality and credibility of information? Or enrich us with a greater multiplicity of voices? To learn more, Momentum asked a science journalist in the mainstream media, along with an online reporter who focuses on the politics of energy and the environment.

Seth Borenstein
Science Writer, The Associated Press

I don’t see the decline in science writing as bad as other parts of journalism. At AP, we haven’t had cuts that affect science or environment writing at all. But for the public, the changes in media consumption habits means everything is more fractionalized and factionalized. People want to read and view people who agree with them, and they don’t want to see or hear anything that is not part of their worldview. It has always been that way to some extent, but it has gotten easier. If I were a climate change denier and only wanted to listen to Rush Limbaugh, I could have done that 10 years ago. If I were a Greenpeacer who didn’t want to hear the other voices that conflicted with my worldview, I could’ve found my news. With new media, it allows things to echo more on both ends of the spectrum.

The AP has a kind of credibility that blogs and agenda media don’t have, but it’s more than that. For my work, I hold a mirror to the world in terms of science, climate change and the environment. I still think people want to read and view that. I have been covering science and the environment for about 20 years, and so we provide the expertise. We are not here to feed one worldview or another.

The shrinkage of the conventional press is neither bad nor good, it just is. If you want to read nothing but agenda-based media, you can do it. But you will be more informed if you read reality-based media. Either way, I don’t think it is the media’s job to have people be more or less engaged with science and the environment. Whether people are engaged should have little to do with media.

Darren Samuelsohn
Senior Energy and Environment Reporter, POLITICO

While there is definitely a decrease in the number of reporters covering every issue out there, there’s a stable, core group of writers covering environmental issues like climate change. But you have got to want to find it. Energy, climate and environment issues constantly come back into the limelight and get mainstream coverage when things happen, such as blackouts in the West, the oil spill, Hurricane Katrina, 9/11, gas prices shooting up to four bucks, IPCC or Gore’s movie.

Niche publications serve a very important role. There are people out there who demand to use this information all the time, not just when something else brings the issue back into the spotlight. As a reporter specialized in this topic, I cover energy and the environment constantly. I know who to talk to, who to reach out to—and people want to pay for that.

Regarding point of view, absolutely, it’s good to have opinion news out there. There’s a readership that wants writers who think similarly. Some of it is funny and hits a point right on. I read Grist and conservative blogs, trying to see what everyone has to say. I take a lot of it with grain of salt. You can certainly see there is an agenda—either solve global warming or stop policy.

I hasten to say opinionated news media has probably always been that way, with a Democrat newspaper and a Republican newspaper in each city. Now the Internet makes things more available to people you tend to agree with. People are reading, and that is a good thing. If they read a publication like mine, we are trying to call balls and strikes from what I would like to think is the middle.

This story was first published in the Spring 2011 edition of Momentum, a publication of the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment.

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What’s With the Weather Extremes?

Widespread reports of unusually severe weather persisted coast-to-coast and across much of the world throughout 2010, reconfirming for some the nonlinear impacts of a changing climate but also buttressing talking points for those inclined to be contrarian by, among other things, conflating short-term weather with long-term climate.

As fire and record heat shut down Moscow and killed tens of thousands, floods devastated Pakistan. The Arctic saw extremely warm temperatures, the Mid-Atlantic states in early 2010 recorded record snowfalls, and record heat in the oceans led to massive bleachings of coral. And, despite the cooling effects of La Niña and natural climate variability, 2010 tied with 1998 or 2005, as some experts prefer, for the warmest year on record.

Stories on extreme weather provide an opportunity for journalists to give context and deepen readers’ understanding of the kinds of severe weather events that are likely with climate change as levels of heat-trapping gases continue to rise. Since we’re approaching spring, all eyes will be on extreme flooding. In my home state of Minnesota, folks living near the Mississippi River are already on high alert. Almost half of the country will experience flooding this spring. A new story in the first issue of the journal Nature Climate Change explains that first-hand experience with extreme weather events increases concern about climate change and willingness to engage in energy-saving behaviors.

“We know that many people tend to see climate change as distant, affecting other people and places. However experiences of extreme weather events like flooding have the potential to change the way people view climate change, by making it more real and tangible, and ultimately resulting in greater intentions to act in sustainable ways,” psychologist Dr Alexa Spence, of The University of Nottingham, said in a statement.

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Earth’s vitals signs go unmeasured

Satellites are eyes and ears for many professions, but their observations give scientists who study climate change the only means to precisely monitor Earth systems worldwide. The New York Times’ recent cover story on glaciers touched on this point. But satellites aren’t built to last forever. So when there’s a gap in observations, one scientist told me that “we basically close our eyes for awhile.”

NASA image: ICESat
The third and last laser on NASA’s Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation ICESat (ICESat) quit working a year ago, outlasting its designed mission length by three and a half years. Problem is, its successor, ICESat II, won’t go aloft for several more years. The Times article failed to fully express problems scientists have when Earth’s vital signs go unmeasured, especially in the case of climate change. Last December I wrote an article for Scientific American that spells out how NASA’s fleet of Earth Observing System orbiters is on borrowed time due to a lack of planning and underfunding.

I talked with senior scientist Thorsten Markus, head of the Cyropheric Sciences Branch at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. He said, “It is critical that we continue those time-series observations. For climate change, the satellite provides the only means to truly monitor the Earth on a global basis. There is simply no other way.” When satellites “go dark,” they rob scientists of critical data needed for monitoring climate change and verifying international agreements, just as a critical mass of global players is agreeing that such agreements are essential to the future health of the world’s people and economies.

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Hello there!

Hello there. I am Lisa Palmer and welcome to my site. I’m a journalist and writer, a contributor to magazines and online media sites, a freelance editor, a backpacker, a NOLSie, a cyclist, a wife and mother, and a student of the piano hooked on the classic techniques of nineteenth century pianist Charles-Louis Hanon. I’ve written a lot of news and feature articles on science, green energy, climate change, green building and design, and the environment; and I’ve posted some stories here. There’s also information about my background and my professional affiliations.

Since becoming a freelance writer in 2000, I have written on everything from biotechnology and dramatic medical narratives to green tech and sustainable agri-business for leading magazines and newspapers.  Recent projects include freelance stints as a writer and editor for the National Academy of Sciences and as a producer of a reporting guide for journalists covering the green jobs beat for the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism. I am a graduate of Boston University and earned my master’s degree at Simmons College in Boston. Prior to my career as a writer, I was a teacher and a research analyst.

My greatest strength as a writer lies in my ability to jump among diverse communities. Some days I’ll write about a prenatal blood test or cover stories in high crime and poverty neighborhoods. Other days I’ll interview a NASA scientist, talk with the superintendent of an urban school about education reform, sit down with a CEO of a Fortune 500 company to discuss climate change, or have a Tony award winner show me his latest set design. That said, I am deft at covering a variety of topics in both ends of the socio-economic spectrum without pandering to subjects or readers.

I am also a skilled and enthusiastic moderator and speaker. I have appeared before university audiences and at numerous conferences, including the Society of Environmental Journalists’ annual conference. To hire me as a speaker, click here.

Thanks for visiting lisapalmer.com and stop back soon.

We had a couple of writing interns join our group this month. To track writing assignments for the technology blog, I’ve been using JIRA. JIRA is online assignments Effective written communication is an integral part of science education. In this hub the author has shared some new ways to amalgamate writing and science
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