Julia Butterfly Hill: Adventures in Tree Sitting

You'll find a 3-part documentary here about Julia "Butterfly" Hill's protest as well as a NBC Dateline feature. See page 45 in our text for more information.

What do you think of Hill's protest?


Part 1

Part 2


Part 3

Dateline News Feature

Environmental News on the Web

As Cox indicates, environmental issues routinely make the news (13).


I'll keep a running list of blogs that Cox and others reference. Hopefully, the list will be a good resource for you. If nothing else, you might skim some of the entries to get a feel for the genre of the blog post:

Dot Earth

A blog hosted by the NY Times.

Environment News Network

This blog reports on issues such as health, green technology, energy, and wildlife.

Grist.org

Grist reports on environmental news with a not so subtle touch of sarcasm.


National Geographic: Daily News

You'll find recent environmental news here--and award-winning photography.

Shannon-Weaver Model of Communication

Compare to p. 20 in your text, and our discussions about "language as symbolic action":

Clean Coal Ads, Pro and Con

This advertisement is funded by Americas for Balanced Energy Choices


This advertisement is from AmericasPower.Org

This advertisement is from ThinkReality, and so this one.




This news feature is from CBS News.


On pages 20 and 22 of your text, you'll notice that Cox argues for a two-part definition of environmental communication. On the one hand, it's pragmatic. That is, communication, such as the ads above, are intended to change or solidify an opinion. Such ads often solicit support for a cause--vote or candidate X or donate money to organization Y. On the other hand, environmental communication is "constitutive." That is, the words and images of the ads appeal to a set of commonplace understandings about the United States and about the natural world. In other words, viewers understand the issue of coal-based energy production by means of these and similar ads. In that sense, language is not transparent but a form of "symbolic action" (20-22).

Review these ads and write an analysis of the the symbolic action in the ads. Coal--after all--is just a rock. But coal is also and inevitably a symbol. How do the ads position this symbol?

Leopold's "Thinking Like Mountain"

Aldo Leopold was a naturalist and writer. The short essay "Thinking Like A Mountain" is quoted in your textbook on page 26.

Click the above link and read the entire essay. On the discussion board, write a paragraph in which you describe the way in which Cox uses Leopold as a source for his argument.

Why did Cox choose Leopold? How did he incorporate Leopold's text into his own? How does your experience with the whole essay differ from your encounter with the quotation?

Can Audi Outrun the Green Police?

Here's a YouTube link to an Audi advertisement that ran during the 2010 superbowl.

Can you evaluate this ad in ways that are consistent with Cox's suggestions on page 16?

What are the pragmatic appeals (think logos, pathos, ethos)? To what "dominant discourse[s]" does the ad appeal?

Environmental Communication In the News

On the opening pages of Chapter 1, Cox notes that the environmental news appears regularly on the pages of major news magazines. Here's a list of just a few recent stories from the New York Times.

You see articles related to coal, owls, champagne, and an environmental disaster (the recent Gulf Coast Oil Spill).

Suppose we wanted to categorize or tag these and related stories. What tags would you use? What other types of environmental news stories, not depicted above, do you typically see? What tags would we give these stories?