Press Briefing: Covering the Climate Story for a Texas Audience

Transcript

Kyle Pope: Hello, and welcome to this press briefing with Covering Climate Now and The Texas Tribune. I’m Kyle Pope. I’m one of the co-founders of Covering Climate Now, and I’m really, really happy you’re here. For those of you who don’t know us, Covering Climate Now is a nonprofit global collaboration of about 500 newsrooms from all over the world. Our job is simply to help people do a better job of covering climate, which we see as the defining story of our time. Go to our website, coveringclimatenow.org, and you can see our list of partners. You can check out our resources. You can sign up for our weekly newsletter, and you can join us at Covering Climate Now. We also offer a training program for local television newsrooms. This is for reporters, producers, meteorologists, digital folks. It’s called the Climate Station. Again, it helps people make this climate connection to what’s going on in their community.

We’ll drop a link in the chat, so you can get more information. Please reach out to us with any questions. We would love to have you. We already work with a few TV newsrooms in Texas, and we would love to work with more of you. Onto today’s panel, our subject is covering the climate story for a Texas audience. We’re thrilled to have as our moderator, Emily Foxhall. Emily is the climate reporter for the Tribune, and she joined the Tribune as an energy reporter in December 2022, focused on the state’s transition to green energy, the reliability of the Texas power grid and the environmental impact of electricity generation. She’ll guide us through today’s hour-long discussion. You’ll see at the bottom of your screen, a Q&A button. That is for you to put your questions in for this panel. Roughly, the first half hour of our conversation today will be our panelists talking about these issues in Texas.

Then, the second half will be your questions. We really encourage you to put your questions in so we can hear from you. I’m really especially excited about this conversation today. One, Because I am a Texas native, grew up in El, Paso, went to school in Austin, worked in media in Houston and Dallas and Austin. I’ve been covering these issues in Texas super closely, so I’m really interested in hearing from everybody. It’s also important for us because we know that the work that local newsrooms do on climate change is really important to helping audiences understand what’s at stake and what they can do about it. The Tribune has been doing great work on this, and so I’m looking forward to listening to today’s chat alongside with the rest of you. With that, I’ll turn it over to Emily.

Emily Foxhall: Thank you. Hi, everybody. I am so excited to be having this conversation. It’s a topic, I think all of us who are here on this panel really care a lot about. I’m based in Houston. Like Kyle said, I’ve been covering the climate for the Tribune. As I was preparing for, I just was thinking about what a busy year it’s been for climate in Texas. For those of you who might be joining us from somewhere in Texas, you may have been covering pieces of this, but we had these wildfires in the Panhandle in February, and that of course had a climate component to how climate change is making fire seasons longer, and so the risk for fire is there. Those of us in Houston just went through Hurricane Beryl, which really had many of us suffering without power and also trying to do our jobs to explain how climate played a role in that.

Those are big events that I think help set the stage for why this conversation is so important and why understanding the bigger picture of climate change in Texas is so important every day because these big disasters happen, but there’s also huge questions facing the state about preparedness and resiliency. Thank you all for being here and for wanting to think about these topics with us. I’m going to introduce our panelists. We have Brandi Addison. She is a reporter who covers the environment and wildlife topics. She’s based in West Texas. Her title is connect reporter for the USA Today Network. You may have seen her work in the Austin American Statesman, the El Paso Times, and the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal.

We also have Professor Jay Banner, who is a professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Science at the University of Texas. He’s also the director of the Environmental Science Institute at the University of Texas. His research includes topics like environmental justice, sustainability and water issues. Third, we have Priya Zachariah who joined the Harris County Flood Control District as the district’s first chief resilience officer in May 2024. Before that, she serves as the city of Houston’s chief resilience and sustainability officer from 2021 to 2024 under Mayor Sylvester Turner. She was the first in that job to oversee a portfolio of both resilience and sustainability. We’ve got some really smart people here to talk with us today.
Just to begin, I wanted to set the stage a bit. Jay, we’re going to turn to you. If you can just give us a quick picture for those who may be joining the call and aren’t following all the science around climate change. If you can give a quick picture of what climate change looks like in Texas and how that’s changed over the decades to get us where we are today.

Jay L. Banner: Yeah. Sure. Thanks, Emily and everybody. I can start by saying that Texas is in a climatological hotspot and it is a demographic hotspot. Our region is drought-prone, and we’re on the Gulf Coast, so we’re subject to tropical storms and flooding. The predictions of climate science hold that areas that are subject to such extremes with a warming climate. We’ll see more extremes in these same areas. That’s climate-wise. Demographically, I think we’re all experiencing how rapidly Texas cities are growing, so that we really are on a collision course, right in terms of a future of increased water demand from the population doubling by mid-century and decreased water availability from drought.

Those two things do not portend a resilient future for Texas, especially if we make no changes to be ready for them. In terms of your question about how climate in Texas has changed with time, historically, we’re already starting to see changes that are unprecedented, unseen in the past thousand years of record. Emily, you pointed out some of these changes already happening in your opening remarks. Yeah. That’s a little bit of a capsule of what Texas looks like climate-wise, and where it’s heading.

Emily Foxhall: Yeah. I think of us as being on the front lines of climate change or a place that’s seeing the impacts of climate change of first and worse. I guess I’m thinking in terms of heat and storms like you mentioned, but would you agree that that’s an appropriate context for reporters to be thinking of climate impacts in Texas within the context of…

Jay L. Banner: Yeah. Sure. If in your mind’s eye capture a satellite or spatial image of what Texas looks like, the western half is very arid and dry. The eastern half is humid and green. It goes from brown to green as you go from west to east. That climatological boundary, it’s often called 100th meridian because of the line of longitude that you cross, but there’s evidence that that line is actually starting to move to the east. That dry line and the projections for the future are it’s going to shift very dramatically. Front lines, very much. There’s actually a line. It’s more of a zone, not a sharp line, but that’s areas of the world where there’s limitations in soil moisture, like right on that line. Small changes in global climate can bring about big regional changes, and that’s what we mean by Texas being a climatological hotspot.

Emily Foxhall: Yeah. It always makes me think as a climate reporter, but for anyone in our newsroom or in any Texas newsroom, it’s so important for us to be writing about these topics because we’re already living them. It’s not something off in the future.

Jay L. Banner: Exactly.

Emily Foxhall: Yeah. Priya, I wanted to turn to you because obviously, a lot of the work you all do relates to flooding and preventing flooding or managing flooding. Can you talk about how climate science translates to the work you’re doing, how you think about priorities, and just why planning for climate change is so important for Houston or for [inaudible 00:09:02]?

Priya Zachariah: Sure. Yes. Thank you. I’m very happy to be here, of course. To answer your question, I think what Jay was talking about, what it translates to really is to how do you take all of this data information and convert them into plans that make sense? Then, secondarily, how do you demonstrate action on those plans? How do you start to implement? Really, what it looks like, it’s a whole gamut of things, which starts with setting a vision, having a champion or a platform who is able to bring or convene multiple parties to come to the table, to not just look at the science, but also agree on some kind of paths forward. It begins with setting that vision. It begins with developing a framework. I think a good example from some of my previous work experience is the Resilient Houston plan, which is really a plan… A resilient framework for the city of Houston.

On a regional basis, it begins with defining what does resilience mean. We don’t even agree on whether we should say resiliency or resilience. It’s relatively a new term. I know we’ll get into it at some point later on in the conversation. How is that different from sustainability? Is that a new term or an old term? It also entails convening, like I said, multiple kinds of stakeholders because these are not one particular set of actions. You need the physicists, the geologists. You need community workers. You need the politicians. You need municipal workers. You need everyone to come to the table. You need the community. In many cases, on the government side, it means standing up a resilience office. It means standing up a sustainability office. It means defining what those functions are going to look like within the existing framework of how a municipality does its business.

It means finding implementation partners. In many times, it’s about embedding folks who can speak the resilience language and fly this flag in multiple other departments and embed it in the work that’s already ongoing. It means just consistently working on this climate message. It means activating your community partners over and over and over again. A lot of this also entails us trying to get really uncomfortable in spaces where we were previously uncomfortable in learning to speak different kinds of languages. I don’t mean real languages, I mean disciplinary languages. We work with so many interdisciplinary partners, constantly educating, but also at the same time, I think demonstrating action.

I think that became a huge priority because something we always hear is, “Okay. You have the framework. You have the plan. You have the definitions, but how is it going to change my life on the ground?” That means even as you’re doing these… Undertaking these lengthy actions such as defining an entire framework for a region, you are also demonstrating actions. You are finding those pilot projects. You’re defining those areas of opportunities and really hitting the ground running and demonstrating progress, so you bring more and more people to the table. Every one of these, you can delve into. It’s an entire chapter in and of itself, but I’ll leave that for the rest of the conversation.

Emily Foxhall: I know. I wish we had hours to talk about this, but I think what you’re saying is it’s like climate change has to be part of the conversation in every department. It’s not just the resiliency officer or the sustainability officer at a government who needs to be thinking about it. It’s every department of government. There’s a parallel to journalism too. It’s like the business desk needs to be thinking about climate change. The local government desk needs to be thinking about climate change. It can’t just be the environmental desk that’s thinking about it. I totally see a parallel there. What you said about language makes sense too. Even this word resiliency, I probably use too. It’s a buzzy word. It’s like what does that mean?

Priya Zachariah: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It is a buzzy word. I’ll just say one more thing is that in a resilience office, we had to learn to get really good at living in the spaces between the traditional departments. What that means, there’s a whole lot of conversation around that. I think that’s where the creativity and being strategic about how to find the implementation partners and the trust for action, that’s where it comes from. You can have a climate office. You can have a resilience office, or you may not. You would still be able to do the work.

Emily Foxhall: That makes sense. That leads us to Brandi, who has a great story about how she got into environmental reporting. I’d love… Brandi, if you could tell us about what drew you in and speak to this need we’re talking about here. Maybe this would be amazing if every newsroom had a climate reporter and an environment reporter, but we’ve talked about a need for climate and environment reporting. Tell us about that.

Brandi Addison: Yeah. I became a climate reporter after I really started caring deeply about the climate. I will say back then, when I was in college, I considered myself an advocate for the environment. Since then, I have learned that I’m no more an advocate for the planet, in the same way that I would not call myself an advocate if I call it the fire department and my house was on fire. Those are both objectively bad things. When I started reading more environmental news, I really noticed that there was a major lapse in coverage, especially in Texas. I would just fill in the gap on my way. I was education reporter. Then, I was covering counties for Dallas Morning News, like specific regions. Then, I started agriculture and natural resources for the AJ. I noticed this lapse, and I filled in those gaps. Honestly, I will be the first to say, I think Texas is lagging behind…

Brandi Addison: I will be the first to say, I think Texas is lagging behind by a couple of decades. And now that we have such deep-rooted opinions in our audience here, I think now we’re going to have to work harder to build that reputation for environmental coverage. And so in my role right now, I often tell people that I’m an environmental journalist in West Texas because for me it literally feels like an oxymoron, and I don’t want it to be that way. I’m based in the High Plains. We’re the largest agriculture producing region in the nation, and then we’re the largest cattle producing region in the world. And I was in Midland before that, as you know where I met you, and we lead the globe in energy production. And I think that this concept of being an environmental reporter in West Texas is really harmful because we should absolutely see our food and our water and our means of transportation and textiles directly with the climate.

Otherwise, we’re not going to have any of those things. And I think that in my role as an environmental journalist in Texas now, that I’m trying to stress with people that we do have to recognize that the planet and both human livelihoods and people’s personal freedoms, property rights are equally important. But there does need to be a reasonable balance to achieve this mutual benefit. And we might not find the perfect solution, but I think we do have to start at the point where we want to mitigate and minimize impact for both. And in order to do that, we have to inform.

Emily Foxhall: Yeah. I think all the time about the tension between, because I’m here in Houston and I’m driving by petrochemical facilities sometimes, but how, like you said, the industry is here that is emitting greenhouse gases that are contributing and driving climate change and yet this city where I live where I grew up is also experiencing the harm of climate change. It’s a really profound tension but, like you said, there’s so many people here who also are aware of the earth and their relationship to the earth. And it’s interesting that, that motivates you as a writer and it’s interesting to think about that motivating our readers.

Jay, I want to move to you because you have given talks to farmers and you’ve given talks to various stakeholders, so I’m curious your perspective on where you’re seeing interest just from Texans’ change or understanding change of climate change among Texans here, and maybe what from your experience can help reporters on this call as they think about how to tell this climate story?

Jay L. Banner: Thanks. In terms of telling the climate story, I find there are some particular graphics of data that are very straightforward and I found have really resonated with public audiences to portray what life will look like in our climate future. Or as Priya just said, how is it going to change my life on the ground? What will Texas look like in the future? For me, a really good example of this is a map of Texas that shows the results of climate models projecting out towards the end of the century how many 100 degree days we will have in different parts of Texas by say [inaudible 00:18:21]. In Central Texas, what the climate models project is, under the current carbon emission scenario, we’re on the business as usual scenario, we keep using energy as we’ve been using it, in Central Texas, this map shows that by 2070, there’ll be 80 more days a year where it’s 100 Fahrenheit or more.

Now, think about that, that’s more. That’s not the total number. We already are averaging 40 days a year of 100 or more. So 40 and 80, 120. That’s four months out of the year where it’ll be 100 degrees or more. So four months, June, July, August, September. Well, every day? No, it won’t be every day because we have highs and lows in weather patterns. So that means those 120 days, those four months will be spread out. Where do we fit that on our calendar? April to November, we will see days of 100 or more. So this is really quite remarkable. I’m going to drop in the chat the publication from the National Climate Assessment. That’s the link, and if you go to figure number 23.4 in that, if you click on that link, you’ll see this map and it shows one map for our business as usual carbon emissions scenario and it shows side by side another map with a low carbon emissions scenario.

We want to go technological, policy changes, personal behavior, all these changes, what can it produce? And it’s a much different picture. And what the side-by-side high and low carbon emissions scenario 100 degree temperature map shows is, first, how miserable our region will be if we don’t change the course that we’re on. And number two, it also presents a clear case against the common thought that, you know what? It’s of note to try to change things. Nothing we can do. So let’s just enjoy what we got while we’ve got it and not worry about the future. This shows that, that is patently just such wrongheaded thinking because it shows we can bring about change. Will it be easy? No one said it would be. Is it possible? For sure it is.
And then towards your question, bringing all this back to the interest from stakeholders, I’m seeing more and more interest… on this kind of info from farmers, realtors, and landowners in Texas. What this tells me is there’s a really growing realization that changes are happening and they’re going to continue to happen and that drought and heat and flooding is going to make all of these stakeholders, all of their property values are going to go down. What use is having a lovely ranch in the hill country if there’s no water on that property? It’s just not the same.

Emily Foxhall: Right. So it’s like people are starting to see it and connect the dots. But I hear you on the data. We at The Tribune are lucky to have a Data Visuals Team and they’ve created, there’s some maps that we use all the time and some charts that we use all the time to show how heat is increasing. Because I think, especially the historic data, you can’t really argue with that. I mean, you can debate how you project climate into the future, but I lean on those, yeah.

Jay L. Banner: All models have uncertainties. There’s just no question about that, and reporting that there are uncertainties to these models is the totally proper way, the scientific method way to go about this. You have to be completely straightforward.

Emily Foxhall: Right.

Jay L. Banner: And that long-term trends versus short-term trends have different ways to be able to predict how accurate things are, but there’s something about which data you choose. I find this 100 degree day resonates with audiences, and I think it’s because, as I tell audiences, “Well, for me, three or four days at 100 degrees in a row in Austin and I’m just in my fortress of solitude.” [inaudible 00:22:24] a South by Southwest panel and the reporter made that the headline, “Superman and the Fortress of Solitude.” I don’t leave. And your lifestyle becomes really different. And that’s just with a few days. And that’s just me and my own personal issues and very self-centered way of thinking about things. But imagine if you’re a frontline emergency responder, if you’re a roofer, if you’re doing something in construction, there’s a fair bit of construction going on in Texas, imagine if you’re working under those conditions.

And my friend who’s a firefighter, he once brought to one of our gatherings, his gear, 70 pounds of gear on top, and you’re sprinting to save someone from a fire and it’s 100 degrees out. It’s just remarkable how different our world would be, including for people who work indoors because a lot of settings, a lot of factories, a lot of places, manufacturing facilities don’t keep things as 68 degrees. Things are warmer. When they get a little bit warmer, a lot of studies show that our cognitive abilities start to erode. We’re just not good workers. And so that means there’s going to be economic losses all up and down the supply chain. As you said just before, Emily, and as Priya was saying, this is not just physical sciences. This is economics, this is finance, this is social equity, all sectors of our society are going to be impacted.

Emily Foxhall: Right. And so I think your point about including data is a good one. And for reporters who don’t have a data team to build them, these graphics, even just writing out choice data points about your region can be powerful. And as you’re describing what the experience of living through heat is, I’m such a strong believer in we can write stories about policy and about numbers and data all day, but I think the stories that stick with people are the stories that are about people living with it, people working to fix it, people like you, Jay, professors who care a lot about it.

Some of my favorite stories have been just going out with academic researchers to see. We just did one about mangroves expanding along the Texas coast and showing these people who are really deep experts in something and why they personally care so much about it, I think can help bring these numbers that can be really scary sometimes, can help bring some life to them. So Brandi, can you talk a little bit about that? I know you do this in your day-to-day work, both with big stories about climate and with other stories that might be about something totally unrelated where you will make a point to work climate in. So tell us a little bit about that.

Brandi Addison: Yeah, it’s actually funny that Jay mentioned that, because my one example was literally how one of my tips was using data and interactive graphics to my advantage. And my first example was I worked on a story that measured the difference in 100 degree days of time in Lubbock and it was five weeks earlier than what it was in the ’80s. So now our average first day is June for 100 degree days. In the ’80s, it was late July. And so when you can put it on a calendar like that and people can see it, especially when we have farmers out here, agriculture producers out here that need just the right weather in order for their businesses, their commodities to thrive, that is really impactful for them. I’ll even note that it’s been so hot out here that I don’t even know if I’ve seen any cotton blooms yet. Certainly, not two weeks ago. At this point of the year, we should be seeing bulbs. So yeah, that’s crazy to me.

So like I mentioned earlier, Texas, especially Texas, requires a bit more of a nuanced approach. We have to consider the cultural and economic context of this state, and it’s really hard to frame the environmental narrative in the terms of its intrinsic natural value. We do have to put a dollar sense to it. When it comes to my environmental coverage, I do a little bit of everything so I can reach as far and wide as possible. I did cover both the wildfire that you mentioned earlier and feel like I worked around the clock covering Barrel being in Lubbock. And I covered tornadoes last year as well. So I do, do that. But for the most part, I’ve noticed what is more effective is using the time between major natural disasters to create guidelines and informational pieces and things that are just more easily digestible.

I think that this approach really helps establish the ongoing relevance of climate issues and I think it really shows our audience, no, this is not something we’re just thinking of when traumatic events happen. I’m not going to use Hurricane Barrel to promote the climate agenda. This is something on my mind at all times, and it should be something on your mind at all times too. And I think just even explainers, using layman’s terms, doing all this stuff regularly rather than just covering traumatic events, also keeps it at the forefront of their mind, or at the very least the back of their mind. So, for example, last year I produced a really extensive long-form series on the disappearing grasslands around the Great Plains. But with my new role, again, more of my work became short form.

And this is about integrating bits and pieces of climate awareness because I think people are more likely to click on, like I mentioned in an article the other day, this story about a woman hitting a black bear in Central Texas, they’re more likely to click on that story and digest, absorb the information about climate change and their impact on black bear versus clicking on a headline that leads with climate change, especially in our political atmosphere. And then one thing I will note is that I actually refer to myself more as a wildlife journalist. I think if you think climate coverage is bad, man, wildlife coverage is just, oh, it is, pun intended, wildly just under represented. And I think this is especially important in Texas, and maybe Jay can back me up on this.

We have the third-highest biodiversity in the U.S. of any state just behind Hawaii and California, and those cultural and economic factors will be impacted if we continue to lose wildlife. Again, as I said the other day, it’s difficult to engage people with concerns like this tiny little three millimeter inch or millimeter long [inaudible 00:29:24] beetle in the Comal Springs. And sure, that might not have any impact. It is about where we draw the line though. So when will it be the prairie dog? Because while they are seemingly infinite, they are limited. They’re only at 2% of their historic range at this point, and they are a keystone species. And like with the bison, they will transform our entire ecosystem.

And that does come along with our cotton production, our food production, vegetation, everything else. Someone once told me it’s like a Jenga tower. You pick one block and it’s okay, but eventually it’ll all come falling down.

Brandi Addison: You pick one block and it’s okay, but eventually it’ll all come falling down. And we’re one of those blocks, I got to say that, so yeah.

Emily Foxhall: Yeah, there’s so much to think about here. So I mean, I guess, in preparing for this, I was considering how extreme weather is just such an easy way to talk about climate change. And we took a similar approach to you during the fires, we did these kind of step-back stories explaining how climate change primed the weather for the fires to happen. And similarly, after Barrel, we tried to do a bigger-picture explainer on the way the grid was developed. That goes back decades. And the lack of preparation all around the country for climate change with our infrastructure is a much longer story and a much bigger story than just one event. So it’s sort of like these disasters offer entry points into talking about the bigger picture.

But I also love what you said about the cotton because it is such a recognizable thing. There’s certain things that people in our regions really care about, and for us, this year it was crawfish. Crawfish were so expensive, and part of the reason for that was drought. And drought, of course, is linked to climate change. So there’s sort of these ways that you can connect with people, I think, because daily life is changing or things we love are changing. And as you said, it’s nuanced, and as Jay said, it’s nuanced and we have to be really careful, I think, as journalists to explain the science and to explain the uncertainty. But I love that approach of thinking about climate as beyond the disaster and as just kind of an everyday, every story sort of thing, so thank you for that.

Priya, I wonder if you can talk, I mean, we started talking about resilience a little bit, but for reporters who cover government, either in a place with a resiliency officer or a sustainability officer or not, where do you think reporters should be looking for climate work on the government level? How do you think reporters should be thinking about whether governments are doing enough or not? Can you speak to that some?

Priya Zachariah: Yeah. And I think one useful way that I have arrived at to think about even just the word resilience is it is not necessarily a new or an old term. It’s kind of a blend of both. I feel you lose people when one talks in a lot of these kind of buzzy lingo and communities are thinking, “I’ve got to be sustainable. I’ve got to reduce my carbon footprint. I’ve got to reduce my greenhouse gas emissions. Now I’ve got to be resilient now?” There’s so many things, it’s just one on top of the other, and you start to lose your audience. And for me, it was always helpful for me personally, and for the work I do, to think about resilience in a way that it hearkens back to our basic human instinct to survive, to grow and to thrive.

So that’s old, and what’s the new part of it is really it is that, in the context of imminence and the urgency of climate impacts, that resilience has become kind of that clarion call to action and to bring people together. Like I said, many times in local government, resilience is that connective tissue that lives in the spaces between these different departments. So if you come at it from that perspective that we just call it resilience now, but we’ve been at it for a long time, and it’s really trying to build our capacity, and sometimes we call it adaptive capacity, for the impacts of climate change that are in a way irreversible. And so it is our ability to be able to face those, to be able to live with them and to grow in spite of them and to thrive beyond them. So all in all, that’s what is resilience. But this is not a new instinct. Like I said, we’ve been at it, humankind and civilizations have been at this for a long time.

So it would be good to see from the perspective of the audience. I think, Emily, you told us it’s mostly journalists from the perspective of climate stories, to kind of think from that perspective. It is not a new skill that we have to grow. It’s leveraging old skills and things we do, but in a slightly different framework and to be able to find that adaptive capacity.

And so like I said, it could be unifying and holistic. And in terms of where it lives within local government, when we were part of a resilience team… I mean, you can think about it a couple of ways. If you’re part of a resilience or a sustainability team, you become kind of that driver that is looking at implementation momentum across many different portfolios and climate impact programs, climate response programs. So resilience programs, we don’t not necessarily own the infrastructure. Say I’m talking about the resilience team, you don’t own the streets. That’s public works. You don’t own the water systems. That’s public works. You don’t own the building codes. That’s planning. The land use codes. But you want to be able to work with every single one of them to make sure that the response and the resilience multiplier effect is embedded in the things that city government is already doing.

So if you don’t have a climate officer, and I hope that cities do have climate officers because that’s your one point of entry, but if they don’t, I think the place to start at is within teams that own some of these big responsibility for big programs or big infrastructure systems or big policies within a municipality.

Emily Foxhall: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And it makes sense that it’s something that should have been worked on starting a long time ago. Jay, I mean, a lot of what Priya is talking about is this local or regional approach, but can you talk about the divide between how the state approaches climate versus how local governments approach climate, and how we should be thinking about the context of each of those?

Jay L. Banner: Yeah, sure. From my personal experience, I guess I’d maybe refer to that there’s big differences between the state and how municipalities approach climate change. I’d almost say that we’re kind of bipolar in that regard. From personal experience, I’ve been invited to testify to the state legislature on climate adaptation bills since the 2009 session, and the bills have been easily defeated every time. I’ll be happy to talk about the specifics of the bills, but they don’t seem to be going anywhere, so maybe no one’s interested in hearing about these bills that keep getting squashed.

On the other hand, municipalities around the state are aware, proactively planning. We’ve already heard some great examples from Priya around this. For the example of Austin, I can share that city planners are using state-of-the-art climate models, working with climate scientists to consider the future for mitigation, for adaptation strategies. I can give a couple of examples in Austin. There are now feasibility studies to see how much of a reduction there is in the heat load if we paint roads in some neighborhoods with a lighter, more reflective color so it reflects more of the solar radiation than absorbs and re-radiates it, which is causing this urban heat island effect, which is having five to ten degrees increase in temperature.

So consider that as we go into the future, that the neighborhoods that have been, I guess, traditionally kind of underserved for the last hundred years since the redlining defined different neighborhoods, these neighborhoods are really nearly a hundred percent impervious cover and they’re in the lower socioeconomic status parts of cities. So the more impervious cover, the bigger the urban heat island effect, then the more above a hundred degrees Fahrenheit those days are going to be. So not only are the different regions in Texas going to be experiencing differences in these heat loads, but within cities, we’re going to see gradients in this heat load.

And one of the ways, I think, of getting at it is to try to understand what are the vulnerabilities for certain communities in order to map out where are the areas that need the most adaptation, mitigation-type strategies. And one thing we’re doing in Austin is something called Project CRESSLE. It’s partnering the University of Texas, local communities and the city for efforts such as mapping the climate resilience across different neighborhoods, which have very different vulnerabilities to climate change. For anyone who’s interested, I’ll drop in the chat information about Project CRESSLE.

And this really comes down to an issue of social justice, these long-standing discriminatory practices that, even though today there may be no discrimination, it’s just the result of a hundred years of it. And how is this causing different climate resilience weaknesses for different parts of different cities? This is, I think, really something it’s important now to get out in front of it because changes made now can make big differences decades down the road. We continue to build out all neighborhoods, and developers are doing this completely legally, as much impervious cover as possible because you get more units in a new apartment complex, a new set of condos. They’re built in Austin right up to the curb. And so there’s almost a hundred percent impervious cover in these new developments, and that is not getting out in front of this. And there’s no regulations against this. Developers are working perfectly within the law in what they’re developing.

Emily Foxhall: Yeah, equity is such a big piece of this, and I wish we could… I’m sure there have been whole webinars just on that science around that. But there is a long history of academia showing the inequity of environmental harm and climate harm. And during Barrel, you could see it driving around. There were people in wealthy neighborhoods who had generators running up and down the block, and so you could start to see how the suffering differed.

Jay L. Banner: Yeah. And just spitting off that point you just made, I think one thing that’s really important is the university researchers can point these inequities out, but I think a really big next step is doing what’s been called in various fields of study community-based participatory research, where the university researchers, stakeholders such as the city, and stakeholders such as community members, are all getting together and co-designing and co-executing research. That’s what Project CRESSLE happens to be about. And until cities and communities and universities value these kind of collaborative efforts, I think we’re going to be kind of stuck.

Emily Foxhall: I want to move us to questions very shortly, but I wanted to be sure we got to this point about how to interact with people who deny climate science or climate change, or any backlash you might’ve ever had speaking about climate change and how you handled that, any strategies for handling that. So Brandi, maybe we could start with you if you have any quick thoughts on these things. And then, Jay and Priya, if you want to add too.

Brandi Addison: I have actually surprisingly not had a ton of people just come and criticize my work, but that’s because I’ve always been really intentional with being proactive about it to avoid that. So as I mentioned earlier, it really is about finding that common ground and being transparent. So for example, when covering the fate of grasslands, I of course had to acknowledge why some people are wary of government intervention. This is their property. Of course they don’t want the government involved in their private property. Totally understandable. But we do have to stress that it might have been their actions or certain inactions that led to this current disaster. So we have to acknowledge that openly and we have to find that common ground.

But then, again, another example on covering grasslands, I expected comments about people saying wind turbines are killing birds, solar panels are doing this. Yes, that’s true, they are. But we also have to acknowledge that the biggest issue for wildlife is warming temperatures and it is climate change, and that is largely because of the petroleum industry.

And then one other example was just in the case of the nuclear waste storage. One environmental advocacy group emphasized the importance of the area that they did not want it to go to because it was home to nearly 40 rare threatened and endangered species, but they didn’t offer any clear solutions. And I feel like I did acknowledge that because highlighting the problem is absolutely crucial, but what’s the point of protesting if you don’t have a solution? That’s pretty much where I’m at.

And when covering climate issues, readers are inevitably going to ask you about those solutions or what’s going to happen next, so addressing this question up front, I feel like, is absolutely essential even if there are no clear answers, because it establishes that trust with your audience from the get-go, rather than them having to go back and forth in this conversation with you. And if one reader is wondering this, that means lots are, but not everyone’s going to take the chance to go ahead and ask you that, so you need to get that stuff up front before you diminish your own credibility by not being as transparent as you could be.

Emily Foxhall: Right. Yeah, I think that’s such a good point that writing about solutions is very much a part of our job. And even if no solution is perfect, it’s at least setting up the options for what they could be.

Brandi Addison: Sorry, Emily, I was just going to say, I will add real quick that it is important also to recognize that there is a very, very fine line between being balanced and presenting accurate information versus perpetuating disinformation from non-experts. You should absolutely not include opinions for people who have no expertise on climate change. And if you do, do it in a direct quote and then use that data to counter them. Because you don’t want your story to perpetuate just complete disinformation based on the guise of balance. That’s not balance if it’s inaccurate.

Emily Foxhall: Jay and Priya, is there anything y’all wanted to add?

Emily Foxhall: Jay and Priya, is there anything y’all wanted to add? Otherwise, we’ll move to questions.

Priya Zachariah: I can add something. Sorry. Jay, you want to go ahead?

Jay L. Banner: No, please go ahead, Priya.

Priya Zachariah: No, I will add that to my surprise, I did not encounter a lot of climate deniers. The criticism that our office faced was, you’re not going fast enough on implementation. And it was difficult, but it was a pleasant kind of change in expectation. I was not fighting folks on climate science or that this is going to happen. We didn’t have those kinds of debates. The issue was why you have a framework, you have a plan, why are you not going fast enough? And that’s kind of the criticism that we stubbed our toe on all the time. And we were trying to find ways to make an action and progress on the ground.

Emily Foxhall: That’s interesting. Yeah, I mean it’s amazing. Your position was just created, so I guess people could complain it wasn’t there earlier. Or they couldn’t celebrate the fact that it’s there now.

Priya Zachariah: Well, to clarify, there was a resilience office at the city and a sustainability office. So you stand upon the shoulders of the folks that went before you, right? So, they’re the ones who did the climate action plan and the Resilient Houston plan. When I came on board, really the focus was on implementation and converting these plans from documents into action, which was kind of, you know, Houston made a lot of progress. And yeah, that’s where we bumped up against criticism of not going fast enough.

Emily Foxhall: Okay. I’m sorry, Jay, I’m going to move us to questions just so we can get a couple in. And this first one, Priya, may be for you. I would love if you knew the answer for this.

Priya Zachariah: Wait, where do I look at the questions? Oh, in the Q&A?

Emily Foxhall: I’m going to read it to you.

Priya Zachariah: Okay.

Emily Foxhall: It’s specific, so if you don’t know, that’s all right. It’s, when can we expect FEMA’s new flood maps for Harris County? I think this is important, just to broaden it too, is the data informing… These are maps that are showing the flood plain, for those of you listening. And many of us in Houston have been eagerly awaiting them. But is the data that went into those flood maps impacted by climate change? And we’ll stop there.

Priya Zachariah: So I want to preface that my answer by saying I’ve only been in flood control for two months, so I don’t want to venture any guesses. I think I’m safest saying that we will get back to you on that. I am aware of the map next effort, which is highly coordinated with FEMA. But I think we will have to get back to you on that.

Emily Foxhall: Can you speak to the way data, climate data is used by the district? And Jay, maybe you can piggyback on this too. I think as reporter now on the state level, I think a lot about what state agencies are or aren’t using climate data. And I’ve covered ERCOT and the Public Utilities Commission and trying to understand where climate data is used and isn’t, I think is important. So can you talk about how you guys use it, Priya? And then Jay, if you want to add anything.

Priya Zachariah: Sure. I’ll keep it very short and then pass it off to Jay. We do use Atlas 14. So our latest rainfall data, which is most relevant to what flood control is doing, that is being used in all of our current efforts.

Emily Foxhall: Yeah. And I hope there’s some fellow nerds out there. I spent a lot of time learning what Atlas 14 was. But for those of you who may be daunted by this, I mean there are so many smart, kind, patient people out there, such as Jay and Priya, who are experts in these data sets and in understanding them. So I would encourage you amid our crazy jobs, to try to begin to understand what data is out there. I think it’s been really fruitful for me. Jay, did you want to add anything?

Jay L. Banner: I’ll just iterate that my experience in the city of Austin has been that the city is consulting and working with and engaging climate scientists using the latest state-of-the-art climate models. The resolution in terms of time and space is getting better, working in components of how cities provide as they grow, provide feedbacks to the climate system, as I talked about through the urban heat island effect. There are experts at the University of Texas. I’ll put one name in the chat, Professor Dev Niyogi, who basically is studying how cities affect climate and create their own weather. So, I think cities are totally on board with it.

And the state, again, this reflects the picture I painted earlier. The state has a water plan. The Texas Water Development Board every 45 years, puts out a state water plan. And it advises water resource managers on how to plan for there being water for all Texans for all uses, 50 years out into the future. And it uses as the worst case scenario, the drought of the 1950s, which was a six-year drought. From our tree ring studies, we see droughts much longer, more intense than that going back a thousand years. From the climate model projections, we see that we’re going to be entering into a more of a mean state of the climate system in Texas by mid-century, we’ll approximate drought. So these are going to be what we call mega droughts, 10, 20, 30-year long droughts. And what the state continues to use as the worst case scenario is that six year drought of the 1950s. So they ignore the proxy record going back into the past, and they ignore the climate model projections.

Emily Foxhall: So just understanding that is so important, and it takes a couple extra hours of reporting or sometimes more. But even when we talk about climate normals, knowing what that is, and Priya sort of set the stage for this early on, it’s like people use these words. And it’s our job as reporters to figure out what they actually mean. So, that’s a great point.
Brandi, a question for you. How do you prioritize the stories you do? And how do you keep up just with the pace of the news, when it comes to environmental work?

Brandi Addison: Emily, you can probably tell me, you can’t ever keep up with every climate story out there. It’s just not going to happen. Honestly, it’s a lot. It really is a lot. And I really try to focus on, again, those solutions-oriented stories first. I think that’s really important ’cause at the very least, at least maybe some impact could come out of those. Rather than just spewing the same stuff or regurgitating the same stuff that’s just going to stand still or at a standstill. So, solutions-oriented first.

Then I’ll choose stuff where it’s actual inequities, when it does come to human inequities such as, I just did one on how there was an environmental health disaster in West Dallas. Downwinders at [inaudible 00:52:21] released a study basically saying that they’re more prone to asthma and respiratory diseases out there. Again, the heat zone, stuff like that. Anything that has to do with inequities, I prioritize.

And then anything that has to do with actually holding people accountable. If there’s not anyone that you can change that certain story that you’re reporting on, that’s going to be at the bottom of my list. Yeah, I do love covering wildlife, but wildlife is not at the forefront of our government’s mind right now. So, I’m going to hold people accountable for the things that they are willing to change first. So, that’s how I prioritize mine.

Again, when there’s not active news peg related events right there in front of me, that’s when I do my explainers. That’s when I fit in the things that I want to do. Because I assume that if I’m curious about these things, other people are as well. So I’m just going to write about it and see, hopefully people look at it. And most of the time, they do. But that’s pretty much my pyramid. It’s definitely the inverted pyramid on that too.

Emily Foxhall: Yeah, I think about it similarly. I mean we talk about, I don’t know if you talk about this like the front burner and the back burner stories. So, always working on short-term ones and long-term ones at the same time. But it totally comes down to what I’m the most excited about. And when I’m meeting up with friends, what story am I passionately telling them about? That’s generally where the interest goes. And I think that comes just from having been in the field and you sort of develop the instinct for what stories are going to resonate.

But I was thinking too about you talking about trying to write stories that were interesting to people that might not have climate change in the headline. And every year we do the story about it has recently been… Last year was the hottest year on record for Texas. And I wrote that story because we think it’s important to have that on the record, but people didn’t want to read that story. The engagement on that was low. And so, it’s interesting to think about where that’s the kind of story you can write in an hour or two. And so maybe you just do it to have it in the public record. But how you focus your time on longer pieces, I think, yeah, it’s a good thing and an important thing to think about. One more question-

Jay L. Banner: Emily, may I ask you, what’s the story you wrote last year on climate that everybody read?

Emily Foxhall: That everybody read?

Jay L. Banner: That everybody… Well, no one read, it’s the hottest year on record. What was the one that got the most hits?

Emily Foxhall: This year, our story is explaining the context around the fires. There were some floods, I’m sure Priya remembers. Gosh, they were late spring, I think, some river flooding that happened. And our explainer around barrel, they did remarkably well. And it goes against my advice that we should be writing about people ’cause those stories were really purely just like, let’s talk through the big picture here.

But I was really encouraged by the appetite from readers for thinking about these big problems, that I, and I’m sure all of you, think about when I’m walking my dog, when I’m cooking dinner. Kind of these huge questions of, how is the state going to look in 50 years? What is the government doing now about that? What is the government not doing now about that? This question of blame I think, is part of our role, but also a more forward-looking consideration of, what does it take to protect against climate change? It’s just a huge question and what is that going to cost? So, I was so happy to see people reading those stories, emailing me about those stories. And I get a fair bit of mail from people who think I’m crazy and spouting. They don’t always like the science that we cite. But there was a lot of people who were really engaged in asking questions, and giving us ideas for where to look next.

So I’m not supposed to be on this panel, but this gets me [inaudible 00:57:12]. Okay, so I think we’re going to have to wrap it up in just a few minutes. But if there’s anything else you all on the panel are thinking and want to get in, now is your chance.

Jay L. Banner: I’ll close with saying I think it would be great to see more stories out there around the financial costs of climate change. It’s really complex. I know from my own research in this area or bringing together experts in this area, it’s complex. But I think that’s the kind of thing that’s going to get us over the hump in terms of everyone saying, “Okay, now I understand how this is impacting me, my community, my state.” And maybe that’s the thing that gets people in higher offices that can make changes, decision makers, maybe that’s the thing that nudges their needle, so to speak.

Emily Foxhall: Yeah. Well, I hope all the reporters on this call can consider all of us as resources. And I hope we can keep brainstorming and sharing tips like this. It’s a really great thing. And Kyle, we’ll kick it to you.

Kyle Pope: Thank you, Emily, and thank you, Brandi, Jay, Priya. That was amazing. Super interesting. And what a great reminder that the climate crisis is a global thing, but in journalism often manifests itself in local examples, local stories, local solutions. I loved hearing about prairie dogs, I loved hearing about cotton, I loved hearing about heat, and I loved hearing about the focus on solutions and how we think about that.

And Jay, your last point about costs and accountability is super important, especially in a place like Texas. So, thanks to all of you. This was a terrific conversation. We have a newsletter called, Locally Sourced, which is all about helping local journalists cover climate with a lot of examples of how your colleagues around the country and around the world are doing these stories. You might find it helpful. Like everything we do at Covering Climate Now, it’s all free. So thanks again. Terrific conversation. Thanks for the partnership with Texas Tribune, and we hope to see you all again soon.