Bloggers beyond Bali - what's the story?, Chris Littlecott

Chris Littlecott — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 16:25:38 +0000

Let's see then. Are there any other bloggers out there trying to stick together the Bali-shaped parts of the climate change jigsaw puzzle?

A quick search of top blogosphere tool the truth laid bear shows that Monday 3rd December saw a peak of 26 posts from around the world featuring the terms Bali, UN, and Climate.

But how does this compare? For the same day, search results for "Climate Change" and "Britney Spears" are tied at 113 results, while both are well beaten by "George W Bush" with 124.

That isn't a great start. Isn't Bali supposed to be important?

Even more worryingly, upon digging a little deeper into the search results for the past few days we find that the top blog stories with repeated Bali coverage include "Not Enough Parking for Private Jets Going to UN Climate Conference" and "Skeptics Refused Press Credentials at UN Climate Meeting in Bali".

But perhaps I'm looking in the wrong place? What about the major green websites?

The three top ranked sites are all based in the USA, and pull in readers from around the world.

Treehugger has two stories directly related to the island of Bali, one about electro-shock therapy for coral, the other providing a link to the Greenpeace blog. They did have one major preview article last month - a contribution from the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.

Meanwhile, Worldchanging has just a couple of news updates and a review of the news around Australia's ratification of the Kyoto protocol.

Over at Grist, things are a little better. They've got a steady drip-drip of Bali-related posts in their Gristmill blog. Their coverage kicks on a gear with a top and tail post by the ever-readable David Roberts on the recent letter from the international business community urging action.

Jason Anderson of the Institute for European Environmental Policy then contributes a weighty preview feature; Sarah K. Burkhalter has a useful primer; Glenn Hurowitz and Dorjee Sun focus on deforestation; Tom Athanasiou of EcoEquity looks at NGO expectations and strategy; and the ‘Bali Bloggers' of the US Youth Movement set out their stall and present the Fossil Awards. (I'll return to the innovative web efforts of the youth movement in a later post).

So far, so... well, mixed in all honesty. I have to admit I'd been hoping to find more. It's not as if primary media resources from Bali are in short supply, so why's it so difficult to pick up what's going on? The UN in particular has been making a real effort to engage online, and I'll be coming back to this in another post.

Perhaps it's the old problem of how to sell a story. Talks about talks may not be interesting. But the impact the Bali discussions will have on energy security, job creation, environmental refugees and international relations are all alternative hooks to hang a story on.

Part of the core of the climate challenge is our inability to tell ourselves an engaging story. How are we going to pull together the different interests and communities who are set to lose, or indeed gain, if there's no shared conversation?

We hope that Global Deal might be able to help in this - do please join in with comments or emails.

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Bloggers beyond Bali - what's the story?, Chris Littlecott