By Laura Aka for WorkingNation.
Broadcast version by Suzanne Potter for California News Service reporting for the WorkingNation-Public News Service Collaboration.

With more than 39 million people , California is the most populous state in the country. Unofficially divided into northern, central, and southern regions, the state has beaches, deserts, farmland, and mountains.

"California is probably unique in its diversity. It's almost not one state economy. It's maybe 10 or 14 regional economies depending on how you look at how industry sectors are organized," says Tim Rainey, executive director, California Workforce Development Board.

The outlook for the green economy is as far-reaching as the state itself. "We're doing everything in California with an eye toward reducing carbon in the atmosphere. In a way, you could almost define everything we do in California as green jobs," says Rainey.

According to our report Green Jobs Now: California, a new WorkingNation and Lightcast analysis of the green labor market in the state, there are already more than 210,593 workers in California's green economy.

The report projects in the next five years, employment for green jobs in the state will increase by 7.1%, well above the national average of 5.7%.

Assembly Bill 398 - intended to mitigate climate change - also calls for the creation of good jobs.

When passed, the legislation tasked the California Workforce Development Board to report "on the need for increased education, career technical education, job training, and workforce development resources or capacity to help industry, workers, and communities transition to economic and labor-market changes related to specified statewide greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals."

A 2020 report from the UC Berkeley Labor Center offers a breakdown of AB 398, stating, "California has emerged as a national and world leader in the fight to avoid climate disaster, passing a comprehensive and evolving suite of climate measures to accelerate the transition to a carbon-neutral economy."

Putting California on the High Road: A Jobs and Climate Action Plan for 2030 also says, "The state has also emerged as a national leader in embracing economic equity as a goal for state policy."

Rainey notes, "We need to be really clear that when we talk about jobs, we have to focus on quality jobs. And if we want to achieve equity, you can't separate quality jobs from equity. We're not going to put poor people in bad jobs because that's not going to move the needle in equity."

"Our state and federal governments are investing historic levels of funding in infrastructure focused on climate, green jobs. We have an opportunity to put in those investments workforce standards that help set up our ability to put people in good jobs."

Rainey points out, "The employment is going to be in those traditional occupations that largely don't require college degrees. As the demand for apprentices increases, the demand for construction workers increases - filling the pipeline in a way that has real intentionality around impacting equity is our focus. We have really beautiful programs across the state we call high-road construction careers that do just that."

"Our role in is to fill the pipeline with people who don't look like your traditional tradespeople - more women, more people of color, lots of focus on the formerly incarcerated - so we can start getting at those equity goals and showing that in the data."

Green Jobs Growth in The Golden State

"Workers with green skills are also spreading across a wide range of industries - such as utilities, manufacturing, and professional services - illustrating the increasing need for green skills across California's economy," according to Green Jobs Now: California.

California's Green Workforce is Moderate and Growing: As stated, there are over 210,593 workers in California's green economy, and there were 53,587 green job openings in the state in 2022.

By comparison, this is more than twice the number of Pharmacy Technicians and Forklift / Pallet Jack Operators demanded in California in 2022.

Demand for Green Enabled Jobs is Strong and Green Jobs Are Spreading Across Industries: Demand for green enabled jobs, that is, workers in roles that are not considered green by default, but who are required to have at least one green skill or competency, is significant, with 38,455 openings in 2022.

Workers with green skills are also spreading across a wide range of industries - such as Utilities, Manufacturing, and Professional Services - illustrating the increasing need for green skills across California's economy.

What is a Green Job?

We look at four different categories when we break down the opportunities in the green jobs ecosystem.

Core jobs have "a primary responsibility associated with the green economy." The data indicates a top core green job in California is a solar sales representative.

Enabled jobs have "primary responsibilities separate or tangential to the green economy" with building and general maintenance technicians identified as primary jobs.

Not to be confused with enabled jobs, enabling jobs "aren't associated with green tech per se, but they support the green economy."

Green Jobs Now: California finds there are about 5.8 million workers in the state who, with new skills, could be green workers. "These workers come from a variety of different occupations and educational backgrounds and reskilling them could build the pipeline of green workers faster than relying on new postsecondary graduates alone."

"However, doing so will require a mix of training program formats that support the reskilling and redeployment of these workers."

The most in-demand skills related to core green jobs in California are solar sales and solar energy.

The report says, "For workers in many core and enabled occupations, there is a significant salary boost for having green skills and competencies on their resume." For example, a quality inspector/technician commands an average annual salary boost of more than $8,000.

Findings state, "From the most in-demand green skills, workers interested in entering the green workforce can prioritize what skills and competencies to acquire."

Key green skills offer significant annual salary increases of $1,600 for skills related to wind power and $5,800 for carbon management skills.

According to the data, the average green jobs salary in California is $67,252.

California's Agricultural Sector

"Over a third of the country's vegetables and three-quarters of the country's fruits and nuts are grown in California," according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture (GDFA). "In 2021 California's farms and ranches received $51.1 billion in cash receipts for their output."

The farming community increasingly shows strong interest in sustainability, according to Steve Lyle, director of public affairs for the department. "CDFA's climate-smart agriculture incentive programs have continued to grow in popularity such that now they are oversubscribed every year."

"The purpose of our incentive programs is to support them in taking those first steps of trying new sustainable practices in their operations, and hopefully making a business case for continuing those practices beyond the lifetime of their CDFA grants."

Lyle offers advice for the agricultural community, "Take advantage of climate-smart programs, like OEFI [Office of Environmental Farming and Innovation] offers, and the technical assistance its vast network provides to understand which programs and systems will work best for any given farmer or grower in California."

He explains that technical assistance - which is provided to farmers and ranchers at no cost - can include support through the "planning, execution, and closeout processes of our soils, water efficiency, and manure management incentive programs, in addition to funding some programs that offer broader technical assistance for conservation agriculture."

Lyle notes, "Many colleges and universities offer certificate programs in agricultural sustainability." These include UC Davis's bachelor of science degree in sustainable agriculture and food systems and Santa Rosa Junior College's associate degree and two certificates in sustainable agriculture.

Looking forward, he says, "We believe that farmers and ranchers see the challenges of a changing climate and want to pursue strategies that increase their resiliency while being good stewards of the land for future generations."

Pathway into Green Infrastructure

"Since our formation, we've been bringing labor and environmental groups together to really tackle labor and climate issues at the same time," says JB Tengco, vice president of state affairs at BlueGreen Alliance - which includes 10 state-based teams, including California.

Tengco notes that addressing the mission in California is "complicated."

"If you look at California - from the size of its economy, the size of its energy need, the energy diversity that we have here, we have everything you can think about in terms of needs for the economy and to really help the state operate. When you add all that together, the complexity of what we're trying to accomplish with the energy transition is definitely daunting and big."

"I think a lot of folks within the state - from elected officials, to working families, to labor, to industry - are really looking at how do we ensure, that as our energy generation and our energy needs change, that we're doing so in a way that creates good jobs."

Referencing state legislation, Tengco says, "The AB 398 report tries to map out different sets of labor levers to go with climate policy."

He continues, "Climate policy has two components, the climate policy and the proactive labor lever. It's the combination that ensures that you create good jobs. We know there's a difference between a job and a good job."

Tengco notes, "Labor has clearly led on addressing some of those issues around systemic inequality. Historically, you've seen that for a lot of people of color, their abilities to get higher wages, promotion paths, health care have come from working with labor. We've seen a lot of opportunities for people of color to have jobs that are family-sustaining. California has done a lot to recruit from targeted communities - be it people of color, formerly incarcerated, women - into the trades themselves."

Opportunities in the Green Economy

"In the clean energy space, we clearly see the energy generation - from renewables like solar and wind, both onshore and offshore as areas for good job creation," says Tengco.

"As we look at trying to build new energy generation facilities, more and more of that is done with labor. Also, as we move to making buildings more energy-efficient, there's been a lot of good labor work within that. I think increasingly as we look at manufacturing, both California and the country are really thinking through how do we onshore manufacturing? How do we do so in a way that leads to good jobs?"

"What you're seeing is a lot of the crafts continuing work and expanding their work as new opportunities arise. When you really think of what solar generation is, it's energy generation. Electricians who have been working on powering homes, powering buildings, powering industrial sites, solar is just another mechanism to create electricity. You're actually seeing a lot of the trades move that way and have already incorporated a lot of these new technologies in their trainings."

"You see the same with HVAC systems, right? HVAC systems create clean air within schools, hospitals, and whatnot. As that technology changes to become cleaner, they're moving into or expanding their skillset to work on different types of [cleaner] technologies."

An Oakland-Based Nonprofit is Creating Access to Quality Jobs

"Rising Sun as a pre-apprenticeship program is exactly the type of program that the trades partner with to ensure that they are getting people of color, women, local hires into the trades," explains Tengco.

"We've always had this mission that's been at the intersection of equity, climate, and jobs," says Julia Hatton, president and CEO at Rising Sun Center for Opportunity - an Oakland workforce development organization that provides training and employment programs.

Originally founded in 1994, Hatton explains the organization's current Climate Careers program was spearheaded by a student-led effort in 2000. "We had staff who were teaching a class on climate change at Berkeley High. It was actually the students in that class who decided that they didn't want to just learn about this stuff. They wanted to go out and make a difference in their own communities. They went to the homes of their friends and neighbors and took out the old inefficient lighting and water fixtures, and replaced them with new, efficient versions of those things."

"We now run that program across the 10-county area in the Bay Area and Central Valley. The emphasis of that program is the youth employment and the youth development piece - giving young people, not just their first green job, but their first [paid] job. Period."

Climate Careers whose participants are between the ages of 15 to 24 - includes a leadership pathway for the older youth.

After a week of paid training, the participants work during the summer months making green house calls. From September through November, the youth are placed in paid externships with partners working in the climate space. Among them - Redwood Energy, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Stockton Service Corps.

"We collect feedback cards from every green house call - to see the feedback that comes back about the young people, 'They were so professional. I'm so impressed I learned this thing that I didn't know. I want to hear more from these kids. The youth are our future.' That can be really transformative. On the youth side, it's empowering to know that adults react in that way."

About 80 youth participate in the program, visiting about 3,000 households during the summer - with wages at about $19 an hour.

Pathway Into Union Membership

Rising Sun's Opportunity Build - an industry-certified construction training program - provides a path to union apprenticeship in the skilled trades. "One of the key things that union membership offers is that ongoing training, retraining, and reskilling," says Hatton.

The organization has three cohorts around the skilled trades training.

"We have an all-women's cohort called Women Building the Bay. We have a nights and weekends cohort that runs in the summer that's tailored for folks who might have a job that they need to be at during the day. And then we have a regular cohort in the fall. Across all the cohorts, at least 55% of our participants are women. About 40% are system-impacted which could include coming home from incarceration or having other interaction with the justice system. All of our participants in Opportunity Build are facing some pretty high barriers to employment" - including housing instability and food insecurity.

"We do 10 to 12 weeks of training, but then it's 12 additional months of services after they graduate to support the job placement, the job retention, and, ultimately, the career advancement."

Participants might receive a stipend of a thousand dollars and support services that can include initial union dues, unpaid parking tickets, rent, and childcare.

The Need for Union Labor

"Wind turbines or our highways and roadways - making sure those are going be resilient to climate change, to heat, to flooding, to whatever it is. That's union labor. That's organized labor. That's the building and construction trades," Hatton points out.

She says IBEW Local 332 is well-suited to provide skills training, "They have whole classrooms, whole labs dedicated to battery storage training to EV charging, all those things. When you think about climate infrastructure, that's union labor."

Regarding UA Local 342, Hatton notes, "They're training their apprentices on heat pumps and that's a huge piece when you're looking at building electrification and decarbonization, right?"

Employment in the green sector must mean - not just a job - but a quality job, explains Hatton. "There is an interesting differentiation between residential sector work and work that tends to be organized and unionized which, not exclusively, tends to be more at the commercial or infrastructure scale. That differentiation is really important when you start thinking about job quality."

One Apprentice's Journey

"I took a liking to construction through my grandfather. I found it interesting watching my grandfather work on the sink or rebuild his kitchen, his bathroom, his roof," recalls Ashley Lewis, now a laborer apprentice, Turner Construction Company in Oakland.

"He would just catch me standing there just watching him and he'd just be like, 'Why don't you come over and help?' I'd help lay tiles on the floor, help him replace a couple pipes underneath the sink. I learned to paint a room with my grandfather."

Lewis initially applied for the Rising Sun pre-apprenticeship program a few years ago but the training opportunity was put on hold due to the pandemic. When programming resumed, Lewis applied for the February 2022 all-women cohort with about 20 participants.

She says, "It was all women. I loved that women empowerment, that unity, that sisterhood. We all built a really great bond."

The Rising Sun training gave the participants a lot of experience, notes Lewis. "We ended up getting lots of hands-on training with different tools you might use in different trades like cementing, woodcutting, leveling, mapping."

Prior to her pre-apprenticeship training at Rising Sun, Lewis did in-home care and worked at various odd jobs. Her laborer apprenticeship with Turner began in February of this year.

Lewis is currently working on a project at Oakland International Airport. She says the company has protocols in place to be environmentally safe. "Because there's a lot of welding, a lot of different equipment and chemicals being used, they have these big filtering fans throughout the [walled-off] areas where we're working. That way the fumes and the dust - everything [is kept] at a minimum."

"We don't know how old certain things in the airport are - so trying to keep things contained and from spreading, we have the air filtration systems constantly going and making sure that not only are we safe, but everyone outside the walls is safe."

She says her company is employing green practices in its work. "I think Turner is definitely keeping that in mind. I see all the different recycling bins for metal, for waste, for miscellaneous items. And making sure, because we're at the airport, it doesn't get into the water because we're surrounded by the water. And making sure other things stay covered, locked, and secured.

She continues, "I see them taking steps, putting signs up around the airport, letting people know that there's construction work going on and how we have restricted zones."

Lewis hopes her union pathway will lead to her becoming a journeyman.

The Green Economy and Quality Green Jobs

"You bring in the workforce training components that skill people up so they can take those jobs. You can do that across these investments in ways that really drive not just improving the infrastructure, but really gets to regional and local economic development that starts to impact employment in regions," says the CWDB's Rainey.

Tengco of BlueGreen Alliance says, "When I first started working with BlueGreen, I talked to elected officials, I talked to companies, I talked to a whole host of different allies and partners. We talked about addressing environmental issues, and we talked about the need to create good jobs. Often, I had to answer the question, 'Why do we need to create good jobs? Why do we have to be proactive? Aren't we creating jobs? Isn't that good enough?' I'd say over the years, that the question is no longer 'Why?' but 'How?' And that is what makes me optimistic about what we do."

Rising Sun's Hatton says, "The quality of those jobs is so essentially important. Not just the wages, but the benefits, the scheduling, the worker protections, all of those pieces. It's not just the training. It's all the wraparound pieces, all the supportive services, making sure there are pathways, and that people are prepared to advance on those pathways."

"You have the climate part of the mission that's so important. It has to happen fast and it has to happen everywhere, but how can we make sure those opportunities are also uplifting economically? That's a big question."

Apprentice Lewis frequently talks with her grandfather about her career pathway. "He says, 'When you enjoy something, it doesn't matter what you're doing. Time doesn't exist and before you know it, your day is over.' My grandpa was at the school district for over 30 years and he retired - now I see what he meant because he stayed there for 30 years."


Laura Aka wrote this article for WorkingNation.

Support for this reporting was provided by Lumina Foundation.


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By Jessica Kutz for Inside Climate News.
Broadcast version by Alex Gonzalez for Arizona News Connection reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

Hazel Chandler was at home taking care of her son when she began flipping through a document that detailed how burning fossil fuels would soon jeopardize the planet.

She can't quite remember who gave her the report - this was in 1969 - but the moment stands out to her vividly: After reading a list of extreme climate events that would materialize in the coming decades, she looked down at the baby she was nursing, filled with dread.

"'Oh my God, I've got to do something,'" she remembered thinking.

It was one of several such moments throughout Chandler's life that propelled her into activist spaces - against the Vietnam War, for civil rights and women's rights, and in support of other environmental causes.

She participated in letter-writing campaigns and helped gather others to write to legislators about vital pieces of environmental legislation including the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, passed in 1970 and 1972, respectively. At the child care center she worked at, she helped plan celebrations around the first Earth Day in 1970.

Now at 78, after working in child care and health care for most of her life, she's more engaged than ever. In 2015, she began volunteering with Elder Climate Action, which focuses on activating older people to fight for the environment. She then took a job as a consultant for the Union for Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit science advocacy organization.

More recently, her activism has revolved around her role as the Arizona field coordinator of Moms Clean Air Force, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group. Chandler helps rally volunteers to take action on climate and environmental justice issues, recruiting residents to testify and meet with lawmakers.

Her motivation now is the same as it was decades ago.

"When I look my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren, my children, in the eye, I have to be able to say, 'I did everything I could to protect you,'" Chandler said. "I have to be able to tell them that I've done everything possible within my ability to help move us forward."

Chandler is part of a largely unrecognized contingent of the climate movement in the United States: the climate grannies.

The most prominent example perhaps, is the actor Jane Fonda. The octogenarian grandmother has been arrested during climate protests a number of times and has her own PAC that funds the campaigns of "climate champions" in local and state elections.

Climate grannies come equipped with decades of activism experience and aim to pressure the government and corporations to curb fossil fuel emissions. As a result they, alongside women of every age group, are turning out in bigger numbers, both at protests and the polls. All of the climate grandmothers The 19th interviewed for this piece noted one unifying theme: concern for their grandchildren's futures.

According to research conducted by Dana R. Fisher, director for the Center of Environment, Community and Equity at American University, while the mainstream environmental movement has typically been dominated by men, women make up 61 percent of climate activists today. The average age of climate activists was 52 with 24 percent being 69 and older.

Part of the gender shift, she says, can be traced back to the mass demonstrations and protests that flourished in response to former President Donald Trump.

"Starting with the Women's March and the day after the inauguration of Donald Trump ... women are more engaged and women are more likely to be leaders," Fisher said.

"Which is nice, because especially in the environmental arena it has historically been quite the dude fest."

A similar trend holds true at the ballot box, according to data collected by the Environmental Voter Project, a nonpartisan organization focused on turning out climate voters in elections.

A report released by the Environmental Voter Project in December that looked at the patterns of registered voters in 18 different states found that after the Gen Z vote, people 65 and older represent the next largest climate voter group, with older women far exceeding older men in their propensity to list climate as their No. 1 reason for voting. The organization defines climate voters as those who are most likely to list climate change, the environment, or clean air and water as their top political priority.

"Grandmothers are now at the vanguard of today's climate movement," said Nathaniel Stinnett, founder of the Environmental Voter Project.

"Older people are three times as likely to list climate as a top priority than middle-aged people. On top of that, women in all age groups are more likely to care about climate than men," he said. "So you put those two things together ... and you can safely say that grandma is much more likely to be a climate voter than your middle-aged man."

In Arizona, where Chandler lives, older climate voters make up 231,000 registered voters in the state. The presidential election in the crucial swing state was decided by just 11,000 votes, Stinnett noted.

"Older climate voters can really throw their weight around in Arizona if they organize and if they make sure that everybody goes to the polls," he said.

In some cases, their identities as grandmothers have become an organizing force.

In California, 1000 Grandmothers for Future Generations formed in 2016, after older women from the Bay Area traveled to be in solidarity with Indigenous grandmothers protesting the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.

"When they came back, they decided to form an organization that would continue to mobilize women on behalf of the climate justice movement," said Nancy Hollander, a member of the group.

1000 Grandmothers - in this case, the term encompasses all older women, not just the literal grandmothers - is rooted at the intersection of social justice and the climate crisis, supporting people of color and Indigenous-led causes in the Bay Area. The organization is divided into various working groups, each with a different focus: elections, bank divestments from fossil fuels, legislative work, nonviolent direct actions, among others.

They make frequent appearances alongside other climate activist groups at protests in front of banks like Wells Fargo, which finances oil and gas infrastructure, as well as participating in the annual Anti-Chevron day, protesting at the Chevron Refinery in Richmond, California.

For Hollander, 85, the work has been energizing, a continuation of the political activism she was a part of throughout her life. It's also helped her mentally cope with the multiple crises the world is currently experiencing.

"It facilitates a sense of agency and of me being in concert with my values and my ideals. It also puts me in touch with other people, other human beings, who are motivated by similar desires and commitments," she said.

Many of the activists emphasized how important that sense of community is, especially when the work can lead one into a sense of despair over all that has been lost. Action, they agree, is an antidote, a way to cope with that feeling and show their care. Much of their work centers on protecting the younger generation - from the threats of the climate crisis, but also in activist spaces.

"There are women in the nonviolent direct action part of the organization who really do feel that elder women - it's their time to stand up and be counted and to get arrested," Hollander said. "They consider it a historical responsibility and put themselves out there to protect the more vulnerable."

But 1000 Grandmothers credits another grandmother activist, Pennie Opal Plant, for helping train their members in nonviolent direct action and for inspiring them to take the lead of Indigenous women in the fight.

Plant, 66 - an enrolled member of the Yaqui of Southern California tribe, and of undocumented Choctaw and Cherokee ancestry - has started various organizations over the years, including Idle No More SF Bay, which she co-founded with a group of Indigenous grandmothers in 2013, first in solidarity with a group formed by First Nations women in Canada to defend treaty rights and to protect the environment from exploitation.

In 2016, Plant gathered with others in front of Wells Fargo Corporate offices in San Francisco, blocking the road in protest of the Dakota Access Pipeline, when she realized the advantages she had as an older woman in the fight.

As a police liaison - or a person who aims to defuse tension with law enforcement - she went to speak to an officer who was trying to interrupt the action. When she saw him maneuvering his car over a sidewalk, she stood in front of it, her gray hair flowing. "I opened my arms really wide and was like, are you going to run over a grandmother?"

A new idea was born: The Society of Fearless Grandmothers. Once an in-person training - it now mostly exists online as a Facebook page - it helped teach other grandmothers how to protect the youth at protests.

For Plant, the role of grandmothers in the fight to protect the planet is about a simple Indigenous principle: ensuring the future for the next seven generations.

"What we're seeing is a shift starting with Indigenous women, that is lifting up the good things that mothers have to share, the good things that women that love children can share, that will help bring back balance in the world," Plant said.

The coordination between the two groups is one instance of intersectional work happening in the climate activism space. Though younger climate activists tend to be part of a more diverse movement, Fisher notes the movement is still predominantly White.

"People of color are mobilizing, but in many cases, they're not mobilizing and engaging in activism that is specifically focused on climate," Fisher said. "They may be engaging in work that is more climate justice, frontline community focused or against systemic racism, but it's framed really differently than in most of the groups that are doing this kind of climate work ... so there's still a very big gulf there that needs to be crossed."

Some of the older generation of activists see working on issues surrounding the climate as a way to try and correct some of their generation's historical wrongs.

Kathleen Sullivan, an organizer with Third Act - a national organization started by environmentalist Bill McKibben - said that's part of what has motivated her to become a climate activist in her later years.

"I couldn't live with myself if I didn't because I've been gifted with so much in life, and those gifts have come at a huge price," she said, reflecting on how resource extraction, slavery, genocide, have built this country and led to the climate crisis. "And, when you wake up to that, first you weep and and then you say, 'Oh my God, there's a whole other way to live a life, another way to understand how to be on this planet.'"

Sullivan is one of approximately 70,000 people over the age of 60 who've joined Third Act, a group specifically formed to engage people 60 and older to mobilize for climate action across the country.

"This is an act of moral responsibility. It's an act of care. And It's an act of reciprocity to the way in which we are cared for by the planet," Sullivan said. "It's an act of interconnection to your peers, because there can be great joy and great sense of solidarity with other people around this."


Jessica Kutz wrote this article for Inside Climate News.


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By Jessica Scott-Reid for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Nadia Ramlagan for Kentucky News Connection reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

When “misinformation” was declared 2018’s Word of the Year by Dictionary.com, the website stated at the time that “the rampant spread of misinformation poses new challenges for navigating life.” The year prior, Collins Dictionary named “fake news” as its word of the year. Misinformation has since proliferated — made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic — as both social and traditional media have become viral vectors for the spread. Two hot topics have become especially susceptible to media misinformation and bias — climate change and our food system.

For readers seeking balance and objectivity on these issues, the current media environment can be tough to navigate. Corporate interests, polarizing politics and social media influence make the truth more and more difficult to decipher. To help readers traverse this challenging media landscape, we asked experts in media literacy for tips on how to spot misinformation red flags. Here’s how to separate fact from fallacy, and truth from conspiracy.

Why Misinformation Exists in Media

Though the concept of misinformation in media might seem relatively new, according to Sander van der Linden, professor of psychology at Cambridge University, and author of the book Foolproof: Why We Fall for Misinformation and How to Build Immunity, this threat to the public has actually been around since the late 1800s; back then in the form of media propaganda.

“A lot of people traced the first example back to the Spanish American War,” he explains, “where there was this sort of fake news about a U.S. tanker that sank, which was blamed on the Spanish even though that wasn’t true.” This false information “swayed public opinion in favor of the war,” he says, and was an early example of what came to be known as “yellow journalism: — journalism based on sensationalism and crude exaggeration. Since then, the problem of misinformation in the media has persisted.

Van der Linden points to cable TV news as the medium that took media misinformation to the next level. “In journalism you have editorial standards, you have fact checkers,” he explains. That’s no longer always the case, he says, as “cable news dropped some of those standards.”

As Flavia Roscini writes in her research for Boston University, “cable news is a business that runs on ratings and advertisements. In order to capture people’s attention, it needs to be engaging. It has, therefore, increasingly blurred the lines between information and entertainment.”

The emergence of social media then blurred those lines further, with “no barriers to entry,” says van der Linden. “Right on YouTube, we have content creators who can say anything now without any type of fact checking. There’s no regard for accuracy.”

John Cook, an expert in the cognitive psychology of climate science denial, says that “by removing gatekeepers [editors, fact-checkers, etc.], social media makes it possible for any individual to potentially reach millions of people.” But, he adds, “it’s worse than that. Misinformation spreads faster and deeper than facts on social media because it’s usually more eye-catching and salacious than dry facts.” And once misinformation takes hold, he adds “it’s notoriously hard to undo the damage.”

With online misinformation spreading quickly, and “more and more by inauthentic accounts and AI generated content,” van der Linden says, “the problem has gotten away from us.”

How to Add More Media Literacy to Your News Diet

The abundance of misinformation in the media today has created an increased need for media literacy among readers and audiences. Media literacy is the ability to critically analyze media content to determine its accuracy and credibility. To do this, says Jon Greenberg, a few steps are required. Greenberg is a senior correspondent for PolitiFact, and he teaches journalism at Poynter Institute.

The first step in looking critically at a piece of media, Greenberg says, is an emotional check-in. “If there’s a sense of, ‘Damn it, I knew that was the case,’ or ‘holy smokes, no way’ shock,” then, he says, the next step is the hardest, but most important: “hit the pause button.”

If media consumers can hit that pause button, says Greenberg, the following step is to then ask who or what the source of the information is. “Then you can ask the question: do they have a dog in this fight? What’s their interest?” Consider whether there are any potential conflicts or financial gains at stake.

The next step, Greenberg says, is to look at the news and interrogate the evidence. “Is it believable? Just because it comes from a group that is, say, the ‘Center for Really Savvy Insights’ doesn’t mean that they are squeaky clean,” he says. “They may not be insightful, and they may not be savvy.”

Judging the credibility of a source is key. “Do they have a setup that allows them to go through internal challenges to make sure that the information is accurate?” Greenberg says that if a source appears to be a “lone wolf researcher” — though they may have a PhD — readers should beware. “If they’re working by themselves, they haven’t gone through the process of having their findings and their conclusions vetted by their colleagues, peer reviewed.” Facts are learned through being challenged, he explains, “and that which survives challenges becomes our accepted truth.”

Finally, Greenberg says readers should be interested in what other people are saying about the topic or story. “Plug the phrase into Google and see what bubbles up,” he says. Look to see if certain advocacy or political groups have taken up the same issue, and what fact checkers and debunkers have to say. “And in this way, you can round out your picture.”

Navigating News on Climate Change

Some topics have become more vulnerable to misinformation than others; particularly those that are polarizing, political or with vested financial interests. Climate change is one of those topics, and Cook says that the tendency of mainstream media to present both sides of a debate has allowed for misinformation on climate science to easily enter the public discourse. Presenting both sides of the argument may be “an appropriate approach when it comes to politics or matters of opinion, but misleads the public when applied to matters of scientific fact.”

For example, “it would be inappropriate to give a flat-earther equal coverage with a scientist from NASA, in the same way it’s inappropriate and misleading to give a climate science denier equal coverage with a climate scientist.” Cook’s research has found this format “gives the audience the impression of a 50/50 debate among the scientific community, when the actual scientific consensus on issues like human-caused global warming is greater than 97 percent.”

Another red flag to be on the lookout for when maneuvering through mainstream news on climate change? The omission of the role food systems, and specifically meat and dairy, plays. A 2023 study conducted by Sentient and Faunalytics revealed that animal agriculture is systematically underreported in climate media coverage; 93 percent of the climate news stories reviewed didn’t even mention it. This, despite the fact that animal agriculture is a leading cause of deforestation, and is responsible for between 11.1 and 19.6 percent of global emissions.

Climate misinformation also makes its way into mainstream media via political leaders promoting false arguments about climate change, Cook adds. “Unfortunately, several studies have found that one of the biggest drivers of changes in public opinion about climate change is cues from political leaders,” he says. “People are tribal and respond when our tribal leaders speak.”

Seeking out peer-reviewed sources is the best way to find reliable information on climate change, Cook asserts — however, he recognizes that asking the public to read technical studies from scientific journals may be a bit much. “There are a number of other authoritative and thoroughly-vetted sources on climate information,” he says, “such as the NASA climate website and the National Academy of Science, which are also written to be accessible to non-scientists.”

Navigating News About the Meat Industry

News covering the meat and dairy industries is particularly ripe for misinformation, as the bias goes deep. Tayler Zavitz, a sociologist and critical animal studies scholar, describes this as an entire “corporate-controlled system” at work, made up of “the media, invested corporations (the animal agriculture industry), and the state.” One result of this system: journalists rarely, if ever, include animal suffering, let alone animal welfare, in their news coverage.

For example, while it is common to see quotes from industry sources, such as farmers and lobby/trade groups, rarely are animal advocates sought out for comment, or are the experiences of the animals considered.

Consider news coverage of barn fires. Often, the stories highlight the loss of money or product, as well as the devastation of the farmers. Reporting on how the animals died, often horrifically, is almost never included. “Readers should look at whether the coverage is written through an anthropocentric lens” says Zavitz. Pointing to our barn fire example, she says, “we often see headlines like ‘No injuries in barn fire,’ but the article will then go on to note that 30,000 hens were killed. So, this sort of discourse highlights the human-focused, capitalist ideology underpinning the mainstream news media, as that animal lives are seen as so insignificant and worthless outside of their economic value.”

Meat and dairy industry groups are also pouring money into academic centers created to train researchers in communicating industry-aligned messages to the public. While food industry funding for public research is nothing new, the focus on “communications” and “public trust” is a more recent and worrying invention, because the emphasis is on the message, rather than on research to improve the way food is produced.

One such example is the CLEAR Center at University of California, Davis created by Professor Frank Mitloehner, a scientist with a long public record of downplaying the climate impacts of meat and dairy. A 2022 New York Times and Unearthed investigation revealed Mitloehner did not disclose the full extent of his industry funding on the center’s website. Yet that revelation did little to discourage livestock industry groups from communications funding, and a similar initiative now exists at Colorado State University. And the pork industry has pledged to fund research to boost “public trust between pork producers and pork consumers,” to address animal welfare concerns.

The blurred lines between industry and public research is tricky for journalists to navigate, but also critical in this moment. A 2023 Washington Post-University of Maryland poll found 74 percent of Americans think — wrongly — that not eating meat would make little or no difference for climate change. The scientific research actually shows the opposite: eating less meat with a plant-rich diet is one of the most effective forms of individual climate action, according to Project Drawdown. When in doubt, journalists should avoid leaning on single studies in their reporting, but look instead for the scientific consensus or what most of the research points to.

The Bottom Line

In a media landscape increasingly saturated with misinformation, the need for critical media literacy is growing. As readers navigate topics like climate change and the food system, skills to discern fact from fallacy are crucial. By questioning sources, examining evidence and seeking diverse perspectives and peer reviewed conclusions, readers can better understand the truth amidst the noise of media sensationalism and industry bias.


Jessica Scott-Reid wrote this article for Sentient.


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By Liz Carey for The Daily Yonder.
Broadcast version by Nadia Ramlagan for Kentucky News Connection for the Daily Yonder-Public News Service Collaboration

In the wake of Hurricane Helene flooding areas of eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina, a new research study hopes to not only determine what causes flash flooding in the mountainous areas of Appalachia, but how to prepare residents for coming disasters.

In 2022, flash floods hit the hills of eastern Kentucky leaving in their wake, millions of dollars of devastation. A new research project at the University of Kentucky hopes to dive into what happened during that event and how planners can use that information to be better prepared in the future.

The four-year project will look at flash flooding in the small headwater streams in Appalachia. Part of a $77.8 million investment by the National Science Foundation into infrastructure improvements in the face of climate change, the study will bring together researchers from UK, the University of Louisville, Eastern Kentucky University, West Virginia University and Marshall University. Using sensors in streams and data from the Robison Forest, a teaching, research and extension forest in the Cumberland Plateau, researchers use the information they gather to identify specific issues related to flash floods.

Kenton Sena, Ph.D., co-principal investigator and lecturer at UK, said sensors in the forest have been accumulating data for more than 50 years. The data will help them dig deeper into the temperatures, precipitation and weather conditions prior to flooding events which can lead to a better understanding of flooding scenarios. While national weather data can give researchers a daily precipitation amount, he said, the data from the Robinson Forest can give them hourly precipitation amounts.

“We can get a little bit more information out of the data like what kind of storm was this, was this a really intense thunderstorm where it rained cats and dogs for three hours and then stopped, or was this a more chill storm event that lasted for the whole day and was more gentle and less intense, because obviously the watershed will respond differently to those different scenarios with respect to flooding,” he said in an interview with the Daily Yonder.

Between July 25 and July 29, 2022, eastern Kentucky was hit with what the National Weather Service called the deadliest non-tropical weather event in the U.S. since the 1970s.

The rains started on July 25, but by the next morning, flash flood reports started coming in. Rains in excess of four inches an hour fell across 13 counties, inundating the area with upwards of 16 inches of rain.

By the evening of July 28 buildings, mobile homes and cars were swept down the valley as a wall of water left roads and bridges impassable and some residents trapped on hillsides. In the end, 45 people died and nearly 1,400 required rescuing. All 13 counties were declared federal disaster areas with nearly 9,000 homes damaged or destroyed and hundreds of families relocated to temporary shelters.

In 2023, a report from the Ohio River Valley Institute and Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center found that rebuilding the homes damaged in the 2022 flood would cost about $450 million, but relocating and replacing many of the homes to less flood-prone areas would raise the total to more than $950 million. 

It’s not the first time the area had seen catastrophic flooding. According to a report by the Federal Reserve of Cleveland, the 13 county area has seen flooding 27 times. 

The study may also help scientists better understand flooding in other areas, like the Hurricane Helene disaster in eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina. In September, tropical storms leftover from Hurricane Helene besieged the Great Smoky Mountains. Already saturated from days of storms prior to Helene’s arrival, some areas received nearly 30 inches of rain causing streams to overflow their banks and take out anything in their path.

The storm left at least 224 dead — 96 from North Carolina and 17 from Tennessee. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said Wednesday the storm caused more than $53 billion in damage. The state said the storm and its aftermath caused 1,400 landslides and damaged more than 160 water and sewer systems, 6,000 miles of roads, more than 1,000 bridges and culverts and an estimated 126,000 homes. In his request to the North Carolina legislature, Cooper asked for $3.9 billion to begin the process of rebuilding.

“Helene is the deadliest and most damaging storm ever to hit North Carolina,“ said Cooper. “This storm left a trail of destruction in our beautiful mountains that we will not soon forget, but I know the people of Western North Carolina are determined to build back better than ever.”

While the research can help with planning and prevention in the future, Sena said, the initial goal of the research is to save lives.

“We can look at what if we have a 2-inch rain event in three hours? We can look at what kinds of flood risk we’d be looking at,” he said. “And I think that helps us to build out the kind of predictive framework that we really need in order to move to a phase three which would be an on-the-ground meaningful warning (system) that will hopefully give folks time to evacuate.”

Additionally, he said, the researchers will be able to determine how best to communicate the threats to rural residents in a way that is meaningful to them.

“We’ll be working together… to better understand how the local community members would prefer to receive and distribute that kind of information,” he said. “Whatever we develop will hopefully be useful and ready to implement.”


Liz Carey wrote this article for The Daily Yonder.


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