The End

Today is the last day of my fellowship. I can't believe it's already been nine months - the time went so incredibly fast. It's been a wonderful experience - I'd almost go so far as to say magical - and I'm sad to see it end. This is one of those situations in life where you get out of it what you put into it and I feel like I poured a lot of energy and time and heart and soul in. What I got out of it was an exponentially larger return on investment.

All the fellows were asked to write up an evaluation of our time here - some of my answers are below. It's hard to summarize the experience in such a small space but, suffice it to say, I feel infinitely richer for my time here.

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1.    Courses: How do you think these might help you with your environmental journalism?

I think they help tremendously. My biggest weakness was lack of solid baseline knowledge – I feel much more comfortable with environmental subjects (especially when it comes to natural resources and energy) now that I’ve had these courses. I also now have a tremendous number of contacts I can reach out to when I have questions.

2.    Independent Project: Here is where you should describe the work you’ve done.

When I applied for the Scripps Fellowship, I said I wanted to gain a better understanding of wildfire in the American West. It has always been part of the environment here but with climate change and drought, it is permanently altering the landscape and it’s doing so in a much shorter period of time.

It was a big topic – more than I could tackle in just this year and it was very similar to the book that Michael is writing. But I ended up finding a narrower focus within this topic, looking specifically at the problem of development in the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) and the repercussions that has had for both people and forests.

I wrote two articles on this topic. One was for Newsweek, about the Black Forest Fire, which was one of the most destructive in Colorado’s history, partially because of a history of forest mismanagement, partially because of where people are living and partially because of the attitudes of the locals toward mitigation and preparedness. It’s an example of what is becoming a very expensive problem all across the west. The story appeared in the February 13 edition of the magazine, as well as online.

The second article is for Outside Magazine. It looks at the issue of controlled burns, which are an incredibly useful tool for land managers but can also have some terrible consequences if they get out of control. That article is to be published in the July edition of the magazine.

Another project is unrelated to fire but grew from an interesting presentation by James Edward Mills, one of our seminar guests. He talked to us about the lack of diversity in outdoor activities. Out of that conversation, I created and pitched a series to NPR’s Code Switch Team. I’m working closely with reporter Shereen Meraji as the editor and producer on five or six stories – the first one ran in February, pegged to the National Brotherhood of Skiers and the Black Ski Summit, which was held in Aspen at the end of February. The remaining stories will run this summer on Weekend Edition with Rachel Martin – the series is called “Race + Recreation”.

3.    Please share any other comments about the program, general or specific that you might have.

This program gave me the opportunity to really dig into a subject that I care about deeply. I’d been working in general news for years and hadn’t had the time/opportunity to work on many environmental stories. This year will give me a lot more leverage to report on these kinds of topics. Additionally, I’d been doing radio for my entire journalism career. I specifically focused on doing print while at CU because I wanted to try something new. It would have been much, much harder to experiment with a different kind of journalism if I hadn’t been in this program.

In short, I can’t say enough good things. This has, hands down, been one of the best years of my life. To have the opportunity to go back to classes, to have unlimited access to professors and scientists and journalists, to have the time to think and write and reflect – it was truly a gift. I also had a great group of fellows who were enthusiastic learners (and bowlers and beer-drinkers) and game for just about anything.

4.    How do you think you might approach environmental subjects differently in light of your fellowship experiences?

With more confidence. I always felt a bit shaky on the science, given that I don’t have a science/environment background, but the fellowship helped me a) get some more basic knowledge and b) realize that it’s possible to write about these topics in a smart, interesting way – even without a PhD in physics or biology.

5.    In what other Journalism & Mass Communication/College of Media, Communication and Information activities or events have you been a participant?

I helped start a podcast with the graduate students of the CEJ. It was something of an ambitious project but the goal was to help them have an audio story as one of their clips and to have a good, final product that they could then shop around to get university support and funding. 

6.    What activities have you and/or your family enjoyed as the result of living in Boulder and in Colorado?

Oh man. Where to begin. The hiking, for starters – Chautauqua is a short walk from where my boyfriend & I are living. Mount Sanitas. The Table Mesa trail. Then there’s Eldora – we went skiing there multiple times. With the fellows (some current, some former), we took trips up to Devil’s Thumb Ranch to go cross-country skiing. We hit up the Buffalo Bill Museum in Golden. Visited multiple breweries here in town and in Longmont and Fort Collins. Went to Rocky Mountain National Park to see the elk. Took a trip to Paonia in spring. Skied at Aspen (!). Swam at El Dorado Springs. Snowshoed up to one of the 10th Mountain Division Huts at Berthoud Pass for an overnight trip. Shopped at that fantastic farmers’ market. Watched the bronc riders at the Western Stock Show. Went to Frozen Dead Guy Days in Nederland. Squeezed in a little culture at the Denver Museum of Art. Made lots of new friends and had tons of happy hours, dinners, bbqs, potlucks and parties with all of them.

7.    What do you plan to do after the fellowship program is over?

Wait – it’s over?

I’ve got a number of plans in the works. I’m not ready to go back to a full-time office job yet – I’d like to continue to do more writing but also do some radio projects. I’ll be working with a former fellow who’s now at High Country News, to help develop a possible podcast. I’m also going to be collaborating on an independent radio project called “I See Change” that crowdsources climate change and marries it with data from NASA.  I’ll finish working with NPR on the “Race + Recreation” series that we launched in February – there will be 5 pieces total, running in August on Weekend Edition. I’ll be editing and producing, as well as writing web copy. And I’ve got a couple of my own writing projects in the works.

Homework!

The nice thing about this year is I get to be a student but I don't have to do the homework or write the papers or take the tests. But there have been a couple of homework assignments that seem like worthwhile exercises, like the one that was due today.

For my Energy and Climate Change course, we were asked to come up with a whole paragraph (!) about where we - as supreme leader of the planet - think the world's energy will come from in 2040. 

First - how I came to power:

The year is 2040. Global temperatures have risen an average of 2°C. 

Just six years earlier, Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK) - the world's last climate change denier - left office at the age of 100. The United States Congress finally agreed to sign on to several international climate change treaties. But their actions came too late. Already, nothing remained of Miami Beach but a thin strip of sand; the city itself is slowly disappearing into the ocean. In the panic, former Scripps Fellow Laura Krantz wrested control of the government away from President Jenna Bush, took over the UN and began to implement a new energy plan…

Ok. So this wasn't included in what I turned in. But that probably will be when Inhofe retires - pretty sure I'm right about that. Anyway - my actual homework follows.

Supplying the world’s energy in 2040:

The planet will have 9 billion people, consuming twice as much energy as 2015. So where is it all going to come from? Realistically, I don’t think we’ll be off fossil fuels entirely, but I do think they’ll be reduced. And I see a lot of the developing world – with the cooperation and aid of wealthier nations – skipping right over the fossil fuels stage and going directly to renewables, which will have grown exponentially.

25% - 30% of the world’s energy needs will be met by renewables, specifically solar. There’s a tremendous amount of energy from the sun that can be more efficiently captured and, by 2040, storage and distribution technologies will have made it a more reliable and constant source of energy, even in places that don’t get consistent sunshine.

25% will likely still come from oil and gas. The transition to renewables will take time and there will still be technology that’s reliant on traditional fossil fuel sources. But the price tag for these fuels will be higher because they'll actually include the costs of dealing with emissions and air pollution - costs that aren't factored in to 2015 prices. Additionally, recognizing the problems that fossil fuels pose, the majority of governments will no longer be subsidizing these industries.

The remaining 25% will come from nuclear. There was a lot of fear about nuclear in the wake of the March 2011 Fukushima disaster but those fears will have faded as the world became more concerned with finding cleaner energy sources. Wealthier countries will benefit most from nuclear technology – it’s too expensive for most developing nations.

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It's an interesting exercise and my answer is probably a little too optimistic when it comes to renewables and delusional when it comes to nuclear (I personally think nuclear is waaay better than coal). Fossil fuels are almost certain to still be the main source of energy and, as much as I dislike the idea, that includes the use of coal. The US Energy Information Administration projects that the increase in world energy demands will mean an increase in all types of energy (although natural gas and renewables will see the biggest growth - see below).

What is worth noting is that the chart above is working off the assumption that our rate of consumption will be constant. In other word,s the above chart shows the projected growth of these energy sources based on current consumption levels. So if people were to increase their energy efficiency, it could alter that chart considerably. 

One way to force that would be through costs - higher taxes on fossil fuels, higher fuel economy standards. Not exactly a popular idea, especially in this political climate. (But that could change when Miami starts to go underwater.)

The other thing to think about is that there doesn't seem to be a perfect energy source. All of them have pluses and minuses. The problems with fossil fuels are well known. Solar requires using rare earth metals to create the panels - those are limited and pose their own environmental challenges when it comes to mining them and recycling them. Nuclear energy runs on specific elements that a) are limited and b) produce extremely toxic waste that's hard to dispose of. Using wind turbines - as I learned today - can have a big effect on local climate by changing the flow of the atmosphere. 

I don't think there's going to be a magic energy bullet or a perfect solution. 

It's going to be about finding the right mix and constantly fine-tuning it, as well as increasing our efficiency, to get the greatest amount of energy for the least amount of environmental and social cost. 

Beginnings

I'm a week away from starting a Scripps Fellowship at the Center for Environmental Journalism with the University of Colorado in Boulder.

The program lasts an academic year - from mid-August 2014 until mid-May 2015. I'll be auditing a full course load of any classes I'm interested in taking, be it poetry or physics or painting. There's a weekly two-hour seminar for me and the four other fellows, as well as several field trips and a trip to New Orleans for the Society of Environmental Journalists annual conference. And I'll be tackling at least one project of my choosing - currently, I'm planning to look at how a century of forest mismanagement and the current state of climate change have created the types of wildfires that are altering the landscape of the American west.

Now, one goal of the program is to take seasoned journalists and make them more aware of - and capable of reporting on - the environment; helping them develop the ability to translate complex ideas into concepts that are accessible to the general public. The founder of the program, Edward Scripps (grandson of the founder of Scripps Howard) was himself a journalist who cared deeply about the environment. 

Personally, though, my goal is to also use this year to make some changes in my career. I've worked in radio for 8 years - I want to give writing a shot. And after 8 years of covering a wide variety of stories, following the daily ups and downs of whatever news is of the moment, I want to take some time to work with one subject that's really important to me - the natural world and the environment. 

It's something that fills me with real joy - a golden sunrise, a hike along a rushing stream in the woods, a tromp through powdery, quiet snow - and here in Boulder, I get the chance to take advantage of some truly gorgeous wilderness. But the state of the environment and the treatment of the natural world also saddens me - the acidification of the oceans, the death of thousands of species, the altering of the landscape. I want to understand the effect humanity's actions have had on the planet and, while I don't think we will destroy it, I think we can do a better job of taking care of it.

So we'll see where this year takes me. I'm not a scientist - my background is in history and international relations - but I find the world to be a pretty fascinating place and I like sharing what I'm learning with other people (hopefully not in an obnoxious way). I plan to use this blog as a way to post information on stories I find interesting, little tidbits of knowledge I pick up from classes and my fellow fellows, and the ideas and thoughts that grow out of exploring the great outdoors. 

Here we go... dear readers, please be gentle.