AU and WAMU Examine “The Climate Change Generation: Youth, Media, and Politics in an Unsustainable World”

Monday night, March 1, starting at 630pm, American University’s School of Communication will be hosting a panel discussion focused on “The Climate Change Generation: Youth, Media, and Politics in an Unsustainable World.” [Follow the link for location on campus and directions. This is a rescheduled event from February that was postponed due to weather.]

Joining me on the panel will be the Washington Post’s national environmental reporter Juliet Eilperin and Mother Jones energy and environmental reporter Kate Shepard. The panel will be moderated by AU journalism professor Jane Hall.

The event will be broadcast live at 7pm on WAMU, the capitol region’s NPR news station. A downloadable MP3 of the broadcast will also be available through WAMU. Live and archived video of the event will be streamed by the American Observer, a project of the graduate program in journalism at AU. Check out the preview page that Observer staff have put together.

Also released on Monday evening will be a survey analysis and report authored by AU professor Lauren Feldman in collaboration with myself and colleagues Anthony Leiserowitz (Yale University) and Edward Maibach (George Mason University.)

Based on a new analysis of nationally representative survey data collected by Leiserowitz and Maibach in January 2010, the report finds that Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 are, for the most part, split on the issue of global warming and, on some indicators, relatively disengaged when compared to older generations. Journalists can contact me at nisbet AT american DOT edu for an advance embargoed copy.