Environmental Communication and the Public Sphere

Phaedra C. Pezzullo is Associate Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, and a dual citizen with the US and Italia. Her interdisciplinary background informs her research on environmental justice, climate justice, just transition, public advocacy, and tourist studies. Her book, Toxic Tourism (University of Alabama Press, 2007), won four awards, including the Jane Jacobs Urban Communication Book Award and the National Communication Associations Environmental Communication Division Book Award. Among other publications, she coedited Green Communication and China (Michigan State University Press, 2020) and Environmental Justice and Environmentalism (MIT Press, 2007). She was a founding editor of the journal Environmental Communication and serves on its editorial board. She has volunteered on the Sierra Clubs national Environmental Justice Committee and Affinity Group Working Group, consulted with cities and counties on a just transition, and was a delegate at COP21 in Paris. Pezzullo is a founding co-director of the Center for Creative Climate Communication and Behavior Change (C3BC) on her campus. She also enjoys outdoor recreation and cooking a plant-based diet.

Robert Cox is Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His principal research areas are environmental and climate change communication and strategic studies of social movements. A internationally-recognized leading scholar who helped found the field of environmental communication, Cox is coeditor of The Routledge Handbook of Environment and Communication (2015; second edition forthcoming), editor of the four-volume reference series Environmental Communication (Sage, 2016), and the author of numerous studies of environmental and climate change campaigns. He has served three times (1994-1996; 2000-2001; 2007-2008) as president of the Sierra Club, the largest grassroots U.S. environmental organization, and was also on the board of directors for Earth Echo International, whose mission is to empower youth to take action that restores and protects our water planet. Cox also continues to advise environmental groups on their communication programs. He regularly participates in environmental and climate change initiatives and has campaigned with former vice president Al Gore, singer Melissa Etheridge, and other public figures. He also enjoys hiking and trekking in the Himalayas, Europe, and the southern Appalachian Mountains in the United States.

PART I. COMMUNICATING FOR/ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT Chapter 1. Defining Environmental Communication Chapter 2. Contested Meanings: A Brief History Chapter 3. Symbolic Constructions of the Environment Chapter 4. Environmental Media and Sustainability PART II. ENVIRONMENTAL CAMPAIGNS AND MOVEMENTS Chapter 5. Environmental Advocacy Campaigns and Message Construction Chapter 6. Digital Environmental Organizing Chapter 7. Visual and Market Advocacy Chapter 8. Environmental Justice and Climate Justice Movements PART III. ENVIRONMENTAL DISCOURSES AND PUBLIC SPHERES Chapter 9. Environmental Journalism Chapter 10. Science and Climate Communication Chapter 11. Public Health and Environmental Risk Communication PART IV. GREEN GOVERNANCE AND LEGAL SPHERES Chapter 12. Public Participation and Democratic Rights Chapter 13. Voice and Public Dissent EPILOGUE: IMAGINING STORIES OF/FOR OUR FUTURE Glossary References