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From Covid to climate change, we have no idea what we're talking about

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Cantu is the digital director at the American Conservation Coalition, which mobilizes young people around environmental action through market-based and limited-government ideals.

While it is nonsensical to try to prescribe a diagnosis to America's current state of civic discourse — from dumping manure on the White House lawn in the name of climate action or attending the Met Gala to demand we "tax the rich" — we often blame partisan politics. But what if part of the problem is that we literally cannot understand one another? And, perhaps worse than that, the institutions we trust to lead the public have stopped trying to communicate to be understood.

Let's get the figures out of the way. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that 50 percent of U.S. adults cannot read a book written at an eighth-grade level. The National Institute of Literacy estimates that the average American reads at a seventh- to eighth-grade level. Despite these concerns, an analysis of 21 major media outlets found that consumers require a 10th grade reading level to comprehend any of them. Most notably, Fox News and NPR ranked at an 11th grade level, while outlets like MSNBC and Politico exceeded a 12th grade level. This is not an isolated issue. Both the government and media fail to meet Americans where they are in terms of knowledge and vocabulary on critical subjects, such as the Covid-19 pandemic or climate change.

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In 2010, President Barack Obama signed the U.S. Plain Writing Act, requiring "federal agencies use clear government communication that the public can understand and use." While the intention was to ensure government institutions communicated with national literacy and comprehension rates in mind, the Covid-19 pandemic has illuminated that some issues cannot be merely legislated away. A fall 2020 analysis of federal and state websites related to Covid-19 failed to meet the standards for communicating with the public identified by leading institutions such as the American Medical Association and National Institute for Health.

These concerns can also be applied to how we talk about climate change. Climate change is a scientific concept at its core, which means it's spoken about in scientific terms. When vital information about climate change is being communicated to the public through words like "mitigation," "adaptation," "carbon neutra," or, even worse, "carbon negative," Americans are lost.

This was especially clear when a Twitter user recently pointed out that his milk boasted being "carbon positive" by 2045. Unsurprisingly, the replies were full of confusion and differing dictionaries of climate jargon. The general consensus was that Horizon Organic really meant "carbon negative," or that the company will capture more carbon than it emits, but didn't want negative language on its branding materials. Other users also mentioned that the terms "carbon negative" and "carbon positive" actually mean the same thing, which, of course, is problematic for the average citizen just trying to make sense of it all.

When the words we use to discuss one of the biggest problems of our life do more to confuse than inform, it's not a mystery as to why climate action has stalled for decades. From 3D data segmentation to workforce solutions and now climate action, I have spent the past five years creating accessible digital media on behalf of organizations. No matter the complexity or mundanity behind policy or scientific information, one thing remains the same — language that requires highly specialized knowledge is found everywhere, and it is intentionally alienating people.

To be clear, the goal is not to make every American an epidemiologist or climate scientist. Instead, communicators in the space need to be more deliberate with the language they use and its readability. At the pandemic's beginning, media outlets came under fire for hiding their Covid reporting behind a paywall. Similarly, if we as science and policy communicators do not work to deliver our information in a way that is accessible to the public, our words are also hidden away, just in plain sight.

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To help heal divides, we must cut “the media” some slack

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Getty Images / Sean Gladwell

To help heal divides, we must cut “the media” some slack

A few days ago, Donald Trump was inaugurated. In his second term, just as in his first, he’ll likely spark passionate disagreements about news media: what is “fake news” and what isn’t, which media sources should be trusted and which should be doubted.

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King's Birmingham Jail Letter in Our Digital Times

Sixty-two years after Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s pen touches paper in a Birmingham jail cell, I contemplate the walls that still divide us. Walls constructed in concrete to enclose Alabama jails, but in Silicon Valley, designed code, algorithms, and newsfeeds. King's legacy and prophetic words from that jail cell pierce our digital age with renewed urgency.

The words of that infamous letter burned with holy discontent – not just anger at injustice, but a more profound spiritual yearning for a beloved community. Witnessing our social fabric fray in digital spaces, I, too, feel that same holy discontent in my spirit. King wrote to white clergymen who called his methods "unwise and untimely." When I scroll through my social media feeds, I see modern versions of King's "white moderate" – those who prefer the absence of tension to the presence of truth. These are the people who click "like" on posts about racial harmony while scrolling past videos of police brutality. They share MLK quotes about dreams while sleeping through our contemporary nightmares.

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Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly disrupting America’s job market. Within the next decade, positions such as administrative assistants, cashiers, postal clerks, and data entry workers could be fully automated. Although the World Economic Forum expects a net increase of 78 million jobs, significant policy efforts will be required to support millions of displaced workers. The Trump administration should craft a comprehensive plan to tackle AI-driven job losses and ensure a fair transition for all.

As AI is expected to reshape nearly 40% of workers’ skills over the next five years, investing in workforce development is crucial. To be proactive, the administration should establish partnerships to provide subsidized retraining programs in high-demand fields like cybersecurity, healthcare, and renewable energy. Providing tax incentives for companies that implement in-house reskilling initiatives could further accelerate this transition.

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Holiday cards vs. the never-ending barrage of social media

“How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.” — Annie Dillard

There was a time, not so long ago, when holiday cards were the means by which acquaintances updated us on their lives. Often featuring family photos with everyone dressed up, or perhaps casual with a seaside or mountainside backdrop, it was understood this was a “best shot” curated to feature everybody happily together.

Those holiday cards were eagerly opened, shared and even saved. Occasionally they might broach boundaries of good taste, perhaps featuring a photo of the sender’s new Lexus shining brightly as the Christmas star, or containing more pages than an IKEA assembly pack and listing the fifth grader’s achievements. But most of the time these cards conveyed the annual family update and welcome holiday cheer.

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