Yale Center for Environmental Communication

The Center for Environmental Communication includes:

• The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication
• Yale Climate Connections
• Yale Environment 360
• The Environmental Film Festival at Yale (EFFY)
• Sage Magazine
• The Yale Environment Review

Teaching

The YCEC provides courses in environmental communication for Yale graduate and undergraduate students. Current environmental communication courses include (all at YSE except as noted):

• Strategic Environmental Communication (Leiserowitz)
• Writing as a Public Scholar (Hanes)
• Writing the World (Klinkenborg)
• Writing Workshop (Cohn)
• Documentary Film and the Environment (Musser, in American Studies)
• Documentary Film Workshop (Musser, in American Studies)
• Global Communication Skills (Vance)
• Professional Skills Course: Environmental Communicator (Vance)
• Delivering Effective Presentations (Reich)
• Food and Documentary (Cheney)
• Introduction to Environmental Data Science (Fenichel, Marlon, Queenborough)
• Environmental Data Visualization and Communication (Marlon, Queenborough)
• Environmental Risk Communication (Schwarz)
• Yale Environment Review (student-led; Kotchen is Faculty Advisor)
• Understanding Environmental Campaigns and Policymaking: Strategies and Tactics (Northrop)
• Ethical Consumption, by Ian Robinson
• Environmental Organizing, by Ian Robinson
• A Toolkit for Communicating Environmental Science, taught by Washington Post Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Chris Mooney

Beyond YCEC, professional development courses in environmental communication at Yale include Marketing for Sustainability offered by the Yale School of Management's Executive Education program and a course on Communicating Climate Change and Health at the Yale School of Public Health.

Environmental Journalism

The YCEC informs and engages the public in environmental science and solutions through several environmental journalism initiatives.

• Yale Environment 360 is an award-winning online magazine featuring reporting, opinion, and analysis on global environmental issues.
• Yale Climate Connections is a climate change news service featuring articles, videos and a radio program broadcast daily on more than 680 stations and frequencies nationwide.
• The Environmental Film Festival at Yale is a student-run annual film festival showcasing incisive, cutting edge films that highlight the environmental and social issues of our time.
• Sage Magazine is a student-run literary magazine that expands environmentalism through provocative conversation and the arts.
• The Yale Environment Review is a student-run magazine that provides weekly updates translating cutting edge research for a lay audience.

The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (YPCCC) and the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting have partnered to connect journalists reporting on climate change with leading researchers and students studying climate change communication. YPCCC and the Pulitzer Center bring leading environmental journalists to Yale for faculty and student seminars and public presentations. The Pulitzer Center also supports a competitive fellowship program, giving Yale students an opportunity to work directly with Pulitzer journalists as part of a training program in Washington, D.C. Finally, YPCCC and the Pulitzer Center produce and distribute climate-focused content to a wide national audience.

Supporting A Global Network of Environmental Communicators

The YCEC organizes national and international meetings, conferences and events to convene climate change and environmental leaders and supports a global network of environmental communications scholars and practitioners. Recent examples of YCEC convenings:

• In 2022, Yale Environment 360 hosted talks for YSE students with former New York Times op-ed editor Trish Hall; award-winning author David George Haskell; New Yorker writer Ian Frazier, and Pulitzer Prize winner and e360 contributor Elizabeth Kolbert. And Yale Environment 360 hosted its ninth annual International Film Contest, which received 490 entries from six continents.
• The Environmental Film Festival at Yale hosted its 14th annual festival in Spring 2022 highlighting the urgent global and social issues of our time.
• The results of the YPCCC report, International Public Opinion on Climate Change , published in June, 2022 was discussed at COP27 in Egypt in November 2022. The report describes climate change beliefs, attitudes, policy preferences, and behaviors among Facebook users in 110 countries, territories, and geographic groups. The survey was fielded in partnership with Data for Good at Meta from March – April, 2022.
• In November 2022, Grace Cajski (Yale College ’24) presented her work as the 2022 YPCCC/Pulitzer Center Climate Reporting Fellow. Grace spent a month over the previous summer on Oahu and the Big Island researching how ancient Hawaiian fishponds can, will, and have interacted with climate change. She worked with a Pulitzer mentor to develop and pitch her project, Fishpond Aquaculture in a Warming World, which was published in Honolulu Civil Beat in both English and Hawaiian.
• After a hiatus due to the pandemic, Sage Magazine released a 2022 Print Edition on the theme of “Cultivation”.

The YCEC is supported by the Tides Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation.