Veteran journalist Justin Catanoso knows the Amazon cloud forest’s critical role in global climate change can be hard to comprehend for the vast majority of Americans.
Even urgent warnings about imminent tipping points described in the recently released National Research Council report – from melting ice caps to increased extinction rates – seem far removed from everyday life.
Now Catanoso, a Science-in-Society Award winner and director of Wake Forest University’s journalism program, is working to raise awareness – and more importantly, make people care – about global climate change before it’s too late.
Supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, he traveled with Wake Forest biologists to the remote Peruvian cloud forest this summer to witness firsthand the impacts of 21st century warming on this vital ecosystem.
“When it comes to climate change, we live on a tropical planet, we just don’t realize it,” he said.
Today Catanoso is a regular contributor to National Geographic and WFDD, the NPR affiliate in Winston-Salem, N.C., and welcomes the opportunity to speak with broadcast, print and online media. The topics he can address include but are not limited to:
• The coffee conundrum: how climate change puts your cup of morning joe in jeopardy;• The politics of climate change: the monumental importance (and huge undertaking) of inspiring today’s world leaders to take action; • The uncertain future of Gen Z: "It's not hundreds of years off. It's the coming generation. And the generation after that. My grandchildren are going to be living in a very different world if we don't slow the rate of warming,” he told Business Insider.
“The next generation could look back and say, ‘What did you do?’” Catanoso said recently on WFDD. “And if you didn’t do enough, was it just because you were so focused on short-term gains and your own wealth that you didn’t see that this planet was baking and baking too fast to be healthy for us in the future?”
Catanoso can also share photos from his trip to the Andes.
Katie Neal, [email protected], 336-758-6141