President Barack Obama recently delivered a major address regarding climate change policy. We asked two of our USC Annenberg faculty members to give their expert analysis of the speech and related matters.

The resulting conversation between Professors Larry Pryor and G. Thomas Goodnight is the subject of this podcast.

Pryor is an associate professor of journalism who teaches newswriting and environmental journalism. The professor, who covered the environment while at the Los Angeles Times, had a particular interest in the public policy aspects of the Obama speech – including noting how the President’s climate action plan was treated by the environmental community and the President’s opponents in Congress.

Goodnight is a communication professor as well as USC Annenberg’s director of doctoral studies. Goodnight is a rhetorician with a long history of analyzing speeches and debates. His current interests include science communication and communicative reason in controversy. Both professors are members of the USC Annenberg Earth Science Climate Initiative (ESCI).

Image of the Earth by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on Flickr.