I agree with much here but I would point to another media failure: the failure to connect the dots. There is a lot of reporting now on climate-related disasters - heat-domes, catastrophic fires, devastating floods. These are newsworthy stories and increasingly journalists are linking these events to climate change. What journalists are *not* doing is linking climate change to its causes - the burning of fossil fuels and industrial agriculture. Up here in Canada, ClimateAccess studies of recent polling shows that about half the Canadian population still don't understand that climate change is primarily caused by CO2 from burning fossil fuels. Many of these people are climate-concerned but shockingly climate uninformed and they are none wiser for listening to or watching most media outlets. If people don't understand the causes, they won't support the solutions. Why is the media failing us on this? Journalists themselves are uninformed? Fear of alienating advertising $$ from fossil fuel industry and the banks that enable them? Who knows. I would also agree with Sunday Harrison below that this failure to connect the dots is apparent, alarmingly, in much climate education materials provided by third party organizations who are themselves, (surprise, surprise!) funded by the fossil fuel industry or the big banks. I would love to see more attention to this issue. The fossil fuel industry is all over climate and environmental education yet, with some exceptions, this is being largely ignored by climate activists.
This is why I think we need a rapid response strategy for our climate finance protests. When a major climate disaster is happening (wildfire, flood, heat dome, etc), we could get out in front of Chase or BlackRock or Wells Fargo with a simple message connecting the dots ("Chase financing is fueling the flames")
Make Chase and fossil fuels part of the wildfire story by giving the media an easy visual hook.
Well, Bill, here's a story - not only are the fossil co's. influencing the story that gets out to the public, they have decided to focus on the kiddies. We're finding, in Canada as in the US, that fossil-fuel interests have slyly joined the boards of directors of environmental education organizations, along with the banks that fund the pipelines. We need this story to be told! Teachers lack professional development and media literacy in this subject area, and guess who's filling the gap! Children and youth are learning that their personal, small actions will "make a difference" while just like in COPs 1-25, the words "fossil fuels" are not mentioned. Now I'm not saying don't do personal, small actions - just that this message is coming from the same corner that points anywhere but itself. We need a good story about how this has been a growing concern. The podcast Drilled gets to it in the US and that story needs to be told to a wider audience plus Canada. Please help!
A solid and timely movie but a much better commentary by Bill McKibben. My solution to the observation that in journalistic terms, climate change "happens just a little too slowly to quite register" is to urge upon specific industries to write about the torrent of climate news as it relates to their particular circumstances. In my case, I have a career in US municipal/infrastructure finance and apply the observations of various smart climate studies with analysis to those particular circumstances. After all , how does one finance a 30 year asset--a road, school or water system--without giving serious thought to climate change as well as its applicable securities offering disclosure. Most industries require the similar exercise.
I think The Guardian has recently done a very good job covering the climate crisis - particularly over the last couple of years - as good and sometimes better than the Times.
for a very long time, actually. John Vidal was one of the very first journalists to cover climate as a human story, and no one is more perceptive than George Monbiot. And so many others--at one point they ran a months-long crusade for divestment. Heroes!
Dave Barry wrote something maybe twenty years ago that made your point about news media well. From memory, and imagine actual was funnier and sadder, but something like, "Newsweek had climate change on the cover saying the earth is going to heat up and we're all going to die. Next week, Cher."
Agree on the importance of the movie, which is also really funny. And it's been frustrating to watch critics who think comedy and reality should stay in their separated lanes. One thing that did disturb me, is that although the movie has a website on what to do, which is good, it's focused primarily on individual actions and not common actions. I actually just emailed them suggesting that for each individual action, like adding solar panels, they talk about some policy prescriptions that would help, like supporting them with subsidies. If you were able to connect with them to amplify that message that could help as well. Here's the site: https://dontlookup.count-us-in.com/
I totally agree with Paul - Oscar Wilde said, "If you're going to tell people the truth, make them laugh...otherwise, they'll kill you." I'm an Alaska fish biologist and have been trying to convince someone, anyone, connected to the film industry for some time, that I have the basis for a powerful story that will combine reality and humor in a compelling way...but, my efforts are falling on deaf ears. I'm hoping that someone can help me craft a film treatment (i.e., a connection to a talented screenwriter). Here's a link that partially explains my vision/effort; partially, because it doesn't show how my Northern Exposuresque life could be the source of the humor. https://youtu.be/w-qkIJ_1OE4
Bill, great article and I think you really hit on a key point about the media and their focus on reporting "breaking news". This might be nit picking to some extent, but the one point I would argue is your comment that the supply chain crisis didn't account to much. I work in supply chain, and even though it may not have had a huge impact on the delivery of consumer goods over the holidays, the supply chain crisis is very real, and has had a huge impact for an extended time on industry. In fact, climate change impacts have contributed to the crisis, just like they contribute to almost every facet of our world. Daily natural disasters (floods, fires) in various parts of the world exacerbate the ongoing impact of the early pandemic in causing constraints throughout the supply chain. People looking to but solar panels have probably experienced the delays and increased costs of the supply chain issues directly.
Again, I know this isn't the key message of your article, but I think the lack of reporting on the climate change contributions to the overall supply chain crisis while focusing on holiday package deliveries aligns with your message that the media is missing the big picture.
that is good to know. i'm sure you're right, that it has real implications--in fact, i know someone waiting for an induction cooktop and facing the same challenge
Coming to this a bit late, and a new subscriber, but what if we could get the NYT, WSJ, and other major newspapers to include in their masthead a doomsday-like ticker as a permanent feature? In the upper right of the NYT's masthead, they give you the current temperature and the Dow Jones & Nasdaq numbers. Why not a carbon clock instead?
As usual you are right on the mark, Mr. McKibben. Climate Change is not newsworthy because it is so slow except when huge areas catch fire. Your comparison with the economy, however, gives some hope that we can perhaps latch onto. You mention economic "dips and cycles" that get translated into news. CO2 accumulation also has dips and cycles, in spite of its inexorable upward trajectory. The stock market is reported daily in a strip of indexes with Up or Down arrows and a comparison to yesterday. Picture one more arrow added to the list - today's CO2 level compared with the same day last year. At CO2.earth, a small band of Canadians is working on convincing media outlets to announce CO2 concentrations regularly as a way to keep the climate's most important metric in front of the public all the time. We would welcome the opportunity to discuss the merits of this idea with you in the hope that you might help help us make it better. You can find us and our work in progress at https://www.show.earth/ or https://www.co2.earth/.
Thank you for the linked articles from 2001 & 2003. For writing them then and for including them here. Kind of scary (“kind of” ??!!) to think about what you might be writing 20 years from now. But in the meantime we won’t give up.
I suspect the answer is to take a page from the Big Lie of fascism and repeat, repeat, repeat the same simple story from "Don't Look Up": we will all die!
The origin stories of the crisis needs to be told, ie Merchants of Doubt, and how it got is to where we are today. This was done in the smoking court cases of the 1990s, which I remember well. How, in so many areas (smoking, blood factor, extra), profit is being put above people. And, yes, write better stories. Stories that grip people, and allow them to think.
I agree with much here but I would point to another media failure: the failure to connect the dots. There is a lot of reporting now on climate-related disasters - heat-domes, catastrophic fires, devastating floods. These are newsworthy stories and increasingly journalists are linking these events to climate change. What journalists are *not* doing is linking climate change to its causes - the burning of fossil fuels and industrial agriculture. Up here in Canada, ClimateAccess studies of recent polling shows that about half the Canadian population still don't understand that climate change is primarily caused by CO2 from burning fossil fuels. Many of these people are climate-concerned but shockingly climate uninformed and they are none wiser for listening to or watching most media outlets. If people don't understand the causes, they won't support the solutions. Why is the media failing us on this? Journalists themselves are uninformed? Fear of alienating advertising $$ from fossil fuel industry and the banks that enable them? Who knows. I would also agree with Sunday Harrison below that this failure to connect the dots is apparent, alarmingly, in much climate education materials provided by third party organizations who are themselves, (surprise, surprise!) funded by the fossil fuel industry or the big banks. I would love to see more attention to this issue. The fossil fuel industry is all over climate and environmental education yet, with some exceptions, this is being largely ignored by climate activists.
yes, the oil to carbon to heat triple link is the key
This is why I think we need a rapid response strategy for our climate finance protests. When a major climate disaster is happening (wildfire, flood, heat dome, etc), we could get out in front of Chase or BlackRock or Wells Fargo with a simple message connecting the dots ("Chase financing is fueling the flames")
Make Chase and fossil fuels part of the wildfire story by giving the media an easy visual hook.
Well, Bill, here's a story - not only are the fossil co's. influencing the story that gets out to the public, they have decided to focus on the kiddies. We're finding, in Canada as in the US, that fossil-fuel interests have slyly joined the boards of directors of environmental education organizations, along with the banks that fund the pipelines. We need this story to be told! Teachers lack professional development and media literacy in this subject area, and guess who's filling the gap! Children and youth are learning that their personal, small actions will "make a difference" while just like in COPs 1-25, the words "fossil fuels" are not mentioned. Now I'm not saying don't do personal, small actions - just that this message is coming from the same corner that points anywhere but itself. We need a good story about how this has been a growing concern. The podcast Drilled gets to it in the US and that story needs to be told to a wider audience plus Canada. Please help!
A solid and timely movie but a much better commentary by Bill McKibben. My solution to the observation that in journalistic terms, climate change "happens just a little too slowly to quite register" is to urge upon specific industries to write about the torrent of climate news as it relates to their particular circumstances. In my case, I have a career in US municipal/infrastructure finance and apply the observations of various smart climate studies with analysis to those particular circumstances. After all , how does one finance a 30 year asset--a road, school or water system--without giving serious thought to climate change as well as its applicable securities offering disclosure. Most industries require the similar exercise.
so true.
I think The Guardian has recently done a very good job covering the climate crisis - particularly over the last couple of years - as good and sometimes better than the Times.
for a very long time, actually. John Vidal was one of the very first journalists to cover climate as a human story, and no one is more perceptive than George Monbiot. And so many others--at one point they ran a months-long crusade for divestment. Heroes!
Dave Barry wrote something maybe twenty years ago that made your point about news media well. From memory, and imagine actual was funnier and sadder, but something like, "Newsweek had climate change on the cover saying the earth is going to heat up and we're all going to die. Next week, Cher."
Agree on the importance of the movie, which is also really funny. And it's been frustrating to watch critics who think comedy and reality should stay in their separated lanes. One thing that did disturb me, is that although the movie has a website on what to do, which is good, it's focused primarily on individual actions and not common actions. I actually just emailed them suggesting that for each individual action, like adding solar panels, they talk about some policy prescriptions that would help, like supporting them with subsidies. If you were able to connect with them to amplify that message that could help as well. Here's the site: https://dontlookup.count-us-in.com/
will do!
Great. They actually just responded to me so I'll email you the thread at your gmail account
I totally agree with Paul - Oscar Wilde said, "If you're going to tell people the truth, make them laugh...otherwise, they'll kill you." I'm an Alaska fish biologist and have been trying to convince someone, anyone, connected to the film industry for some time, that I have the basis for a powerful story that will combine reality and humor in a compelling way...but, my efforts are falling on deaf ears. I'm hoping that someone can help me craft a film treatment (i.e., a connection to a talented screenwriter). Here's a link that partially explains my vision/effort; partially, because it doesn't show how my Northern Exposuresque life could be the source of the humor. https://youtu.be/w-qkIJ_1OE4
Thank you for this suggestion. Done✅
Bill, great article and I think you really hit on a key point about the media and their focus on reporting "breaking news". This might be nit picking to some extent, but the one point I would argue is your comment that the supply chain crisis didn't account to much. I work in supply chain, and even though it may not have had a huge impact on the delivery of consumer goods over the holidays, the supply chain crisis is very real, and has had a huge impact for an extended time on industry. In fact, climate change impacts have contributed to the crisis, just like they contribute to almost every facet of our world. Daily natural disasters (floods, fires) in various parts of the world exacerbate the ongoing impact of the early pandemic in causing constraints throughout the supply chain. People looking to but solar panels have probably experienced the delays and increased costs of the supply chain issues directly.
Again, I know this isn't the key message of your article, but I think the lack of reporting on the climate change contributions to the overall supply chain crisis while focusing on holiday package deliveries aligns with your message that the media is missing the big picture.
that is good to know. i'm sure you're right, that it has real implications--in fact, i know someone waiting for an induction cooktop and facing the same challenge
Coming to this a bit late, and a new subscriber, but what if we could get the NYT, WSJ, and other major newspapers to include in their masthead a doomsday-like ticker as a permanent feature? In the upper right of the NYT's masthead, they give you the current temperature and the Dow Jones & Nasdaq numbers. Why not a carbon clock instead?
As usual you are right on the mark, Mr. McKibben. Climate Change is not newsworthy because it is so slow except when huge areas catch fire. Your comparison with the economy, however, gives some hope that we can perhaps latch onto. You mention economic "dips and cycles" that get translated into news. CO2 accumulation also has dips and cycles, in spite of its inexorable upward trajectory. The stock market is reported daily in a strip of indexes with Up or Down arrows and a comparison to yesterday. Picture one more arrow added to the list - today's CO2 level compared with the same day last year. At CO2.earth, a small band of Canadians is working on convincing media outlets to announce CO2 concentrations regularly as a way to keep the climate's most important metric in front of the public all the time. We would welcome the opportunity to discuss the merits of this idea with you in the hope that you might help help us make it better. You can find us and our work in progress at https://www.show.earth/ or https://www.co2.earth/.
Thank you for the linked articles from 2001 & 2003. For writing them then and for including them here. Kind of scary (“kind of” ??!!) to think about what you might be writing 20 years from now. But in the meantime we won’t give up.
I suspect the answer is to take a page from the Big Lie of fascism and repeat, repeat, repeat the same simple story from "Don't Look Up": we will all die!
The origin stories of the crisis needs to be told, ie Merchants of Doubt, and how it got is to where we are today. This was done in the smoking court cases of the 1990s, which I remember well. How, in so many areas (smoking, blood factor, extra), profit is being put above people. And, yes, write better stories. Stories that grip people, and allow them to think.