Feed aggregator
Australia’s Election Is A Chance To Regain Our Leadership On Climate Change
Washington Post - Richard Glover
Students protested in March against a coal mine near the Great Barrier Reef and the inadequate progress to address climate change in Sydney. (Saeed Khan/AFP/Getty Images)Back in February 2017, Scott Morrison, now the prime minister of Australia, brought a lump of coal to Parliament. He waved it around.
“This is coal,” Morrison told his fellow legislators. “Don’t be afraid, don’t be scared.”
Morrison went on to mock the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, over his party’s enthusiasm for renewable energy. “If Bill Shorten becomes the prime minister,” Morrison said, “all the lights will go off around the country.”
Such sentiments may have won votes two years ago, but they seem less sure-fire today. Morrison’s government is facing an election on May 18 and climate change is a key issue among voters.
In a recent survey, 23 percent of respondents cited the environment as one of their key concerns, sharply up from the 14 percent recorded in 2016, at the time of the last election. The latest polls predict the coalition government’s defeat, with the Labor Party heading for a clear victory.
Young voters, who have registered in record numbers, are particularly passionate about the issue, with 39 percent of respondents under that age of 35 now rating the environment as their No. 1 concern.
Why the shift? Australia is the middle of a particularly savage drought. This past January was the nation’s hottest on record, and large swaths of the country received a fifth of their normal rainfall. There were wildfires in Tasmania and floods in Queensland. Temperatures in March also broke records.
Along parts of the iconic Darling River, the stagnant water turned toxic over summer. Several million fish died and in December and January, their bloated bodies floating to the surface. In one video, two distressed locals each cradled a huge, dead Murray Cod, one declaring some of the dead fish to be 100 years old. An expert panel from the Australian Academy of Science disagreed with that age assessment, yet still assessed the fish as being up to 25 years old — meaning they had endured, and survived, many previous dry spells.
This drought, in other words, was different.
Adding to the change in mood is a growing cynicism about government fear-mongering over renewables. For some years, Morrison’s side has sounded shrill when discussing the cost of a low-carbon economy.
Barnaby Joyce, a significant figure in the governing coalition, at one point predicted a tax on carbon would make a single cow or sheep cost as much as a house. In 2011, Tony Abbott, who later became prime minister, declared the science around climate change was “absolute crap” and said a carbon price would wipe large industrial towns such as Whyalla “off the map.”
Such predictions have moderated over time, yet the government’s wariness about carbon-reduction has continued.
Just this month, a massive new coal mine has been approved for Queensland, despite its potential impact on Australia’s most significant natural wonder: the already damaged Great Barrier Reef.
More bizarrely, in terms of a pro-business government, there were suggestions that a coal-fired power plant be forcibly acquired from its private owners — just to keep it open. The private company, AGL, resisted, citing business reasons for its desire to shift to renewables.
The Labor Party also faces criticism. It has failed in the past to follow through on its climate change commitments. This time around, some point to Labor’s unwillingness to predict the cost of its carbon-abatement plans.
The government, meanwhile, claims to be on track to meet the country’s carbon-reduction targets. Its leadership — whatever the arguments over policy — now accepts the science of anthropogenic climate change.
And yet some still argue that Australia, because of its small population, has a negligible impact on global warning. To me, this is the worst argument for doing nothing.
It’s true that Australia was responsible for just 1.1 percent of global emissions in 2016, ranking Australia No. 16 among the most polluting countries in the world. And yet, per capita, we’re among the worst.
More to the point, as I’ve argued before, it’s pathetic and absurd to say small countries have no role in solving big problems.
Australia could have adopted the same “little us” argument during World War II. Who needs the Australians when such valiant work was being done by others — the Brits, the Russians, the Americans, the Canadians? It’s true, I suppose, that the Allies would have won without the Australians — the nearly 1 million of our people who served; the 27,073 who were killed in action.
But how is that an argument for not doing your bit?
The unstated thought: Important battles should be left to others. Smaller nations can stand on the sidelines and freeload.
Australia is more at risk from climate change than almost any other country in the developed world. It’s taken us a while, but — with this election — many Australians are signaling a desire to put their shoulder to the wheel.
Links
Students protested in March against a coal mine near the Great Barrier Reef and the inadequate progress to address climate change in Sydney. (Saeed Khan/AFP/Getty Images)Back in February 2017, Scott Morrison, now the prime minister of Australia, brought a lump of coal to Parliament. He waved it around.
“This is coal,” Morrison told his fellow legislators. “Don’t be afraid, don’t be scared.”
Morrison went on to mock the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, over his party’s enthusiasm for renewable energy. “If Bill Shorten becomes the prime minister,” Morrison said, “all the lights will go off around the country.”
Such sentiments may have won votes two years ago, but they seem less sure-fire today. Morrison’s government is facing an election on May 18 and climate change is a key issue among voters.
In a recent survey, 23 percent of respondents cited the environment as one of their key concerns, sharply up from the 14 percent recorded in 2016, at the time of the last election. The latest polls predict the coalition government’s defeat, with the Labor Party heading for a clear victory.
Young voters, who have registered in record numbers, are particularly passionate about the issue, with 39 percent of respondents under that age of 35 now rating the environment as their No. 1 concern.
Why the shift? Australia is the middle of a particularly savage drought. This past January was the nation’s hottest on record, and large swaths of the country received a fifth of their normal rainfall. There were wildfires in Tasmania and floods in Queensland. Temperatures in March also broke records.
Along parts of the iconic Darling River, the stagnant water turned toxic over summer. Several million fish died and in December and January, their bloated bodies floating to the surface. In one video, two distressed locals each cradled a huge, dead Murray Cod, one declaring some of the dead fish to be 100 years old. An expert panel from the Australian Academy of Science disagreed with that age assessment, yet still assessed the fish as being up to 25 years old — meaning they had endured, and survived, many previous dry spells.
This drought, in other words, was different.
Adding to the change in mood is a growing cynicism about government fear-mongering over renewables. For some years, Morrison’s side has sounded shrill when discussing the cost of a low-carbon economy.
Barnaby Joyce, a significant figure in the governing coalition, at one point predicted a tax on carbon would make a single cow or sheep cost as much as a house. In 2011, Tony Abbott, who later became prime minister, declared the science around climate change was “absolute crap” and said a carbon price would wipe large industrial towns such as Whyalla “off the map.”
Such predictions have moderated over time, yet the government’s wariness about carbon-reduction has continued.
Just this month, a massive new coal mine has been approved for Queensland, despite its potential impact on Australia’s most significant natural wonder: the already damaged Great Barrier Reef.
More bizarrely, in terms of a pro-business government, there were suggestions that a coal-fired power plant be forcibly acquired from its private owners — just to keep it open. The private company, AGL, resisted, citing business reasons for its desire to shift to renewables.
The Labor Party also faces criticism. It has failed in the past to follow through on its climate change commitments. This time around, some point to Labor’s unwillingness to predict the cost of its carbon-abatement plans.
The government, meanwhile, claims to be on track to meet the country’s carbon-reduction targets. Its leadership — whatever the arguments over policy — now accepts the science of anthropogenic climate change.
And yet some still argue that Australia, because of its small population, has a negligible impact on global warning. To me, this is the worst argument for doing nothing.
It’s true that Australia was responsible for just 1.1 percent of global emissions in 2016, ranking Australia No. 16 among the most polluting countries in the world. And yet, per capita, we’re among the worst.
More to the point, as I’ve argued before, it’s pathetic and absurd to say small countries have no role in solving big problems.
Australia could have adopted the same “little us” argument during World War II. Who needs the Australians when such valiant work was being done by others — the Brits, the Russians, the Americans, the Canadians? It’s true, I suppose, that the Allies would have won without the Australians — the nearly 1 million of our people who served; the 27,073 who were killed in action.
But how is that an argument for not doing your bit?
The unstated thought: Important battles should be left to others. Smaller nations can stand on the sidelines and freeload.
Australia is more at risk from climate change than almost any other country in the developed world. It’s taken us a while, but — with this election — many Australians are signaling a desire to put their shoulder to the wheel.
Links
- The 10 things that worry voters most - and how that's changed since the last election
- Vote Compass finds voters are split on economy and environment as most important issue
- Joyce's $100 roast prediction rubbished
- Australia one of the countries most exposed to climate change, bank warns
- A Climate Reckoning Is Coming To Our Political Hothouse
- Experts Find 'Integrity Issues' With Coalition's Direct Action Policy
- The Next Reckoning: Capitalism And Climate Change
- The Carbon Brief Profile: Australia
- Now Adani Has Been Approved, These Are The Nine At-Risk Coalition Seats Most Concerned About Climate Change
- In Australia, Climate Policy Battles Are Endlessly Reheated
- Coalition Hits Bottom Of Barrel With Fake News Campaign Against Electric Cars
- Electric Vehicles An Opportunity For Local Government
- News Corp Launches Offensive Against Labor's Climate Policy Amid Glowing Budget 2019 Previews
- The Challenge Facing Labor On Climate Change
- ALP Climate Policy Requires Serious Scrutiny
- Hopes Emerge For A 'Great Era Of Bipartisanship' On Clean Energy Policy
- Australia Stops Payments To Green Climate Fund
- Coalition's Climate Solutions Fund Must Last A Further Five Years
Categories: External websites
It Looks Like Banksy Just Created An Extinction Rebellion Mural
Grist - Kate Yoder
Isabel Infantes / AFP / Getty ImagesBanksy, the famously anonymous street artist, appears to have lent his (or maybe her) talents to sounding the alarm about the climate crisis.
A new mural showed up in central London near Hyde Park on Thursday night, and a Banksy collector thinks it’s legit. The mural depicts a young girl with a just-planted seedling who’s holding a tiny sign bearing the symbol of Extinction Rebellion, a new group using civil disobedience to draw attention to government inaction on climate change. The words alongside it say “From this moment despair ends and tactics begin.”
The child is stenciled on a concrete block at the Marble Arch landmark, where Extinction Rebellion protestors had recently set up camp. Over the past week and a half, activists have barricaded roads and bridges across London, demanding that the British government set a target of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2025. More than a thousand of them have been arrested in the nonviolent protests.
Banksy has not yet confirmed that the mural is authentic, but the artist has created artwork about similar themes, like rising seas and sooty air, before.
Back in 2009, for instance, Banksy depicted a classic climate denial statement — “I don’t believe in global warming” — sinking into the water of a canal in north London.
Zak Hussein / PA Images via Getty ImagesAnother Banksy artwork last December took on air pollution. Painted on the corner of a garage in Port Talbot, one of the most polluted towns in the U.K., it looked like a kid enjoying the snow. Until you see around the corner, when it becomes clear that the “snow” is actually debris from a flaming dumpster.
Matt Cardy / Getty ImagesSo if Banksy is an activist trying to raise awareness about our present peril, well, unlike his or her identity, that’s not a well-kept secret.
Links
Isabel Infantes / AFP / Getty ImagesBanksy, the famously anonymous street artist, appears to have lent his (or maybe her) talents to sounding the alarm about the climate crisis.
A new mural showed up in central London near Hyde Park on Thursday night, and a Banksy collector thinks it’s legit. The mural depicts a young girl with a just-planted seedling who’s holding a tiny sign bearing the symbol of Extinction Rebellion, a new group using civil disobedience to draw attention to government inaction on climate change. The words alongside it say “From this moment despair ends and tactics begin.”
The child is stenciled on a concrete block at the Marble Arch landmark, where Extinction Rebellion protestors had recently set up camp. Over the past week and a half, activists have barricaded roads and bridges across London, demanding that the British government set a target of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2025. More than a thousand of them have been arrested in the nonviolent protests.
Banksy has not yet confirmed that the mural is authentic, but the artist has created artwork about similar themes, like rising seas and sooty air, before.
Back in 2009, for instance, Banksy depicted a classic climate denial statement — “I don’t believe in global warming” — sinking into the water of a canal in north London.
Zak Hussein / PA Images via Getty ImagesAnother Banksy artwork last December took on air pollution. Painted on the corner of a garage in Port Talbot, one of the most polluted towns in the U.K., it looked like a kid enjoying the snow. Until you see around the corner, when it becomes clear that the “snow” is actually debris from a flaming dumpster.
Matt Cardy / Getty ImagesSo if Banksy is an activist trying to raise awareness about our present peril, well, unlike his or her identity, that’s not a well-kept secret.
Links
- London Extinction Rebellion mural is a Banksy, says expert
- Art work from Banksy, poking fun at climate change deniers
- Street artists are joining the fight to save the environment
- Banksy's Latest Mural Is a Haunting Take on Air Pollution
- Climate change is real by unknown artist
- UNICEF - Street art as a messenger for climate change action
Categories: External websites
Both Parties Still In Climate Policy Black Hole
AFR - Editorial
The Greens have set a renewable energy target of 100 per cent for the power sector by 2030 as part of their climate policy goals for the federal election. Jo BuchananAustralia’s share market jumped yesterday on the back of higher world oil prices, prompted by Donald Trump’s hardline stance against oil-exporting Iran.
Protesting climate change absolutists might deny it. But clean energy policies need to come clean about the costs they will impose on Australia’s fossil fuel prosperity.
Denying the costs of decarbonising an economy that has developed on the back of clean fossil fuels has ended up undermining public acceptance, fomenting the political climate wars and disrupting investment confidence.
The result has handicapped efforts to reduce Australia’s carbon emissions and destroyed Australia’s traditional competitive advantage in cheap energy.
When Labor announced its new climate policy the day before the April 2 federal budget, The AFR View backed the return toward a carbon price through a limited form of an emissions trading scheme for big companies.
But Bill Shorten, we said, needed to provide credible reassurance that his ambitious target to cut emissions by 45 per cent of 2005 levels by 2030 – against the Coalition government’s goal of 26 to 28 per cent – would not come at a significantly greater cost. Last week, Mr Shorten was finally forced to confront the question and made a hash of it, just as he did on negative gearing and the taxation of super.
He eventually fell back on ANU professor Warwick McKibbin’s modelling for the Abbott government in 2015, suggesting that the Labor and Coalition targets would both cost the same – though only if Labor’s plan relied more on buying cheaper carbon abatement permits from offshore. Otherwise, Labor’s plan would cost $60 billion more by 2030: not crippling given the size of the economy, but not chicken feed either.
Increasingly competitive
But more importantly, as Professor McKibbin wrote on these pages yesterday, economic modelling of carbon policies merely offers a range of plausible cost comparisons that inevitably will vary as the uncertain future unfolds.
Labor’s deeper problem is that it seeks to redistribute the shares of a slowly growing national income pie while saddling it with more ambitious carbon reduction targets; increased taxes on savers, investors and wealth creators; a higher minimum wage floor; and more burdensome pro-union workplace regulations on employers who have to do business in an increasingly competitive global market. It doesn’t add up.
Labor has been able to get away with this, in part because the Coalition’s own climate change civil war has resulted in such a hodge-podge policy. The Coalition has failed for six years to create a coherent energy plan.
When it was on the cusp of one in 2018 with the National Energy Guarantee – itself a compromise on the Clean Energy Target developed by Professor Alan Finkel’s review – it politically decapitated Malcolm Turnbull.
Then it came up with a most un-Liberal plan to reduce power prices by bludgeoning energy companies with a big stick of threatened breakup, backed by a sudden rush to large-scale hydro. And last week, Scott Morrison slammed Labor for proposing to allow business to buy international carbon permits or offsets to hit its more ambitious emissions target.
It is Australia’s national interest to allow individual countries to reduce emissions at lowest cost, where ever they occur on the planet. By rejecting this, Mr Morrison has effectively put the Coalition on the same side as the Greens.
The use of international credits is simply an extension of the idea that a robust climate change policy should be like good tax reform policy – as broad-based as possible to spread and minimise the cost. That is what an economy-wide carbon price would do best – and which Labor is closer to. At the same time, a good climate change policy has to avoid “carbon leakage” that would simply drive emissions-intensive industries offshore. That would hurt Australian prosperity without helping the planet.
The election campaign reflects the deep contradiction of Australian climate policy.
On the one hand, there’s a swell of opposition against the proposed Adani coal-export project that would deliver first-world power to poor Indian households.
On the other hand, the election supposedly is about the cost of living pressures led by rising Australian power bills as a result of botched climate change policy.
Both sides of politics remain trapped in this policy black hole.
Links
The Greens have set a renewable energy target of 100 per cent for the power sector by 2030 as part of their climate policy goals for the federal election. Jo BuchananAustralia’s share market jumped yesterday on the back of higher world oil prices, prompted by Donald Trump’s hardline stance against oil-exporting Iran.
Protesting climate change absolutists might deny it. But clean energy policies need to come clean about the costs they will impose on Australia’s fossil fuel prosperity.
Denying the costs of decarbonising an economy that has developed on the back of clean fossil fuels has ended up undermining public acceptance, fomenting the political climate wars and disrupting investment confidence.
The result has handicapped efforts to reduce Australia’s carbon emissions and destroyed Australia’s traditional competitive advantage in cheap energy.
When Labor announced its new climate policy the day before the April 2 federal budget, The AFR View backed the return toward a carbon price through a limited form of an emissions trading scheme for big companies.
But Bill Shorten, we said, needed to provide credible reassurance that his ambitious target to cut emissions by 45 per cent of 2005 levels by 2030 – against the Coalition government’s goal of 26 to 28 per cent – would not come at a significantly greater cost. Last week, Mr Shorten was finally forced to confront the question and made a hash of it, just as he did on negative gearing and the taxation of super.
He eventually fell back on ANU professor Warwick McKibbin’s modelling for the Abbott government in 2015, suggesting that the Labor and Coalition targets would both cost the same – though only if Labor’s plan relied more on buying cheaper carbon abatement permits from offshore. Otherwise, Labor’s plan would cost $60 billion more by 2030: not crippling given the size of the economy, but not chicken feed either.
Increasingly competitive
But more importantly, as Professor McKibbin wrote on these pages yesterday, economic modelling of carbon policies merely offers a range of plausible cost comparisons that inevitably will vary as the uncertain future unfolds.
Labor’s deeper problem is that it seeks to redistribute the shares of a slowly growing national income pie while saddling it with more ambitious carbon reduction targets; increased taxes on savers, investors and wealth creators; a higher minimum wage floor; and more burdensome pro-union workplace regulations on employers who have to do business in an increasingly competitive global market. It doesn’t add up.
Labor has been able to get away with this, in part because the Coalition’s own climate change civil war has resulted in such a hodge-podge policy. The Coalition has failed for six years to create a coherent energy plan.
When it was on the cusp of one in 2018 with the National Energy Guarantee – itself a compromise on the Clean Energy Target developed by Professor Alan Finkel’s review – it politically decapitated Malcolm Turnbull.
Then it came up with a most un-Liberal plan to reduce power prices by bludgeoning energy companies with a big stick of threatened breakup, backed by a sudden rush to large-scale hydro. And last week, Scott Morrison slammed Labor for proposing to allow business to buy international carbon permits or offsets to hit its more ambitious emissions target.
It is Australia’s national interest to allow individual countries to reduce emissions at lowest cost, where ever they occur on the planet. By rejecting this, Mr Morrison has effectively put the Coalition on the same side as the Greens.
The use of international credits is simply an extension of the idea that a robust climate change policy should be like good tax reform policy – as broad-based as possible to spread and minimise the cost. That is what an economy-wide carbon price would do best – and which Labor is closer to. At the same time, a good climate change policy has to avoid “carbon leakage” that would simply drive emissions-intensive industries offshore. That would hurt Australian prosperity without helping the planet.
The election campaign reflects the deep contradiction of Australian climate policy.
On the one hand, there’s a swell of opposition against the proposed Adani coal-export project that would deliver first-world power to poor Indian households.
On the other hand, the election supposedly is about the cost of living pressures led by rising Australian power bills as a result of botched climate change policy.
Both sides of politics remain trapped in this policy black hole.
Links
- A Climate Reckoning Is Coming To Our Political Hothouse
- Experts Find 'Integrity Issues' With Coalition's Direct Action Policy
- The Next Reckoning: Capitalism And Climate Change
- The Carbon Brief Profile: Australia
- Now Adani Has Been Approved, These Are The Nine At-Risk Coalition Seats Most Concerned About Climate Change
- In Australia, Climate Policy Battles Are Endlessly Reheated
- Coalition Hits Bottom Of Barrel With Fake News Campaign Against Electric Cars
- Electric Vehicles An Opportunity For Local Government
- News Corp Launches Offensive Against Labor's Climate Policy Amid Glowing Budget 2019 Previews
- The Challenge Facing Labor On Climate Change
- ALP Climate Policy Requires Serious Scrutiny
- Hopes Emerge For A 'Great Era Of Bipartisanship' On Clean Energy Policy
- Australia Stops Payments To Green Climate Fund
- Coalition's Climate Solutions Fund Must Last A Further Five Years
Categories: External websites
Why Is The US News Media So Bad At Covering Climate Change?
The Guardian - Kyle Pope | Mark Hertsgaard
The US news media devotes startlingly little time to climate change – how can newsrooms cover it in ways that will finally resonate with their audiences?
A firefighter sprays water as flames from the Camp Fire consume a home in Magalia, California, in 2018. Photograph: Noah Berger/AP This article is excerpted from a piece published by Columbia Journalism Review and the Nation. The Guardian is partnering with CJR and the Nation on a 30 April conference aimed at reframing the way journalists cover climate change. More information about the conference, including a link to RSVP, is here. Last summer, during the deadliest wildfire season in California’s history, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes got into a revealing Twitter discussion about why US television doesn’t much cover climate change. Elon Green, an editor at Longform, had tweeted, “Sure would be nice if our news networks – the only outlets that can force change in this country – would cover it with commensurate urgency.” Hayes (who is an editor at large for the Nation) replied that his program had tried. Which was true: in 2016, All In With Chris Hayes spent an entire week highlighting the impact of climate change in the US as part of a look at the issues that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were ignoring. The problem, Hayes tweeted, was that “every single time we’ve covered [climate change] it’s been a palpable ratings killer. So the incentives are not great.”
The Twittersphere pounced. “TV used to be obligated to put on programming for the public good even if it didn’t get good ratings. What happened to that?” asked @JThomasAlbert. @GalJaya said, “Your ‘ratings killer’ argument against covering #climatechange is the reverse of that used during the 2016 primary when corporate media justified gifting Trump $5 billion in free air time because ‘it was good for ratings,’ with disastrous results for the nation.”
When @mikebaird17 urged Hayes to invite Katharine Hayhoe of Texas Tech University, one of the best climate science communicators around, on to his show, she tweeted that All In had canceled on her twice – once when “I was literally in the studio w[ith] the earpiece in my ear” – and so she wouldn’t waste any more time on it.
“Wait, we did that?” Hayes tweeted back. “I’m very very sorry that happened.”
This spring Hayes redeemed himself, airing perhaps the best coverage on American television yet of the Green New Deal. All In devoted its entire 29 March broadcast to analyzing the congressional resolution, co-sponsored by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey, which outlines a plan to mobilize the United States to stave off climate disaster and, in the process, create millions of green jobs. In a shrewd answer to the ratings challenge, Hayes booked Ocasio-Cortez, the most charismatic US politician of the moment, for the entire hour.
Yet at a time when civilization is accelerating toward disaster, climate silence continues to reign across the bulk of the US news media. Especially on television, where most Americans still get their news, the brutal demands of ratings and money work against adequate coverage of the biggest story of our time. Many newspapers, too, are failing the climate test. Last October, the scientists of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a landmark report, warning that humanity had a mere 12 years to radically slash greenhouse gas emissions or face a calamitous future in which hundreds of millions of people worldwide would go hungry or homeless or worse. Only 22 of the 50 biggest newspapers in the United States covered that report.
Instead of sleepwalking us toward disaster, the US news media need to remember their Paul Revere responsibilities – to awaken, inform and rouse the people to action. To that end, the Nation and CJR are launching Covering Climate Change: A New Playbook for a 1.5-Degree World, a project aimed at dramatically improving US media coverage of the climate crisis. When the IPCC scientists issued their 12-year warning, they said that limiting temperature rise to 1.5C would require radically transforming energy, agriculture, transportation, construction and other core sectors of the global economy. Our project is grounded in the conviction that the news sector must be transformed just as radically.
The project will launch on 30 April with a conference at the Columbia Journalism School – a working forum where journalists will gather to start charting a new course. We envision this event as the beginning of a conversation that America’s journalists and news organizations must have with one another, as well as with the public we are supposed to be serving, about how to cover this rapidly uncoiling emergency. Judging by the climate coverage to date, most of the US news media still don’t grasp the seriousness of this issue. There is a runaway train racing toward us, and its name is climate change. That is not alarmism; it is scientific fact. We as a civilization urgently need to slow that train down and help as many people off the tracks as possible. It’s an enormous challenge, and if we don’t get it right, nothing else will matter. The US mainstream news media, unlike major news outlets in Europe and independent media in the US, have played a big part in getting it wrong for many years. It’s past time to make amends.
If 1.5C is the new limit for a habitable planet, how can newsrooms tell that story in ways that will finally resonate with their audiences? And given journalism’s deeply troubled business model, how can such coverage be paid for? Some preliminary suggestions. (You can read this story in its entirety at Columbia Journalism Review or The Nation.)
Links
The US news media devotes startlingly little time to climate change – how can newsrooms cover it in ways that will finally resonate with their audiences?
A firefighter sprays water as flames from the Camp Fire consume a home in Magalia, California, in 2018. Photograph: Noah Berger/AP This article is excerpted from a piece published by Columbia Journalism Review and the Nation. The Guardian is partnering with CJR and the Nation on a 30 April conference aimed at reframing the way journalists cover climate change. More information about the conference, including a link to RSVP, is here. Last summer, during the deadliest wildfire season in California’s history, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes got into a revealing Twitter discussion about why US television doesn’t much cover climate change. Elon Green, an editor at Longform, had tweeted, “Sure would be nice if our news networks – the only outlets that can force change in this country – would cover it with commensurate urgency.” Hayes (who is an editor at large for the Nation) replied that his program had tried. Which was true: in 2016, All In With Chris Hayes spent an entire week highlighting the impact of climate change in the US as part of a look at the issues that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were ignoring. The problem, Hayes tweeted, was that “every single time we’ve covered [climate change] it’s been a palpable ratings killer. So the incentives are not great.”
The Twittersphere pounced. “TV used to be obligated to put on programming for the public good even if it didn’t get good ratings. What happened to that?” asked @JThomasAlbert. @GalJaya said, “Your ‘ratings killer’ argument against covering #climatechange is the reverse of that used during the 2016 primary when corporate media justified gifting Trump $5 billion in free air time because ‘it was good for ratings,’ with disastrous results for the nation.”
When @mikebaird17 urged Hayes to invite Katharine Hayhoe of Texas Tech University, one of the best climate science communicators around, on to his show, she tweeted that All In had canceled on her twice – once when “I was literally in the studio w[ith] the earpiece in my ear” – and so she wouldn’t waste any more time on it.
“Wait, we did that?” Hayes tweeted back. “I’m very very sorry that happened.”
This spring Hayes redeemed himself, airing perhaps the best coverage on American television yet of the Green New Deal. All In devoted its entire 29 March broadcast to analyzing the congressional resolution, co-sponsored by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey, which outlines a plan to mobilize the United States to stave off climate disaster and, in the process, create millions of green jobs. In a shrewd answer to the ratings challenge, Hayes booked Ocasio-Cortez, the most charismatic US politician of the moment, for the entire hour.
Yet at a time when civilization is accelerating toward disaster, climate silence continues to reign across the bulk of the US news media. Especially on television, where most Americans still get their news, the brutal demands of ratings and money work against adequate coverage of the biggest story of our time. Many newspapers, too, are failing the climate test. Last October, the scientists of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a landmark report, warning that humanity had a mere 12 years to radically slash greenhouse gas emissions or face a calamitous future in which hundreds of millions of people worldwide would go hungry or homeless or worse. Only 22 of the 50 biggest newspapers in the United States covered that report.
Instead of sleepwalking us toward disaster, the US news media need to remember their Paul Revere responsibilities – to awaken, inform and rouse the people to action. To that end, the Nation and CJR are launching Covering Climate Change: A New Playbook for a 1.5-Degree World, a project aimed at dramatically improving US media coverage of the climate crisis. When the IPCC scientists issued their 12-year warning, they said that limiting temperature rise to 1.5C would require radically transforming energy, agriculture, transportation, construction and other core sectors of the global economy. Our project is grounded in the conviction that the news sector must be transformed just as radically.
The project will launch on 30 April with a conference at the Columbia Journalism School – a working forum where journalists will gather to start charting a new course. We envision this event as the beginning of a conversation that America’s journalists and news organizations must have with one another, as well as with the public we are supposed to be serving, about how to cover this rapidly uncoiling emergency. Judging by the climate coverage to date, most of the US news media still don’t grasp the seriousness of this issue. There is a runaway train racing toward us, and its name is climate change. That is not alarmism; it is scientific fact. We as a civilization urgently need to slow that train down and help as many people off the tracks as possible. It’s an enormous challenge, and if we don’t get it right, nothing else will matter. The US mainstream news media, unlike major news outlets in Europe and independent media in the US, have played a big part in getting it wrong for many years. It’s past time to make amends.
If 1.5C is the new limit for a habitable planet, how can newsrooms tell that story in ways that will finally resonate with their audiences? And given journalism’s deeply troubled business model, how can such coverage be paid for? Some preliminary suggestions. (You can read this story in its entirety at Columbia Journalism Review or The Nation.)
- Don’t blame the audience, and listen to the kids. The onus is on news organizations to craft the story in ways that will demand the attention of readers and viewers. The specifics of how to do this will vary depending on whether a given outlet works in text, radio, TV or some other medium and whether it is commercially or publicly funded, but the core challenge is the same. A majority of Americans are interested in climate change and want to hear what can be done about it. This is especially true of the younger people that news organizations covet as an audience. Even most young Republicans want climate action. And no one is speaking with more clarity now than Greta Thunberg, Alexandria Villaseñor and the other teenagers who have rallied hundreds of thousands of people into the streets worldwide for the School Strike 4 Climate demonstrations.
- Establish a diverse climate desk, but don’t silo climate coverage. The climate story is too important and multidimensional for a news outlet not to have a designated team covering it. That team must have members who reflect the economic, racial and gender diversity of America; if not, the coverage will miss crucial aspects of the story and fail to connect with important audiences. At the same time, climate change is so far-reaching that connections should be made when reporting on nearly every topic. For example, an economics reporter could partner with a climate reporter to cover the case for a just transition: the need to help workers and communities that have long relied on fossil fuel, such as the coal regions of Appalachia, transition to a clean-energy economy, as the Green New Deal envisions.
- Learn the science. Many journalists have long had a bias toward the conceptual. But you can’t do justice to the climate crisis if you don’t understand the scientific facts, in particular how insanely late the hour is. At this point, anyone suggesting a leisurely approach to slashing emissions is not taking the science seriously. Make the time to get educated. Four recent books – McKibben’s Falter, Naomi Klein’s On Fire, David Wallace-Wells’s The Uninhabitable Earth, and Jeff Goodell’s The Water Will Come – are good places to start.
- Don’t internalize the spin. Not only do most Americans care about climate change, but an overwhelming majority support a Green New Deal – 81% of registered voters said so as of last December, according to Yale climate pollsters. Trump and Fox don’t like the Green New Deal? Fine. But journalists should report that the rest of America does. Likewise, they should not buy the argument that supporting a Green New Deal is a terrible political risk that will play into the hands of Trump and the GOP; nor should the media give credence to wild assertions about what a Green New Deal would do or cost. The data simply does not support such accusations. But breaking free from this ideological trap requires another step.
- Lose the Beltway mindset. It’s not just the Green New Deal that is popular with the broader public. Many of the subsidiary policies – such as Medicare for All and free daycare – are now supported by upwards of 70% of the American public, according to Pew and Reuters polls. Inside the Beltway, this fact is unknown or discounted; the assumption by journalists and the politicians they cover is that such policies are ultra-leftist political suicide. They think this because the Beltway worldview prioritizes transactional politics: what will Congress pass and the president sign into law? But what Congress and the White House do is often very different from what the American people favor, and the press should not confuse the two.
- Help the heartland. Some of the places being hit hardest by climate change, such as the midwestern states flooded this spring, have little access to real climate news; instead, the denial peddled by Fox News and Rush Limbaugh dominates. Iconic TV newsman Bill Moyers has an antidote: “Suppose you formed a consortium of media that could quickly act as a strike force to show how a disaster like this is related to climate change – not just for the general media, but for agricultural media, heartland radio stations, local television outlets. A huge teachable moment could be at hand if there were a small coordinating nerve center of journalists who could energize reporting, op-eds, interviews, and so on that connect the public to the causes and not just the consequences of events like this.” Moyers added that such a team should “always have on standby a pool of the most reputable scientists who, on camera and otherwise, can connect natural disasters to the latest and most credible scientific research”.
- Cover the solutions. There isn’t a more exciting time to be on the climate beat. That may sound strange, considering how much suffering lies in store from the impacts that are already locked in. But with the Green New Deal, the US government is now, for the first time, at least talking about a response that is commensurate with the scale and urgency of the problem. Reporters have a tendency to gravitate to the crime scene, to the tragedy. They have a harder time with the solutions to a problem; some even mistake it as fluff. Now, with climate change, the solution is a critical part of the story.
- Don’t be afraid to point fingers. As always, journalists should shun cheerleading, but neither should we be neutral. Defusing the climate crisis is in everyone’s interest, but some entities are resolutely opposed to doing what the science says is needed, starting with the president of the United States. The press has called out Trump on many fronts – for his lying, corruption and racism – but his deliberate worsening of the climate crisis has been little mentioned, though it is arguably the most consequential of his presidential actions. Meanwhile, ExxonMobil has announced plans to keep producing large amounts of oil and gas through at least 2040; other companies have made similar declarations. If enacted, those plans guarantee catastrophe. Journalism has a responsibility to make that consequence clear to the public and to cover the companies, executives, and investors behind those plans accordingly.
Links
- Fox News climate change coverage is now 28% accurate, up from 7%
- Online news service promotes false climate change study
- Climate change is the story you missed in 2017. And the media is to blame
- News Corp Launches Offensive Against Labor's Climate Policy Amid Glowing Budget 2019 Previews
- Australian Headlines Are Designed To Scare People Into Not Acting On Climate Change
- 11 Things Climate Change 'Dismissive' People Say On Social Media
- Here Are Two Big Things That Were Wrong With Climate Change Coverage In 2018
- Vaccinate Public Against Science Misinformation, Researchers Urge
- How The Fossil Fuel Industry Got The Media To Think Climate Change Was Debatable
- The Australian's Continued Support Of Climate Change Denialism
- Climate Change: Using Satire To Communicate Science
- Time to end ‘debate’ on climate change
- Trump's disbelief won't stop dangerous climate change
- Climate change activists defy Trump’s inaction with their own summit
- US businesses push against Trump's attempts to dismiss climate change
- The inter-generational theft of Brexit and climate change
- Extinction Rebellion arrests pass 1,000 on eighth day of protests
- Our leaders are ignoring global warming to the point of criminal negligence. It's unforgivable
Categories: External websites
Pages
