By ignoring fundamental realities, climate journalists downplay the extreme peril of climate change.
Even as climate-driven heat waves, floods, and wildfires increase, Americans’ concern about climate change has not risen, according to a Gallup poll. True, 61 percent of respondents said they worried about climate change “a great deal” or “a fair amount.” But it’s about the same percentage as in polls dating back to 1989. It’s certainly not the level of concern, even alarm, required to drive the economic, political, and technological revolutions required to stave off a climate catastrophe. And, while a global survey found that 89 percent of respondents favor more government action to fight global warming, it has not translated into the dramatic action required.
Some of that lack of progress is likely due to the fact that people see climate-driven events as “natural disasters,” and carbon dioxide emissions as a usual, human-driven process. Imagine instead if aliens landed on Earth and began spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at the rate of human-caused emissions. There would no doubt be a military response.
However, I contend that climate journalists are responsible for some of this lack of a sense of urgency. They have sequestered their reporting in an information bubble that excludes alarming realities that would reveal the extreme peril of climate change. Thus, they have downplayed the climate emergency.
Conveying a sense of urgency is particularly important now, given the Trump administration’s endemic climate change denialism. It has issued inaccurate climate change reports, and taken actions to obscure the reality of climate change including refusing to publish a major climate assessment and seeking to end the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Here are some of the stark realities often excluded from the climate journalism bubble.
Carbon dioxide emission levels are meaningless. Whether carbon dioxide emissions go up or down, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels will continue a relentless rise because of the hellishly long atmospheric lifetime, measured in centuries, of emitted carbon dioxide. The complexity of carbon dioxide processing in the environment means that millennia will pass before the carbon dioxide emitted today will be thoroughly absorbed. So, articles reporting carbon dioxide emission levels should include that reduced emissions will not cause reduced atmospheric concentrations.
Global temperatures will rise inexorably. Given that fossil fuel production will continue unabated, carbon dioxide levels will continue to rise, and so will global temperatures. Articles reporting new global temperature levels should include this context to accurately reflect the dire nature of the climate emergency.
Global temperature limits are a scientists’ con. The 1.5 degree C temperature limit set by scientists as a goal is naïve at best, perhaps even disingenuous. For one thing, no single number could possibly convey the immense complexity of climate change and its hazards. What’s more, scientists basically pulled the number out of their . . . hat. The original 2 degrees C limit scientists proposed arose not from an analysis of scientific data, but was merely the global temperature rise believed to occur if atmospheric carbon dioxide level doubled. And the 1.5 degree C limit was decided on only because scientists believed it was less damaging than a 2 degrees C increase. It is telling that they chose 1.5 degrees, rather than 1.4 degrees, or 1.6 degrees, or some other number that would indicate scientific rigor. Despite this lack of validity, scientists continue to promulgate the 1.5-degree limit, and journalists continue to uncritically cite it, e.g. this article.
U.S. climate policy is globally all-but-irrelevant. U.S. climate journalists understandably center their reporting on U.S. climate policy, but invariably without global context. In reality, U.S. climate policy has almost no global implications. For one thing, regardless of any U.S. policy change, it is only one country and a relatively minor contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions. In 2024, the top emitters were China (32%), United States (13%), India (8%), EU (7%), Russia (4%), and Japan (3%), according to the Global Carbon Budget. And, according to the UN, the world is failing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions enough to avoid a major temperature increase.
Fossil fuel companies are not villains. They are rattlesnakes. While corporations comprise people who possess a moral compass, the corporation as an economic entity does not. The corporation is less like an individual human and more like a rattlesnake. Both serve a useful purpose—in the case of rattlesnakes, controlling pest populations—and both are laser-focused on survival. One would not expect a rattlesnake to have a conscience; nor should one expect a corporation to. Corporations readily commit unethical acts to survive and profit. While journalists should certainly report such acts, their practice of simplistic, knee-jerk demonizing of corporations avoids a critical and profoundly disturbing question: Why are fossil fuel companies so successful? It’s because they provide the energy that underpins the global economy. Even as climate journalists inveigh against the perfidy of fossil fuel corporations, their lives are made possible by the food, shelter, transportation, and other necessities fossil fuels provide.
Renewable energy won’t replace fossil fuels. The oft-cited statistic that the vast majority of new electricity generation comes from renewables is misleading. First of all, additions to generation capacity do not mean significant replacement of the massive existing capacity, which is overwhelmingly fossil-fuel-powered. Also, electricity production meets only one component of energy demand. A huge portion is fossil-fueled, such as industrial processes. As of 2022, the share of the global energy supply of solar, wind, hydro, geothermal and ocean energy was only 5.5 percent, and renewable energy is not rising enough to even come close to replacing the massive consumption of fossil fuels and its huge production infrastructure and production plans. And, despite renewable energy’s seeming economic advantages, its increase must overcome logistical and political barriers, as well as industry’s reluctance to abandon massive investment in fossil-fuel-based equipment.
Experimental climate-saving technology are not “promising”. Journalists may dub promising experimental climate-related technologies such as carbon capture and renewable energy. However, laboratory success is far, far from marketplace success. Experimental technologies must overcome massive economic and technological hurdles, and most end up in the developmental Valley of Death. So, prematurely calling them promising amounts to optimistic hype.
Climate journalists ensconce themselves in a coverage bubble because of both personal and editorial exigencies. Like all of us, they have an anxiety-reducing “optimism bias,” in which they overestimate the likelihood of positive events and underestimate the likelihood of negative events. They may also experience “apocalyptic blindness”—a concept proposed by philosopher Günther Anders in which we are unable to imagine the end of our history. Journalists must also defer to editors who declare that distressing apocalypse-tinged stories do not sell—an irony, given that fictional apocalyptic tales are highly popular. And while editors may brand bluntly realistic reporting as alarmist, when the future is, indeed, alarming, the label is entirely apt.
Journalists should free themselves from their coverage bubble. To be accurate and complete, their reporting on the climate emergency must include its uncomfortable, even frightening truths. As journalist Katarina Zimmer wrote in Undark, “… climate communication should not just be about instilling hope. It means also confronting the worst possible outcomes and the tough, transformative work that lies ahead.”
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