Neil deMause

How the news media dealt with — or failed to — the links between this spring’s severe weather and climate change:

On April 14, a massive storm swept down out of the Rocky Mountains into the Midwest and South, spawning more than 150 tornadoes that killed 43 people across 16 states (Capital Weather Gang, 4/18/11). It was one of the largest weather catastrophes in United States history—but was soon upstaged by an even larger storm, the 2011 Super Outbreak that spread more than 300 tornadoes across 14 states from April 25 to 28 (including an all-time one-day record of 188 twisters on April 27), killing 339 people, including 41 in Tuscaloosa, Alabama (CNN, 5/1/11).

Ensuing weeks saw Texas wildfires that had been burning since December expand to consume more than 3 million acres (Texas Forest Service, 6/28/11; CNN, 4/25/11), plus record flooding along the Mississippi River, which couldn’t contain the water from April’s storms on top of the spring snowmelt. On May 22, a super-strong F5 tornado killed 153 people as it flattened a large part of Joplin, Missouri (National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office, 5/22/11) ; in the first two weeks of June, a heat wave broke temperature records in multiple states, and the Wallow fire became the largest in Arizona state history (Washington Post, 6/14/11).

It was an unprecedented string of severe weather: By mid-June, more than 1,000 tornadoes had killed 536 people (NOAA, 6/13/11), nearly as many deaths as in the entire preceding decade. And it was only natural to ask: Were we seeing the effects of climate change?… [read more]

My Extra! magazine article on how U.S. media coverage of last fall’s elections ignored climate policy, previously print-only, is now online for free: You can read it here in its entirety, no tree-killing or money-spending necessary. (Though FAIR could certainly use your money if you want to subscribe, and their digital subscriptions save both trees and your cash!)

I have an article in the February issue of Extra! on how the U.S. news media largely ignored Republicans’ climate-change-denial rhetoric in the runup to last November’s elections, despite the fact that it could have huge consequences for the fate of the earth. It’s not online, sadly, but you can buy a copy for $4.95 at what we used to call “your local news-stand,” get an annual subscription for not much more, or wait a month or two and it should show up for free here. Here’s the intro:

Of all the issues at stake in the midterm congressional elections of 2010, the one that hung most in the balance may have been the fate of the world’s climate. It was clear from early in the election cycle that incoming Republicans were uniformly in agreement that no government action to control carbon emissions was desirable, or indeed necessary: Of Republican Senate candidates, “19 of the 20 who have taken a position say that global climate change is unproven or actually a hoax,” the National Journal’s Ron Brownstein told Christiane Amanpour (This Week, 9/26/10).

Several prominent GOP leaders had gone even further: Soon-to-be House speaker John Boehner declared that “the idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen, that it is harmful to our environment, is almost comical,” while Rep. John Shimkus, a contender for chair of the House Energy Committee, brushed off fears of climate disaster by citing the Bible’s promise that “as long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease” (New Yorker, 11/22/10)…

In an analysis of media coverage of the cap-and-trade climate legislation, I compare it to reporting on the health care bill, noting that in both cases journalists omitted any mention of criticism that the bills were too weak. And perfect timing too, since the climate bill just got even more like the health bill, in that Obama is backing away from trying to pass it anytime soon.

The sweeping bill to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions that moved through Congress over the last year received relatively scant media attention, taking a distant back seat to the healthcare reform bill and its attendant public uproar. And, much like the healthcare debate (Extra!, 10/09), coverage of climate-change legislation ended up obscuring the issues as much as it explained them, viewing a Democratic compromise bill through the lens of right-wing and corporate criticism, while marginalizing progressive critics who said the legislation was insufficient to the task at hand…. [read more]

As if I weren’t worried enough about the fate of the world, I picked up the Times today and read this in what was meant to be an optimistic report on how global carbon emissions have fallen as a result of the economic collapse:

The forecast should also make it easier for most nations to meet emissions reduction targets in the near and medium term and could give a lift toward a new global warming treaty, said Paul W. Bledsoe of the National Commission on Energy Policy, a bipartisan advisory group.

“Because many countries are using 2005 as a baseline year, this will give them some breathing room when economic activity picks up again,” Mr. Bledsoe said.

In other words: Nations may be willing to agree to limits on carbon emissions if they get to compare them to pre-recession levels, since this would allow them to actually emit more greenhouse gases and still call it a “cut.” Woohoo?

Concern about global climate change isn’t actually doing much yet to forestall disaster:

Remember global warming? It seems like only yesterday that we were watching bits of Antarctica flake off into the ocean — not to mention even less-gripping sights, like Al Gore with a laser pointer — and worrying whether humanity’s love of SUVs and air conditioning was going to doom us to extinction by midcentury… [read more]

When my editor at Metro suggested I write my column this week about Earth Day, my first response was “What about it?” Then I remembered the bagel crisis:

Tomorrow is Earth Day, which means you’re likely to hear a lot of talk about low-energy light bulbs and taking shorter showers, roof gardens and alternative-fuel cars. You’re less likely to hear much about $1 bagels… [read more]

Reports on climate change look very different depending on whether you’re getting your news from British media or U.S. ones. (In the subscribers-only print edition, so you’ll need to order Extra! to read it – or look for it on Nexis if you have an account there.

If 2006 was the year that the issue of global climate change broke through into greater public consciousness–thanks in large part to Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, plus books like Elizabeth Kolbert’s Field Notes from a Catastrophe–2007 could be the year that it becomes old news.

Between February and May of this year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a joint project of the United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization, issued a series of three comprehensive reports designed to present the scientific evidence for climate change, as well as the likely consequences and how the most catastrophic effects can be avoided. By the end of it, “Live Aid” organizer Bob Geldof could be moved to harrumph on hearing of Al Gore’s planned “Live Earth” concerts to raise consciousness of the issue: “We are all fucking conscious of global warming.”

How conscious you are, though, likely depends largely on where you live–and how you get your news…

I’ve mentioned this before, but one of the odd things about freelance journalism is that you can be drowning in work, and yet the time lag from research to the printed page means there isn’t much to show for it right away. I guess it’s not quite as bad as being a musician – the Mekons have reportedly had a new album all but ready to go for two years now, and that’s not even close to a record – but it’s still frustrating sometimes when it’s time to write these updates. In any event, there should be plenty of fruits to my labor over the next month or two – not to give too much away, but let’s just say you might not want to be nominating Anderson Cooper for a Nobel Peace Prize just yet.

As for last month’s fruits, as promised last month, the Village Voice ran my investigation into the new, even stricter welfare rules and what they’re likely to mean for poor
families in New York. (Hint: It’s not going to be less dysfunctional bureaucracy.) One of the troublesome city programs singled out in my article: WeCARE, an “intensive case management” system that mostly served to force people to truck halfway across the city to meet with an endless stream of doctors and case workers, or else have their benefits cut off – and within days, the city had announced it would switch to decentralized services in clients’ own neighborhoods. Coincidence?

On the sports stadium front, the Yanks and Mets deals are currently on hiatus – possibly for several months – but Minnesota more than picked up the slack, passing a nearly $400 million sales-tax package to fund the bulk of costs for a new Twins stadium. The approval came after more than a decade of legislative debates, and with polls showing Minnesota residents still opposed to the deal by a 2-to-1 margin. Baseball Prospectus subscribers can read my take on why the state legislature caved, while everyone else can see my interview in the Minneapolis City Pages.

Also on my agenda for the month was reading a pair of books I’d been meaning to get to – and which I highly recommend if you or your loved ones intend to live on this planet for more than the next few years. Elizabeth
Kolbert’s Field Notes from a Catastrophe is a slim, eminently readable travelogue on the devastating, irreversible impacts of global climate change – it’s probably the lightest reading you’ll ever do on the end of the world. (That’s a compliment, by the way, to Kolbert’s New Yorker-honed prose. Incidentally, I worked on a college newspaper with Elizabeth’s brother Dan, and while he didn’t teach me everything I know about journalism, he certainly gave me a good nudge in the right direction. Thanks, Dan!)

For a meatier look at the same topic, check out Tim Flannery’s The Weather Makers, which includes such unlikely-but-not-unlikely-enough scenarios
as the complete collapse of the Amazon rainforest ecosystem and the halting of the Gulf Stream, bringing Ice Age conditions to Europe. (Flannery is also the author of one of my other favorite books, The Eternal Frontier, a history of North America over the past 65 million years that contains the only description I’ve seen of how to preserve mastodon meat by burying it in a bog.) Flannery goes on a bit at times – feel free to skip the first chapter about the Gaia theory – but it’s still gripping reading, and at least spares you having to watch Al Gore.

Between the two of them, Kolbert and Flannery make clear that radical change is needed in the way we produce and consume energy, and soon, if we have any hope of preventing catastrophe within our lifetimes. It looks like we can have SUVs or polar bears, but not both. And if we don’t choose soon, possibly not either.

And on that cheery note, I’ll see you next month. Happy hurricane season!