“Climate Change Drove Western Heat Wave’s Extreme Records, Analysis Finds” - The New York Times
“Heat wave smothers much of West Coast in triple-degree temperatures” - The Washington Post
“North American heat wave a warning to the world” - The Statesman
“Heat wave spread fire that ‘erased’ Canadian town” - The Indian Express
These headlines aren’t age-old tales. In fact, it hasn’t even been a week since the last intense heatwave that hit the Pacific Northwest. States that previously weren’t familiar with the devastating effects of climate change are now forced to consider what rising temperatures could mean for them and the future.
The usually temperate region witnessed record high temperatures with Seattle reaching 42° C (108° F), while Portland, Ore., surged to 47° Celsius (116° F) on June 29, 2021. Meanwhile, British Columbia set a Candian temperature record of 49.6° C (121.3° F), setting off wildfires that tore through Lytton and burnt about 90 percent of the village. This isn’t a rare one-day phenomenon. On July 7, 2021, an international team of scientists revealed that the deadly “heatwave of the Pacific Northwest would have been “virtually impossible” without human-caused climate change”.
Global climate change raised a worldwide alarm in 1896 when the first conjecture predicted that the carbon dioxide emission from fossil fuel combustion could gradually warm the globe. But it wasn’t until the 1930s that climate change was reported in the U.S. press. The coverage of human contributions to climate change took a couple of decades more to make it to the news [Swain, K. A., 2016].
A significant peak in the media coverage of climate change first occurred in early 2007 which was driven by AI Gore’s documentary - An Inconvenient Truth and IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. A 50% higher peak was witnessed in late 2009 due to the December 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference and the November 2009 Climatic Research Unit email controversy. The maximum coverage of both climate change and global warming by global media was observed in June 2017 when U.S. President Donald J. Trump announced his withdrawal from the 2015 United Nations Paris Climate Agreement.
Image Source: Grist
Although the reportage on climate change in newspapers, radio, and television, should, in theory, be straightforward, considerable variations come to light between the editorial perceptions held by different media organizations about the seriousness of climate change. As anticipated, there exists a strong relationship between the political perspectives of media organizations and their position on climate change.
For instance, the UK’s left-leaning newspaper the Guardian, internationally recognized as the hub of environmental reporting and climate change, rarely adds skeptical opinions. Take, for example, the article “Sixty years of climate change warnings: the signs that were missed (and ignored)” that lay down facts on how the world ignored the signs of climate change and no appropriate actions were taken. On the contrary, US’ right-leaning media houses such as The Wall Street Journal are more likely to report skeptical editorials and opinions. An opinion piece by the WSJ “Who Tells the Truth About Climate Change?” is a vivid example of the stance taken by this media house.
The Paris Climate Agreement of 2015, the last major agreement that aimed to keep the rise in global temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius with a desire to keep it within 1.5 degrees Celsius, spurred the long-pending debate on climate change within media houses.
When referring to the Paris Climate Agreement, the Guardian called it an “ambitious agreement” and “an end to the fossil fuel era”, adding that “campaign groups were broadly positive about the outcome”. On the other hand, the Telegraph was a little more cautious. Instead of highlighting and emphasizing the success of the agreement and its historic significance, it outlined what was agreed upon.
Image Source: The Guardian
Mass media can play an extensive role in fighting the battle against climate change. Recent research suggests that mass media acts as a critical agent in how climate change issues are framed in the public. Journalists can warn people of the drastic effects of climate change, highlight coping strategies, explain complex policies, promote actions from governments, businesses, and consumers to build green economies, and act as watchdogs to protect the public interest.
What’s worrying is that even though climate change is a grave topic of discussion, it still occupies a small portion of media coverage, threatening the livelihoods and lives of billions of people. Awareness amongst the public might be rising across the world but in many countries, the understanding of the seriousness of climate change remains low. Only when media houses tackle this underlying problem will people be able to take necessary steps and actions to mitigate the problem of climate change.
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