Tag: climate change

Earth Day is Monday, so how are we doing? Is the news media helping us create a better environment?

Bill McKibben follows issues centered around the climate crisis better than almost anyone. Here’s the stark truth from his substack, The Crucial Years:

At the most fundamental level, new figures last week showed that atmospheric levels of the three main greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide—reached new all-time highs last year. Here’s how the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported the figures:

While the rise in the three heat-trapping gases recorded in the air samples collected by NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory (GML) in 2023 was not quite as high as the record jumps observed in recent years, they were in line with the steep increases observed during the past decade. 

The global surface concentration of CO₂, averaged across all 12 months of 2023, was 419.3 parts per million (ppm), an increase of 2.8 ppm during the year. This was the 12th consecutive year CO₂ increased by more than 2 ppm, extending the highest sustained rate of CO₂ increases during the 65-year monitoring record. Three consecutive years of CO₂  growth of 2 ppm or more had not been seen in NOAA’s monitoring records prior to 2014. Atmospheric CO₂ is now more than 50% higher than pre-industrial levels.

Entirely unsurprisingly, the planet’s temperature has also continued to rise.

The Crucial Years, a substack by Bill McKibben, April 10, 2024.

Not long ago, McKibben headed an organization called 350.org, which advocated keeping average surface concentration of CO2 below 350 ppm. At 419.3 ppm, and increasing about 2 ppm per year, we are going the wrong direction.

How do news audiences perceive the climate crisis? A recent study explored this question. Why is it important? How we perceive and receive news about the climate crisis determines, in large part, whether and how we address it.

Around Earth Day, we expect to see more news stories about the climate crisis. Folks at Reuters Institute studied news use and attitudes about climate change, using data from Brazil, France, Germany, India, Japan, Pakistan, the UK, and the USA. The issues are similar to what we see in response to media on any topic: Should we trust scientists? What is misinformation and what isn’t? What news sources are trustworthy? Are direct action protests covered fairly by media? They found a lot:

• In most of the eight countries there has been a slight increase in climate change news use, with just over half (55%) on average using climate change news in the previous week.
• Climate news avoidance and trust in climate information from the news media have remained roughly stable, but avoidance has decreased slightly in the UK, USA, and Pakistan, as well as trust in the UK and Germany.
• Scientists remain the most trusted sources of news and information about climate change, trusted by 73% on average, and respondents more often see them used as sources in the news media than any other source of information.
• Over three quarters (80%) of survey respondents say they are concerned about climate change misinformation, consistent with data from 2022.
• Once again, respondents think television and online (including social media and messaging apps) are where they see most climate-related misinformation. Politicians, political parties, and governments are frequently mentioned as sources of false and misleading information.
• Nearly two thirds of respondents believe that news media play a significant role in influencing climate change decisions, actions by large businesses, government policies, and public attitudes, with particularly strong beliefs in Brazil, India, and Pakistan.
• There is large variation in how soon respondents think people in their country will face the serious effects of climate change, with significant proportions in every country thinking the consequences are decades away at least. However, people who use climate change news on a weekly basis are considerably more likely to think that people are being affected by climate change now.
• Significant disparities exist in perceptions of the impact of climate change on public health specifically, with those in Global South countries (Brazil, India, Pakistan) generally perceiving larger effects (50% or more) than those in the Global North (UK, USA, France, Germany, Japan).
• Just over half of respondents think that climate change has a larger effect on poorer people (53%) and poorer countries (52%), but there is a considerable partisan disagreement on this in France, the UK, and the USA, with those leaning politically right less likely to agree.
• People are more likely to think that richer countries and more polluting countries should take greater responsibility for reducing climate change, and weekly climate change news users are more likely to hold this view.
• In the UK, USA, Germany and France opinion is roughly evenly split on whether direct action climate protests (e.g. blocking roads, disrupting sporting events) are covered fairly by the news media. But in Germany, the UK, and the USA opinion varies depending on whether people support or oppose the protests.
• People in our survey expressed a high level of interest in various types of climate coverage, including news that discusses latest developments, positive news, and coverage presenting solutions. People did not express a clear preference for the type of solutions journalism they are most interested in.

What do these findings mean? Assessing news in media has become a critical skill in 2024. It is important to align our lives with accurate information about the climate crisis. Rich McKibben is a good source of information. So are Katharine Hayhoe and Al Gore. Knowing the truth about the climate crisis will make us better advocates. It will set us free to create a better world for our progeny.

On Earth Day 2024, we are a distance from achieving our goals. Things are not going as well as we need and it is complicated by reliance on media fraught with misinformation. We can do better.

~ The author helped organize the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970 in his home town. He served as chair of the county board of health, and has been advocating and writing on environmental issues all along his journey. He joined Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project in 2013.

When we couldn’t get new parts for our 2002 Subaru in 2022, we decided to get a replacement car. First of all, it rots that basic suspension parts are unavailable from the manufacturer of a relatively new and otherwise fine car. Second, we wanted an electric vehicle, yet manufacturers couldn’t even tell us when we could get one. It was more than a year’s wait for some basic models with actual delivery date unknowable, they said. Demand was so high, they apparently didn’t mind missing a few sales. We resolved the immediate crisis by getting a used subcompact that gets 38 miles per gallon of gasoline.

The 45th President had something to say about electric cars during his Christmas message to the nation. He said he hopes supporters of “Electric Car Lunacy… ROT IN HELL.” Our Congresswoman, Mariannette Miller-Meeks is on board with the former president and wrote a column on the topic in our local newspaper, the Solon Economist. Not only does she have her lips busy kissing Trump’s behind, she is unabashedly in favor of the Iowa ethanol and biodiesel crazes. Heaven help us that the Environmental Protection Agency attempt to regulate a livable climate and infringe on our “freedom,” I wrote sarcastically.

Miller-Meeks takes the tone of a serious person, yet she is not one. While her predecessor, Democrat Dave Loebsack supported corn ethanol and biofuels, Miller-Meeks let her membership on the Energy and Commerce Committee, and Conservative Climate Caucus go to her head. She became a parrot for what the oil and gas, and corn ethanol and biofuels lobbies want from Washington. This compared to a legislator that looks out for all of the people she represents.

In her column, she wrote, “For one reason or another, the Biden administration has relentlessly pushed its fixation on electric vehicles (EVs), or vehicles that have an electric motor in place of an internal combustion engine, on everyday Americans.” We know the reason, and I suspect Miller-Meeks does as well. 2023 has been the hottest year in recorded history for our atmosphere and oceans. At this rate, global heating will soar past the recommendations of scientists who study it for a living. The scale of the problem demands bold solutions, which is what the EPA proposed. Is two-thirds of all new vehicles being electric by 2032 the right number? Given the ramp up time and obstruction from the corn ethanol, biofuels, and oil and gas industries, it may not be good enough.

Miller-Meeks took her corn ethanol/biofuels show on the road to COP 28 in Dubai. She had a story to tell which is reprinted below from her weekly newsletter.

At COP, I had the opportunity to speak at the U.S. Pavilion to discuss how our farmers across Iowa and the United States are the backbone of this country and our economy. I highlighted how Iowa is a leading producer of soybeans, corn, pork, and eggs in the United States, even while reducing fertilizer and pesticide use with adoption of sustainable regenerative Ag practices. Further, I mentioned how our farmers help fuel the world with lower carbon, cleaner emissions liquid fuels. 

I had the opportunity to discuss how we have taken advantage of the geographic composition of our state to support the entire gamut of renewables, from wind to solar to ethanol, biodiesel, biomass, manure, and compressed renewable natural gas. 

In Iowa, we can introduce innovative technologies like carbon capture and underground storage to our biofuel refineries. We’ve added hydropower at Lake Red Rock, and advanced nuclear energy is being revisited to provide capacity and dispatchable continual base load to the energy mix. We have the Ames Lab, one of the U.S. national labs, that adds to the exciting research conducted at the University of Iowa and Iowa State. 

We have a story to tell, and I was honored to represent our district and our agricultural priorities at COP28, and I am excited to continue to tell the story about how Iowa is setting the example and creating systems to support and harness clean energy to secure a cleaner, healthier planet for generations to come.

Miller-Meeks Weekly Script, Dec. 17, 2023.

By filling her time at the U.S. Pavilion with all of these things, she avoided addressing the real and increasingly dangerous challenges of a heating planet. While she is good at cramming buzz words into these paragraphs, notably, she avoided mentioning electric vehicles. It may sound like she is saying a lot, but in truth, she is saying nothing but that we should continue the status quo. That is simply not good enough to create a livable world.

Iowans should consider buying an electric vehicle when they need a replacement for an internal combustion vehicle, and vote Miller-Meeks out of office in 2024.

We’ve lived through the hottest 12 months since record-keeping began. It’s not just me saying this. It’s likely the hottest it’s been in 125,000 years according to scientists quoted by the Washington Post.

It is not a risky thing to say that our planet will pass the tipping point of climate change. With the increased average temperature of Earth passing 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial norms, entire ecosystems could be irreversibly damaged or destroyed by global warming. Things won’t be like we know them now. According to the Post article, “nearly 3 in 4 people experienced more than a month’s worth of heat so extreme, it would have been unusual in the past, but became at least three times more likely because of human-caused climate change.”

It seems very warm here in Big Grove. That’s because it is.

This year’s drought has been a humdinger. Crop reports indicate it hasn’t been as bad as 2012 based on corn and soybean yields, yet unless we get rain soon, farmers will be facing a dry spring again. On my daily walks along the lake shore, the culvert that drain the lake watershed still doesn’t have anything in it except cracking chunks of soil like those in the photo above.

The only thing I know is no one person will be the solution to preventing as much irreversible damage as we can. It is too late for that. We can’t get agreement that children should not be slaughtered in Israel or Gaza, for Pete’s sake. There is necessary work to be done here.