Doc Hoff’s BlogBlogProject — It’s Now or Never: When Will We Really Care about Climate Change? by Millie Harris
I’ve been sharing blogs written by my University of Delaware students since 2013. This blog, by Millie Harris, a senior majoring in Political Science with minors in Global Studies and Political Communication, was written for my Media & Politics class in Spring, 2022. Millie discusses the complicated role news media play in covering crises like climate change.
“I am here because scientists are not being listened to…we’ve been trying to warn you guys for so many decades that we’re heading towards a f–king catastrophe…” said Peter Kalmus as he broke down in tears earlier this year while chained in front of the JPMorgan Chase building in downtown Los Angeles. He went on social media as he protested big banks and their contribution to climate change. However, not all went according to plan. Kalmus along with several other climate scientists — Allan Chornack, Eric Gill, and Greg Spooner — were arrested for trespassing at the building.
You’re probably asking yourself who is Peter Kalmus, and why should I care? Kalmus is a NASA climate scientist who studies space and Earth along with how to better fight climate disasters. He has a B.A. in physics from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in physics from Columbia University. Kalmus co-founded the Climate Ad Project as well as the Earth Hero app, all with the goal of raising awareness about climate change. In an objective manner, he worked with the other scientists are trusted experts in this area who should be listened to when they decide to protest something.
The climate scientists are part of an international group called Scientist Rebellion that involves 1,200 scientists across more than 20 countries working to bring attention to climate change and any possible action plans. The protest was chosen to be outside of the JPMorgan Chase building because they have been funding more new fossil fuel projects. This will inevitably have disastrous and compounding climate effects. In fact, since 2015 over $3.8 trillion has been given to fossil fuel companies by big banks like JP Morgan Chase. Big banks contribute to climate change because they sell stocks, give loans, or fund fossil fuel companies like BP or Shell. By indirectly supporting and being some of the sole financiers of these fossil fuels companies, big banks should be held partly responsible for the detrimental effects of fossil fuels. These effects include the increase of greenhouse gasses and air pollution, negative economic and health effects, an imminent resource crisis, acid rain, and many other harmful irreversible effects.
In the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, experts warned that it is “now or never” to limit global warming. Scientists like Kalmus have been cautioning us for years that we are heading towards an impending disaster with the potential of surpassing global warming of more than double the 2.7 degree Fahrenheit limit outlined in the Paris Climate Accords in 2015.
Yet, when you scrolled through the headlines on the New York Times website or checked your CNN updates, you probably didn’t see any coverage of this story. How is it possible that a prominent NASA scientist was arrested and went viral on social media, yet no major news source covered it? This is often the case when it comes to media coverage regarding climate change.
Climate change simply does not make the media’s agenda anymore. Richard Perloff, author of “The Dynamics of Political Communication, discusses a concept called “priming” where the media influences the weight people assign to issues. Media coverage on climate change was limited to begin with and has decreased in several ways. This is because climate change is not very newsworthy since it is not an “in-your-face” issue. The only news stories that tend to be covered are natural disasters or freak events due to their novelty. For example, the disastrous fires in Australia in 2020 were part of a media frenzy because of how terrible they were and the overarching consequences. However, coverage disappeared quickly when the next major disaster happened (ahem, Covid). We are currently “experiencing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that haven’t been seen in millions of years — and never before in human history.” Yet the lack of media coverage on climate change has caused people to assign less weight to these issues and potentially care less when it comes to voting for their elected representatives. Moreover, this has a compounding effect that leads to the spread of misinformation and a lack of motivation to address climate change.
This lack of coverage may result in individuals being less educated and less caring about the imminent threat of climate change. How do we as a society make people start paying attention? Will it be when coastlines completely disappear underwater? Will it be when we have never-ending droughts and eventually run out of fresh water? I challenge you to start addressing climate issues and bring attention to these issues. If the media is not going to cover this, we need to begin to force people to pay attention through social media like Kalmus did. As the Lorax once said, “unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”
This blog was written by University of Delaware student, Millie Harris, a senior majoring in Political Science, for my Spring 2022 Politics & Media class.
