Media Fail to Explain Climate Crisis Role in Weather Events

From Public Citizen, via email. Key information: 7.2 percent of television coverage and 2.5 percent of news coverage in the top television stations and newspapers mentioned climate change in coverage of Hurricane Dorian.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Although Hurricane Dorian exemplifies what climate scientists have warned about, major U.S. media outlets are failing to connect the climate crisis to the strongest Atlantic storm ever to hit land, a Public Citizen analysis shows.

Scientists say that global warming makes hurricanes intensify faster, dump more rain and move more slowly. All these things have happened with Dorian; it has moved over water that is warmer than usual, intensified at an unprecedented rate, dumped 24 inches of rain on parts of the Bahamas and slowed to a crawl, moving at as little as 1 mile per hour.

But between Friday and Monday, climate or global warming was mentioned in just 7.2% of the 167 pieces on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC and Fox. The top 49 newspapers by circulation didn’t do much better. Of them, 32 covered Dorian in their print editions, but only eight papers connected Dorian to climate. Of 363 articles about Dorian in those papers’ print editions, just nine (2.5%) mentioned climate change.

“It is mind-boggling that major media outlets can report about a storm of epic proportions that is exactly what climate scientists have warned about yet fail to mention two key words: ‘climate change,” said Allison Fisher, outreach director for Public Citizen’s Energy Program. “We can’t address the looming climate catastrophe if we aren’t talking about it.”

Meanwhile, Dorian is still lingering over the Bahamas, and damage reports are still coming in. The storm is growing and will head next to the East Coast of the U.S. As reporters cover this story, Public Citizen is urging them to include climate change.

Public Citizen’s analysis was a snapshot; it didn’t include online stories, and because of a limitation of the database, it didn’t include the Wall Street Journal. Because Public Citizen looked at top papers by circulation, many significant local dailies were not included, such as The Palm Beach Post and The Post and Courier in South Carolina. The same is true of papers that cover Capitol Hill, like The Hill, Politico and Roll Call. This analysis also does not include radio, local television or online news articles.

The results are in line with media coverage of Hurricanes Florence and Michael last year. A Public Citizen survey found that of the 24,968 total pieces mentioning Hurricanes Florence and Michael in 2018, climate change was mentioned in only 10% of online news pieces, 8% of television news transcripts and 5% of print news articles. This was, however, an improvement from 2017, when the rates were 6% for online media and television and 3% for newspapers.

Aftermaths and Catastrophes

Corlears Hook Park, next to our building, used to have whole rows of stately old trees, 80 or 90 years old.  When we first moved to the neighborhood, I kept taking pictures: it seemed the trees demanded it.

Many of those trees are gone now.  Three came down in Hurricane Irene and another nine in Hurricane Sandy, and the park has a completely different feel now: more open, brighter, yet without the majesty of the tall trees.

Corlears Hook park was damaged by the winds of Sandy.  Across the FDR Drive, the East River Park flooded.  A month later, there are still piles of rubble, flotsam and jetsam, tree limbs, and garbage: there just isn't enough people power to get everything cleaned up.  The dog run is in shambles.

These are local reminders that a month later, people in the region are still homeless, still suffering in various ways from the storm's destruction.  And I keep thinking of people and places elsewhere in the world: the tsunami in Japan, Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, the earthquake in Haiti.  Civilians, many of them children, in places riven by war, drought, famine.

My internal landscape was shaken by the hurricane, and I'm left more aware of the people around the world who suffer from ecological and political catastrophes.  At worst, I'm paralyzed: there's too much suffering, and I can do too little.

Yet I'm fortunate that my institution has given me space to develop two courses on the environment, and in those courses, I can help bring students to awareness of climate change and the resulting problems.  It seems too little, a tiny ripple in an immense pond, yet it's what I can do.

And so I need to push away the feeling that the world's problems are too big, and my capacities too small, and keep doing what I can do, and hope that those around me will also be inspired to action, and the ripple effects will build.

How To Help: NYC and NJ

[Updated 11/15]

At this point, it's all about volunteers and money.

People are still needed to go to the hardest-hit areas and help climb stairs, clean buildings and parks, sort donated goods, and transport food and other needed items to the people in need.

Cash is still needed to pay for help.  Food donations are still needed, but check your location's needs before you shop or donate.  If you can donate blood, please follow the links below to find your nearest location.  Bonus: you can get away with eating a second piece of pie on Thanksgiving.

New York City

Occupy Sandy was the first volunteer presence in much of the city and continues to coordinate aid to several areas.  Right now, they need blankets, flashlights, aaa batteries, gallon ziplock bags, cleaning hardware, especially brooms, flat shovels, mops, masks and gloves, hydrogen peroxide, white vinegar, baby/toddler food and formula, duct and scotch tape, toiletries (deodorants, tampons, soap, etc), can openers. To view the updated list or sign up to volunteer:
http://interoccupy.net/occupysandy/map/
Occupy Sandy has set up a wedding registry on Amazon, where you can purchase needed items:
http://www.amazon.com/registry/wedding/32TAA123PJR42

The City of New York has a list of ways to help:
http://www.nycservice.org/pages/pages/8

Blood supplies were affected after the cancellation of many blood drives and the closing of blood collection centers in the area, and donations are needed:
http://www.americasblood.org/
http://www.nybc.org/index.jsp

New Jersey

The Community Food Bank of New Jersey is taking donations of cash, non-perishable foods, and diapers.  Check the website for the list of specific items:
http://www.cfbnj.org/blog/news/5367/hurricane-sandy-relief

The United Way of New Jersey is taking cash donations:
http://www.unitedwaynnj.org/gethelp/disasterrelief.php

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Please help me crowd-source this page.  Add confirmed information in the comments, email me at imagine1community@gmail.com, or post to my Facebook page, and I'll add items in the next update.  Thanks.

Clean, Clear Water

It was the lettuce that got me thinking.  A head of lettuce from the farm, still shedding soil.  I looked at it on day three or four of our power outage and realized I couldn't eat it, unless I was willing to wash it at the fire hydrant while other people stood in line for water.

And then I realized I have no idea how people live in a drought, or in places without access to clean water for drinking and bathing.

I'm not talking about the kind of drought we get on the east coast of the United States every few years, where they tell you not to water the grass.  Nor even the drought we had in the west and midwest last summer, that cut corn yields and drove up prices and contributed to wildfires.

I'm talking about the kind of drought that caused famine in several north African countries last summer.  I know we have hunger in the US; there are significant numbers of people who can't be sure they'll get enough to eat tomorrow.  But in Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia last year, people were dying for lack of food.

And according to UNICEF, there are 2.5 billion people around the world who don't have access to clean water.

I have no idea what that could possibly be like.  I can't imagine it.

Yes, I go camping, and use iodine tablets or a filter to purify water.  But I am so fully embedded in privileged access to clean running water at any time of day or night that I can not get my mind around what it would be like to live without it in my home.

After the power came back on, and then the water, and then the heat, I soaked the lettuce, limp by then, in some cold clean water for a few hours, and then made a salad.

For much of the world, the water isn't coming back on.  And our first-world over-consumption is only going to make it worse.

Still in the Dark

Walking around the city the day after the hurricane, I looked at the carnage and the chaos -- no, those words are not too strong -- and had no desire to document it, to seek artistic or journalistic frames and juxtapositions.  The emotion was direct and raw, washed over me like the saturated air still seething in the aftermath of the storm.

But a couple days later, I grabbed this with my cell phone: the Williamsburg Bridge, the Brooklyn side lit up, the Manhattan side dark.

Being surrounded by places with power was a good thing.  One day we visited a friend and showered; she cooked us a meal using a stove! a refrigerator! running water! Another day I sat for hours in Barnes & Noble recharging phone and iPad.  One night we went out to dinner, and I briefly noted the atmospheric candle on our table.

If we hadn't lost power, hadn't been without heat and light and running water for those days, I suspect I'd feel a lot less empathy for those still without power; as it is, it's heart-wrenching.

And the region is still like that half-dark bridge: most of us are back to more or less normal lives, others are still suffering.  We need to remember them, and keep doing whatever we can to help.

Aftermaths

Living on the third floor, having no elevator access was little more than inconvenience, though pitch-dark stairwells were a danger.  I live in a 20-story building, and some of my neighbors, unable to navigate the stairs, were trapped for the duration of the outage.  Residents of the building checked on each other, helping where we could.

One night, I heard someone fall in the stairwell.  Thumpthumpthumpthumpthump, a cry, a couple of moans.  I listened for a call for help, and when none came, burrowed back under the covers, knowing I should have gone to help.

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Before the blackout, I was in the midst of my worst asthma attack in three years.  I was using a nebulizer four times a day -- a machine that plugs into the wall to help deliver medication mixed with saline solution into the lungs in mist form.  With the power out, I switched to a metered dose inhaler to get the medication.

The next day, the attack finally broke.

I could climb those two flights of stairs.  I could walk the neighborhood and look at the damage.  I could bike to Union Square, where they were supposed to be giving out dry ice for the refrigerator.  I could go to the fire hydrant at the corner, fill buckets, carry them half a block and then up the stairs.

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Official help?  Hard to find.  Yesterday, after power had been returned to most of the area, I saw national guard members distributing bottled water on Grand Street.  A few days ago, I passed a truck on East 10th Street with oatmeal and bread.  There were rumors of food in other places, but no system to inform people what was available, and where.

The New York Times posted updates with information about infrastructure, noting "tap water is safe to drink."  Since we had no tap water in our building, that seemed a bit of an insult, along with the Empire State Building, lit up like fireworks beyond the dark buildings of the neighborhood.

Facebook was sometimes the only source of information.  It's how we found out about the dry ice, though the official notice failed to mention times for distribution, so I made my first trip to Union Square before the truck arrived, and my second after it had run out.

Flotsam and Jetsam

The morning after the power went out, I went for a long walk with the dog.  The wind was still blowing, but not dangerously; it wasn't really raining, but water seemed sort of to be sifting out of the sky.  I walked south along the East River, still bloated with flooding, stinking of marine fuel, and marveled at the things that had drifted in with the tide.  When I got home, I wrote the start of a blog post about them:

a pigeon, feet sticking out straight in front, one leg banded
part of an outboard motor
half a porta-potty
several pieces of PVC pipe joing
a gas mask
a small stuffed toy
bee hives in brightly painted boxes
a life vest, inside out
cars left in clumps, like bath toys

Early this morning I thought I heard surf breaking in the East River as the tide came in again.  I thought it must be my imagination twisting the gusts of wind, but when I saw the high water mark in the park, I reconsidered.

People, too, were washed up in the streets, stunned.  People who hadn't taken in the seriousness of the upcoming storm, hadn't had the information or the resources to gather supplies, to make a plan.  Dark stairwells, no flashlights, no water, cell phones drained of power.  A woman stood, anguish on her face, unable to step into the street.  Two lost young men decided they could bicycle to family, one to an aunt uptown, another to parents in Brooklyn. 

Later that day, another long walk.  In the river, two picnic tables, a length of what looked like metal pipe, at least 30 feet long and a foot in diameter, and an entire staircase.  We were driven out of our dark apartment, compelled to see the damage, yet unable to process the enormity of the destruction