One of the country’s leading journalists has written a searing critique of the media’s coverage of global warming, especially climate economics.
How Much Would You Pay to Save the Planet? The American Press and the Economics of Climate Change [PDF] is by Eric Pooley for Harvard’s prestigious Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. Pooley has been managing editor of Fortune, national editor of Time, Time‘s chief political correspondent, and Time‘s White House correspondent, where he won the Gerald Ford Prize for Excellence in Reporting. Before that, he was a senior editor of New York magazine.
In short, Pooley has earned the right to be heard. Journalists and senior editors need to pay heed to Pooley’s three tough conclusions abut how “damaging” the recent media of the climate debate has been:
- The press misrepresented the economic debate over cap and trade. It failed to recognize the emerging consensus ... that cap and trade would have a marginal effect on economic growth and gave doomsday forecasts coequal status with nonpartisan ones ... The press allowed opponents of climate action to replicate the false debate over climate science in the realm of climate economics.
- The press failed to perform the basic service of making climate policy and its economic impact understandable to the reader and allowed opponents of climate action to set the terms of the cost debate. The argument centered on the short-term costs of taking action—i.e., higher electricity and gasoline prices—and sometimes assumed that doing nothing about climate change carried no cost.
- Editors failed to devote sufficient resources to the climate story. In general, global warming is still being shoved into the “environment” pigeonhole, along with the spotted owls and delta smelt, when it is clearly to society’s detriment to think about the subject that way. It is time for editors to treat climate policy as a permanent, important beat: tracking a mobilization for the moral equivalent of war.
Precisely.
Pooley is one of the few major journalists in the country who understands that global warming is the story of the century— if we don’t reverse our emissions path soon, it will tragically be the story of the millennium, with irreversible impacts lasting for many, many centuries (see here).
In a conversation Saturday, Pooley told me, “I think this is the only story going forward.” That’s why, although he remains a contributor to Time magazine, he is devoting most of his time now to researching and writing a book on the politics and economics of climate change.
The first step for Pooley was an analysis of media coverage over the past 15 months. In a long introduction to the different roles reporters can play, Pooley notes:
Being a referee is harder than being a stenographer because it requires grappling with the substance of an issue in a way that many time-pressed journalists aren’t willing or able to do.
He decided to examine media coverage surrounding the 2008 Senate debate over the climate bill put forward by John Warner (R-Va.) and Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.):
News coverage of the Lieberman-Warner debate included some shoddy, one-sided reporting and some strong work that took the time both to dive into the policy weeds—evaluating the economic assumptions used by the various players—and step back to portray those players as com-batants in a war for public opinion. But most of the reporting was bad in the painstakingly balanced way of so much daily journalism—two sides, no real meat.
He then explains his research:
My analysis of news articles published in national and regional newspapers, wire services, and newsmagazines between December 2007 and June 2008 suggests that for most reporters covering this story, the default role was that of stenographer—presenting a nominally balanced view of the debate without questioning the validity of the arguments, sometimes even ignoring evidence that one side was twisting truth. Database searches yielded a sample of 40 published news and analysis stories that explored the cost debate in some de-tail (see appendix). Of these, seven stories were one-sided. Twenty-four stories were works of journalistic stenography. And nine stories attempted, with varying degrees of success, to move past the binary debate, weigh the arguments, and reach conclusions about this thorny issue.
The bottom line:
The media’s collective decision to play the stenographer role actually helped opponents of climate action stifle progress.
He makes another interesting point, one I would not have expected from a journalist:
Mainstream news organizations have accepted the conclusions of the IPCC but have not yet applied those conclusions to the economic debate. The terms of that debate have been defined by opponents of climate action who argue that reducing emissions would “cost too much.” So the battle has been fought over the short-term price of climate action and its impact on GDP, while overlooking an extremely important variable, the long-term costs of inaction and business as usual.
Although Pooley doesn’t make the point, the problem he identifies is compounded by the fact that the mainstream economic community also overestimates the cost of action and underestimates the cost of inaction, a central point of my ongoing series on voodoo economists (see, for instance, Voodoo economists Part 3 and Part 2).
That means when the media goes out looking for a well-known climate economist to quote in an article, they typically end up with someone who doesn’t understand the scientific urgency and those who misunderstand the economics (more on that in Parts 5, 6, and 7 of the series).
If you really want to understand the fact that even a very strong cap-and trade-bill “would have a marginal effect on economic growth,” the best place to go is the the International Energy Agency and IPCC and McKinsey (see “McKinsey 2008 Research in Review: Stabilizing at 450 ppm has a net cost near zero”).
Pooley’s whole paper is a must-read, especially for advocates of climate action. Yes, the media bears much culpability for the fact that, as Pooley says, “the tipping point for climate action has not yet been reached.” But so do scientists, environmentalists, and progressives. The general state of our messaging remains lousy (see, for instance, Part 4 and Does the “Reality Campaign” need new Mad Men?).
One clear message from this study is that the climate science activists need to do a better job of spelling out the cost of inaction. Until that cost is clear to the public, the media, and policymakers, the country will never be able to mobilize to do what is needed to preserve a livable climate.
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
The hidden costs and benefits of things we take for granted
When it comes to energy, Mark Jacobson thinks big
Comments
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Russ Posted 6:14 am
26 Jan 2009
It seems to me, even if we didn't have strong evidence that the economics of comprehensive mitigation efforts:
wouldn't be overly expensive in themselves (in the short run);
would generate great economic value in themselves (in the longer run);
would forestall the overwhelming costs of doing nothing;
and therefore don't look at all bad economically; I say, even if we didn't have good reason to believe this, still, if you accept the IPCC's (probably modest) projections, how is it you wouldn't think, "We have to do something about this no matter what the cost"?
Yet the MSM doesn't draw this conclusion. For them it's just to blandly say, that's one element of the story we're done with, let's fiddle around with the next.
I often think of how Gene Shoemaker said it was his hunch that we'd detect an asteroid which was definitely going to hit Earth in 10,000 years, and that 9950 years would pass before anyone would even start to talk seriously about maybe trying to do something about it.
Of course for man today and the climate crisis it's more like 9990+, and still nothing done.
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davedenali Posted 7:16 am
26 Jan 2009
So what the hey.
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davedenali Posted 7:29 am
26 Jan 2009
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Agreed. We also need a major public effort from the Administration and Congress. John Holdren needs to be the Paul Revere of climate disruption and we will need prime time presidential TV speeches on the need to address this crisis. President Obama is off to a good start on climate, but he will need to put the prestige and visibility of the presidency behind this. And we need high profile hearings from environmentalal warriors like Rep Waxman and others.
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Pompey Road Posted 1:19 pm
26 Jan 2009
Expect 1,000-year climate impacts, experts say
Study: Stopping emissions won't prevent decreased rainfall, higher seas
Vital Signs of a Warming World
WASHINGTON - Even if the world can cap carbon dioxide emissions tied to global warming, expect to see droughts and sea level rise that span centuries, not just decades, according to a new study sponsored by the U.S. government.
"People have imagined that if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide the climate would go back to normal in 100 years, 200 years; that's not true," lead author Susan Solomon told reporters.
Instead, the team concluded, warming tied to higher CO2 "is largely irreversible for 1,000 years after emissions stop."
"Climate change is slow, but it is unstoppable" said Solomon, a researcher at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo.
All the more reason to act quickly, so the long-term situation doesn't get even worse, Solomon said.
Waiting could compound problems
Gerald Meehl, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, added that "the real concern is that the longer we wait to do something, the higher the level of irreversible climate change to which we'll have to adapt." Meehl was not part of Solomon's research team.
The findings were announced as President Barack Obama ordered reviews that could lead to automobiles that emit less CO2 and get higher mileage.
Climate change has been driven by gases in the atmosphere that trap heat from solar radiation and raise the planet's temperature -- the "greenhouse effect." Carbon dioxide has been the most important of those gases because it remains in the air for hundreds of years. While other gases are responsible for nearly half of the warming, they degrade more rapidly, Solomon said.
Study: No going back on global warming
Jan. 26: A NOAA study asserts that if carbon dioxide continues to build up unchecked in the atmosphere, the effects of global warming could be irreversible for more than 1,000 years. NBC's Brian Williams.
Nightly News
Before the industrial revolution the air contained about 280 parts per million of carbon dioxide. That has risen to 385 ppm today, and politicians and scientists have debated at what level it could be stabilized.
The peer-reviewed study concludes that if CO2 is allowed to peak at 450-600 parts per million, the results would include persistent decreases in dry-season rainfall that are comparable to the 1930s U.S. Dust Bowl in zones including the U.S. southwest, southern Europe, Africa, eastern South America and western Australia.
The study, which relied on computer models and historical temperatures, was published in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Warming and the seas
Warmer climate also is causing expansion of the ocean and that factor alone is likely to lock in a 1.3 to 3.2 foot sea level rise by the year 3000 if CO2 peaks at 600 ppm, and double that if it peaks at 1,000 ppm, the researchers calculated.
"Additional contributions to sea level rise from the melting of glaciers and polar ice sheets are too uncertain to quantify in the same way," Solomon said in a statement. "They could be even larger but we just don't have the same level of knowledge about those terms. We presented the minimum sea level rise that we can expect from well-understood physics, and we were surprised that it was so large."
Solomon noted that while global warming has been slowed by the oceans, which absorb carbon, that positive effect will wane over time and eventually oceans will actually warm the planet by giving off their accumulated heat to the air.
Alan Robock, of the Center for Environmental Prediction at Rutgers University, agreed with the report's assessment.
"It's not like air pollution where if we turn off a smokestack, in a few days the air is clear," said Robock, who was not part of Solomon's research team. "It means we have to try even harder to reduce emissions," he said.
Solomon's report "is quite important, not alarmist, and very important for the current debates on climate policy," added Jonathan Overpeck, a climate researcher at the University of Arizona.
'Quite conservative' figures
While scientists have been aware of the long-term aspects of climate change, the new report highlights and provides more specifics on them, said Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
"This aspect is one that is poorly appreciated by policymakers and the general public and it is real," said Trenberth, who was not part of the research group.
"The temperature changes and the sea level changes are, if anything underestimated and quite conservative, especially for sea level," he said.
While he agreed that the rainfall changes mentioned in the paper are under way, Trenberth disagreed with some details of that part of the report.
"Even so, there would be changes in snow (to rain), snow pack and water resources, and irreversible consequences even if not quite the way the authors describe," he said. "The policy relevance is clear: We need to act sooner ... because by the time the public and policymakers really realize the changes are here it is far too late to do anything about it. In fact, as the authors point out, it is already too late for some effects."
Geoengineering to remove CO2 from the atmosphere was not considered in the study. "Ideas about taking the carbon dioxide away after the world puts it in have been proposed, but right now those are very speculative," Solomon stated.
Co-authors of the paper were Gian-Kaspar Plattner and Reto Knutti of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and Pierre Friedlingstein of the National Institute for Scientific Research, Gif sur Yvette, France.
The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.
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Pompey Road Posted 1:22 pm
26 Jan 2009
Jan-26
The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.
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