Apr 24, 2022 Hot Take

The Case for Intersectional Climate Coverage

By Mary Annaïse Heglar

One of the more bedeviling recurring debates in the Climate Messaging Wars is whether or not we should focus on the problem or the solutions. I’m starting to see more and more articles making the case for solutions-based journalism. The thinking is that people tune out of climate stories if they’re too gloomy or scary.

But the truth is, I’ve actually never seen a climate story that ONLY focused on the problem. Even the stories about active disasters—wildfires, floods, hurricanes—usually pay at least some attention to the solutions. Also, if the solutions aren’t being implemented, which is overwhelmingly the case, how does one make a news story out of that? Furthermore, it doesn’t make sense to talk about a solution without talking about the problem—or vice versa. We can actually do both. We have to.

And we have to ask ourselves: who is served by a focus on solutions at the expense of the problems? If we agree that the problem is the fossil fuel industry, and an economic and political structure that enables them, I’m sure they’re quite happy to have us focus our attention anywhere but on them. Let’s not do Exxon that favor, okay?

But if the question is how do we keep people engaged with climate coverage, that’s a bigger question and it deserves a bigger answer. I would argue that people don’t tune out of climate coverage because it’s too big of a problem, they tune out because it’s presented as yet another problem. That’s not what climate change is. It’s a deeply intersectional problem that is intertwined with every other Big Issue we face both at its roots, in its impacts today, and in its future. That’s how we should be talking about it. And to do that, we have to do the work to understand the problem.

Let’s take political will, for example. For at least the past decade, I’ve heard that it’s the biggest blocker to climate action. Yet, at the exact same time that we acknowledged it as the missing ingredient for a livable future, its absence was treated as immaterial. In fact, for the first years that I heard about this missing political will, it was framed as a silver lining. We have the solutions, the refrain went, we just need political will. However, if you don’t have political will… you don’t have the solutions, you have many, many problems. And you need to set about the work of understanding them before you can solve any of them.

Why isn’t there political will? Is it because of rampant disinformation that’s created a fractured reality? White supremacy that has taught people that there is no such thing as a greater good? Toxic masculinity that’s made people fear being labeled hysterical if they raise the alarm? Is it because of American exceptionalism that’s made us think bad things don’t happen here? See how many intersections there are in there? And that’s just scratching the surface!

The best way to cover climate change isn’t with a laser focus on problems or solutions, but on the truth, the whole truth.

The Line Between Inspiration and Extraction

By Amy Westervelt

There’s a new PBS Frontline/BBC docuseries out on the role of fossil fuel companies in obstructing climate action and I have some really conflicting thoughts and feelings about it. In general, I think people should watch it, and I hope they do—ep 1 is out now, and ep 2 is coming soon. There are a couple of really great new additions to the public archive of climate accountability here, particularly an interview with Terry Yosie, former American Petroleum Institute vice president, who provides some critical new insight into the trade group’s role in coordinating climate obstructionism, and a look at the fight over the BTU Tax (which would have taxed all fuel sources based on their heat content except for wind, solar, and geothermal), an early indicator of where this fight was headed, and the role that the Koch brothers would play in it. So, you may wonder, where’s the conflict?

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The Real Fuckbois of Fossil Fuel

By Mary Annaïse Heglar

If you haven’t heard: the podcast is back! We released our season 3 premiere this Friday, our first episode after joining the Crooked Media network. The episode was released on Earth Day, so we decided to use the launch as a chance to reclaim the roots of the holiday: naming and shaming the companies doing harm to the planet. This episode goes back to the basics of why we hate the fossil fuel industry through case studies of the 4 Big Oil companies: BP, Shell, Chevron, and Exxon. We do away with the notion that climate change was some accident that they just waltzed into and frame it very much as an intentional crime against humanity.

If you’re thinking, “oh, I’ve been in this climate game for a minute. I won’t learn anything from this episode,” I encourage you to think again. Here’s something I learned from the conversation: it was an oil company that came up with the concept that corporations are people! Given what I know about their MO, it’s not surprising, but still, I didn’t know that!

And…while we released on Earth Day, it was just two days shy of our actual favorite holiday: Fuck BP Day! This year, we decided to take the BP-trolling back to its roots in homage to the twitter trolls from the immediate aftermath of the BP Oil Spill. That means we didn’t tweet at BP, we tweeted as BP. We created a new handle, @BPDeezNutzz, and tweeted what the oil giant is probably (definitely) thinking. We had a lot of fun. Maybe too much. We’re definitely going to keep this account.

Oh, and don’t forget to leave us a rating or review on Apple Podcasts! That’s all we really wanted this Earth Day!

By Amy Westervelt

Next week, on April 28, Mary and I will be doing a takeover of The Guardian’s newsletter Down to Earth. Subscribe to check us out over there, and also for their ongoing coverage of the climate issue, which is a great international complement to Hot Take!

I also want to share another project we both contributed to that’s out now, the Good Energy Playbook, a comprehensive guide to climate storytelling for screenwriters (and anyone else looking to tell climate stories for that matter!) Our pal Anna Jane Joyner, the founder of Good Energy, and her team have been working on this for a couple of years now and it is a really stellar resource whether you’re looking for inspiration or just a couple of character ideas. Just a few examples of the fantastic content in here: Some great recommendations of climate stories in novels and films from Mary, The Villain’s Backstory (by moi), an amazing Climate Science 101 primer written by our favorite climate scientist Dr. Kate Marvel, and this excellent Climate Heroes Ain’t Saints piece that encourages folks to think beyond the preachy, perfect environmentalist trope. There is so much more here, including resources for self-care when thinking and writing about climate. I can’t recommend enough that you go check it out!