For years, most TV newscasts have neglected to make the climate connection with the kind of extreme heat blasting much of North America this week. In the summer of 2024, for example, when record high temperatures brutalized outdoor workers, withered crops, and worsened hurricanes, only 12% of US national TV news segments mentioned climate change, though its role in driving such extreme heat has long been scientifically indisputable.
This week, CBS News decisively broke that pattern. David Schechter, the network’s national environment correspondent, aired two pieces that left no doubt that the ghastly heat afflicting tens of millions of Americans is climate change in action. Schechter also helped viewers understand how such climate change–driven heat can hurt not only their health but their pocketbooks.
Schechter’s first story aired on the CBS Evening News on June 24. Viewers met Meghan Crow of Fort Worth, Texas, “who’s in her second trimester with her second child,” Schechter reported. Watching Crow at a doctor visit, Schechter noted that “during pregnancy the body loses some of its ability to regulate heat,” which can lead to serious health risks. Citing research from the nonprofit Climate Central, he reported that women in the US “now experience 12 additional extremely hot days [a year], leading to a greater risk of pre-term birth and infant mortality.”
His second story this week featured Angela Harmon, a cancer survivor who’s raising a grandson and can’t afford to keep her apartment cool “in the brutal Texas summer” as climate change drives stronger heat waves. The Trump budget bill now under consideration in the Senate would eliminate the Low Income Home Energy Assistance program whose subsidies Harmon previously relied upon, Schechter reported.
The pieces were part of a larger surge in climate coverage at CBS. Since Donald Trump won the 2024 election last November, Schechter and his producer Tracy Wholf, who heads the CBS News Climate Beat team, have produced 61 climate stories, 16 that ran on the evening or morning news broadcasts before also streaming, 24 that went directly to streaming, and 22 that were published as digital text stories.
What’s the secret to getting green lights for so many climate stories?
“We haven’t pitched them as climate stories,” Wholf told Covering Climate Now. “We’ve pitched them as politics stories, as science stories, as consumer stories. Then we make the climate connection within those stories.” She and Schechter also seize on breaking news. “If tariffs are the big story of the day, then we’re going to find that [climate] angle inside tariffs.”
CBS’s standout climate coverage has occurred even as CBS News’s corporate owner, Paramount, agreed to settlement talks over Trump’s baseless lawsuit over a 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Kamala Harris last October. Trump’s demand for an apology reportedly led Bill Owens, the former 60 Minutes executive producer, and Wendy McMahon, the former CBS News president, to resign rather than acquiesce. “The only thing in our control is to do the best work we can do,” Schechter told Covering Climate Now. “And if you look at the 60-plus stories we’ve done, it’d be pretty hard to say that someone is trying to keep us quiet.”
From Us
Press Briefing: The Big, Beautiful Bill. Today, CCNow and Poynter co-hosted a webinar about telling the local story on the many Inflation Reduction Act-funded climate change and clean energy projects across the country that are on the chopping block on Capitol Hill, as part of the Trump administration-backed One Big, Beautiful Bill Act. Watch a recording.
Locally Sourced newsletter. The latest edition of our biweekly newsletter for local journalists digs into air conditioning, which is becoming less a luxury than a life-saving necessity, amid worsening heat waves across the globe. Check out the Locally Sourced archive and sign up to get it every other Tuesday.
Noteworthy Stories
Hotter days. The heat wave scorching much of the US Midwest and East Coast this week and one in Western Europe are signs of the times, in a warming world. And yet, experts say, the computer models scientists use to understand heat patterns are likely “severely underestimat[ing]” how climate change will weigh on future heat waves. By Andrew Freedman for CNN…
Hotter nights. Elevated nighttime temperatures, both during heat waves and in general in the era of climate change, pose a significant risk to human health — especially for the elderly, people with pre-existing medical conditions, and people experiencing homelessness. Not only do our bodies’ core temperatures fail to cool, which adds stress to many of the body’s functions, but we get worse and less sleep, which can have many secondary negative effects on our health. By Kiley Price for Inside Climate News…
Teetering on the brink. Scientists have identified more than a dozen “tipping points,” climate change–related thresholds where incremental change in one metric or another — deforestation in the Amazon, for example — could bring dramatic and irreversible change to fundamental Earth systems. “These enormous risks are potentially catastrophic,” one expert explains. “They would undo the connections between human and ecological systems that form the basis of all of our civilisation.” By Jonathan Watts, for The Guardian, part of an ongoing series, ‘Tipping Points: On the Edge?’…
Credit denied? Brazil’s Federal Prosecutor’s Office is challenging a $180 million carbon credit deal involving the state of Pará and companies like Amazon, H&M Group, and Walmart — the world’s largest carbon credit sale to date — on the grounds that it violates carbon market regulations and Indigenous rights. By Carla Ruas for Mongabay…
Meat and maize. Soaring meat consumption across Asia means a rising carbon footprint, as well, for the continent’s food systems — which, in turn, is taking a big environmental toll on farms and forests alike. By Jack Board and Liling Tan for Channel News Asia’s ‘Climate Conversations’ podcast…
Quote of the Week
“Every heatwave that is occurring today is hotter than it would have been without human-induced climate change.”
– Dr. Friederike Otto, climatologist and leader of the World Weather Attribution project
Dispatch #8 from the Climate Blueprint for Media Transformation
For several months, we’ve been periodically sharing standout insights from the Climate Blueprint for Media Transformation, a collaboration between CCNow and the Solutions Journalism Network. This is the eighth installment.
You probably don’t need to be convinced of the power of local news. Even in polarized times, local outlets remain the most trusted. So how can we build on that trust to more effectively cover climate change?
In short, presence. Local newsrooms can rely on their proximity and community expertise to increase confidence in their reporting and understanding of the various climate issues in their area. Solutions coverage and long-term community listening in particular can help distinguish your coverage and change the conversation. As an editor at The Sacramento Bee, Emilie Stigliani has done both.
“These journalists must tackle the narrative challenge of connecting individual lived experiences to the global phenomenon of climate change,” Stigliani writes. “When they succeed, the outcomes are powerful.”
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