Gold medals. Split-second finishes. The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. Every two years, the Olympics are a huge global news story, as multitudes of people around the world follow the feats of amazing athletes competing for personal recognition and national glory.
Most news coverage rightly concentrates on the athletes’ contests, but reporters at these Olympics could not ignore the role of unfriendly weather. Downpours marred the opening ceremony (and may have contributed to an E. coli infection that caused Belgium’s withdrawal from the mixed triathlon). Then, searing temperatures assaulted athletes and spectators alike as a heat dome settled over much of Europe and North Africa.
Much less reported, though, was the fact that the super-hot conditions “would not have occurred” without man-made global heating. That’s the finding of a study issued July 31 by scientists at the World Weather Attribution group (WWA). “The extreme temperatures reached in July would have been virtually impossible if humans had not warmed the planet by burning fossil fuels,” the group’s press release stated.
Since its founding in 2015, WWA has established a reputation for accurate, timely studies that calculate how much more likely global warming has made a given extreme weather event. WWA’s methods and studies are peer-reviewed, providing an answer to skeptics, in newsrooms and elsewhere, about the climate connection to extreme weather. Its latest study even came with an eye-catching sound bite from its lead scientist, Friederike Otto: “Climate change crashed the Olympics.”
Yet most of the world’s biggest media appear to have ignored the WWA study. Television, the medium of choice for a visual spectacle like the Olympics, was all but silent about climate change, much less the fossil fuel burning that was driving the extreme heat at these Olympics.
Exceptions to the trend — stories by the Guardian (which Mother Jones picked up), AFP (which the Times of India picked up), and Politico Europe — demonstrate that such stories could easily be produced. That so much of broadcast media didn’t do so recalled the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, when extreme heat melted snowpack, leaving bare mountainsides straddling strips of artificial snow — yet climate change went unmentioned in news coverage.
Covering Climate Now has long said that climate change is a story for every beat in every newsroom. A recent issue of our biweekly newsletter Locally Sourced shows how to make the sports-climate connection, and CCNow has plenty more resources to help do a better job going forward.
From Us
CCNow Sharing Library. CCNow news outlet partners are welcome to publish stories shared in the CCNow Sharing Library by fellow partners, for free. We’re also curating an “Elections Coverage” view. Interested in CCNow partnership? Learn more and apply to join.
Climate on the Ballot Summit. From September 17–19, join CCNow and top political and climate journalists for a virtual summit on integrating climate into your elections coverage. RSVP.
Recordings of CCNow webinars. Watch “Digging Into VP Kamala Harris’s Climate Record” (with Zoya Teirstein of Grist, Scott Waldman of Politico’s E&E News, and Justin Worland of TIME) and “How to Cover Climate Activism” (with Keerti Gopal of Inside Climate News and Bill McKibben). Check out CCNow’s events archive for more recordings.
Noteworthy Stories
VP pick on climate. Minnesota governor Tim Walz, Vice President Kamala Harris’s new running mate, boasts an aggressive climate record — including signing legislation requiring Minnesota to run on 100% clean electricity by 2040, streamlining permitting for renewable energy projects, and creating a $2-billion program that’s been compared to the Inflation Reduction Act to jumpstart clean energy projects. He further bolsters the ticket’s climate credentials, which has energized climate advocacy organizations. By Coral Davenport for The New York Times…
- Kudos to colleagues from across the media who are continuing to integrate climate into their 2024 elections coverage with writeups about Walz’s climate credentials. Here’s a sample: ABC’s Stephanie Ebbs, Heatmap’s Jeva Lange, Timothy Cama and Adam Aton of Politico’s E&E News, and TIME’s Justin Worland.
More vulnerable. Because their bodies are still developing, children are more vulnerable to extreme heat and smoke from wildfires. In this podcast, Dr. Debra Hendrickson shares the story of a young patient struggling to breathe after being exposed to wildfire smoke, which contains pollutants that disrupt the development of children’s lungs, brains, and more: “It just really struck me like a blow to the chest, that here was this one little baby in my clinic, that this was climate change that I was seeing right in front of me,” said Hendrickson, author of The Air They Breathe and a clinical professor of pediatrics at the University of Nevada School of Medicine. By NPR’s 1A…
Boosting the grid. The Biden administration announced $2.2 billion in federal grants this week to help modernize the US electrical grid, which needs upgrading and a significant build-out if it’s to meet the demands of the green energy transition. Private-sector investors and local governments will invest another $10 billion. By Jeff St. John for Canary Media…
“Lost history.” Historian Naomi Oreskes was “mortified” when she read a 2022 dissent by US Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan that doubled down on a 2007 ruling that presumed government officials didn’t know much about climate change when Congress passed the 1970 Clean Air Act. Oreskes knew that wasn’t true. To prove it, she analyzed decades of recorded statements by scientists and members of Congress and the Executive Branch revealing that the reality of climate change has been known at the highest levels of power for many decades. By Kate Yoder of Grist…
Connecting wildfires and climate. Poor land management practices, denial that wildfire is necessary in some landscapes, and human-induced climate change are culminating in the huge, dangerous, and out-of-control wildfires we’re seeing today. “A century of engaging in a war on wildfire has delivered us to the climate-change doorstep of bigger, rogue and uncontrollable fires,” writes Lorne Fitch in an opinion column for The Edmonton Journal…
From the Beat
Topping the charts. After reshaping how it covered and prioritized climate, the Norwegian Broadcasting Company has found something remarkable: Climate stories get more views than other coverage and, in 2023, “outperformed the average story” published on the site in 11 out of 12 months, Katherine Dunn writes for the Reuters Institute.
‘State of Emergency.’ Grist has launched a new pop-up newsletter, State of Emergency reported by Zoya Teirstein and Jake Bittle, about climate and voting. Read the first issue and sign up.
Climate and daily life. Transit stories, which offer clear opportunities to make the climate connection, are just one example of how climate change intersects with so much of everyday life, Neel Dhanesha writes for Nieman Lab. “A lot of times, people are not drawn in when climate is the top line,” says LAist reporter Erin Stone. “So I like to start with [a question like] ‘O.K., what’s affecting your daily life?’”
Via Social
As Debby bears down on North and South Carolina in the US, CCNow’s resident meteorologist David Dickson explains how climate change is fueling tropical cyclones and making them more severe.
View this post on Instagram
Resources & Events
“Natural gas” and health. The Pulitzer Center is hosting a webinar, “American Pipe Dream: Natural Gas and Its Health Impacts in the United States,” on August 13.
Ocean attribution advancement. Climate Central will introduce Climate Shift Index: Ocean, its new attribution system for reporting climate change’s impact on ocean temperatures, during a webinar on August 14.
Solutions training. The Knight Center and Solutions Journalism Network are hosting a free two-week training course online, “Climate Solutions Journalism: A Community-informed & Equity-focused Approach” from August 19–September 1.
Water conference. World Water Week, put on by the Stockholm International Water Institute, will be hosted August 25–29. This year’s theme is “Bridging Borders: Water for a Peaceful and Sustainable Future.” Virtual attendance, which allows access to all online sessions, is free.
Public opinion in India. “India Climate Opinion Maps,” published by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, is a new tool looking at state and district-level public opinion across the country.
Jobs, Etc.
Jobs. Dialogue Earth is looking for a temporary assistant editor (London); the deadline to apply is August 12. The Washington Post is hiring an Accountability Reporter, Climate & Environment (Washington, D.C.); apply by August 14. The New York Times is recruiting a Staff Editor, Social Visuals (New York City, San Francisco, or Los Angeles). NBC News Digital is looking for a Senior Enterprise Editor (hybrid, based in New York, N.Y., or Washington, D.C.).
Grants. The Pulitzer Center’s Gender Equality Grant is accepting applications on a rolling basis. The Fund for Investigative Journalism is accepting applications for regular grants of up to $10,000, now through September 9.
Workshop. Climate Tracker Caribbean is offering “Caribbean Energy Transition Workshop,” a hands-on workshop (with mentorship!) for 40 Caribbean journalists from Belize, the Dominican Republic, Guyana, Jamaica, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago. Apply by August 23.
Support Covering Climate Now
We’re working to help journalists worldwide improve and expand their climate coverage. Meet our staff and learn more about CCNow.