In June, during the first of the record heatwaves to scorch Europe this summer, “the London Ambulance Service fielded over 53,000 calls, surpassing the number received when the Covid-19 pandemic was at its height in March 2020,” Bloomberg Green reported this week. And conditions inside UK hospitals were “far worse” than during Covid, Fiona Brennan, an anesthetist in Cardiff, told Bloomberg. It was so hot inside surgery rooms for cancer patients that basic procedures faltered, Brennan said, adding that some patients were so sweaty that she had to constantly check that intravenous drips were not “slipping out” of their bodies.
Also, as with Covid, early mortality figures dramatically understated the death tolls to come. The UK Health Security Agency initially estimated that 2,877 people died from heat-related ailments in May and June. France estimated 5,700 excess deaths took place between June 17 and July 2. Other analyses, benefitting from more complete data and advanced methodology, blamed the heat for as many as 20,000 deaths. And that was before the June heatwave was followed by an additional four heatwaves that surely boosted the number of sick and dying.
Europe is not the only hot spot. In India, temperatures in the capital, Delhi, soared to 54 degrees Celsius (129 degrees Fahrenheit), pushing the limits of human survival, especially for the city’s poor, and again illustrating a core injustice of the climate emergency: The people who did the least to cause it are the ones who tend to suffer the most.
But despite such parallels, there are critical differences between the Covid and climate emergencies. In the opening weeks of the pandemic, scientists weren’t sure how the virus spread, or how to treat it. By contrast, science is unequivocal that today’s extreme heatwaves — and the drought and fires they’ve kindled — would be “all but impossible” without human-caused global warming driven primarily by burning oil, gas, and coal. “Summer of 2026 is another step in the escalation of our world into a sort of hotter, more dangerous planet that climate scientists have been telling us about for decades,” Jeff Goodell, the author of The Heat Will Kill You First, said on CBS News.
Another difference: When Covid emerged in early 2020, much of the news media rose to the challenge, providing science-based reporting that helped both the public and policymakers make informed decisions about how to respond. Journalists also held governments to account, puncturing claims of miracle cures and explaining the value of physical distancing and getting vaccinated.
But, with notable exceptions like those cited in this article, news coverage of this summer’s extreme weather has fallen well short of the Covid standard. Two-thirds of the articles that major UK newspapers published about the summer’s fires did not even mention climate change, much less explain how record heat makes fires more likely and deadly. In the US, the evening newscasts of ABC, CBS, and NBC during the week of July 13 to 19 lavished airtime on the extreme weather but did not utter the words “climate change.”
The Guardian, as usual, has kept the climate connection front and center, and on August 8, it published an opinion piece by the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, who urged government leaders in Britain and around the world to treat climate change as the emergency that scientists say it is — something Khan began doing as mayor in 2018. Khan’s call for leaders to “reduce our reliance on oil and gas” did not name names, but commentators interpreted it as pressing the new British prime minister, Andy Burnham, to rule out more North Sea oil drilling, a question Burnham has studiously avoided since taking office on July 20. Meanwhile, a petition demanding that the government present a televised emergency briefing on the climate crisis has attracted 100,000 signatures, the threshold for getting it debated in Parliament, whose next session begins September 1.
Khan was only half right, however, when he opined that “the climate emergency is here, and no one can say they didn’t see it coming.” Yes, the emergency is here, and “coming faster and harder” than even scientists expected, economist Matthew Argawala of the University of Sussex said on Britain’s Channel 4. But as Khan’s own article goes on to lament, a small but noisy chorus of climate deniers still deny that climate change is happening at all.
Khan cites Donald Trump’s dismissal of climate change as “a con job” and calls out unnamed “opposition politicians and rightwing populists” in the UK. He does not point out that these obstructionists represent only a small fraction of public opinion. More than eight out of 10 (83%) Britons and three out of four (74%) Americans want their governments to take stronger climate action, according to Gallup polling that informs Covering Climate Now’s 89 Percent Project. But the deniers appear to be more numerous than they actually are, both because they have access to far-reaching megaphones and because most news coverage does not point out how wildly their claims are contradicted by science.
Again, the contrast with media coverage of Covid is striking. On April 23, 2020, as Covid’s death toll was mounting, Trump suggested at a White House press briefing that injecting disinfectant into the body might kill the virus. News outlets responded with a flurry of stories quoting incredulous experts lambasting Trump’s idea as dangerous nonsense. Trump quickly retreated, claiming that he’d been speaking sarcastically (though video of his remarks showed he was serious.)
Now, as the summer of 2026 brings record heat to much of the world, as thousands die and many thousands more endure various degrees of misery, White House reporters do not even ask Trump about climate change, much less challenge his scientifically disproven assertion that it’s a hoax. In the UK, press coverage largely ignores the climate argument against more North Sea oil drilling, instead framing Burnham’s upcoming decision as the latest battle in the culture wars.
Most journalists did better than this during Covid, and the public needs us to do better now.
From Us
NEW! South Atlantic Climate Journalism Hub (SAJCH). CCNow is launching a regional support project for journalists working in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware. There’s no cost to join or membership fees. Email david@coveringclimatenow.org with questions or to join.
Radar Clima: El cambio climático nos quita el sueño (y no es una metáfora). En la nueva edición de nuestro boletín en español para periodistas de todas las áreas, te traemos las claves para que cubras cómo están afectando a tu comunidad las noches calurosas, cada vez más frecuentes en todo el mundo. Échale un vistazo a las ediciones anteriores y suscríbete para recibir el boletín los miércoles.
Quote of the Week
“The driest July on record has plunged more than two-thirds of England and the whole of Wales into drought. The result has been a brutal harvest that will go down in history as one of the worst ever. It is a stark reminder that climate change is no longer a distant threat.”
– Tom Bradshaw, president of the UK National Farmers’ Union, in a Financial Times op-ed
Noteworthy Stories
Super El Nino. This year’s El Niño is expected to be the strongest on record, sending temperatures already elevated due to climate change even higher worldwide, generating extreme weather events, including increased and decreased rainfall. This explainer details how the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle works and why this El Niño is different from those we’ve seen before. By Robert McSweeney and Daisy Dunne for Carbon Brief…
UN chief. Guyanese ambassador Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett is the first Caribbean candidate for UN Secretary General and, if successful, she’d be the first woman to lead the 80-year-old organization. She plans to prioritize climate policy and make the UN “a force for good,” again. By Natricia Duncan for The Guardian…
Rethinking the IRA. “Conventional wisdom” was that former US president Joe Biden’s landmark climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, was a political “bust,” but new analysis shows that it did in fact result in more votes for Kamala Harris in red states that benefitted from the bill’s clean-energy manufacturing projects. By Leah Stokes for The Atlantic…
- How did $600 billion of Biden’s clean energy funding survive the Trump administration’s cuts? By Jessie Blaeser, Benjamin Storrow, and Kelsey Tamborrino for E&E News…
Understanding the grid. America’s aging power grid depends on very old, handmade transformers. “If enough fail,” writes Christopher Cox for The New York Times, “the blackout could last years.”
Hot seas. Fish and marine life are also suffering as ocean temperatures around Europe are recording record breaking temperatures that would have been virtually impossible without fossil-fueled climate change, according to a new study from World Weather Attribution. By Ajit Niranjan for The Guardian…
Playing with fire. Wildfire smoke is dangerous, but even those who know better sometimes put their health at risk. In this personal exploration for TIME, Justin Worland writes about what this risk-taking reveals about our response to climate change hazards and human behavior in a warming world.
On the Beat
ABC has sued the US Federal Communications Commission for violating its First Amendment rights saying that the agency “has waged a retaliatory campaign against ABC for a single reason: it disapproves of what ABC broadcasts.”
Two-thirds of the UK public want news media to make the climate connection in extreme weather stories, according to a new Climate News Tracker study. “Climate change is not just for the science or weather specialists,” Mary Hockaday writes for Press Gazette. “General news reporters, business correspondents and transport experts all need to follow the story. Westminster teams too.”
Resources & Events
- “Climate change is driving unprecedented European ocean temperatures, with severe impacts for marine life” (World Weather Attribution)
- “Psychological inoculation against climate doom” (Proceeding on the National Academy of Sciences)
- “A Field Guide to Fossil Fuel Front Groups: Coordinating a Supreme Court Campaign to Shield Big Oil” (Consumer Watchdog)
- “Ocean temperatures set to break all-time record: what’s next?” (Nature)
- “Unraveling the potential of urban greenery for extreme heat and ozone mitigation in Northern Hemisphere cities” (National Science Review)
- “Drought dynamics explain once in a century yellow fever virus outbreak in Brazil with implications for climate change” (Nature Climate Change)
- “The Journalist-Creator Playbook: An Essential Guide to Environmental Video Storytelling for Social Media in Asia” (Earth Journalism Network)
- “What makes climate change feel distant? Evidence from eight countries in the Global North and South” (Journal of Environmental Psychology)
- RSVP: “Clean Air Act: Dismantling One of the Country’s Bedrock Environmental Laws” with ProPublica, on Tuesday, August 25, at 4pm ET (8pm UTC)
RSVP: “AI Systems for Journalism: Is your newsroom ready?” with the Knight Journalism Center on Wednesday, September 2, at 12pm ET (4pm UTC)
Jobs, Etc.
Jobs. Dialogue Earth is hiring an Editor (Brazil). SciLine is hiring an On-Call Scientific Outreach Support Specialist (remote, US). Spectrum News is hiring a National Meteorologist (Dallas, Texas). The Houston Chronicle is hiring an Energy and Data Center Reporter (Houston, Texas). Spotlight PA and Grist are hiring an Environment Reporter (Penn., remote). Twin Cities PBS is hiring an Environmental & Natural Resources Reporter (St. Paul, Minn.). Baltimore Public Media is hiring an Environmental Reporter (Delmarva and Baltimore, Md.). Oxford University is hiring a Oxford Climate Research Network (OCRN) Coordinator (Cambridge, UK). The Climate Emergency Fund is hiring a Director of Development & Communications (New York, NY). The Climate and Clean Energy Equity Fund is hiring a Marketing & Communications Manager (remote, US). The New York Times is hiring a Climate Policy Correspondent (Washington, DC). The Globe & Mail is hiring an Energy Reporter (Ottawa, Canada).
Fellowships & Grants
- Climate Tracker Latin America, GAIA, and Break Free From Plastic will select 40 journalists for a training program (in Portuguese) on zero-waste strategy and its relationship to the climate crisis; apply by August 30.
- Earth Journalism Network is offering a number of opportunities for journalists and media-related organizations; various deadlines.
- The Pulitzer Center is offering Work/Environment Reporting Grants with a particular interest in reporting from regions in Southeast Asia, Europe, Africa, and South America.
- WBUR (Boston, Mass.) is offering three salaried, full-time, year-long 2027 newsroom fellowships for early career journalists; apply by September 25.
- Investigative Reporters & Editors is accepting applications for The Chauncey Bailey Journalist of Color Investigative Reporting Fellowship; apply by September 1.