Writing in The New York Times on May 28, journalist Masha Gessen recalled feeling “shocked many times” while “living in and reporting on Russia when Vladimir Putin took and consolidated power”. But as one outrage followed another and another ad infinitum, “the state of shock would last a day or a week or a month, but [as] time went on,” it faded as Putin’s assaults on democracy simply “became a fact of our lives.”
Is something similar happening to us in the news media regarding climate change? When cutting-edge reporting warned in 2018 that climate scientists feared the Amazon could flip from a humid rainforest into a dry savannah, it was shocking. Later, when updated science concluded that this potential flip was on the verge of actually happening, there was little news coverage outside the region. In 2020, when San Francisco’s skies turned orange with smoke from distant wildfires driven by record heat, that too was shocking, and it caused many newsrooms to lead their broadcasts and home pages with those unforgettable images. When more wildfires brought orange skies to New York three years later, they made headlines again, but without the same alarm; after all, we’d seen this before.
The science is unequivocal: Our planetary house is on fire, the flames are injuring more and more people every year, even as humanity fans those flames by burning ever more oil, gas, and coal. Yet most news coverage is sleepwalking through these developments, as if they are simply the new normal.
When mega-fires scorched Los Angeles in January, the story led home pages and broadcasts around the world for days. But most reporting didn’t even mention climate change, an egregious lapse when the scientific link between mega-fires and a hotter planet is well-established. When the World Meteorological Organization last week revealed that the Paris Agreement goal of limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius is now effectively unreachable and even the 2-degree-C goal is in peril, many newsrooms barely reported it, though either scenario would shrink polar ice sheets and unleash catastrophic sea-level rise. As US president Donald Trump and congressional Republicans try to pass a bill killing the Inflation Reduction Act’s clean energy measures, most news coverage highlights only the bill’s tax and immigration implications.
Thousands of scientists have long said in peer-reviewed journals that humanity faces nothing less than a climate emergency. CCNow has urged our fellow journalists to reflect this scientific judgment in our reporting. Doing so could well attract more readers, viewers and listeners, for as The 89 Percent Project has shown, 80 to 89% of the world’s people want their governments to take stronger climate action.
Yet climate change barely surfaces in most news coverage. The media is no longer guilty of “climate silence,” a small if important victory. But as Gessen observes, “comparatively small victories don’t alter the direction of our transformation –they don’t even slow it down measurably,” they simply normalize it. “And so, just when we most need to act… we tend to be lulled into complacency.”
From Us
Talking Shop: ‘The Movement Is the Story.’ Join CCNow and Solutions Journalism Network Tuesday, June 10, for a one-hour webinar on “movement journalism” and the need for more reporting on climate activism. Moderated by climate and environmental justice editor Breanna Draxler, the event will build on SJN’s and CCNow’s jointly published Climate Blueprint for Media Transformation. Learn more and register.
Talking Shop: 89 Percent Project Showcase. Yesterday, CCNow hosted a webinar exploring journalists’ participation in our Joint Coverage Week about the wide majority of people globally who want their governments to do more to fight climate change, as well as how to cover the story moving forward as The 89 Percent Project continues. Watch a recording.
Social media training. CCNow is launching a free training program to help journalists report and produce social-first climate change journalism. The workshop series, which will explore how to engage and grow an audience on social platforms, will span three sessions this summer. Learn more and apply.
Power & Progress newsletter. The final edition of our pop-up newsletter about the politics of the renewable energy transition spotlights the role philanthropists could play in filling funding gaps, as cuts by the Trump administration strand many climate change–related research efforts and other initiatives. Check out the Power & Progress archive and let us know what you thought!
Noteworthy Stories
Relocated but not home. As part of a federally funded relocation effort, nearly 300 Alaska residents moved from Newtok, a sinking village not far from the Bering Sea, to Mertarvik, a new settlement nearby. The move was meant to be a model for similar relocations that will be necessary amid sea-level rise, but Mertarvik is plagued by failing infrastructure, including no running water, intermittent electricity, and homes that expose residents to harsh weather — a grim warning of the US’s failure to prepare for climate change. By Emily Schwing and Ash Adams for The Washington Post, in cooperation with ProPublica and KYUK Public Media in Bethel, Alaska…
Republicans defund red states. A new report finds that 77% of the $185 billion in spending spurred by clean-energy tax credits in the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act will benefit GOP-led congressional districts — investments that are now at risk, as lawmakers in Washington debate a Republican-backed funding bill that will gut much of the IRA. By Ben Geman for Axios…
Solar in coal country. Catholic parishioners across Eastern Kentucky are turning to clean energy, in response to direction by the Lexington Diocese — the first diocese in the US to pledge it will reach net-zero carbon emissions — to implement plans in line with the late Pope Francis’s nearly decade-old encyclical “Laudato Si’, on Care for Our Common Home.” By Brian Roewe for National Catholic Reporter…
Wartime forests. Since the start of Russia’s war in Ukraine in 2022, nearly 5 million acres of forest have burned due to rockets, shellings, and other explosions, accounting for a huge portion of Ukraine’s overall carbon emissions. Despite the loss, experts say it’s an opportunity to rethink how the country manages its forests in the future, with climate change in mind. By Chad Small for Grist…
Greenland voices. Greenland is warming four times faster than the global average, yet as changes in its landscape force the island to the center of the global stage, the voices of Greenlanders are often missing from the discourse. “Against the backdrop of growing international attention to Greenland, the Inuit Indigenous people must make their voices heard,” one government leader said; as Greenlanders say, “Nothing about us without us.” By Liu Dong and Zhang Yang for China’s climate magazine The Paper…
Quote of the Week
“We’re physically seeing the impacts of a changing climate on these communities. And the fact that we don’t have a government framework for dealing with these issues is not just an Alaska problem, it’s a national problem.”
– Don Antrobus, a climate adaptation consultant for the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium,
regarding one Alaska village’s fraught federal relocation
From Bluesky
Cuts have consequences, illustrated. As seen on TV 📺
— John Morales (@johnmoralestv.bsky.social) June 2, 2025 at 8:45 PM
John Morales, longtime meteorologist for NBC 6 South Florida, explains on-air how the federal government’s “sledgehammer attack on science in general” and cuts to the National Weather Service will limit his and other meteorologists’ ability to deliver accurate forecasts, including on life-threatening storms. “We may be flying blind,” Morales says.
Resources, Events, Etc.
Climate journalism and mental health. New research finds that nearly half of climate journalists report “moderate to severe” symptoms of depression and anxiety connected to their work — and one in five report “prominent” symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, nearly four times the public average in safe countries. These findings and more were explored in a recent event hosted by the Oxford Climate Journalism Network.
- In a piece, six OCJN members — from Brazil, Burkina Faso, Denmark, Nigeria, Trinidad and Tobago, and the UK — reflect on their own mental health struggles and share how they’ve coped. By Greg Cochrane for the Reuters Institute…
GIJN awards and conference. The Global Investigative Journalism Network has announced finalists for its Global Shining Light Award (see large outlet finalists and small and medium outlet finalists). Winners will be showcased at an award ceremony at the GIJN’s conference this November in Kuala Lumpur. Learn more about that conference and register.
Jobs, Opportunities, Etc.
Inside Climate News is hiring part-time fellows for their fall 2025 program (New York).
Applications are open for Journalism Science Alliance grants, which “support collaborations between journalists and scientists to produce investigative journalism grounded in scientific evidence and focused on topics of public interest.” Learn more and apply by August 4.
Green Queen Media is accepting applications for the Climate Feed Fellowship, which “aims to empower six emerging journalists” with writing opportunities, mentorship, professional connections, and more. The fellowship is part of Climate Feed, “a new initiative focused on helping reporters better understand and communicate the vital link between food and climate change.” Learn more and apply by June 20.
USC Annenberg is accepting applications for the Health and Climate Change Reporting Fellowship, which “supports ambitious investigative or explanatory projects about health [physical, mental, or both] in the context of wildfires, hurricanes, flooding, extreme heat, and other disastrous impacts of climate change.” Learn more and apply by September 3.
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