Observations on global warming and the media

In the aftermath of 11 September 2001, the media reported endlessly on the likely identities and motives of those responsible, on the options open to western leaders and on the need for decisive action. For example, a Guardian editorial spoke of "the heartfelt conviction that Britain and the British people . . . will do all in their power to assist the American government in finding those who are responsible . . . For this day of carnage and tears there can be no justification or excuse."

Compare and contrast the media response to the carnage and tears wreaked this August by climate change: 13,600 additional deaths reported from France's record-breaking heatwave; 1,500 heat-related deaths in India; 1,316 deaths in Portugal; between 500 and 1,000 deaths in the Netherlands. In Italy and Spain, death rates are up 20 per cent in some areas.

Professor John Schellnhuber, director of research at the UK's Tyndall Centre, says: "What we are seeing is absolutely unusual. We know that global warming is proceeding apace, but most of us were thinking that in 20-30 years' time we would be seeing hot spells [like this]. But it's happening now."

Last year the US National Academy of Sciences warned of a very sudden global climate disaster, perhaps within the next decade. Reviewing the academy's report, Michael Meacher, then environment minister in the UK, wrote: "We do not have much time . . . If we do not act quickly to minimise runaway feedback effects, we run the risk of making this planet, our home, uninhabitable."

So where are the excoriating media campaigns insisting that there is "no justification or excuse" for the lunatics who have killed the Kyoto Protocol, the only hope of starting to tackle global warming? The US National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), for example, "strongly opposes the [Kyoto] accord" and praises President George W Bush for "now pursuing a more reasonable approach to climate change". The US Chamber of Commerce declares: "The Kyoto Protocol is a flawed treaty that is not in the US interest." You will do well to find even whispered references to this depth of business opposition in our corporate press. Even the Guardian and the Independent have failed to investigate the NAM's opposition and its significance.

Instead, a threat that makes international terrorism look trivial is often treated whimsically. The Independent's editors commented on Britain hitting the 100 F mark: "Inevitably, it was late and we almost despaired of its arriving. Finally, though, the wish produced the fact . . . We can boast that ours was the generation that first experienced subtropical Britain." An equally surreal editorial in the Guardian (headed "Mustn't grumble") read: "At last the hot nights, strumming crickets and warm sea which we usually pay so much to visit for a fortnight's package holiday are here on our doorstep. Rejoice, as Lady Thatcher once instructed us, rejoice."

No matter that thousands have died already, or that the London-based Global Commons Institute predicts more than two million deaths from climate-change-related disasters over the next decade. Journalists joke about airliners slamming into buildings at their peril. Challenging the fabricated "threat" of Iraqi WMDs can get you barracked and smeared, dragged before committees of MPs and banned from reporting. But climate change has not been labelled a "serious and current threat" by the people with the power to make things real for journalists.

David Edwards is co-editor of MediaLens (www.medialens.org)

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