How to Cover Climate Now

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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again everyone. Now our climate story of the week, and in this edition our climate story of the week meets the Climate Journalist of the Year. Climate Journalist of the Year is an honor, just announced this morning by the climate journalism consortium called Covering Climate Now, which includes WNYC and many other news organizations.

The reporter who has been named Climate Journalist of the Year is Justin Worland, from Time Magazine based in Washington, where he covers climate change and the intersection of politics, policy and society. He joins us now along with the co-founder of Covering Climate Now, Mark Hertsgaard, who is also the environment correspondent for the Nation Magazine and author of the book Hot: Living Through the Next 50 Years on Earth. Mark, welcome back and, Justin, congratulations on being named Climate Journalist of the Year this morning, and welcome to WNYC.

Justin Worland: Thank you. Thanks for the congratulations. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Mark, I'll give you the first word about Justin. Why did you select him as Climate Journalist of the Year?

Mark Hertsgaard: Thanks, Brian and Hey, Justin. We're thrilled to do this and I should say it's not just me. The 2022 Covering Climate Now journalism awards were decided by juries of distinguished colleagues from all around the world. We had over 600 entries into these awards this year and about 90 journalists got together and weeded through them and came up with our selections. In addition to Justin as the Climate Journalist of the Year, there's 22 other winners.

I urge everyone to go to our website@coveringclimatenow.org. You can see who won in the writing and television and audio and so forth. Some of the other winners are The Guardian and Aljazeera and Agence France-Presse.

In Justin's case we looked at a couple things and as we said in the basically the winning description of his work, Time Magazine has a long distinguished history of really putting the climate story front and center going back to 1988, 1989, technically when they name endangered planet earth as their person of the year. Justin has continued that tradition, he writes on a dazzling array of subjects. He writes in a way that is very accessible to all readers, not just the average person, but to policy makers and covers never loses sight of the justice aspects of the climate story.

There was one other thing in Justin's case that really tipped the balance in his favor because there were other strong candidates as well, but Justin has done great service to the field of climate journalism by helping to found a really exciting project called the Uproot Project, which he'll, I'm sure be able to talk more about, but it's basically a network for journalist of color who cover environmental issues.

The combination of his journalistic work and his service to the field is what led us to name Justin Worland, the Climate Journalist of the Year. He's a perfect representation of what we say that better news coverage is an essential climate solution because it informs ordinary people and policymakers alike about not just the heartbreaking realities, but the common sense solutions. Those are the people who can drive change.

Brian Lehrer: Justin, I want to ask you in a few minutes about some of your really interesting recent articles but you want to tell us more about what Mark just referred to the Uproot Project that you founded. Can you tell our listeners what that is and why you think it's needed?

Justin Worland: Happy to. To start, I do want to make sure it's co-founded and one of maybe a dozen of us who really took the lead we met in Seattle in 2019 to talk a bit about the whole and environmental journalism, both in the coverage in terms of the impact of climate and environmental issues on people of color, but also among the journalists who cover these issues. It's perhaps no surprise that there is not an equal representation among climate journalists of people of color.

We founded this group, this network with the idea that we would help foster a pathway for journalists of color who are interested in climate issues to join the field to feel like they had a network and a community to help them grow and hoping that in doing so that would also help advance the coverage. That climate would be understood by the public, not just as an issue of carbon concentration in the atmosphere, but also as something that was impacting people and impacting communities of color unequally.

We started in 2019 and finally launched it last year. We're working on a range of things from trainings to a database to connect journalists with editors and to connect journalists with diverse sources and really a whole list of things that I could chat about for too long. The Uproot Project is certainly something I'm proud to be a part of and to help lead.

Brian Lehrer: That's great. What's your background? You're a senior correspondent for Time at this point I see. How'd you get into journalism and how'd you wind up developing climate change as a specialty focus?

Justin Worland: I did my college newspaper, really my high school newspaper and I got sucked into journalism. I actually started working at Time out of college. I started doing fact checking and knew what they called breaking news at the time, which was following whatever story was breaking news, what it was. Of all I did a little bit of health coverage, and then finally it was 2015.

The opportunity came about to do climate coverage, and frankly I was a little skeptical, I didn't know too much about it, but I thought about it, did a lot of reading over the course of a few months and realized, whoa, why aren't people talking about this more? This is going to be the most important issue and people haven't woken up to it. It's really been a wild seven and a half years of seeing the issue rise on people's radar.

I think also it's the approach that I've taken to covering the issue as I've alluded to is really writing about climate and everything that we do and everything in our society as my title suggests not so much thinking solely about the traditional ways of covering, whether that be covering a study or covering a policy, thinking about how do we connect it to what people do. That's been the focus for the last seven years.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, if you're just joining us, we have two guests, Justin Worland, who was just speaking Time Magazine Senior Correspondent covering primarily climate change. He has just been named the Climate Journalist of the Year by the consortium of news organizations, which includes WNYC and many others called Covering Climate Now and Covering Climate Now co-founder Mark Hertsgaard, who is also the Nation Magazine's environment correspondent is also with us.

Justin, let me ask you about some of your recent reporting. You had an article last month about progressive Congressman Ro Khanna of California. That article was called, Why Ro Khanna Wants to Talk About Gas Prices. I see your premise was that inflation, especially for gasoline is generally considered an issue that favors Republicans, but Ro Khanna likes to talk about the issue. What's his take that you were reporting on?

Justin Worland: He has said that if Democrats allow Republicans and certain fossil fuel industry leaders to take control of the narrative they're going to blame Democrats, they're going to blame the Biden administration for high gas prices. Ro Khanna's argument is really that if they flip the narrative and explain what's actually causing in his view the rise in gas prices that will actually play in their favor and his argument, which of course is true is that it's not necessarily the policy decisions of the Biden administration, but it's actually the profit seeking of the industry.

Brian Lehrer: Mark, do you want to weigh in on this? This is going to be one of the make or break issues for who controls Congress in the midterm elections. We just played clips on this show yesterday from a Republican primary candidate's debate for governor of New York. When they were asked what a governor could do about inflation, they all talked about fracking for natural gas in New York state, part of the larger narrative that this is no time for restricting fossil fuels production, as much as environmentalists want, because people are hurting so much economically.

Can climate concern politicians who still want to restrict drilling and force other changes away from fossil fuels potentially win this argument in this election year?

Mark Hertsgaard: I think that's what made that Ro Khanna piece by Justin Worland so interesting is that it cut against a narrative that to my dismay, frankly, so many of our colleagues in the mainstream media have let the fossil fuel industry and their paid representatives in Congress get away with. It is absolute, utter nonsense, and simply anti factual to say that, "Oh, we can frack our way out of high gas prices, where we can drill our way out of high gas prices."

To get those kinds of projects up and running takes years, folks. It's not going to affect the supply and demand in the short-term. This is the same playbook that big oil has been using time and time again. I'm old enough to remember the 1970s gas lines and so forth. They've been using this line ever since. It's never been true, and so often just like with Charlie Brown with the football, so many in the media fall for that.

This is as I say, one of the reasons that Justin Worland really stands out as the Climate Journalist of the Year, is that not only does he not fall for that, but he points out, no, here's an alternative explanation for what's really going on here.

Brian Lehrer: Justin, you wrote an article with the related headline of, Gas Prices Don't Reflect Their Environmental Cost. Do you mean their monetary environmental cost?

Justin Worland: The meaning of that headline and the point of that story is to look at the externalities, the effects on the negative economic effects of burning gas, which we all bear as a society, but we don't pay for. I mean, we pay for it in the costs of healthcare, in the costs of the effects of climate change, but you're not paying for it at the pump. In that story, I looked at some of the research on, how do we calculate the true environmental cost of burning gasoline? I don't have the numbers at my fingertips, but it's no surprise that we aren't paying for that. If we were really to say, "Hey, when you fill up, you're going to pay for all those costs," we would be paying much, much more.

Of course, I'm a journalist, I'm not an advocate. I don't think anybody would advocate for actually saying, everyday people, particularly some of the most vulnerable people should be paying much, much more for gas, but it is a useful exercise to think about the fact that some of the actions that we do have a real cost on society that we don't pay for.

Brian Lehrer: We do pay the monetary cost of various lack of environmental policies out of our pocketbooks as consumers. There was a bill in the New York State Legislature this year that wound up failing. We covered it as part of this Climate Story Of The Week series when it was introduced earlier this year. Then we covered it again after it failed in the New York State Legislature just the other week that would have forced producers to pay for packaging of their products that winds up polluting the environment and that the public winds up paying for in recycling costs, in garbage disposal costs.

It would've forced producers to bake the cost of the packaging into what they produce. Well, that failed, but it's another hidden environmental cost that actually comes out of our pocketbook that we don't think about when we get some package that we buy or get shipped to us and don't think about the environment and therefore the monetary requirements of that.

Listeners, your questions welcome for the next few minutes for Mark Hertsgaard, founder of Covering Climate Now, and Justin Worland from Time Magazine who Covering Climate Now just named Climate Journalist of the Year, maybe on the topic that we've started on, gasoline price inflation and the politics of that and climate change or anything related, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer.

Justin, I see another of your recent articles was called The Small Local Election With Potentially Major Climate Change Significance. This one was about one of the races in last month's Georgia primary. Of course, the Georgia primary was in the news for other reasons primarily having to do with certifying election results. What election in Georgia, what climate issue, and how did it turn out?

Justin Worland: The election I was referencing is that the public utility commission race in Georgia, there were several seats that were up for election in that primary. The issue at stake, I mean, people often don't know, and it's understandable. There's a lot that people are paying attention to, but that many of the decisions about our energy system and where we get our electricity are made by public utility commissions that have to approve what their utilities are doing. They set the rules of the road in a very hands-on way.

In Georgia, there were several of these seats up, and there was a candidate who was really running to try to reframe the way that we talk about electricity, to talk about it as a justice issue, while also talking about the climate impacts, and so I used her as a lens into the Georgia situation, but also around the country. There were many of these races, there are many of these races and hopefully to raise awareness for people who maybe aren't paying attention to what their public utility commissions are doing.

She did not win. Chandra Farley is her name, and she did not win, but I do, from what I can tell, think that she changed the conversation a bit in Georgia and got people thinking about some of these issues in ways that they perhaps were not thinking,

Brian Lehrer: To take a call from somebody who I think listened to the show yesterday when we played the clips I refer to of the candidates on the Republican side for governor of New York who wanted to tame inflation by resuming fracking. Remember governor Andrew Cuomo had banned fracking statewide a number of years ago. Tom in Franklin Square, you're on WNYC. Hi Tom.

Tom: Hi. Good morning, Brian. I didn't hear the part on your show yesterday, but I was watching the debates live. Is Andrew Giuliani serious when he says reignite New York and restart fracking? Does he not understand that fracking can cause your tap water to become flammable? Is he trolling us or is he just totally clueless?

Brian Lehrer: That's funny. I didn't pick up on that. I guess if he used the word reignite, he was not making that connection. Just to be fair to him, all four of the candidates in that debate called for restarting fracking in New York state as a way to fight inflation. They were on the same page on all of that. Climate did not come up in that debate. I mentioned that yesterday too.

They weren't asked an explicit climate question, nor when they said they opposed, or when they want to resume fracking. When they opposed congestion pricing for driving a car into the Manhattan business district, they didn't even mention climate as a factor and even argue that the climate benefits don't outweigh what they see as the other benefits of doing the things that they want to do.

It didn't even get acknowledged as an issue. I'm just saying as a little observation on that candidate's debate. Diane in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Diane.

Diane: Hi. I'm wondering price control is a possible option to be implemented on the oil industry at this time?

Brian Lehrer: Mark, do you understand the question?

Mark Hertsgaard: Sure. Of course, it's a possible option in theory, but that would have to come out of Washington DC, and that would require President Biden to use his emergency authority, his executive authority rather as a national emergency. We did this during World War II with price controls. We did it to some extent during the Nixon administration in the 1970s, but I don't think there's any realistic possibility of that right now.

Although President Biden has invoked his executive authority to help promote the production of solar and wind panels and turbines and so forth, solar panels and wind turbines, but I don't think that's going to happen with price controls. I don't think Biden has that approach to the issue and the pushback inside of Washington would probably be a bridge too far.

Brian Lehrer: Diane, thank you for your call. Justin, you had another article last month. You were very busy in the month of May I see, called This Is How We Quit Big Oil. I didn't get to read into that one, but the headline is intriguing. Does someone know how we quit big oil?

Justin Worland: The headline of course is as a teaser and the conclusion is obviously more nuanced, but the thrust of that story really was about the profitability of the oil industry. I took a look back over the course of the past 10 years. Really there's been this push from climate activists to abandon the oil and gas industry, for investors to abandon the oil and gas industry on the basis of it not being a particularly successful industry.

The returns over the last 10 years were really bad if you invested in oil and gas. In the last six months, that narrative has completely flipped and so the point that I'm making in this story is, it's going to be very hard for us to abandon big oil, for investors to abandon big oil, for the US to abandon big oil so long as it is so profitable.

Again, not endorsing any particular policy, but it ends with a reminder to think about some of the policy solutions that might help tackle this conundrum, whether that be the discussion of a windfall tax or maybe that's finding alternatives that ways to push forward, clean energy that the current political dynamics will allow, but just ways in which the industry is not such a behemoth that is making a lot of money for investors and for the country, frankly. I think the idea is that that is a path towards pushing the industry out.

Brian Lehrer: Couple of other listener comments related before we ran out of time, listener tweets, to expect the American people to use their minds to drill down through propaganda, to discover the true reasons for high gas prices is to be naive, a fool. Mark, what do you say to that listener as a evangelist for good climate journalism? This listener seems to almost be fatalistic and think it doesn't matter if we do deep analysis, the propaganda is always going to win.

Mark Hertsgaard: I find that very unfortunate and that person is clinging to their cynicism and feeling self righteous about it. I have to wonder with whether they have children or loved ones, because if you start with that attitude, that it is all doomed no matter what, that we cannot win this fight, guess what? You're not going to win the fight. It's like going into a basketball game and looking at the other team and saying, "There's no way we can beat those guys." Then going out on the floor, you're not going to beat them.

The only way we can win this fight and preserve a livable planet for my 17 year old daughter and for the rest of her generation around the world who I call generation hot, the only way is to get rid of that smug cynicism and not look down on your fellow citizens. I totally disagree with the idea that Americans are stupid. They're not. There's a lot of propaganda out there and a lot of people fall victim to it, the way to change that is not to denigrate them, but to try and welcome them to a better way of understanding things.

The fact is and this gets back to your point about the Republican primary, even most self-identified Republicans in this country, if they're under the age of 40, they care about climate change. They even want more climate change news, which is part of what we're trying to do with Covering Climate Now. That's for an obvious reason because they know that the rest of their lives and the rest of their children's lives are going to be looking down the barrel of this climate emergency.

Brian Lehrer: Mark, one piece of pushback. We don't have time to put any more callers on the air, but somebody who's on hold who wants to push back, I'll summarize their comment, which is, liberals have been dreaming of these high prices, such hypocrisy. I think the point is that advocates for preventing climate change want a carbon tax want gasoline prices to be higher at the behest of government through the actions of government, in order to discourage use to protect the climate. Therefore high gasoline prices are on purpose from the democratic party and from the left in general, politically. Do you disagree?

Mark Hertsgaard: 10 seconds, nonsense. The biggest and smartest climate policy is one that says, "Yes, let's price the carbon and then give the money back to the American people," just like we do in the state of Alaska for the last 30 years, every Alaskan gets a check every year for running the Pacific pipeline there.

Brian Lehrer: All right.

Mark Hertsgaard: That's the same thing we should do with climate.

Brian Lehrer: Justin Worland covers climate for Time Magazine. He's just been named by the news consortium Covering Climate Now, which includes WNYC and many other news organizations, the Climate Journalist of the Year. Congratulations again, Justin. Now a lot of our listeners may start following your work on Time Magazine as you cover climate.

Justin Worland: Thank you so much for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Mark, have you aggregated the work of your climate journalism award ease because there were others in addition to Justin Worland, somewhere online that people can see easily?

Mark Hertsgaard: Absolutely come to our website @coveringclimatenow.org and you will see all 23 winners including my dear colleague, Justin Worland.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you both.

 

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