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The day after a few news organizations reported that air and ocean temperatures had set new records, The Washington Post reported that Donald Trump told about two dozen oil executives he would slash oil regulations and open drilling on day one if they would just donate $1,000,000,000 to his campaign.
You all are wealthy enough, he said, that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House. At the dinner, he vowed to immediately reverse dozens of President Biden’s environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted, according to people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation.
The attendance list included about two dozen executives from firms like Chevron, ExxonMobile and Occidental Petroleum, according to The Post. Reporters for The New York Times added the American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s lobbying arm, and named the organizer: “oil billionaire Harold Hamm.” We can thank (or curse) Hamm for fracking.
David A. Graham, writing for The Atlantic, points out that Trump’s offer “is entirely legal and absolutely corrupt.” Neither The Post nor The Times addressed the legality of the indirect request for a bribe.*
Neither story linked fossil fuels to climate change.
The BBC reported Wednesday that “the world’s oceans have broken temperature records every single day over the past year.” The trigger: a report from Copernicus Climate Change Service, a European Union agency. Axios reported 13 months of record ocean temperatures. Reuters reported that April 2024 was the hottest on record.
Neither The Post nor The Times chose to share those records with their readers on Wednesday. Thus it is no real surprise that neither organization mentioned the state of the climate in their report on Trump’s legal request for a bribe that would make matters worse.
Do political reporters truly live in such silos? Or do their editors demand that context is verboten?
Trump v Biden on the fate of the planet
Trump is infamous for asserting that climate change is “a hoax;” during his presidency he “weakened or wiped out more than 125 environmental rules and policies.”
Conversely, President Joe Biden has “finalized more than 100 new environmental regulations” targeting climate change. In 2020, Biden “ran for president on the most ambitious climate action platform of any major presidential candidate in U.S. history.”
According to The Times, Biden “signed a sweeping law that pumps $370 billion into incentives for clean energy and electric vehicles and has enacted a suite of tough regulations designed to sharply reduce emissions from the burning of oil, gas and coal.” And yet, “the fossil fuel industry has also enjoyed record profits under the Biden administration.”
Americans are outliers on belief in climate change
More Russians than Americans believe climate change is “a serious threat to humanity.”
In both Canada and Mexico, more citizens (9-in-10) see climate change as a threat than Americans (3-in-4).
Americans are divided on the importance of climate change action.
Pew Research data suggest less than half (46%) of Americans “say human activity is the primary reason why the Earth is warming.” One in four (26%) believe any climate change is exogenous change; 14% do not believe the Earth is warming (2023 data). Only about half of us (54%) think climate change is a “major threat.”
Two-thirds of U.S. adults say the country should prioritize developing renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar, over expanding the production of oil, coal and natural gas, according to a survey conducted in June 2023… the public is generally reluctant to phase out fossil fuels altogether… Among Americans ages 18 to 29, 48% say the U.S. should exclusively use renewables, compared with 52% who say the U.S. should use a mix of energy sources, including fossil fuels.
Little wonder, then, that, climate change scientists despair of action (Guardian research unveiled Wednesday, also ignored by The Post and The Times).
“I think we are headed for major societal disruption within the next five years,” said Gretta Pecl, at the University of Tasmania. “[Authorities] will be overwhelmed by extreme event after extreme event, food production will be disrupted.”
It’s not like that pessimism is new. Last fall, the United Nations reported that global temperatures are destined to rise 2.5ºC (4.5ºF) to 2.9ºC (5.2ºF) above preindustrial levels withough additional government policies. “At 3C of warming, scientists predict the world could pass several catastrophic points of no return, from the runaway melting of ice sheets to the Amazon rainforest drying out.”
Although Reuters and the Associated Press reported the release of the UN’s annual Emissions Gap report, there is no evidence (Google search of the site) that The Post did.
* According to Mirriam-Webster, a bribe is “money or favor given or promised in order to influence the judgment or conduct of a person in a position of trust.”
Featured image created by Kathy Gill in Photoshop using CoPilot and an image from Flickr account DonkeyHotey.
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Known for gnawing at complex questions like a terrier with a bone. Digital evangelist, writer, teacher. Transplanted Southerner; teach newbies to ride motorcycles. @kegill (Twitter and Mastodon.social); wiredpen.com