Co-written with Stephen Ban
Climate change is the most pressing environmental issue of the century. Without a dramatic about-face in international and national policy, the world risks catastrophic environmental change. Although this has been known among scientists, many people continue to be blasé about climate change. Why?
This murder mystery has no single villain and no smoking gun. We all share the burden of responsibility. Environmental scientists lack expertise in communication. Powerful fossil fuel industries spend many vast sums of money creating confusion through marketing and “think tanks.” Politicians worry about the next election cycle, not the next generation.
Journalists are trained to present both sides of any story and credentials of those quoted, and to leave it to readers to decide what to believe. This is a crucial element of journalism that has generally served society well. Ironically, however, striving for balance in reporting actually promotes an unbalanced perspective of climate science. This approach often fails when reporting on scientific issues.
In science, experts gain reputations based on their record of weighing complex sets of evidence in unbiased, insightful ways. Other scientists operate as rebels and sometimes class clowns: they draw attention to themselves by challenging prevailing ideas, sometimes with scant evidence to back up their own. Rebels play a crucial role in improving science, class clowns less so.
The problem with media reporting climate change is that too often journalists give equal weight to the class clowns as the well-respected experts, without sufficiently reporting the weight of evidence and scientific opinion. Despite occasional appearances, science is not a circus, but society’s greatest sleuth and source of innovation.
