Column: Climate Has Already Changed. It’s Insanity Not to Talk About It

It’s hopeful to me that my column on Climate and Clean Energy has been running monthly now in my hometown paper, the Midland Daily News, since the beginning of the year.
Just as I’ve been focusing on the hyper-local politics of siting clean energy, township by township across the midwest, delivering factual information through vectors people trust is an important component. The Daily punches above its weight in a critical state, since the community is home to the HQ of Dow/Dupont, has a large number of mostly moderate, Republican big donors, and an influential, well educated and active population. It was said years ago that the community was comparable to Los Alamos in the number of PhDs per capita, – but for perspective, the paper’s food column recently featured a review of Taco Bell’s new Crunchwrap Supreme.
Under Editor Dave Clark, the paper has improbably become one of the most editorially progressive in the state, and people seem hungry for it.
The columns are getting traction through social media and reaching people that might not otherwise get the best information. Hope you’ll help me spread these.

Peter Sinclair in the Midland Dailly News:

As I write this, Hurricane Beryl is churning through the Caribbean as a Category 5 storm, by far the earliest cyclone of that strength ever recorded.

It’s the product of ocean waters as warm as they would historically have been in August or September, yet we are barely in July.

It is mute evidence of the remorseless physics of a warmer ocean.

In the geological blink of an eye, humanity’s emissions of heat trapping gases have given us a different planet than the one our parents knew.

Amid a summer of record heat, rain storms, hail and floods, every day we watch video of bewildered residents across the Heartland telling interviewers, “I’ve never seen anything like this before..”

That’s going to be a common refrain in coming years and decades. Climate is not just going to change, it’s already changed. The conditions that most Americans grew up with, that most cities, towns, roads, bridges, homes, and infrastructure were built for, are gone, never to return, at least not on a human time frame.

Yet, as CNN Climate correspondent Bill Weir wrote recently, “it is still a radical novelty to hear your local newscasters connect these facts with the unnatural disasters in their own back yard.”

Weir expressed frustration at the media’s inability to make the obvious climate connection.

“Say it” I yell at too many live shots amid the wreckage. “If you can’t say the words ‘climate change’ when you are standing in it, I know people who can!” he wrote.

Weir continued “When my preschooler reaches my age, science predicts that the average American city will feel like it has moved more than 500 miles south, and our Brooklyn neighborhood will have the heat and humidity of Jonesboro, Arkansas.”

“This will rearrange everything: insurance rates, property values, building codes, growing seasons, supply chains, immigrant streams and cultural identities — which means there is a bottomless well of story ideas for every local newsroom in North America to help their viewers survive and thrive.”

Still, too often, the “C” word is missing from local, and even national reporting.

A survey by Media Matters showed that only 5% of 310 segments across national TV news about a recent Southwest heat wave mentioned climate change, even though more frequent heat waves are one of the clearest indicators of human caused global warming.

That lack of connection in media coverage may have made it harder for Americans to ask questions and have conversations about the issue.

According to a survey from Yale University, 66 percent of Americans say they only hear about climate change in the media once a month, or less.

Not surprising, then, that a similar two-thirds of Americans say they rarely or never discuss the climate crisis with family and friends. Like abuse in a dysfunctional family, climate lingers as the unspoken elephant in the room

One reason for the media silence is fear. Chris Gloninger started out as a TV Weathercaster at small stations like  WNEM TV in Saginaw. Over years he advanced to become Chief Meteorologist at KCCI TV in Des Moines, Iowa. Chris was bold and determined to put the increasingly extreme weather events in the midwest firmly in the context of a changing climate.

After a series of death threats to himself and his family, Gloninger quit broadcasting. He took a job as a climate specialist with a consulting firm on the east coast, where he says he feels “happier and safer.”

Another Meteorologist, Jeff Berardelli, told me that it was “potentially taboo and even dangerous” for a broadcaster to talk about climate change in much of the country. Still, determined to communicate on climate change, he found a receptive home as Chief Meteorologist at WFLA in Tampa, where storm-shaken Florida audiences have been eager to get more context, which Jeff provides with regular “Berardelli Bonus” climate segments.Other TV meteorologists are pushing back even more dramatically. Recently, Steve MacLaughlin, of NBC 6 in Miami, took air time to strongly criticize recent Florida legislation that removed the requirement for the state to consider climate change when creating energy policy, and roll back nearly all references to climate change in state law – “in spite of the fact that the state of Florida, over the last couple of years, has seen record heat, record flooding, record raining, record insurance rates and the corals are dying all around the state,” he stated.

As Beryl is showing us, it’s already too late avoid severe and costly climate impacts.

Scientists tell us we can still head off the most cataclysmic scenarios, if we act in time. But we can’t solve a problem we are unwilling to talk about.

It’s well past time, in our families, workplaces, schools, and places of worship, we opened that discussion.

Peter Sinclair is a Midland resident and internationally-recognized videographer who studies climate change and renewable energy issues.