OMNI
CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS, #167, FEBRUARY 26, 2024. Compiled by Dick Bennett
Dana R. Fisher Saving Ourselves:
Climate Shocks to Climate Action (on climate inaction).
Julie Hollar. Grossly Inadequate Reporting by the
Mainstream Media of the Climate Emergency.
“Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks To Climate Action”
By Michaela Herrmann, DeSmog. PopularResistance.org
(2-15-24). Professor Dana R. Fisher’snew book, Saving Ourselves: Climate
Shocks to Climate Action. Dana R.
Fisher argues that
there is a realistic path forward for climate action―but only through mass mobilization
that responds to the growing severity and frequency of disastrous events. She assesses the current state of affairs and shows why
public policy and private-sector efforts have been ineffective. Building upon years of
research on activism, democracy, and climate politics, Fisher explores the
state of the climate movement today to understand how radical direct action is
evolving as the climate crisis worsens. In an interview with DeSmog’s
Michaela Herrmann, Fisher outlines why she thinks “severe, durable climate
shocks” will be required to shake the world out of the fossil fuel status
quo once and for all. She draws upon years of data gathered from climate
protests.... -more-
JULIE HOLLAR . “Humans Might Be About to Break the Ocean? Don’t Stop the Presses” [You couldn’t if you wanted
because they’re not running they way
they should!]. (JULY 31, 2023).
https://fair.org/home/humans-might-be-about-to-break-the-ocean-dont-stop-the-presses/
When a new
peer-reviewed study (Nature Communications, 7/25/23) announces
that a crucial Atlantic Ocean circulation system, a cornerstone of the global
climate, may collapse as quickly as two years from now, you’d think news
outlets might want to put that on the front page. The AMOC (Atlantic
Meridional Overturning Circulation) moves
warmer water from the tropics to the North Atlantic, where it cools, sinks and
returns down the US East Coast. Its collapse would be a “climate tipping point”
with, as the British Guardian (7/25/23) explained.
. . .
The New
York Times (7/26/23) was one of
the only major outlets to put the news on its front page, with a well-reported
piece by Raymond Zhong. It also did better than many, mentioning “human-driven
warming” in the second paragraph, and paraphrasing a scientist that
“uncertainty about the timing of an AMOC collapse shouldn’t be taken as an
excuse for not reducing greenhouse-gas emissions to try to avoid it.” That
scientist, Hali Kilbourne, was given the last word: “It is very plausible that we’ve fallen off a cliff
already and don’t know it,” Dr. Kilbourne said. “I fear, honestly, that by the
time any of this is settled science, it’s way too late to act.” Yet even
here, no connections were made to concrete policy options, and no policy experts or activists were quoted to offer them. The only other front-page US newspaper
mention FAIR could find in the Nexis database was in the Charleston Post
& Courier (7/25/23), which
similarly made no connections to policy.
In the context
of a summer of extreme climate events, including unprecedented heatwaves, ocean temperatures and wildfires, we
desperately need a media system that treats the climate crisis like the
five-alarm fire that it is, and demands accountability from the politicians and
industries—not least the fossil fuel industry—driving us off the cliff.