I just went to Google News, putting the words “Durban Climate Change Conference” in the search box. I thought that today being the last day of the conference there might be some news about the international meeting that has been going on for over a week now.
The news stories that came up were from the Guardian, Vancouver Sun, Irish Times, and other publications from other countries. There were two stories from American news sources, one from CNN and another from the AP, that covered events of the conference. A search of the online front pages of the New York Times and Los Angeles Times brought up no stories of the Durban conference.
On the other hand, when I put “Newt Gingrich” in the search box of Google News, stories from the Los Angeles Times, CBS, ABC, Fox News, Washington Post, PBS, New York Times, and the New York Daily News came up.
Why has the American press largely ignored the Durban climate conference? Perhaps they understood that meaningful results from the conference were about as likely as Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich endorsing president Obama’s stimulus bill. Maybe they knew that the conference was a moot point and thus unworthy of being covered.
But the American press covers a lot of stuff that is not news. Political conventions in which the nominee is already known are covered fawningly and faithfully. The same can be said of the dozen or so debates among the GOP candidates. Television networks have given air time to all of the debates—the substance of which could be summarized in seven to eight minutes of programming— with additional reporting and analysis of the proceedings taking up even more broadcast time.
As these graphs show, the coverage in general about global warming has gone down in the US press.
Graphs from Maxwell Boykoff Center for Science and Technology Policy Research University of Colorado
October, 2011
Finding a successful agreement on CO2 emissions among dozens and dozens of countries, all of them with differing interests when it comes to fossil fuel use and global warming dangers, in unlikely. Nonetheless, one of the reasons for the failures of Kyoto and Durban is the unwillingness of the United States to take a leading position in efforts to mitigate global warming.
And if the American press doesn’t cover the Durban conference and the coverage of other news of climate change drops as well, then it follows that Americans will not think of global warming as an important issue. And without an informed public that lets its elected officials hear about their concerns, Washington will not take the lead on climate change.
The world is warming, and yet the US press is remiss in letting us know what we need to know. As well, Ireland is a small island country that may have much to loose in a warmed world. I guess that's where I get my news from today.
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