Mary Annaïse Heglar

[00:00:11] Hey, Hotcakes, welcome to the podcast, where we examine the climate crisis and all the ways we're talking and not talking about it. I'm Amy Westervelt.

[00:00:20] And I'm Mary Annaise Heglar. This episode, we're going to dig into the intersections between climate and media and climate and politics. And we have a very special guest along to help us do just that.

[00:00:32] That's right. We have the perfect person to talk about this, Kate Aronoff. She's one of the leading climate and politics journalists. And if you're not reading her work over at The New Republic, you should go and fix that.

[00:00:45] Yeah. She's also a co-host of the Hot and Bothered podcast, which I had the pleasure of being on earlier in quarantine. I guess I don't actually know when that happened because time is not really a tangible reality is nowhere like a concept that exists in poetry books. I understand that some people still have watches and clocks and I don't understand how that works. But anyway, yes, she's got a great other podcast, too.

[00:01:08] Yes. Some of the things that we'll get into with Kate are how defunding the police is good for climate, why media outlets are remiss to talk about race and climate in the same breath and degrowth and eco modernism. What are those? I don't know.

[00:01:28] Yeah, and we talk about the potential death of the climate Sadda Boy, which is a term that Kate coined just last year. And we're going to learn all about what that is and why you're not really seeing that much of a mini months. Right. All right. Ready to get into it yet? It's time to talk about climate.

[00:01:55] Welcome to the show, Kate. I'm so excited to be here.

[00:01:58] First question, how did you get into journalism, specifically into climate journalism?

[00:02:05] Yeah, I came to climate stuff before before journalism in college.

[00:02:12] I worked on something called the fossil fuel divestment campaign of trucks might be familiar with to get universities to take their endowments out of fossil fuels. And so I did that for four years and in college started something called the Fossil Fuel Divestment Student Network and have done like a lot of comms work through the surrounding farms, doing kind of media, writing tweets and things like that, organizational counts, and decided after college that I like doing that work and then was better at that.

[00:02:51] And I was organizing, which is really hard. Folks also may also know.

[00:02:57] And so wanted to write about things that I wasn't directly working on. And so started mostly writing about social movements.

[00:03:08] And then slowly through being fortunate enough to get jobs in journalism, which were, you know, sadly not forthcoming. I majored in them to doing more kind of proper climate reporting, focusing on movements and the kind of people who were fighting things like fossil fuel infrastructure. And then I kind of came to a more sort of policy stuff.

[00:03:31] And I'm kind of everything, everything in between. And so now I'm no I'm a full time journalist, which is it's nice to be able to say at the New Republic that the New Republic is right.

[00:03:41] I'm curious about whether because you do often write about how policy gets built around the climate issue. So I wonder if you consider yourself a climate journalist or a politics journal is and really like whether you think there's a difference between the two and if so, kind of how you would define that.

[00:04:00] My official title at The New Republic is Staff Writer, and I work on the Climate B that ends up just going into a lot of different directions about because climate changes ubiquitous, right? I mean, I don't think there a there's a piece of policy that isn't isn't affected by it.

[00:04:23] And I work a lot of the fossil fuel industry and that was bound up in all sorts of things. That's finance or monetary policy trade. And I am interested in the sort of questions of political economy stems from looking, looking a lot of the fossil fuel industry in large part. So I guess I guess I'd call myself a climate climate journalist insofar as climate is is a lot of things and not you know, I don't actually spend too much time looking at the latest scientific reports necessarily or even what's happening at the EPA, which which some of their reporters have done really, really get great coverage on. But I yeah, kind of kind of look at where, you know, institutions, mostly institutions in the United States are sort of butting up against against the climate and then having a big impact on that.

[00:05:24] And I think that can go a lot of places that wouldn't tend to be in the climate beat. So, yeah, I don't know. I think I like the title of staff writer because it's it's big enough to give me a lot of a lot of leeway.

[00:05:38] Yeah, yeah. I keep playing back and forth on this about like, you know, there's been sort of I don't know, I think there's been maybe like three cycles and media like having climate be a super separate thing and then integrating it and then like realizing that that is not working and like having a climate vertical again and like going back and forth. I think maybe the solution really is just to have more either politics reporters or sort of general assignment reporters that do have some kind of background in climate. Because it does. It crosses into everything.

[00:06:12] Yeah. When Amy says vertical, she means section. Yes. That's what a vertical is.

[00:06:17] I've learned that. Sorry. I needed to speak the name of.

[00:06:24] Yeah. The name of my vertical. The vertical I work on at the New Republic is Apocalypse Soon. So that means need different things. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

[00:06:39] Yeah. It does seem like folks who have been into an online climate for a long time really can't see it as this intersecting kind of thing, which is like really, really interesting to me because it is a story that.

[00:06:54] Touches on every little thing. But I think that, like, people can't see it outside of the technicalities of a. Out of the pool, outside of the policies of a.. I get this a lie. As a writer, like people see me as a climate writer and they're like, oh, you must want to analyze this policy and write an article about him like that is not even close to anything I've ever written before. I don't know why.

[00:07:16] Maybe actually that's a good that's a good lead in to talk about on this third question. We want to ask you, which is if you could change one thing about the narratives surrounding climate change. What would it be? You could have more than one if you feel really strongly about mine.

[00:07:31] Can I say just this one is hard.

[00:07:34] I know it's very happy for tougher.

[00:07:38] I think the biggest one for me would be.

[00:07:43] Well, actually, I mean, just, you know, Zuba mentioning is just how siloed it is in that, you know, I think from a politics just gets considered a standalone topic that is about parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, about, you know, cap and trade laws or whatever is happening in Washington.

[00:08:07] But, yeah, I mean, I think part of the problem in media, which maybe we can talk a little bit more about, is that people really get sort of in their in their beats. And so it can be hard to see kind of bigger stories and just really consider the problem and its whole complexity, which was this hugely messy, complicated thing that maps onto people's lives and all of these messy, complicated and interesting ways.

[00:08:33] And so I don't think it goes so far as saying we shouldn't write climate story is right.

[00:08:39] But but I think, you know, just looking at all the ways in which climate is already in so many and so many other stories, you know, it's hard for me to say what concretely that that would look like.

[00:08:50] Yeah. I mean, I think just just recognizing that. But every, you know, more story is the monarch climate stories.

[00:08:56] I'd be hard pressed to think of a story that's not a climate story. Yeah. You know, it's like it even when climate is not mentioned, it's like a silent P at the beginning of a war like this.

[00:09:07] They're not for announcing it. Now, maybe if you're ranting about, like the Great British Bake Off or something.

[00:09:15] Oh, no, because there were quite a few episodes where they couldn't cook in the tent because it was too hot. Yeah. Yeah. And what about like access to certain ingredients, for example? I mean, it's a big waste. Yeah. But I can that's like my dinner party trick and it's probably why I stopped getting invited to dinner to a lot free party. Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, you find your climate people and like everybody suck. Yeah. But no, before that people would be like, oh, here she comes again.

[00:09:52] I think we might have a similar presence at dinner parties. Yeah.

[00:09:59] Enjoy that. Butter is the last meal. Actually, that's something that's been bugging me lately. Is that because I also I too am like the harbinger of death.

[00:10:11] But it's been really bugging me that like there's this idea I was talking to Mary about this just the other day. This there's this idea that, like, if you talk about the problems or like, you know, sort of the historic reasons that we have an active climate, then it's like you're kind of accused of being too negative or focusing on the solutions and whatever into me. I feel like, you know, understanding the problem is part of the solution. And it's like social change and policy change are like among the biggest solutions that we need. So I don't I don't get that whole idea, though.

[00:10:56] Right. It almost always comes from people who have never been through therapy, you know, because like it's like people who are new to therapy always like, all right, fix me up, dad. Give me the drug. Give me a little like the little coping mechanism or whatever is like, bitch, sit on the couch.

[00:11:11] You got some shit to unpack me to. We through this, right. Like you are way more fucked up. And you think it's true that there's this like huge.

[00:11:20] I actually see it as a somewhat kind of, I don't know, like patriarchal or or like male take that. It's like oh like I'm like a that one person is going to solve the problem and that one knowledge. Right. One like innovation is going to be the thing.

[00:11:39] And like right now, everybody wants the quick fix. Exactly. There is an earthquake and this is not a quick problem.

[00:11:46] I think if if there are another narrative about how about climate change, I don't want to change, you would be just issuing a blanket ban.

[00:11:54] Stories about this being the solution to climate change. Yeah, if I were if I were media dictator, I think I would.

[00:12:03] I would do that. Yeah. Do you have aspirations on media dictatorship?

[00:12:08] Definitely not. Definitely not. But, you know, I think standards are helpful. I mean, you can tell us it's OK, but that's not the job I want.

[00:12:19] You know, in the command and control future.

[00:12:21] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't necessarily want that job either, but I do want Andrew Sullivan's job. Yeah, I agree. I wholeheartedly support the.

[00:12:43] I mean, we talked about this a lot, that climate is as much a power problem or a social problem as it is a science and technology problem, if not more.

[00:12:53] And, you know, we continue to see pretty often political reporting not reflecting that like really sticking to it's about technology and the energy sources that we'll use.

[00:13:08] So I'm curious just kind of what you think about that. And then we're gonna make you read from some of your own work, which does a fantastic job of not forgetting that there are these like, you know, power dynamics at play in in the political sphere on climate. But, yeah, like what do you think about how political reporting in general kind of tends to paint the climate problem?

[00:13:32] Yeah, it's really entering this a little bit before.

[00:13:35] But I think a lot of this comes down to just some really boring factors about what it's like to work in a media organization.

[00:13:43] And, you know, The New York Times, for instance, has a climate desk that, you know, [00:13:47]the people who work on the politics desk don't necessarily understand, understand climate change. Editors don't necessarily get it. [9.3s]

[00:13:57] [00:13:57]And I think folks who, you know, are reporting on climate aren't encouraged to like to to bring in other sources. [9.4s] And I think, you know, everybody has its sort of videos increases.

[00:14:11] But I think that the range of sources that people are encouraged to talk to as sort of climate reporters proper, I can make that sort of understanding harder. So, you know, you see a lot of quotes, for instance, at.

[00:14:29] Mainstream outlets, whether it's The Washington Post or other other places, all of which, you know, I think I think most outlets have great ironworkers on on staff.

[00:14:38] And I just want to I want to say that that a lot of the source of the people come are a the people who are easy to talk to on short notice because people have deadlines. And so, you know, often that's people at think tanks. That's folks who are based in D.C. or politicians or whatever. And, you know, it's not always as easy, depending on what your kind of network of sources is, to talk to people and movements, for instance, to talk to people who are living on the front lines of climate change or fenceline with fossil fuel infrastructure.

[00:15:15] That is tough work, that takes time, that takes resources to, you know, build relationships and source relationships with people.

[00:15:23] And that can be hard in in in a quick news cycle. And, you know, as is the case with a lot of sort of climate desks in when when you're, you know, one of very few reporters who are doing that and, you know, our need to produce stories every so often. So I think that's, you know, the the sort of media part of it.

[00:15:47] I think there's a bigger there's a bigger question of just, you know, the the trajectory of climate politics in the last 30 years, which is a thorn everyone, I think, which is that, you know, the sort of mainstream policy conversation where where a lot of reporters tend to focus and where, you know, editors in particular would like people to focus at big outlets is a conversation that happens almost entirely in the Beltway.

[00:16:20] It happens almost entirely in Washington. And it's not, you know, has its own sort of weird look at power dynamics.

[00:16:28] But that is just like can be so sort of blinkered about like which Congressman is talking to which think tank is talking to who in the White House about, you know, X. Right. And to who are amendment to a certain bill.

[00:16:44] And that, you know, is not I think that the part of politics. But I don't think that's that's politics proper. And it's not you know, I don't think a holistic understanding of all of the crazy power dynamics that that play into the fossil fuel industry. And, you know, there's a reluctance to talk about funding, talk about kind of like, you know, not just lobbying and political donations, but also like who funds the think tank that that people are going to for for their sources, which, you know, I think Drilled has been, you know, create a great look at some of those dynamics, but can get left out of, you know, whatever. Twelve hundred word story that people are to finally write a certain time.

[00:17:29] I actually had been thinking about the think tank thing a lot lately, and just like how problematic that whole system is and like how little value would actually prefer to anything.

[00:17:42] Yeah, I don't know. I just. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, Mary, you were going to say as yet.

[00:17:48] Well, yeah, I was. I'm excited to have Kate read from two pieces that I think really touch on something that I think is kind of unspoken in the climate political landscape, and that is that both parties are kind of in an identity crisis.

[00:18:04] It feels like one is that like on the Democratic side, it sort of feels like we've seen this flurry of climate plans come out and there's just all of this praise. Every single time I see an article about one of them is like, this is the most progressive climate policy in history. But there is a big thing that that sort of analysis kind of misses. And the other is that, like the GOP or the right wing is kind of coming around to accepting climate change. And that is not necessarily a good thing.

[00:18:40] I'll stop there and let Kate read this to select excerpts from the first piece is The Limits of Democrats.

[00:18:48] Climate progress plans are better than they were. The plans are not enough. What are the plans for, though?

[00:18:54] It's ostensibly my job to analyze these kinds of climate plans on their own terms. The whole exercise is starting to feel pretty pointless. Documents like the task force, recommendations like presidential campaign platforms or the House Committee on the Climate Crisis Report really only indicate where we're starting from. So far, all the plans that offer likely produced warming greater than two degrees Celsius. And that's a relatively rosy scenario while projected deaths are admittedly trickier to calculate than recorded deaths. Let's judge climate policies by how many people they'll kill anywhere based on our best scientific understanding of the problem. Let's not judge them based on the progress they show compared to more obviously inadequate plans or for the love of God. By how much the cost? Even in cold and conservative economic terms, the cost of 2.5 or three degrees of warming will outstrip the cost of preventing it by tens of trillions of dollars. Every person who dies of a climate field disaster is a sign of failure of policymakers ability to mitigate rising temperatures and adapt to a hotter world.

[00:19:58] The past failures have made inevitable.

[00:20:02] Next piece is the threat of a GOP that accepts climate change. But even if some kind of business friendly climate action does emerge from a post Trump Republican Party, there's no reason to think it wouldn't still involve support for polluters trying to find path to a larger profit. Nor would a shift in messaging on climate caused the party to abandon its overarching commitments. More would a shift in messaging on climate cause the party to abandon its other overarching commitments with its travel bans and harden borders ready to halt refugees fleeing heat, drought and disaster? The GOP is already writing a form of climate policy. Even if it would never call, though, should it start to openly embrace something like climate action? The party would almost certainly retain the racism and xenophobia that has animated it for decades. Fuzing them into green policies is far from what progressive climate activists might hope for.

[00:20:56] I know I've been thinking a lot lately about how the term climate denier or like climate denial like isn't doesn't include enough of these kinds of things.

[00:21:09] Look like we've talked a lot on this show about the climate realists and and like this, you know, this idea that like, yeah, a lot of far right wing people totally accept that climate change is happening, but their action on it will be to consolidate their power and wealth. And that that is also a climate action. Right. It's just not the one that we want.

[00:21:33] Right. And that they're already doing get it right.

[00:21:35] Like, borderline death is totally a climate plan. These closings of borders are totally a climate plan, right?

[00:21:44] Yeah. And it's American. It's like so this like weird France doesn't exist anywhere else on earth. Yeah. You vaguely like Australia.

[00:21:51] But yeah, you had another piece that was like the Democrats climate plan is weirdly isolationist about how even on the left, so to speak. Look, they're still not thinking about the rest of the world because you can't just, like, solve climate change in one country and not in another. That's not solving climate change.

[00:22:11] It's just American exceptionalism gone wild. Yeah, it's truly insane.

[00:22:15] Yeah. It is interesting to me that I think that the moderate I'm using air quotes, but you can't see the moderate idea or conversation around climate change.

[00:22:25] I'm not even so sure if it's moderate or if it's like stuck in the past by 20 years because they don't.

[00:22:33] I don't see how you're paying attention today and don't see that the Republican Party is coming around to climate change and that that doesn't mean something good will end.

[00:22:42] And then that is literally where we were in nineteen ninety one and like. Right. I mean it's like it's probably a little bit behind where we were in 1991, you know. So like this idea that that is somehow progress is really sad.

[00:22:59] And the also I'm really interested in this idea about the Democrats climate progress always being like, oh, well, this is so much more advanced than it was in 2016. But you know what else is more advanced?

[00:23:12] Climate change. Way more advanced, buddy. Like. So what?

[00:23:16] Like it it's just like imagine a doctor treating you for like a horrible disease five years too late and starting the process of treating you where they should have started five years ago. Yeah. Are you going to be happy with that doctor?

[00:23:31] You're going to feel like that's a death sentence and they're not even actually starting just, you know, saying they have this great treatment plan. Exactly. Failing to actually treat you.

[00:23:43] I mean, it's just I think, you know, there's this sort of, like, silo question that we got on to earlier.

[00:23:51] But I also just think, like the fluency climate folks on racism and xenophobia has just a mainstream kind of folks.

[00:24:03] I'll say in particular is really, you know, doing a lot of doing a lot of catching up to where, you know, environmental justice folks have been for a while, the word climate justice spokesman for a while.

[00:24:15] But I think for a lot of folks, there's a sort of like, you know, there's still too many steps to to have them be able to make that like a natural response.

[00:24:27] Right. To to think about these two things in the same breath that thankfully, you know, I think more people are getting comfortable with.

[00:24:52] Media outlets seem to be sort of afraid of talking about race and climate. At the same time afraid and also just generally bad at it.

Transcription

The New Republic's Kate Aronoff joins us to talk about the difference between political reporting and climate reporting, the link between fossil fuel divestment and defunding the police, and of course all the various types of climate bois.

Climate disasters are piling on top of the pandemic and ongoing nationwide civil rights protests, but you wouldn't necessarily know it from reading or watching the news. Brian Kahn, managing editor at Earther, joins us to talk about why so many outlets have a hard time applying a climate lens to stories that aren't about emissions or weather, the storytelling talents of climate deniers, and the need to undo decades worth of bad climate coverage that prioritized the appearance of objectivity over the truth

Hot Take S2

S2, Ep4 | Hate to Say We Told You So, with Brian Kahn

S2, Ep3 | Climate Bois Club, with Kate Aronoff

Hot Take is a holistic, irreverent, honest look at the climate crisis and all the ways media and society are talking—and not talking—about it. Hosted by real-life friends Mary Annaïse Heglar and Amy Westervelt—an essayist and a journalist— Hot Take offers a unique perspective on the issue of climate change. With a breath of fresh humanity and humor, conversation moves swiftly from cackling about the bad week an oil company had, to speaking seriously and passionately about the unequal distribution of climate impacts and our own experiences of climate grief. And then washing it down with a round of dad jokes! Every week, we’ll connect you with the latest climate news and with the journalists and storytellers trying to make sense of this complex issue to help you see the world through climate-colored glasses. We ended production on Hot Take at the end of 2022, but you can still access episodes here, or 

A holistic, irreverent, honest look at the climate crisis and all the ways media and society are talking—and not talking—about it.

S2, Ep3 | Climate Bois Club, with Kate Aronoff

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S2, Ep4 | Hate to Say We Told You So, with Brian Kahn