Climate Change…

Editor’s note: All these photos are by Tom and Nadin Abbott over the course of years. They are file pictures, but may very well have been captured this year.

I remember having discussions with other media types about climate change over ten years ago. Even after Katrina, it was a story with little editorial interest. Partly, I was told repeatedly, the public is not interested. They think we are preaching to them. They think we are liberals. They think…and the excuses continued to build.

The job of the media is to educate and inform, even if the public is in denial. For many decades this was a reality. The public was in deep denial, partly because people tied to the energy sector, were very good at buying politicians and confusing the people with misinformation. This was not unlike what we are seeing with COVID, except it took decades, not eighteen months.

For people in rural areas, at least in my experience, this was not something that affected them directly. Yes, fires were getting more frequent, but we always had fires. Yes, storms were getting worse, but it could not be man-made. People knew the spring was starting earlier, and storms in the winter were worse, which “proved” this was not real. Oh never mind that more extreme weather, including winter storms, is a marker of climate change.