{"id":989,"date":"2026-09-04T16:10:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T16:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=989"},"modified":"2026-09-04T16:10:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T16:10:11","slug":"is-nepal-a-turning-point-in-climate-coverage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=989","title":{"rendered":"Is Nepal a Turning Point in Climate Coverage?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

It\u2019s been slow coming, but news coverage of climate change may at last be turning a corner. For years, reporting on climate-related disasters\u2014the super-storm Hurricane Helene that blasted the southeastern US in 2024, the mega-fires that torched Los Angeles in 2025, the record heat that has scorched Europe and Asia in 2026\u2014rarely mentioned the words \u201cclimate change,\u201d despite overwhelming scientific evidence linking such extreme events to human-caused global heating. This week, however, even formerly reticent news outlets are making the climate connection clear in their coverage of the deadly flooding in Nepal, where more than 1,100 are confirmed dead and an additional 4,000 are missing.<\/p>\n

Read more Hasan Piker and the Democrats\u2019 Edgelord Dilemma<\/a><\/p>\n

More of these disasters are sure to follow: Even with unprecedented emissions reductions, global temperatures will rise to at least 1.8 degrees Celsius above pre-Industrial levels, the UN Environment Programme announced yesterday. As rising temperatures melt more glacial ice, \u201cwe can expect more and more of these events, a greater frequency, a greater magnitude,\u201d Alton C. Byers of the University of Colorado, Boulder, said at a Covering Climate Now live conversation on the Nepal floods.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, The Guardian<\/em>, Agence France-Presse<\/em>, The New York Times<\/em>, the Associated Press<\/em>, Bloomberg<\/em>, Deutsche Welle<\/em>, and other outlets whose reporting has , suddenly, are no longer outliers. The shift is particularly striking among US television networks, whose climate coverage had declined by 35 percent during the first year of Donald Trump\u2019s second term.<\/p>\n

NBC News did not mince words in an August 28 report, with graphics that spelled out the climate connection: \u201cPast 60 Years Glacial Loss Increased 4X, Glaciers Less Stable Worldwide From Melting.\u201d Even CBS News has noted, more than once, the climate connection to the Nepal disaster. (This despite a president, Bari Weiss, who has fired the entire CBS News climate unit, derided climate change in newsroom meetings as \u201cwoke,\u201d and intervened to push the network\u2019s reporting to the right on a range of topics, above all Israel.) Referring to the \u201cglacial burst\u201d that triggered the gargantuan flood that swept away buildings, roads, and bridges, the CBS Evening News stated on August 26 that, \u201cexperts believe this is linked to climate change.\u201d On August 31, CBS\u2019s morning news show interviewed scientist Daniel Swain while graphics told viewers, \u201cClimate Change Impacting Extreme Weather Events, Shifting Global Sea Levels, Ecosystems, and Human Health.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Nepal coverage has demonstrated the importance of public officials speaking plainly, thus giving journalists a peg to make the climate connection to extreme events. Each of the Big Three US networks, CNN, the BBC, and other international news organizations headlined the statement by Nepal\u2019s foreign minister, Shisir Kahnal, blaming the flooding on global warming. Days later, Kahnal said that Nepal is demanding compensation from the world\u2019s biggest emitters.<\/p>\n

Such high-profile coverage predictably irritated the tiny but noisy band of bots and cherry-picking blowhards who still deny climate change. The opinion section of The Wall Street Journal<\/em>, which has disparaged climate science since the 1990s, published an article on August 28 that studiously avoided engaging with the actual scientific expertise other outlets had cited. Instead, it accused \u201cthe Western media\u201d of rushing to judgment by embracing its \u201call-purpose explanation for everything: climate change.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Journal\u2019s accusation was hardly more persuasive than that of an online conspiracy theorist who tried to blame the Nepal floods on a research project in Alaska. The fact-checking unit of AFP, which delivers news to thousands of news outlets and government offices worldwide, quickly slapped down that absurdity: \u201cAFP has repeatedly debunked claims that the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) is to blame for extreme weather events, and scientists say manipulation cannot cause floods of this magnitude\u2014instead pointing to human-caused global warming.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more The Shadowy Powers that Trump Could Use to End American Democracy<\/a><\/p>\n

Why the Nepal disaster has called forth more plainspoken climate coverage than usual is, at this point, unclear. The availability of stunning video showing the awesome size, speed, and force of the flood was doubtless a factor. But that can\u2019t be the sole explanation: The images of Helene\u2019s ferocious winds and of Los Angeles hillsides engulfed in flames were no less eye-catching. Yes, the link between higher global temperatures and melting glaciers makes intuitive sense, but is it any more intuitive than the connection between higher temperatures and the extreme heat that has killed 35,000 people and counting in Europe this summer?<\/p>\n

In any case, the question now is where climate coverage goes from here. Nepal\u2019s floods are a textbook illustration of the stark injustice at the heart of the climate story: The people who did the least to cause the problem tend to be the ones who suffer the first and worst. As Bill McKibben noted on his Substack, \u201cThe Crucial Years,\u201d \u201con average, Nepalis produce about four-tenths of a ton of carbon emissions annually, compared with about 14 tons for an American.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the COP28 UN climate summit in 2023, the world\u2019s governments operationalized a Loss and Damage Fund to compensate victims of climate disasters. Contributions have been paltry, but The Nation<\/em> reported this week that the fund\u2019s board of governors was discussing whether to make an inaugural donation to Nepal as a symbol of why the fund needs to be fully capitalized. As journalists and newsrooms prepare to cover the COP31 summit in Turkey this November, the long-standing debate around climate loss and damage deserves our focused attention.<\/p>\n

Nepal\u2019s floods also highlight another aspect of the climate story: Who is responsible for all those losses, and who should pay for the damages? To date, most reporting has trod lightly on these questions, even though a handful of investigative expos\u00e9s have made clear who the chief culprits are. \u201cA 1981 internal memo written by the director of one of Exxon\u2019s science labs said it was \u201cdistinctly possible\u201d that cumulative carbon emissions could eventually \u201cproduce effects which will indeed be catastrophic (at least for a substantial portion of the earth\u2019s population),\u201d author Jeff Goodell pointed out the day after the Nepal floods.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Exxon and other companies hid that science for decades, instead pressing for ever-increasing fossil fuel production and consumption. If holding power to account is a core duty of journalism, then connecting the dots between Big Oil and the Nepal floods, and other coming disasters that Big Oil\u2019s delaying tactics have made inevitable, is a good place to start.<\/p>\n

Read more Abdul El-Sayed Diagnoses American Politics<\/a><\/p>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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