Where do you get your climate news?

It’s well known that American news media devotes alarmingly little space to the climate crisis. This is due, partly, to the way such news interacts with advertising and ratings: that feature on deforestation may turn you off the beef burger advertised in the commercial break. Consumerism and climate crisis awareness do not complement each other well. Also, for many outlets, news content has long been influenced by corporate interests; and the fossil fuel industry has been perhaps the most powerful of such interests. Yet according to a recent study, most media consumers want to see more coverage of climate and environmental issues. While coverage has increased marginally during the last few years, it has tended to be approached in increasingly partisan terms. 

So where do you get your climate and environmental news? I want to share where I get mine. There’s no science to my selection (though, for the record, I do believe in science); it’s just what I happen to have ended up doing. I’d love to know what you follow – please share in the comments. 

For everyday news, I find that the UK’s The Guardian (Environment section) does a good job of paying attention to the global climate and environmental situation. It has the advantage of not having a paywall. 

For Los Angeles climate and environmental news, Sammy Roth of the Los Angeles Times writes an excellent free weekly newsletter called Boiling Point, which you can subscribe to here.

Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, longtime climate campaigner, and highly respected environmental/climate author, writes a free newsletter for the New Yorker called The Climate Crisis. 

A handful of journalists, frustrated at their limited opportunities to cover climate and environment in the mainstream media have gone out on their own, with subscription-based models of climate news coverage. They offer a portion of their news for free, so you can try it out without an upfront commitment:

Emily Atkin provides impassioned and irreverent news coverage at Heated (“a newsletter for people who are pissed off about the climate crisis.”)

I just recently signed up for The Phoenix, written by Eric Holthaus, a climate scientist and writer, which has a similar paid subscription model. Again, one can sign up for the limited free version to give it a try.

Finally, for topical rather than strictly news-based articles: Grist offers a number of different newsletters, and Treehugger is a fun “comfort” read, focusing on good ideas for living a more sustainable life (you can subscribe on their websites). 

If you’re as frustrated about reliable and insightful coverage of the climate crisis as I was, try one or more of these outlets. You’ll feel better informed. And you may get a good idea, or find a constructive part to play in the great work ahead.

[Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash]