Credit: Kingfisher
Andrew Revkin hasn't just come around to accepting global climate change; he has been on the beat since 1988, even before becoming a leading science journalist at The New York Times. In addition to penning more than 250 articles on the subject, he just released his third book, The North Pole Was Here: Puzzles and Perils at the Top of the World.
What's intriguing about Revkin's latest work—besides the fact that it overflows with detailed anecdotes from one of his greatest reporting adventures—is that it's written for an audience aged 10 and up. The author says his mission was to explain global warming to the next generation. After, all they're the ones who will really have to deal with its effects. It's a remarkable departure, both for Revkin as a journalist and from a recent spate of climate-themed books that have all addressed us grown-ups.
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Seed recently spoke with Revkin about his new project (in stores on Earth Day—Sat., April 22nd) and the challenges and pitfalls of global warming coverage. And heck, we even talked a little bit about his acoustic-roots band, Uncle Wade. Traveling to the uninhabitable Arctic, singing Americana songs—Revkin is a busy guy.
Climate change coverage is heating up again, what with Time magazine's cover story ("Be Worried, Be Very Worried") and all. Are we really at a tipping point in terms of attention levels, or is this just a natural cycle in media behavior?
I would like to think we're at a tipping point, but I don't think so. It's kind of like climbing a range of mountain peaks: Each one is moving us more perhaps towards a tipping point. But when you talk to environmental groups, they're talking at least a few more Congressional cycles before they get to a bill to limit carbon that they would find acceptable.
You probably saw the recent polls, which try to cast everything as being urgent. But those polls do not include the key question, which is the blind question: "What worries you, question mark." If you ask Americans what worries you, without calling to say, "I'm here to ask you about global warming," they wouldn't even think of global warming.
Is there anything that science journalists ought to be doing to focus attention more acutely on this issue?
The bottom line is, I don't see some new science study coming out in the next year—or two or even 10—that will suddenly say, "It's crystal clear now, this is an easy problem like all the environmental problems you grew up confronting: dirty water, black soot coming out of smokestacks." I don't see that happening. There will not be a truthful headline in a newspaper that will say, "Global warming happened today. Seas are rising, people must flee coasts." Because it's not that kind of issue. And there will always be plenty of science to serve everyone in the room.
And the harder thing to convey in print as journalists, and for society to absorb, is that this is truly a century-scale problem. It is a problem of loaded dice, of increasing probability of things we don't like, but not the kind of thing where you can point around you right now and say, "Be worried; be very, very worried."