The Guardian recently ran a couple of really bad climate pieces. The first has a headline guaranteed to draw eyes, “Miami, the great world city, is drowning while the powers that be look away“. Who would possibly allow a “great world city” drown? The monsters! Know that the author is billed as a “science editor”, which I take to mean he understands basic scientific concepts such as uncertainty, time scale, and accuracy. What does Robin McKie have to say?
The effect is calamitous. Shops and houses are inundated; city life is paralysed; cars are ruined by the corrosive seawater that immerses them. […] Only those on higher floors can hope to protect their cars from surging sea waters that corrode and rot the innards of their vehicles. […] Miami and its surroundings are facing a calamity worthy of the Old Testament.
Really? Old Testament calamity? Inundated. Paralysed. Ruined. Corrode and rot.
That’s fairly flowery language for a science editor. How much of it is based in reality? There are definitely localized effects of sea level rise in Miami. Seawater is corrosive. But I missed the news reports of Miami calamities, inundations, being a paralyzed city. Those are serious effects he describes that aren’t quite as extensive or horrific as his article portrays.
Or, as Time writer Michael Grunwald writes, “I’m sorry to spoil the climate porn, but while the periodic puddles in my Whole Foods parking lot are harbingers of a potentially catastrophic future, they are not currently catastrophic. They are annoying. And so is this kind of yellow climate journalism.”
I agree with Michael on this one. This type of journalism works against taking the very action that Miami actually is doing right now to adapt to a changing reality. This quote says it perfectly:
What’s happening in the Middle East right now is calamitous. A blocked entrance is inconvenient.
Thank you, Michael, for some overdue perspective. He adds,
But let’s get real. The Pacific island of Kiribati is drowning; Miami Beach is not yet drowning, and the Guardian’s persistent adjective inflation (“calamitous,” “astonishing,” “devastating”) can’t change that.
This encouraged a number of climate porn addicts to take to the Twitter and denounce Grunwald’s lack of enthusiasm for not wanting to be a part of their tribe. Tweets displayed peoples’ camps:
Less nutty but no. MT @climatebrad @MikeGrunwald has a point about the purple prose in article about Miami’s drowning. But it’s drowning
— Michael Grunwald (@MikeGrunwald) July 15, 2014
.@MikeGrunwald So sea level rise *won’t* submerge Miami in the next several decades? — Brad Johnson (@climatebrad) July 15, 2014
@climatebrad It could happen! That’s why we need to act on climate. http://t.co/wKiiiwrxbq But we can’t pretend it already happened.
— Michael Grunwald (@MikeGrunwald) July 15, 2014
“it could happen” — @MikeGrunwald Exactly my point. There’s a mountain of difference between “could happen” and “is happening”. — Brad Johnson (@climatebrad) July 15, 2014
@climatebrad @MikeGrunwald And there’s effectively no difference between “is happening” and “is locked in and we won’t stop it”.
— Lou Grinzo (@TheCostOfEnergy) July 15, 2014
@TheCostOfEnergy So there’s effectively no difference between island nations and Miami today? — WeatherDem (@WeatherDem) July 15, 2014
@WeatherDem Miami, island nations likely face different timing and resource issues, but they’re both facing existential threats.
— Lou Grinzo (@TheCostOfEnergy) July 15, 2014
@TheCostOfEnergy IMO that’s a false equivalence. Perhaps philosophically true but logically extreme. — WeatherDem (@WeatherDem) July 16, 2014
Here is what folks were trying to say: person A has a gun held to their head right now; person B will die sometime in the future, but we don’t know exactly when. And since the same characteristic will eventually apply to both persons, they both share existential threats. Ask Kiribatians how much of their daily life is affected by sea level rise and I’d bet dollars to doughnuts you’ll get a very different answer than a Miamians’. And contrary to most climate activists, that’s not because Miamians are climate uneducated. It’s because their daily lives aren’t affected by climate change today to the same degree than a Kiribatian is. Saying they are doesn’t make it so.
I also agree with Mike that this fact doesn’t alter the need to mitigate and adapt. I agree with TheCostofEnergy that Miami and island nations face different timing and resource issues. That is precisely why island nations face an existential threat today and Miami doesn’t. Island nation people have nowhere to move to. Their islands will disappear and they will be forced to move. That presents an enormous culture disruption. Miami has much more adaptive capacity than do island nations. Miami will have to adapt, there is no doubt about that. But that’s not an existential threat except in some absurdly narrow use of the term.
Disaster porn language usage has to stop. It’s not accurate. It dissuades instead of incentivizes action. It breaks down instead of builds trust.