Weak Media Coverage of Global Warming and Environmentalism Generally
After Amory Lovins’ lecture yesterday, he took questions, including one from me, which I prefaced by saying, “I think I speak for almost everyone in this packed auditorium when I say that I wish there were a way of making you king of the world.” I got a chuckle, and an instant rejection from Lovins. “I’m not interested,” he smiled.
But I’ve come to understand that most people don’t even know who he is. I spoke this morning with two different close friends, both well-educated people, neither of whom had ever heard of him. And that, in turn, is a function of the fact that our media covers issues of global warming and environmentalism more generally in a very cursory and erratic fashion.
To be sure, this is a big part of the problem. Here we have the most important event in the history of humankind, and, though we hear about it occasionally, most people really know very little about it, because the media largely ignores it.
I get a bit puckish in my writings in the evening, perhaps because I typically have a martini as I make dinner for the Shields family.
