Earth Day spotlights climate change's growing place in public consciousness

Apr. 20—Climate change is an insidious threat that at times can be seen and felt on an epic scale and other times looms quietly, making some people doubt it's really happening.

One trend can't be denied and is as noticeable as a dusty, sun-baked stretch of a New Mexico river: Most everyone is discussing climate change much more than a decade ago, whether it's scientists, journalists, activists, politicians or the general public.

It is on the forefront of the public's consciousness, locally and worldwide, to a degree it never has been in the half-century since scientist J.S. Sawyer sounded the alarm about global warming.

The mounting concerns about human-driven climate change have made it a more prominent part of Earth Day, when communities, environmental advocates and some government leaders take part in river and forest cleanups, festivals and other green events to show their commitment to caring for the planet.

You're now apt to encounter discussions or debates about climate change, its adverse effects and the need for remedies if you're watching TV, surfing the internet, attending a local government hearing or sipping a java at a coffee shop.

The continual chatter is in marked contrast to the early 2010s, when news coverage of climate change was still sporadic and often based on events, such as an exceptionally destructive storm or Al Gore's latest book tour or the Paris Agreement climate accords being signed.

National media followed those spurts of climate reporting with stretches of silence on the issue even amid a growing global crisis linked to the vast amounts of greenhouse gases that have been spewed into the atmosphere for 150 years.

In recent years, media coverage of climate has escalated. At the same time, conservation groups have made climate change a higher priority, while new activist groups focus almost entirely on climate. All of that dovetails with local, state and federal policymakers wrangling over how to combat and adapt to a warming planet.

So why is the changing climate drawing greater attention?

Advocates and experts cite the "feel real" factor that takes the sobering trends out of the abstract, so they're no longer just something happening way up in the sky. The effects are materializing enough to make older people anxious about how their world is degrading and to make the younger generations worry about their future.

A warming ocean has generated more destructive storms and is melting polar ice caps, which in turn are causing sea tides to rise. More intense storms have battered parts of the country with high winds and flooding, while record-setting heat waves and prolonged droughts have increased wildfire threats and parched arid regions, from the Southwest to Africa.

At the same time, almost 11,000 species face an increased chance of extinction because of climate change.

New Mexico experienced the quarter-century drought that contributed to the historic wildfire season two years ago, followed by torrential downpours flooding the fire-stricken communities, said Lucas Herndon, policy director for ProgressNow New Mexico.

Warmer air holds moisture, allowing it to build up, then dumps it all at once, Herndon said, describing wildfires combined with flooding as climate change's one-two punch, inflicting hardships on residents.

"It's more acute, it's more real," Herndon said. "It's not just highfalutin tree-huggers talking about the atmosphere. These are real people suffering real issues from the effects of climate change."

Media coverage improving

In 1972, Sawyer, a British meteorologist, predicted how the greenhouse effect — resulting from gases like carbon dioxide trapping heat in the atmosphere — would warm the planet by about half a degree by 2000.

His forecast was nearly spot on.

Calling attention to the harmful effects of air pollution was part of the emerging ecological awareness seen in the budding green movement and symbolized in the founding of Earth Day in 1970.

The prospect of the planet overheating received grim sci-fi treatment in the 1973 film Soylent Green, depicting a sweltering, grimy and barely livable world in 2020, where winters have vanished and only the uber-wealthy can enjoy real food, air conditioning and trees.

Although civilization hasn't descended into that dystopian black hole — yet — some dire U.N. reports on climate indicate it still could head in that direction if carbon emissions aren't drastically cut and the Earth's temperature rises more than 2 degrees Celsius from the pre-industrial era.

The Paris climate accord sets the ceiling at 1.5 degrees Celsius to avoid severe tipping points. The Earth has warmed by 1.1 degrees since the 19th century.

Despite the early warnings, media outlets paid relatively little attention to climate change for decades.

The articles that were written in the late 20th century usually gave equal weight to deniers, said Max Boykoff, an environmental studies professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Twenty years ago, Boykoff and his brother read climate change stories in U.S. publications written between 1988 and 2002.

"We actually found there was an over-reliance on the journalistic norm of balanced reporting," Boykoff said, which meant naysayers with no climate science background were treated as credible sources.

Boykoff said their findings caused a stir and were often cited, including in Gore's book An Inconvenient Truth. That led some journalists to take a hard look at their approach to covering climate, he said.

He and his brother later did a followup, perusing climate stories between 2005 and 2019 to see if journalists had improved. They had, significantly.

About 90% of the reporting aligned with the scientific consensus that carbon-emitting human activity is driving global warming.

Scientists say weather is the least reliable gauge for measuring climate change because of the many variables, but it's the thing people most understand.

Extreme and erratic weather has convinced many folks that something is happening with climate they should be concerned about, Boykoff said, adding that's when accurate coverage can help them understand what they're experiencing.

A Pew Center survey in 2021 showed 64% of respondents thought climate change should be a top priority, compared with less than 40% in 2016.

There's a correlation between people taking climate change more seriously and the dramatic increase in climate reporting by major news outlets in that same period, Boykoff said.

The university's Media and Climate Change Observatory, which tracks journalism worldwide, showed The New York Times especially has boosted its climate coverage. The Times is among the national outlets that have formed teams devoted to writing about climate, something almost unheard of a decade ago.

Major newspapers' climate coverage has dropped off 20% in the past year, but it's still much more intensive than it used to be, he said.

More visible signs of climate change

In New Mexico's political realm, climate legislation and policymaking have become more common in recent years after a long fallow period.

Some climate advocates credit Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham for leading the way, while tempering their praise with criticism about her not backing some climate bills. Others say it's the infusion of younger, more progressive lawmakers who have given climate a higher priority.

Whatever the driver, climate change has become a more prominent issue among political leaders, drawing noticeably more attention from the regional media and residents.

State Sen. Antoinette Sedillo Lopez, an Albuquerque Democrat, said when she began her first term in the Senate in 2019, no one was introducing climate bills. Now there's a list of them every session.

"There was a time where certain people, mostly Republicans, were denying that there was even climate change," Sedillo Lopez said. "And now those same people are not denying that it's happening, but they're talking about adaption."

The adaption dialogue translates to mean they don't want to impose regulation on the fossil fuel industry to prevent greenhouse gas emissions — especially if it interferes with production — but rather they prefer strategies to adjust to a worsening climate, she said.

Sedillo Lopez agreed media coverage of climate has improved, with outlets doing far less "both-sidesing" with deniers. This change probably has contributed to more political leaders and the public getting on board with tackling the crisis, she said.

The problems arising in this arid state, such as wildfires, drought and reduced water supply, are making early effects of climate change more visible, Sedillo Lopez said.

"You see many more people talking about it, and worrying about it, especially the young people," Sedillo Lopez said.

Younger people have lower rates of skepticism about human-caused climate change and higher anxiety about how it will affect their futures, which has fueled youth activism on climate worldwide, according to one study.

In Northern New Mexico, Youth United for Climate Crisis Action, or YUCCA, was launched in 2019 by young Indigenous people who wanted to tie into Greta Thunberg's global climate activism.

A key part of the group's mission is to draw on Indigenous people's age-old environmental stewardship to combat climate change and address the effects it's having on communities of color, said Ennedith Lopez, YUCCA's policy campaign manager.

Lopez, 24, said climate change is casting uncertainty on the future of people her age and younger in a way that previous generations haven't known.

Young Indigenous people may be forced to leave the state if the effects of climate change grow worse, a difficult decision because they'd be removed from their familial heritage, she said.

For these reasons, climate activism is likely to grow stronger here, she said.

Lopez said she has observed less snow in Albuquerque's winters, monsoons becoming inconsistent and the rivers running lower since she was a child.

"The climate has changed drastically," she said.

Herndon of ProgressNow said nine years ago when he first got involved in environmental advocacy in the state, the focus was mainly on protecting land and water, with little discussion on climate.

Now his main role is dealing with energy and climate, he said.

Herndon thinks media have gotten better at fact-checking on climate issues and not taking the energy industry's talking points at face value.

In his view, the industry has shifted its messaging to grudgingly acknowledge climate change exists while opposing climate legislation and pushing for a much slower clean energy transition.

When he was growing up in Las Cruces, there was water in the Rio Grande year-round that kids could play in, something his 15-year-old daughter hasn't experienced because the increasingly arid climate has led to dry beds in the fall and winter, he said.

It's another tangible sign of where the state is headed if climate change isn't addressed, and why parents like him are more actively seeking solutions, such as slashing carbon emissions, Herndon said, adding his daughter's future is foremost in his mind.

"I would love for her to graduate into a world that is already working on that transition, so she doesn't have to fight these same battles in 30 years," Herndon said.