The Normalisation of the Climate Crisis

I’m noticing a worrying trend in climate reporting, not just a complete lack of it, but a normalisation of the stories associated with it when reporting extreme weather events. It’s as if extreme weather has nothing to do with climate change, or, as we should now call it, the climate crisis. 

Take these three images from from yesterday’s globally respected BBC News website, of three extreme weather events going on around the world: two in the United States, one in Portugal. The headlines: ‘Five ways the US heatproof 50C cities’; ‘In pictures: Americans cool down in sweltering heatwave’; ‘Portugal wildfires: Huge blazes force evacuations.’

None of these headlines mentions extreme weather or climate crisis. In fact, in the case of ‘Five ways the US heatproof 50C cities’ this sounds rather like some kind of playful how to guide. The fact that human life is at risk at temperatures above 35C is not mentioned. The day before, an American football player, and a Super Bowl champion, died of heatstroke at age 32. A sportsman. Died at 32. Of heatstroke!

The second headline: ‘In pictures: Americans cool down in sweltering heatwave’ sits atop an image that looks a whole lot of fun: kids in a water spinkler. As does the rest of the article: kids and young people having fun in the sun. This is what the normalisation of the reporting of the climate crisis literally looks like. The climate crisis as an opportunity to have a great time.

‘Portugal wildfires: Huge blazes force evacuations’, a more direct headline, alluding to climate change, temperature rise and extreme weather, but absolutely no mention of climate or extreme weather in the article. None.

To be clear, what we’re experiencing are shifts in what should be geological time, across hundreds of thousands of years, in human time: that is, in the space of a single human generation. That. Is. Terrifying. This terror is clouding all of our judgements, and clearly the minds of journalists and editorial teams.