Network Newscasts Ignore Global Warming’s Role in Canada’s Wildfires
Network Newscasts Ignore Global Warming’s Role in Canada’s Wildfires
By Miles Grant
May
10
2016
As fast and furious as trailers for a Hollywood disaster movie, network news coverage of the massive fires ripping through Canada’s tar sands hub has missed opportunities to provide real information about the heavily polluting tar sands industry and global warming’s role in adding fuel to the flames.
As of May 10, the fires have burned nearly 800 square miles in the province of Alberta and hit about 2,400 homes, businesses and other structures. In all, nearly 90,000 people in the Fort McMurray area have been forced to flee their homes. (If you’d like to contribute to help the fire’s victims, the Canadian government is matching all donations to the Red Cross Alberta Fires fund.)
From May 2 to May 9, CBS News mentioned Canada’s wildfires 11 times, ABC News ten times and NBC News four times. None of the stories mentioned global warming’s role in contributing to the hot, dry conditions that make forests ripe for wildfires.
Fires Hit Heart of Canada’s Tar Sands Industry
Fort McMurray, a city of some 60,000 people, was a frontier outpost until tar sands production began in earnest in the 1960s, with a spike in oil prices in the mid-2000s fueling a secondary boom that nearly doubled the city’s population in the decade since. Just one network, CBS, mentioned why Fort McMurray had suddenly sprung up in the middle of an old-growth forest. Even that mention was itself telling: CBS used the Canadian oil industry’s preferred term, “oil sands,” instead of the more accurate “tar sands” to describe the sandy, sticky clumps that are turned into fuel through an expensive, polluting and energy-intensive process.
More:
http://fair.org/home/network-newscasts-ignore-global-warmings-role-in-canadas-wildfires/
