Journalists and the looming superstorm of climate disinformation
By Andrew McCormick, CJR
FEBRUARY 24, 2021
This article is adapted from “The Climate Beat,” the weekly newsletter of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism initiative strengthening coverage of the climate story. The authors are Covering Climate Now’s executive and deputy directors.
TEXAS HAD ONLY JUST FROZEN OVER. In the wake of a devastating winter storm, millions in the state were without power and struggling to find warmth. They boiled snow for water; some were dying. And against all evidence the anti-climate political right was grousing about windmills and blaming a Green New Deal that doesn’t yet exist.
“Unbeknownst to most people, the Green New Deal came to Texas,” Tucker Carlson said on February 16 on Fox News. “The power grid in the state became totally reliant on windmills. Then it got cold, and the windmills broke, because that’s what happens in the Green New Deal.” An hour later, on Hannity, routinely America’s most-watched cable news program, Texas governor Greg Abbott said his state’s predicament “shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America.” In the days that followed, similar disinformation was repeated across Fox News and Fox Business programming, on competitor right-wing outlets OAN and Newsmax, in right-leaning newspapers, and in myriad statements by Republican elected officials.
These claims were nonsense. Texas runs primarily on natural gas, and it was frozen pipelines and wells—amid an energy infrastructure not designed to withstand cold—that were most responsible for the blackouts. Moreover, in the spirit of deregulation, state officials years ago had isolated their grid from the rest of the country, meaning Texas was unable to import electricity from elsewhere to keep the lights on. Some windmills did freeze, but only because they weren’t winterized—not due to an innate vulnerability of windmills in general.
In the reality-based press, experts defended renewable energy, and outlets issued explainers debunking Republican assertions. As the saying goes, though, a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth gets its shoes on. And so a story that should have been about Texans in need and a harrowing warning of the climate emergency turning life upside down was instead given over to a political mud fight—and that’s when it wasn’t reduced to a story about the high-flying misadventures of Ted Cruz.
More:
https://www.cjr.org/covering_climate_now/green-new-deal-misinformation-texas-windmills.php
= new reply since forum marked as read
