Barely a Blip

Trey Smith

[Tuesday] was August 28th 2012. Remember that date. It marks the day when the world went raving mad.

Three things of note happened. The first is that a record Arctic ice melt had just been announced by the scientists studying the region. The 2012 figure has not only beaten the previous record, established in 2007. It has beaten it three weeks before the sea ice is likely to reach its minimum extent. It reveals that global climate breakdown is proceeding more rapidly than most climate scientists expected. But you could be forgiven for missing it, as it scarcely made the news at all.

Instead, in the UK, the headlines concentrated on the call by Tim Yeo, chair of the parliamentary energy and climate change committee, for a third runway at Heathrow. This sparked a lively debate in and beyond the media about where Britain's new runways and airports should be built. The question of whether they should be built scarcely arose. Just as rare was any connection between the shocking news from the Arctic and this determination to increase our emissions of greenhouse gases.

I wonder whether we could be seeing a form of reactive denial at work: people proving to themselves that there cannot be a problem if they can continue to discuss the issues in these terms.

The third event was that the Republican party in the United States began its national convention in Tampa, Florida – a day late. Why? Because of the anticipated severity of hurricane Isaac, which reached the US on [Tuesday] night.
~ from The Day the World Went Mad by George Monbiot ~

In some ways, it's rather easy to understand why so many Americans no longer view climate change as an important issue. While we may be alarmed about the weather outside, the mainstream media goes out of its way to under report the most glaring changes staring humanity in the face.

I watched my local news on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. There were a lot of reports about crime, political intrigue and a guy in the Seattle area who is buying up property because he wants to build a big stadium to lure both an NBA and NHL franchise to the area, but there wasn't even a passing mention to the record Arctic ice melt!

How can the average citizen KNOW that climate change is real and happening now, if the media goes out of its way not to report what is going on?