The Atlantic needs a reminder that journalists should mention both sides when covering stories. The Society of Professional Journalists says the media are supposed to “support the open and civil exchange of views.” That includes climate change.
Ignoring that standard, Atlantic writers bypassed objectivity and went straight to alarmism by asking a number of “experts” “Can the Planet Be Saved?” in a Dec. 28 article.
Claiming that “things can feel beyond bleak,” a team of Atlantic editors, fellows and writers conducted interviews with professors, lawyers and regulators about environmental issues and the future of the planet asking them what gives them “hope” and “despair.” Most interviewees answered from the perspective that climate change will be catastrophic. One described the phenomenon as “another wave of violence inherent in the colonial ideal.”
“Climate change is the biggest challenge our planet faces,” former EPA official Margo Oge said. “I fear that killing, or endlessly delaying, the nation’s serious efforts to mitigate this threat will be catastrophic: rising seas swallowing island nations, floods wiping out towns and villages, unprecedented heat waves and drought destroying crops and lives, and even global instability that provokes wars.”
Although Oge served under Republican and Democrat administrations, she currently works with the left-leaning ClimateWorks and Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). In August of last year, UCS Director of News and Commentary Elliot Negin insisted there was no “other side” to the debate on climate science.
The Atlantic also consulted Gernot Wagner,senior economist at the liberal, eco-group Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). Wagner described climate change as “the perfect problem: more global, more long-term, more irreversible, and more uncertain that virtually any other public-policy problem facing us.” His organization says “climate change threatens our future.”
The idea that climate change is a preeminent threat is popular on the left. In January 2015, President Barack Obama said, "No challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change." Former Obama advisor Jon Powers also declared climate change the “mother” of all national security risks in November 2015.
Left-wing media, politicians and environmental groups continue to warn that climate change is a threat that will devastate the planet, in spite of past climate predictions which have proved to be laughably inaccurate. For example, in 2005 the United Nations predicted global warming would create 50 million refugees by 2010. That hasn’t happened. However, terrorism, which the Obama administration considered lower on its threat list, drove millions of refugees from the Middle East to Europe and any countries willing to take them in in recent years.
The Atlantic’s climate alarmism is just part of its history of liberal bias. In October, it published the article, “Why Solving Climate Change Will Be Like Mobilizing for War.” Venkatesh Rao, the author of that piece, said industry would need to mobilize at a level not seen since World War II, and that government bureaucrats would be “heroes” in the battle against climate change.
