When I was growing up in Minnesota, the local TV stations would come on at 10 PM with a half hour of “News, Weather, and Sports”: 15 minutes of news, a quick 5 minutes of weather, then 10 minutes of sports.
The general population cared enough about the weather to want to hear a quick forecast, and the farmers wanted to know enough to be able to make hay while the sun shines. But in general, except in rare circumstances like when some tornado-producing system might be barreling toward us across the prairies to our west, weather remained a pretty peripheral concern.
Times have changed, because earth’s climate has changed: extreme “weather” events have become more frequent and more extreme. Now, the “Weather,” is often headline “News.”
Like when catastrophic Hurricane Helene recently struck the United States.
As Helene approached landfall at Florida’s “Big Bend,” I followed developments on the Weather Channel. The high-point of the coverage was a long – and most impressive -- interview of Florida Governor Ron De Santis.
De Santis was impressive in his mastery of both the geography (all the towns and counties threatened) and the necessary guidance for the citizens (things like, don’t be lured into thinking the emergency over when the eye of the hurricane passing over brings momentary calm).
There was one aspect of this lengthy interview, however, that made a less favorable impression. Not once was there any mention of the wider picture of which this fast-intensifying hurricane is part: the pattern of increasingly extreme weather arising out of our ongoing disruption of the earth’s climate.
But, one might say in defense, this interview concerned an immediate, emergency situation. The Governor was there to help his constituents to protect themselves from the coming hurricane. Why distract from the immediate necessities to call attention to the long-term challenge that human civilization is now required to meet for our collective safety and survival?
On the other hand, what better time to use the “teachable moment” that this extreme weather event provides?
Surely, part of meeting our larger challenge is educating the public about the essential need to address the problems created by our civilization’s disrupting the climate system of the only planet we have. As this catastrophic storm approached – an extreme weather event that would kill over 200 Americans, and do more than $150 billion in damages to property – was the perfect time to advance the public’s understanding of the enormous stakes.
So couldn’t the interviewer and the Governor spend only almost all of their time dealing with the immediate emergency, while giving a little time to utilizing that teachable moment?
After all, the Weather Channel was reaching a national audience, not just the people of the Big Bend of Florida. (And never is that national audience larger than at such moments when the Weather has become the headline News.)
Ah, but the interviewer is talking not to just any state governor, but to a climate-denying extremist -- Governor De Santis -- who lately gained some notoriety by decreeing that all mentions of climate change must be deleted from all of Florida’s laws.
(Which is a remarkable thing to do for the Governor of a state that sticks out into the bathtub-warm Gulf of Mexico, whose heat is increasing the destructiveness of hurricanes. And a state that’s especially threatened by the rise in the sea levels caused by “global warming’s” melting the earth’s glaciers and the Antarctic ice sheets.)
But it wasn’t just the De Santis interview. Climate got no mention in the rest of the coverage I saw.
On the whole, it seems that they’d much rather stick to the “Weather” and avoid the “Climate.” And one can see why: “Climate” is controversial, and therefore a threat to revenue.
It’s not just De Santis: in his climate denial, De Santis is representative of his whole political party.
America’s Republican Party has had the distinction -- for decades -- of denying the findings of climate scientists, and blocking action to heed their warnings, more fiercely than any other political party in any other advanced democratic nation.
Because the Republicans have generated “controversy” over the reality of one of the most consequential developments in human history, a business (like the Weather Channel) will want to stay away from the battle, take no sides, not drive away any part of its revenue sources.
So they go deep into the immediate weather and steer clear of the larger, long-unfolding story of a a civilization that endangered itself by destabilizing the planet’s climate.
So, as is all too typical of our corporate system, the corporation chose the pursuit of profit at the expense of the clear public good. The Weather Channel passes up its opportunity play the historically urgent role of educating the American public so that understands the urgent challenge we face of averting a future in which the earth’s extreme weather brings catastrophes down upon human civilization—of which Helene and Milton are giving us a glimpse. So that the public will demand the kind of response to this challenge that the situation calls for.
All giving us a glimpse into our lamentable situation:
- Humankind faces what has been called the most serious challenge we have ever confronted as a species.
- One of our political parties has long since chosen to do the bidding of a fossil fuel industry that is willing to sacrifice our children and grandchildren for its own short-term profits.
- And then another corporation – the Weather Channel -- looks to its own bottom line, rather than focusing on the urgent need to educate the public so that there will be popular support for the serious actions the human future requires us to make.