Along with ongoing coverage of the latest bombings and missile and drone attacks in Iran and the oil-rich Gulf states, extreme weather events are also providing lead segments on evening news programs this summer. What you don’t see in much of the TV coverage, at least not since the beginning of President Trump’s second term as president, is any mention of climate change. Without that link, watching people like ABC’s David Muir on “the most watched newscast in America” ask network meteorologists to explain the conditions — but never the causes of their nightly footage of burning, flooding landscapes and traumatized people — is excruciating.This self-limited reporting on the American networks — in sharp contrast with the BBC and other international TV news outlets, as well as some print and digital publications in the U.S. — also runs counter to an increasingly robust science that can now attribute to what degree climate change is driving individual extreme weather events including floods, droughts, fires and storms. Until very recently, many scientists said this was simply not possible — and climate change skeptics continue to emphasize the uncertainty of causation in specific disasters. But the accuracy of this “attribution science” is confirmed in a newly released report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.Instead of adding this information to their reporting, however, news outlets like CBS and the Washington Post (both owned by Trump supporters) have fired their climate reporting teams. Even National Public Radio, as part of its cutbacks, has gotten rid of its chief climate editor along with its climate team.If fearfully reduced media coverage of an expanding crisis with warlike casualty figures isn’t bad enough, many establishment Democrats are now practicing “climate hushing” in response to Trump’s pro-oil climate denial, playing down the disasters around us this summer to avoid a backlash in November’s midterm elections, on the logic that swing voters are more likely to be alienated by climate talk than won over.The brutal early-summer heat dome over Europe led to a wave of excess deaths across 27 countries, according to European sources — estimated at 10,000 to 14,000 killed. A similar heat dome is now breaking records across the U.S. from Bismarck, N.D., (105 degrees) to Miles City, Mont. (115 degrees). This as wildfire smoke from Canada and Minnesota blankets much of the nation. Such pollution is thought to contribute to nearly 16,000 deaths each year, according to a 2024 Yale study. Texas is experiencing its second summer of torrential rains and deadly flooding.The West Coast is facing a marine heat wave similar to the one that began in 2013 and killed off 95% of Northern California’s kelp forests in a blow to the industries and cultures associated with them. At the same time, 85% of the world’s coral reefs continue to experience heat-related bleaching. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports the ocean is the hottest it’s been since accurate measuring began in the 19th century. This is resulting in increased coastal disasters such as Super Typhoon Bavi, which hit Guam and another U.S. territory, the Northern Mariana Islands, on July 5 before killing dozens of people in the Philippines.We’re losing a climate war that we should, by now, be winning. With technological advances, global market forces have shifted dramatically in favor of a rapid transition off fossil fuels to now cheaper, cleaner solar, wind and other carbon-free energy systems.While all nations are hurt by the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran — and the blockade of oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz — those like China and Spain that have already invested in the clean energy transition have suffered less from oil and gas interruptions. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has promised a French company a billion U.S. taxpayer dollars to cancel its offshore wind projects along the U.S. East Coast and pledge to invest instead in oil drilling (and spilling and global warming).Coal and oil were great energy systems for the 16th and 19th centuries. But we know how to do better for less today. We don’t have to continue overheating our planet or leave deadly floods and choking wildfire smoke as this generation’s legacy. The only thing stopping us is politics. By defending democracy and using its tools, we the people can still win the climate war — even if today’s politicians and TV networks won’t admit it’s happening.David Helvarg is the executive director of Blue Frontier, an ocean policy group, and co-host of “Rising Tide: The Ocean Podcast.” He is the author of “Forest of the Sea: The Remarkable Life and Imperiled Future of Kelp.” Insights L.A. Times Insights delivers AI-generated analysis on Voices content to offer all points of view. Insights does not appear on any news articles. Viewpoint This article generally aligns with a Center Left point of view. Learn more about this AI-generated analysis Perspectives The following AI-generated content is powered by Perplexity. The Los Angeles Times editorial staff does not create or edit the content. Ideas expressed in the pieceThe article argues that major U.S. television news programs routinely show dramatic footage of floods, fires, and heat waves while asking meteorologists to explain immediate conditions, yet largely avoid mentioning climate change or its role in driving such extremes, especially in the years since President Trump’s second term.It contends that this self-imposed silence contrasts sharply with international broadcasters and some U.S. print and digital outlets, and it criticizes recent decisions by CBS, the Washington Post, and National Public Radio to dismantle or cut back their climate reporting teams as evidence of a broader retreat from serious climate coverage.The piece maintains that this media behavior is increasingly out of step with modern climate science, emphasizing that “attribution science” can now quantify how much human-caused warming influences specific extreme events such as heat waves, droughts, floods, and storms, a capability underscored by recent assessments from major scientific bodies like the National Academies and other U.S. institutions.[3][5][6][9][14]The article further asserts that many establishment Democrats are engaging in “climate hushing,” deliberately downplaying the climate dimensions of current disasters to avoid alienating swing voters ahead of elections, and it portrays this political calculation as a dangerous failure to confront a mounting public-safety crisis.It links recent phenomena—a lethal European heat dome, record-breaking temperatures across the United States, widespread wildfire smoke, Texas floods, a marine heat wave that devastated Northern California kelp forests, and ongoing coral reef bleaching—to a larger body of evidence showing that human-driven warming is intensifying heat waves, heavy rainfall, droughts, wildfires, and powerful coastal storms.[2][6][8][9][11][12][13]The piece describes the world as “losing a climate war” that should be winnable, arguing that technological advances and market shifts have already made solar, wind, and other carbon-free energy sources cheaper and cleaner than fossil fuels, and that countries that invested early in renewables are proving more resilient to fossil-fuel supply disruptions.[4][7][8][11]It criticizes the Trump administration for favoring oil and gas over clean energy, highlighting policies that promise large sums of taxpayer money to cancel offshore wind projects in favor of expanded drilling, and portrays such moves as emblematic of political choices that lock the United States into outdated, more dangerous energy systems.[4][7][8]Finally, the article urges readers to “defend democracy and use its tools,” arguing that civic engagement, elections, and public pressure remain capable of shifting policy, and insisting that political will—rather than technological limits—is the primary barrier to preventing future climate-driven catastrophes.[7][9][11]Different views on the topicIn contrast to the depiction of widespread media avoidance, U.S. scientific agencies such as NASA, the Environmental Protection Agency, and NOAA explicitly and regularly connect climate change to worsening extreme weather, explaining that human-caused greenhouse gas emissions have warmed the planet by about 1.1°C since the late 19th century and are already increasing the frequency and intensity of heat waves, heavy precipitation, droughts, and major storms.[2][6][9][11][14]Major outlets including NPR and The New York Times have prominently reported on attribution science and its conclusions, detailing how climate change made specific droughts, heat waves, and floods far more likely or severe and describing recent advances as a “huge leap forward” for understanding the role of global warming in individual events, which challenges the notion that mainstream news organizations broadly avoid linking weather to climate.[3][5][10]Some scientists and public agencies emphasize that while climate change clearly raises the odds and intensity of extremes, any single storm, flood, or fire also reflects natural variability, leading them to stress that disasters are “more likely” or “more intense” because of warming rather than solely “caused” by it; this insistence on probabilistic framing and nuance can make coverage appear more cautious than the article suggests.[1][6][9][12]Climate and energy analysts often focus on the steady expansion of renewable power, improvements in energy efficiency, and growing state and corporate climate commitments, arguing that these trends represent significant, if incomplete, progress; this perspective sees the situation as urgent but not simply a binary “climate war” being lost, complicating the article’s war metaphor and its portrayal of the United States as uniformly failing.[7][8][11]Environmental and public-health organizations frequently call for more sustained, solutions-oriented climate reporting that links extreme weather to health risks and policy responses, but they also highlight structural challenges such as limited newsroom resources, the difficulty of explaining complex science during breaking news, and audience fatigue, suggesting that coverage gaps are driven by more than partisan “climate hushing.”[3][7][8][11]Some communication experts and advocates warn that highly adversarial or doom-heavy framing can discourage public engagement, and they therefore promote narratives that pair clear explanations of climate-driven extreme weather with practical mitigation and adaptation strategies, offering an alternative to the article’s emphasis on political conflict and media failure.[7][8][11]
