Where is the Press?

San Francisco -- If a planet fried in a greenhouse, and no one came to the press conference, would it still sizzle? You have to wonder, watching the national political press ignore climate change even while candidates and voters bore in on it as one of their priority issues.

The world's scientific community has determined that global warming is a human-caused crisis that threatens our children's future, our economic prosperity, basic security and the environmental stability of our planet.

As for urgency, the Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has stated: "What we do in the next two or three years will determine our future."

So how can it be that, out of 2,679 questions asked of the candidates since January 2007 by the national press, only three questions have mentioned global warming? Instead, hosts like Tim Russert, George Stephanopoulos, and Wolf Blitzer have asked ridiculous questions about UFOs, baseball, and even Chuck Norris! Do voters know better -- absolutely.

In New Hampshire, the New York Times found voters complaining about inadequate coverage of energy and global warming, with one voter saying, "We need leadership -- someone to say, 'This is what we need to be doing, so let's all pull together.' I'm just not seeing it."

And the candidates are raising a ruckus with the issue. Here's Mitt Romney making John McCain's commitment to a modern auto industry the basis of his campaign appeal in Michigan, going after McCain for his support of higher fuel economy standards (which polls show 80% of Michigan voters favor), but you won't find that in the coverage.

Is it just me, or is that nuts? Watch this video to see for yourself how the media have let us down and then urge these hosts to stop covering the horse race and get back to the human race.

Comments

[DFlinchum]

One of the biggest environmental problems is over-population. The US is growing at a horrific rate, from 200 million in 1968, to 300 million in 2007, to an estimated 420+ in 2050. Most of this growth is caused by massive immigration since 1970 and the descendants of these immigrants. Yet the environmental groups such as Carl Pope's Sierra Club refuse to acknowledge this "inconvenient fact". It's hard to take groups that are this intellectually dense or dishonest seriously on any subject affecting the environment.

[Tubby]

All of us have had it pounded into our head that nature moves in million year and billion year increments. It's still hard to take Global Warming seriously.

[RepublicanBrain]

Those types of things make for better reading than listening. Global Warming stuff is laden with technical information that, at times, even contradicts itself. Cramming it into a sound byte doesn't really do it justice.