Even Fox News Admits Climate Change Is Real Now
Fewer people are skeptical of environmental threats, a new study says. But there is still resistance to tackling the problem head on.
Admitting we have a problem.
Photographer: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
The good news is that after nearly half a century, 1.1C of global heating and countless natural disasters, people for the most part finally accept the basic science of human-caused climate change. The bad news is that they still don’t seem willing to do very much about it.
A new study of TV coverage of the 2021 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found few expressions of doubt about the basic science of anthropogenic global warming — almost all of which were confined to right-wing media such as Fox News. And even Fox has mostly morphed, relative to coverage of previous IPCC reports, from questioning the reality and causes of climate change to doubts about its severity and the need to take action.