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It's quite striking to note how media coverage of climate change and pollution have gone down so much. I remember in the 90's it was very much in the popular mi

It's quite striking to note how media coverage of climate change and pollution have gone down so much. I remember in the 90's it was very much in the popular mileu. What's more we are living through an actual green revolution. Solar power and batteries have never been so cheap - and still promising to get cheaper and better with sodium ion batteries.

inigyou 2mo ago
In the 90s it was something to deal with later. Now that it's something to deal with right now, of course they won't cover it. In a few decades they'll cover it again, but only to say how it's too late now. Another factor is that rich oil and gas people figured out they could just buy the media.
- actionfromafar 2mo ago
  And government.
- Demiurge 2mo ago
  The bigger factor is probably the global pandemic, economic degradation, looming nuclear winter, genocide, WW3, aliens, and singularity. Not to mention orange clowns. We have surpassed the Britney Spears controversy era. Unless the polar bears are going to invade DC and attack ICE, we might not hear much about the climate change until these other problems go away.
  - ericmay 2mo ago
    And let’s also not forget, we all want the climate crises fixed, but nobody is willing to personally make any changes to their lifestyle! All parties are incentivized against fixing this problem.
    - Ekaros 2mo ago
      That is fundamentally the problem with whole thing. Vast majority of population on Earth is not ready for personal sacrifices needed. And if some government will get to around it, I am pretty sure they will be replaced and most things are rolled back. My guess is that we somehow end up geoengineering it with even more debt...
      - glitchc 2mo ago
        Why would they be when they see the hypocrisy of the chattering classes? How many celebrities or billionaires have curtailed their own lifestyles while pitching for climate change? Has the number of luxury jets and superyatches gone up or down over time? The average person may seem stupid but they are paying attention to the actions, and it all sounds like "I got mine, screw yours" to them.
        everdrive 2mo ago
        Hypocrisy is really not as useful as people think. Imagine if some man, who beat his wife, made a career of talking about the important and harrowing issues of domestic abuse. People would rightly scratch their heads at such an over-the-top hypocrite. But surely, the man would be correct: domestic abuse is an important issue. And imagine a response from the peanut gallery? "I'm not going to stop beating my _own_ wife until that hypocrite gets his comeuppance!"
        rwmj 2mo ago
        What have luxury jets and superyachts got to do with the chattering classes? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chattering_classes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chattering_classes
        inigyou 2mo ago
        Gas stoves and ordinary jets do.
        ifwinterco 2mo ago
        [dead]
    - tim-star 2mo ago
      at the end of the day 'personal changes' as a fix for climate change are just another lie big corporations fed us to make it feel like the onus was on a personal level. the amount of co2 that industries pollute and that various regulation would be able to change is multiple orders of magnitude compared to regular personal responsibility.
      - Robotbeat 2mo ago
        I mean, in the real world, people will just vote out politicians who raise their gas prices.
        inigyou 2mo ago
        Doesn't seem to have worked this time.
      - pingou 2mo ago
        Who do these corporations pollute for? Isn't it for individuals?
        inigyou 2mo ago
        Who benefits from a corporation? Is it the customers, the workers or the owners?
        hnaccount19293 2mo ago
        In many cases, it's all three.
        fsflover 2mo ago
        But not equally.
        hnaccount19293 2mo ago
- unsupp0rted 2mo ago
  Why would it be too late?
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    It'll already be summer temperatures in winter and most life will have died off
  - galangalalgol 2mo ago
    Some reports indicate it is already to late for emission reduction, or even elimination, to halt the feedback effects that continue the trend. But it won't be too late for active climate engineering until the effects of the climate change prevent our ability to do that engineering.
  - chicken-stew 2mo ago
    Thermal systems are slow. On the planetary scale of pump and dump heat the lag is something like 30 years. So the change you’re experiencing today is the effect of what was exhausted in the 90s. What we’re getting in 2050 is already locked in.
    - ffsm8 2mo ago
      I don't disagree but I feel like this comment chain kinda implies taking action today would actually meaningfully change the trajectory too... It really doesn't. Climate change is a global problem. It would need a global solution, and everyone should know that that's beyond unlikely to appear... So the only thing you can do is reduce local pollution - which is meaningful in it's way (better quality of life), but has no long term impact on the climate.
      - inigyou 2mo ago
        It really depends on which action you take.
      - deleted 2mo ago
        [deleted]
- qsera 2mo ago
  >Another factor is that rich oil and gas people figured out they could just buy the media. Yea, they figured it just now, in the 2010s and 20s. During the 90's the thought just didn't occur to them...Makes complete sense. Nothing discredits an idea so much like the proponents of it being total idiots.
- FeloniousHam 2mo ago
  > Another factor is that rich oil and gas people figured out they could just buy the media. Who is this "media"? Is this the same "media" that Trump and his dullards claim is so corrupt and contrary to The Truth? Are you influenced by this "media"? I don't read The Guardian or Jacobin, but I'm occasionally exposed to their headlines and they are certainly reporting on climate change. Are they part of the "media"? There is no monoculture "media" and to the extent there is, it is (in the US at least) overwhelmingly left-leaning. And ironically, when there were fewer outlets for information, those outlets (because they served such a large and diverse audience) hewed to a common sense/conventional wisdom understanding of the facts. No is one controlling media. Maybe the CCP through TikTok steering.
  - antisthenes 2mo ago
    > Is this the same "media" that Trump and his dullards claim is so corrupt and contrary to The Truth? Are you influenced by this "media"? I don't read The Guardian or Jacobin, but I'm occasionally exposed to their headlines and they are certainly reporting on climate change. Are they part of the "media"? This would have any meaning behind it if e.g. Jacobin had the same reach and viewership as Fox News. But it doesn't, so your entire argument rests on false assumptions.
    - FeloniousHam 2mo ago
      Fox News' influence is greater than its (pathetic by historical standards) geriatric audience share, but it far far less influential than its opponents imagine. What changes if they were gone? Another right-leaning organization would rise a la MSNBC to fill that demand. I would love to think that http://thedispatch.com http://thedispatch.com would become the standard bearer of thoughtful conservation of liberal values, but it would probably be ONN or some shit.
  - insane_dreamer 2mo ago
    the "media" means "the media that the majority of the people consume" -- that is most certainly not the Jacobin, or even the Guardian in the US, it's Fox "News", and the other big networks - NBC, CBS, ABC, to a letter extent CNN, NYT, WaPo look up the ownership of those networks. why do you think the Ellisons and Trump are trying so hard to get Paramount to take over Warner Bros after it already took over SkyDance?
- robocat 2mo ago
  That's the 4 stage strategy: https://youtube.com/watch?v=QYHwgQLvjqs https://youtube.com/watch?v=QYHwgQLvjqs
assimpleaspossi 2mo ago
Which shows how badly the popular media cover hard news. "Social justice" is all the rage now thrown together with anything else that's exciting to watch on video.
- fn-mote 2mo ago
  What does this even mean? Are you talking about US media? Seems like a delusion to me. Social justice is yet another banned topic under conservative corporate ownership. Quick headline check: - Trump claims to have invented a word that exists - “Burger King’s New Whopper Strikes a Blow in Fast Food Wars” - “US strikes $1.2bn deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects” (is this a social justice topic?) - Attorney General confirmation political reporting - school shooting reporting (is this social justice??)
  - assimpleaspossi 2mo ago
    And there it is
breezybottom 2mo ago
[flagged]
- altacc 2mo ago
  Are you asking for data to show there's reduced media coverage about climate change? If you look at the article there's a graph in there from Media Matters showing the decline. This isn't reddit, here you're expected to do more than read the headline ;)
  - breezybottom 2mo ago
    No it doesn't. That graph shows minutes of coverage on ABC, CBS, and NBC, and FOX; a cherry picked stat that excludes newspapers, magazines, any non-American media, as well as major networks like MSNOW, or entertainment like Last Week Tonight. This study is more accurate, and less sensationalist. https://www.colorado.edu/today/2026/02/16/climate-change-media-coverage-fell-14-2025 https://www.colorado.edu/today/2026/02/16/climate-change-med...
marcyb5st 2mo ago
I was reading somewhere that we are already fucked even if we were to completely halt greenhouse emissions today. Apparently we kickstarted some positive feedback loop (I think it was the thawing of the permafrost in Siberia/Canada) which releases enormous quantities of Methane and that with the higher temperatures we already reached we decreased Earth albedo as there is less snow/ice reflecting light into space. I really hope that particular article was wrong, because the alternative is that we have to resort to geo engineering. Considering that the governments can't really coordinate in preventing this, I don't see them coordinate in fixing it, especially because the scale and costs of the "fixes" are astronomical.
- Iolaum 2mo ago
  There's an old joke that goes about like: How do you solve Global Warming? Nuclear Winter ... I really hope this is not how we end up geo-engineering our way out of Climate change.
Alwayshasbeeb 2mo ago
While it's great that green energy is now economically feasible, the idea that there will quickly (say, in the next 50 years) be a "green transition" that eliminates the usage of carbon fuels is still highly dubious. What we've seen is new renewable capacity carving out a tiny sliver in the energy mix, sometimes even being able to meet all new demand in the installation period, but we still have all the existing demand running on the old stack. https://ourworldindata.org/energy-mix https://ourworldindata.org/energy-mix This book talks about this: https://www.amazon.com/More-All-Consuming-History-Energy/dp/0063444933 https://www.amazon.com/More-All-Consuming-History-Energy/dp/... There's also the fact that global society is not a real time strategy game being managed by a well intentioned min-maxing actor driving compounding efficiency gains in resource usage. It's a free for all where everyone is paranoid that they'll be destroyed if they don't use every dirty trick they can (on a global geopolitical level), entrenched oligarchies permanently lobbying for their inefficient, destructive structures to continue (on a domestic economy level) and so on. It's not looking good overall.
dreamcompiler 2mo ago
Until this administration which is actively canceling wind projects with taxpayer money. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49208314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49208314
losvedir 2mo ago
Well "climate change" as understood today wasn't really talked about much in the 90s, as I remember it. Some broad, apocalyptic concern about creeping temperatures and knock on effects over many decades. But I do remember quite a bit about "pollution" and like general acute environmental issues. Smog in LA, the hole in the ozone, etc. Those were both more understandable and visible to your average person and more tractable. And there was the obvious hook about energy independence after the fairly recent (at that time) oil embargo and such. The Green party (are they still around?) talked about more vague issues like ocean plastic and six pack wrappers on birds, but I don't think we made a ton of progress there, but then that was less consequential anyway. I feel like we went down the worst timeline since then when it became very political and people burn gas for the hell of it, and others hate people who do so. Solar and nuclear (or hell even just solar) could give us clean, cheap energy abundance, but the people championing solar tend not to do it from the abundance perspective, but in tandem with cutting energy use which is a hard sell and not necessary anyway, in my opinion.
- breezybottom 2mo ago
  You do realize some of us were alive in the 1990's? That's a really odd thing to lie about.
- roryirvine 2mo ago
  Did you forget the Earth Summit and its Climate Change Convention? Or the Kyoto Protocol? Both sat at the top of the news agenda for months! Not to mention years of features, long-form journalism, and documentaries. And then the denialist backlash began to kick off in the late 90s, which (initially) added to the media storm.
thefz 2mo ago
Your balcony solar is a drop in the ocean of CO2 that USA, China and India keep spewing out. https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2025 https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2025
ear7h 2mo ago
I think this has to do with the fact that the public has caught on to greenwashing. One example that sticks out in my head is the "save a tree use a plastic bag" thing. I think the appeal to environmentalism was enough to change customer behavior, or at least not cause resistance, but the real motivation for the change was probably financial.
chneu 2mo ago
Its because society has decided that anyone talking about climate change is rude It isnt nice to talk about climate change because it's become extremely obvious that blaming the rich and the government is not working. The responsibility lies on the 8 billion individuals making excuses. So the news isn't really covering it anymore because PEOPLE COMPLAIN.
nappy-doo 2mo ago
https://www.mediamatters.org/broadcast-networks/abc-cbs-and-nbc-aired-nearly-200-segments-about-three-us-heat-events-without https://www.mediamatters.org/broadcast-networks/abc-cbs-and-...
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]

inigyou 2mo ago

In the 90s it was something to deal with later. Now that it's something to deal with right now, of course they won't cover it. In a few decades they'll cover it again, but only to say how it's too late now. Another factor is that rich oil and gas people figured out they could just buy the media.

actionfromafar 2mo ago
And government.
Demiurge 2mo ago
The bigger factor is probably the global pandemic, economic degradation, looming nuclear winter, genocide, WW3, aliens, and singularity. Not to mention orange clowns. We have surpassed the Britney Spears controversy era. Unless the polar bears are going to invade DC and attack ICE, we might not hear much about the climate change until these other problems go away.
- ericmay 2mo ago
  And let’s also not forget, we all want the climate crises fixed, but nobody is willing to personally make any changes to their lifestyle! All parties are incentivized against fixing this problem.
  - Ekaros 2mo ago
    That is fundamentally the problem with whole thing. Vast majority of population on Earth is not ready for personal sacrifices needed. And if some government will get to around it, I am pretty sure they will be replaced and most things are rolled back. My guess is that we somehow end up geoengineering it with even more debt...
    - glitchc 2mo ago
      Why would they be when they see the hypocrisy of the chattering classes? How many celebrities or billionaires have curtailed their own lifestyles while pitching for climate change? Has the number of luxury jets and superyatches gone up or down over time? The average person may seem stupid but they are paying attention to the actions, and it all sounds like "I got mine, screw yours" to them.
      - everdrive 2mo ago
        Hypocrisy is really not as useful as people think. Imagine if some man, who beat his wife, made a career of talking about the important and harrowing issues of domestic abuse. People would rightly scratch their heads at such an over-the-top hypocrite. But surely, the man would be correct: domestic abuse is an important issue. And imagine a response from the peanut gallery? "I'm not going to stop beating my _own_ wife until that hypocrite gets his comeuppance!"
      - rwmj 2mo ago
        What have luxury jets and superyachts got to do with the chattering classes? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chattering_classes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chattering_classes
        inigyou 2mo ago
        Gas stoves and ordinary jets do.
      - ifwinterco 2mo ago
        [dead]
  - tim-star 2mo ago
    at the end of the day 'personal changes' as a fix for climate change are just another lie big corporations fed us to make it feel like the onus was on a personal level. the amount of co2 that industries pollute and that various regulation would be able to change is multiple orders of magnitude compared to regular personal responsibility.
    - Robotbeat 2mo ago
      I mean, in the real world, people will just vote out politicians who raise their gas prices.
      - inigyou 2mo ago
        Doesn't seem to have worked this time.
    - pingou 2mo ago
      Who do these corporations pollute for? Isn't it for individuals?
      - inigyou 2mo ago
        Who benefits from a corporation? Is it the customers, the workers or the owners?
        hnaccount19293 2mo ago
        In many cases, it's all three.
        fsflover 2mo ago
        But not equally.
        hnaccount19293 2mo ago
unsupp0rted 2mo ago
Why would it be too late?
- inigyou 2mo ago
  It'll already be summer temperatures in winter and most life will have died off
- galangalalgol 2mo ago
  Some reports indicate it is already to late for emission reduction, or even elimination, to halt the feedback effects that continue the trend. But it won't be too late for active climate engineering until the effects of the climate change prevent our ability to do that engineering.
- chicken-stew 2mo ago
  Thermal systems are slow. On the planetary scale of pump and dump heat the lag is something like 30 years. So the change you’re experiencing today is the effect of what was exhausted in the 90s. What we’re getting in 2050 is already locked in.
  - ffsm8 2mo ago
    I don't disagree but I feel like this comment chain kinda implies taking action today would actually meaningfully change the trajectory too... It really doesn't. Climate change is a global problem. It would need a global solution, and everyone should know that that's beyond unlikely to appear... So the only thing you can do is reduce local pollution - which is meaningful in it's way (better quality of life), but has no long term impact on the climate.
    - inigyou 2mo ago
      It really depends on which action you take.
    - deleted 2mo ago
      [deleted]
qsera 2mo ago
>Another factor is that rich oil and gas people figured out they could just buy the media. Yea, they figured it just now, in the 2010s and 20s. During the 90's the thought just didn't occur to them...Makes complete sense. Nothing discredits an idea so much like the proponents of it being total idiots.
FeloniousHam 2mo ago
> Another factor is that rich oil and gas people figured out they could just buy the media. Who is this "media"? Is this the same "media" that Trump and his dullards claim is so corrupt and contrary to The Truth? Are you influenced by this "media"? I don't read The Guardian or Jacobin, but I'm occasionally exposed to their headlines and they are certainly reporting on climate change. Are they part of the "media"? There is no monoculture "media" and to the extent there is, it is (in the US at least) overwhelmingly left-leaning. And ironically, when there were fewer outlets for information, those outlets (because they served such a large and diverse audience) hewed to a common sense/conventional wisdom understanding of the facts. No is one controlling media. Maybe the CCP through TikTok steering.
- antisthenes 2mo ago
  > Is this the same "media" that Trump and his dullards claim is so corrupt and contrary to The Truth? Are you influenced by this "media"? I don't read The Guardian or Jacobin, but I'm occasionally exposed to their headlines and they are certainly reporting on climate change. Are they part of the "media"? This would have any meaning behind it if e.g. Jacobin had the same reach and viewership as Fox News. But it doesn't, so your entire argument rests on false assumptions.
  - FeloniousHam 2mo ago
    Fox News' influence is greater than its (pathetic by historical standards) geriatric audience share, but it far far less influential than its opponents imagine. What changes if they were gone? Another right-leaning organization would rise a la MSNBC to fill that demand. I would love to think that http://thedispatch.com http://thedispatch.com would become the standard bearer of thoughtful conservation of liberal values, but it would probably be ONN or some shit.
- insane_dreamer 2mo ago
  the "media" means "the media that the majority of the people consume" -- that is most certainly not the Jacobin, or even the Guardian in the US, it's Fox "News", and the other big networks - NBC, CBS, ABC, to a letter extent CNN, NYT, WaPo look up the ownership of those networks. why do you think the Ellisons and Trump are trying so hard to get Paramount to take over Warner Bros after it already took over SkyDance?
robocat 2mo ago
That's the 4 stage strategy: https://youtube.com/watch?v=QYHwgQLvjqs https://youtube.com/watch?v=QYHwgQLvjqs

assimpleaspossi 2mo ago

Which shows how badly the popular media cover hard news. "Social justice" is all the rage now thrown together with anything else that's exciting to watch on video.

fn-mote 2mo ago
What does this even mean? Are you talking about US media? Seems like a delusion to me. Social justice is yet another banned topic under conservative corporate ownership. Quick headline check: - Trump claims to have invented a word that exists - “Burger King’s New Whopper Strikes a Blow in Fast Food Wars” - “US strikes $1.2bn deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects” (is this a social justice topic?) - Attorney General confirmation political reporting - school shooting reporting (is this social justice??)
- assimpleaspossi 2mo ago
  And there it is

breezybottom 2mo ago

[flagged]

altacc 2mo ago
Are you asking for data to show there's reduced media coverage about climate change? If you look at the article there's a graph in there from Media Matters showing the decline. This isn't reddit, here you're expected to do more than read the headline ;)
- breezybottom 2mo ago
  No it doesn't. That graph shows minutes of coverage on ABC, CBS, and NBC, and FOX; a cherry picked stat that excludes newspapers, magazines, any non-American media, as well as major networks like MSNOW, or entertainment like Last Week Tonight. This study is more accurate, and less sensationalist. https://www.colorado.edu/today/2026/02/16/climate-change-media-coverage-fell-14-2025 https://www.colorado.edu/today/2026/02/16/climate-change-med...

marcyb5st 2mo ago

I was reading somewhere that we are already fucked even if we were to completely halt greenhouse emissions today. Apparently we kickstarted some positive feedback loop (I think it was the thawing of the permafrost in Siberia/Canada) which releases enormous quantities of Methane and that with the higher temperatures we already reached we decreased Earth albedo as there is less snow/ice reflecting light into space. I really hope that particular article was wrong, because the alternative is that we have to resort to geo engineering. Considering that the governments can't really coordinate in preventing this, I don't see them coordinate in fixing it, especially because the scale and costs of the "fixes" are astronomical.

Iolaum 2mo ago
There's an old joke that goes about like: How do you solve Global Warming? Nuclear Winter ... I really hope this is not how we end up geo-engineering our way out of Climate change.

Alwayshasbeeb 2mo ago

While it's great that green energy is now economically feasible, the idea that there will quickly (say, in the next 50 years) be a "green transition" that eliminates the usage of carbon fuels is still highly dubious. What we've seen is new renewable capacity carving out a tiny sliver in the energy mix, sometimes even being able to meet all new demand in the installation period, but we still have all the existing demand running on the old stack. https://ourworldindata.org/energy-mix https://ourworldindata.org/energy-mix This book talks about this: https://www.amazon.com/More-All-Consuming-History-Energy/dp/0063444933 https://www.amazon.com/More-All-Consuming-History-Energy/dp/... There's also the fact that global society is not a real time strategy game being managed by a well intentioned min-maxing actor driving compounding efficiency gains in resource usage. It's a free for all where everyone is paranoid that they'll be destroyed if they don't use every dirty trick they can (on a global geopolitical level), entrenched oligarchies permanently lobbying for their inefficient, destructive structures to continue (on a domestic economy level) and so on. It's not looking good overall.

dreamcompiler 2mo ago

Until this administration which is actively canceling wind projects with taxpayer money. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49208314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49208314

losvedir 2mo ago

Well "climate change" as understood today wasn't really talked about much in the 90s, as I remember it. Some broad, apocalyptic concern about creeping temperatures and knock on effects over many decades. But I do remember quite a bit about "pollution" and like general acute environmental issues. Smog in LA, the hole in the ozone, etc. Those were both more understandable and visible to your average person and more tractable. And there was the obvious hook about energy independence after the fairly recent (at that time) oil embargo and such. The Green party (are they still around?) talked about more vague issues like ocean plastic and six pack wrappers on birds, but I don't think we made a ton of progress there, but then that was less consequential anyway. I feel like we went down the worst timeline since then when it became very political and people burn gas for the hell of it, and others hate people who do so. Solar and nuclear (or hell even just solar) could give us clean, cheap energy abundance, but the people championing solar tend not to do it from the abundance perspective, but in tandem with cutting energy use which is a hard sell and not necessary anyway, in my opinion.

breezybottom 2mo ago
You do realize some of us were alive in the 1990's? That's a really odd thing to lie about.
roryirvine 2mo ago
Did you forget the Earth Summit and its Climate Change Convention? Or the Kyoto Protocol? Both sat at the top of the news agenda for months! Not to mention years of features, long-form journalism, and documentaries. And then the denialist backlash began to kick off in the late 90s, which (initially) added to the media storm.

thefz 2mo ago

Your balcony solar is a drop in the ocean of CO2 that USA, China and India keep spewing out. https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2025 https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2025

ear7h 2mo ago

I think this has to do with the fact that the public has caught on to greenwashing. One example that sticks out in my head is the "save a tree use a plastic bag" thing. I think the appeal to environmentalism was enough to change customer behavior, or at least not cause resistance, but the real motivation for the change was probably financial.

chneu 2mo ago

Its because society has decided that anyone talking about climate change is rude It isnt nice to talk about climate change because it's become extremely obvious that blaming the rich and the government is not working. The responsibility lies on the 8 billion individuals making excuses. So the news isn't really covering it anymore because PEOPLE COMPLAIN.

nappy-doo 2mo ago

https://www.mediamatters.org/broadcast-networks/abc-cbs-and-nbc-aired-nearly-200-segments-about-three-us-heat-events-without https://www.mediamatters.org/broadcast-networks/abc-cbs-and-...

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]