Starting on Jan. 7, our screens became filled with harrowing images of the California wildfires. Near-dystopian videos of fires raging through neighborhoods that had never before been at risk of burning spread online. We all watched as the environmental disaster-filled future climatologists have been warning us about for decades finally arrived.
In the wake of such a devastating environmental crisis, there have naturally been many headlines sensationalizing the events of the past few weeks. However, much of this media coverage focuses on bureaucratic issues like insufficient water supply or inefficient movement of firefighters, ignoring the major environmental implications of the fires that extend beyond California.
Since the fires are happening during the rainy season of California, they are subject to the impacts of the Santa Ana wind phenomenon. These winds occur in California every year between the fall and spring months, forming from the Great Basin and sending gusts down the coast. This series of fires has also been spreading much farther and deeper into cities than previous fires in California. In fact, calling this disaster a wildfire feels like a misnomer — compared to traditional wildfires, these fires spread towards urban areas too, burning the most urban land in California since the 1980s. Not only does this mean that there are more people at risk, but the fires continue to cause harm even after being put out, releasing toxic chemicals into the air. The fact that these details are going largely unreported further downplays the fact that these fires are very different from previous ones that have happened in California. They are not a natural result of the state’s climate, they are a result of the extreme climate conditions that we are living under. Not only that, but leaving out the various reasons this fire is spreading so fast, like the Santa Ana winds, leaves room for right-wing leaders to claim that it has taken so long to put out these fires because of diversity efforts.
Most of the California wildfires in the past occurred during the dry season. However, these powerful, record-breaking fires took place during the rainy season, showing the severity of our climate crisis. Instead of criticizing the continued overreliance on fossil fuels, which will only worsen now that President Trump has removed the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, news corporations have been criticizing the lack of preparation from the state government to combat the fire. Not only does this distract from the actual root cause of this environmental disaster, these criticisms also fail to take into account how this fire is so different from the ones California has faced in the past.
The lack of coverage on these details is confusing, until one starts to dig deeper into the operation of these media publications themselves. The New York Times, despite having a section solely dedicated to climate change, refuses to ban fossil fuel advertisements, and NPR, which often covers the climate crisis in-depth, relies on oil company sponsorships. The muddying of climate change journalism by sponsorships goes even further than this. One study shows that many respected publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Bloomberg and the Financial Times publish ‘advertorials’ — editorial pieces paid for by companies and posted alongside other opinion pieces — written by these oil companies. Moreover, many of these media organizations have creative teams specifically dedicated to writing and publishing these advertorials.
News agencies often emphasize covering both sides of the climate story, especially in an attempt to justify advertising the very companies that are destroying our planet. But when it comes to climate change, there are not two equal sides. Many Tufts students are from California and have experienced the impacts of this environmental disaster up close and personal. There is no room for oil companies to write editorials on why fossil fuels are compatible with our green goals when so many people are being affected by said fossil fuels right now. As Tufts students, we must begin to read even articles from respected publications with a critical eye, and we need to accept that climate change is not an issue that future generations are going to have to deal with. It has already arrived.
