Interview: A Reporter’s Field Notes On the Coverage of Climate Change

As a journalist, Elizabeth Kolbert has played a major role in trying to bring the issue of climate change to the attention of the U.S. public. Her award-winning series on climate change in The New Yorker in 2005 became the basis for her influential book, Field Notes From a Catastrophe, and she has traveled from Greenland to Alaska to the Netherlands reporting on the emerging impacts of a warming world. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Kolbert discussed a wide range of issues: how the media and scientists are both responsible for the lack of public understanding on climate change; the Obama administration’s chances of passing climate-related legislation; and the prospects of geoengineering the planet to mitigate the effects of warming. On whether there is a moral or ethical dimension to this issue, she observed, “It seems to me that if there’s not a moral dimension to potentially leaving a totally impoverished planet to future generations, all future generations, I don’t know what would be.”
Click here to read the full interview.