The Story We Stopped Telling
Fewer and fewer media outlets are reporting on climate change
I remember when climate change used to show up regularly in the news.
Not as a passing mention, but as a serious ongoing story, because it is a serious ongoing story. I recall when major storms were explained in the context of a warming planet. New scientific reports made headlines. Melting glaciers, rising seas, worsening wildfires. The public conversation was far from perfect, but at least the issue stayed visible.
President Joe Biden made addressing this threat to humanity a top priority of his administration, as one would.
Then the political circus took over, and the dumber-than-dumb invaded the nation’s capital.
When the driver of the clown car entered the White House, the media began chasing a nonstop stream of chaos. Tweets at dawn, firings by noon, investigations by evening. Every day brought another spectacle. Newsrooms understandably covered it, but something important got pushed aside.
Climate change did not stop, but the coverage did, because the crybaby didn’t like it.
From where I sit as a reader and viewer, the shift has been impossible to ignore. Climate stories that once appeared regularly now surface only occasionally, often buried behind the latest political drama. It feels as though one of the most consequential stories of our time has slowly drifted out of the spotlight, and that matters.
The media doesn’t just report events. It signals what the public should pay attention to. When an issue dominates headlines, people understand it’s important. When it fades from view, the sense of urgency fades with it.
Climate change is especially vulnerable to this because it is a slow-moving crisis. It does not explode in a single dramatic moment like a terrorist attack or financial crash. It unfolds gradually, year by year, degree by degree. Without consistent reporting, it becomes easy to tune out.
But the physical world keeps reminding us that the problem hasn’t gone away.
Sometimes those reminders arrive in unexpected places.
Just this morning, I came across reports out of northern Japan describing a disturbing trend: bears attacking humans at unusually high rates. Wildlife experts there say the animals are struggling to find their traditional food sources as climate patterns shift and ecosystems change. Hungry bears are wandering into towns and villages looking for anything they can eat.
It’s a small story in the grand scheme of things, but it says a lot. Climate change is not just melting ice caps in distant oceans. It’s reshaping the relationships between animals, ecosystems, and people in real time. It is reshaping our world, and it has only just begun.
These are the kinds of stories that help people understand what climate change actually looks like on the ground, yet they rarely stay in the news for very long.
Take CBS as just one example.
Not too long ago, CBS News was one of the stronger mainstream outlets for reporting on climate-related developments. Correspondents connected extreme weather events to the broader warming trend. Scientific findings were explained in plain language. Climate change was treated as an ongoing story, not just an occasional headline.
Then something shifted. Yep. You guessed it: Trump, again.
Paramount, the parent company of CBS, came under the control of billionaire David Ellison, someone widely seen as politically friendly with Donald Trump and at least curious about the MAGA movement. I obviously don’t have access to internal editorial meetings, but as someone watching from the outside, the change in coverage has felt abrupt.
Stories linking extreme weather to climate change seemed to disappear almost overnight.
Segments that once explored the science behind warming temperatures stopped appearing. It felt less like a gradual editorial change and more like someone quietly deciding that the topic had become politically inconvenient, and the timing raises some uncomfortable questions.
Trump has spent years calling climate change a hoax, despite the overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary. He has also shown a willingness to publicly attack news organizations that challenge him. In that environment, it’s not hard to imagine media executives deciding that the safest route is simply to avoid the topic.
From the outside, it looks like silence born from caution.
There is another force shaping this conversation as well, one that rarely gets discussed openly. Christian nationalism has become a powerful influence within parts of the Trump political movement and within his administration. For some of its adherents, environmental concerns are dismissed not just for political reasons, but for theological ones.
I’ve heard variations of the argument more than once: humans cannot alter the climate in any meaningful way because only God controls the Earth. Some go further, suggesting that worrying about climate change shows a lack of faith. In their view, if the climate is going to change, it will change because Jesus decides it should.
That bizarre and nonsensical belief system leaves little room for scientific evidence or policy solutions.
When political power, media caution, and religious fatalism combine, the result is a dangerous kind of paralysis. If the problem is denied or framed as something only divine intervention can fix, then there is no urgency to act. The atmosphere does not care about ideology or theology, and meanwhile, the planet keeps warming.
Wildfires burn hotter and longer. Heat waves break records year after year. Droughts stretch across continents. Floods wipe out entire communities. Insurance companies begin quietly backing away from regions that are becoming too risky to cover.
None of this stops because it no longer leads the evening news.
That is why sustained reporting matters so much.
Journalism has always had a simple job: keep the public informed about realities that affect their lives, even when those realities are uncomfortable for people in power. Climate change fits that description perfectly.
It’s not just an environmental issue. It touches national security, agriculture, infrastructure, public health, housing, and economic stability. In many ways, it is becoming the backdrop against which the rest of this century’s challenges will unfold.
The decisions made in the next decade will shape the climate for generations. Every year of delay locks in more warming and fewer options for avoiding the worst outcomes.
That reality does not change because a politician dismisses the science.
And it does not change because parts of the media decide the topic has become politically inconvenient.
The story of climate change is still unfolding all around us. In some places, it looks like rising seas. In others, it looks like record-breaking heat, burning forests, or hungry bears wandering into human towns.
What worries me most is not that the story exists.
It’s that we seem to be talking about it less and less, and that’s never good. Knowledge is, after all, power.
Professor Mike is a university lecturer. He teaches, among other subjects, justice studies and global security, including international terrorism. In his spare time, he writes for Medium and Substack. His work has been published on CNN.