Like many others in Los Angeles, my family evacuated last night due to a quick-moving fire surging behind our home. We are amongst the fortunate who were able to return today, our house still standing. 

Before police allowed us back on the street, I walked around the neighborhood and introduced myself to journalists covering the story. As you can imagine, I was curious if they were reporting about climate change, which set the stage for the level of catastrophe we are seeing now, and I wanted to offer any help I could in explaining that crucial aspect of the story. My exchanges with the three crews I interfaced with were unilaterally heartening. Such hardworking people, all trying to get the story right, all open to hearing from me. Here are my takeaways from those conversations.

  • Even in Los Angeles, reporters are not sure if their news directors want them to mention climate change. (Please, if there are any news directors who happen to read this, tell your reporters that it’s ok to talk about climate change! Call me and I will help you!)
  • Questions one of the reporters asked me reminded me that people have been hearing about climate change for so long that they are both exhausted by it and also fuzzy on the details. As someone who is deep in this work, that can be easy to forget. We must calibrate our communications accordingly.
  • The Europeans are ahead of us. I observed anecdotally that BBC and Guardian coverage mentioned climate change earlier and more often than local news outlets here in LA or major national publications. When I spoke with a news producer for a big German outlet he said, “Climate change? Of course. We just talked about it in our last live shot.”

To all of the journalists out there, thank you for serving our community. I have personally relied on your reporting a great deal this week. And don’t forget to mention climate change!

P.S. Here are a couple stories that successfully make the climate connection with the fires in Los Angeles. 

Allison Agsten is the director of the Center for Climate Journalism and Communication.