“War is a climate story, but billionaire media owners don’t want to tell it. The effects of a warming Earth are worsening. Climate disinformation is rampant. Wars around the world are pitting petrostates against one another. So why are much of the world’s media backsliding when it comes to the coverage of climate change? Covering Climate Now was formed in 2019 in response to the climate silence that then prevailed in much of the press, especially in the US. Over the years that followed, hundreds of newsrooms joined our effort, and press coverage of the story began to reflect the scale of the crisis. Newsrooms beefed up their climate reporting teams; they confronted misinformation that sought to play down the problem; they thought creatively about how to find the climate connection on every beat. Finally, newsrooms were giving the story the attention it deserved. That all changed in the run-up to the 2024 US presidential election. Even though the stakes of that election were clear — everyone knew what Donald Trump would do to climate policy if he returned to power — climate never made it near the top of the list of journalistic priorities during the campaign. A September 2024 debate between Trump and Kamala Harris was typical: Climate change got only one question from the moderators, near the end of the debate. Trump used the moment to reiterate that he sees global warming as a hoax (an unequivocal falsehood, science has proven), and Harris reminded voters of her previous support for gas fracking. The storyline was set. Just over a year into Trump’s second term, it is now clear that many newsrooms see the climate story as a slog, and are scaling back. In the US, The Washington Post gutted its climate team as part of its ongoing series of layoffs, and CBS, NBC, and ABC cut back on their coverage.  There are important exceptions to the trend: The Guardian, The New York Times, the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, and CNN continue to cover the climate story, maintaining and, in some cases, expanding their reporting teams. More common, unfortunately, is the experience that Chase Cain, NBC’s former national climate reporter, recounted in an interview last week with the climate newsletter, HEATED. Cain, who recently left NBC, said he was ground down by having to constantly remind his bosses of the importance of the story. “I was just kind of exhausted by the sales, by the constant trying to explain and remind, like, hey, this is important. Please run this story,” Cain said. Cain joined Tracy Wholf, HEATED’s producer and a veteran of climate coverage at ABC and CBS, who also has been forced to strike out on her own. According to Media Matters, an industry watchdog group, coverage of climate on the three big broadcast networks fell by 35% last year, compared to 2024…”