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Let me start 2023 with a glance back at a December news moment that caught my eye. To do so, however, I have to offer a bit of explanation.<\/p>
First, the obvious: I\u2019m an old guy and, though I spend significant parts of any day scrolling through endless websites covering aspects of our ever-changing world, I have a subscription \u2014 yes, it\u2019s still possible! \u2014 to the New York Times<\/em>. That\u2019s the paper New York Times<\/em>. For those of you too young to know, once long ago, in an era when TVs were still black and white and the Internet, at best, a figment of some sci-fi novelist\u2019s imagination, all papers and magazines were printed and sold on actual paper. Hence, of course, the graphically descriptive and definitional name \u201cnewspaper.\u201d<\/p> In 2023, for those of you of a certain age, that may sound like something from the neolithic era. Still, so it was. And for me, when it comes to the Times<\/em> \u2014 call it nostalgia, if you will \u2014 I remain in the age of the newspaper (though, often enough, I also visit its website). Every morning when I get up, it\u2019s there on the mat in front of my door. So, I pick it up and, in my own fashion, face the day just past thanks to a set of front-page headline stories.<\/p> On the morning of Wednesday, December 14th, I glanced at the headlines atop the page and saw: \u201cInflation Slows, Leading to Hope of \u2018Soft Landing'\u201d and \u201cFraud at FTX Started Early, Charges Claim.\u201d At mid-page was: \u201cA Blast of 192 Lasers Achieves a Breakthrough in Nuclear Fusion\u201d; and at page bottom, \u201cBeijing\u2019s Streets Empty as Covid and Fear Surge\u201d; \u201cMcCarthy Fights to Clear Path to Speaker\u2019s Seat\u201d; and \u201cWith Indiana Jones Era Over, Museums Assess Looted Art.\u201d<\/p> Each was a perfectly reasonable story to focus attention on, while the nuclear fusion one actually offered<\/a> some modest hope of a new way to switch off fossil fuels (even if in a future almost too distant to imagine). That, then, was the shorthand version of the previous day I faced that morning on this ever-stranger planet of ours. Those were the stories the editors of the Times <\/em>wanted at least the ancient among us to notice, the ones that mattered most as they saw it.<\/p> And I reacted accordingly, focusing on them briefly as I wolfed down my breakfast.<\/p> Crashes Then and Now<\/strong><\/p> It wasn\u2019t until that night, as I lay on the couch and began leafing through the inside pages of the first section of the Times<\/em> that, at the bottom of page 12, I noticed a piece<\/a>, reported by Raymond Zhong, headlined: \u201cIn a Rapidly Warming Arctic, Rain Where It Used to Snow, In Scientists\u2019 Annual Assessment, Signs of Climate Change Include Storms Traveling Northward.\u201d<\/p> And no, that obviously wasn\u2019t a headline intended to blow me or any other reader away, storms heading northward or not. Admittedly, above it was a dramatic enough photo of what looked like a mountain of ice and snow with the subhead: \u201cA September heatwave in Greenland caused the most severe melting of the island\u2019s ice sheet for that time of year in more than four decades of satellite monitoring.\u201d And as with that caption, here was the weird thing: more or less every other line of that story might, with a little interpretive rewriting, have become a blazing front-page headline focusing us on a planet that\u2019s only expected to get ever hotter<\/a> in 2023 and beyond, given that \u2014 and this should shock any of us \u2014 the last eight years have been the warmest on record.<\/p> Try just this random line from Zhong\u2019s piece, for instance: \u201cOver the past four decades, the region has warmed at four times the global average rate, not two or three times as had often been reported, scientists in Finland said this year. Some parts of the Arctic are warming at up to seven times the global rate, they said.\u201d Sure, to make it onto the front page, it would have needed a headline that embodied some sentiment like: \u201cIt\u2019s raining, it\u2019s pouring, the Arctic is snoring\u201d or a screaming handle about heat soaring in the coldest place on the planet, right?<\/p> So, let\u2019s sum it up this way: Yes, the slowing of inflation was the page-one story of that day and certainly mattered to Americans, fearful of how a possible recession might level their lives. And headlined story two was, in a sense, the very opposite \u2014 a deflationary tale of how, at his now-collapsed crypto-currency exchange, FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried had already emptied the savings of striking numbers of his customers.<\/p> Still, if you stop to think about it, there, on page 12, was what could be considered the most crucial inflationary and<\/em> deflationary story of our time, maybe of all time. I know, I know, the focus of Zhong\u2019s piece was an assumedly wonky Arctic Report Card that\u2019s been produced by scientists for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration since 2006. And you could feel that wonkiness in the piece itself.<\/p> Still, while inflation \u2014 or even the Fed\u2019s attempts to reduce it<\/a> by eternally upping interest rates \u2014 could lead to an economic disaster that would damage the lives of so many Americans, nothing (short of nuclear war) could damage our lives the way climate change is likely to. Honestly, barring some future surprise, shouldn\u2019t it qualify daily as the<\/em> headline story of our lifetime, potentially of any lifetime? After all, whether in the melting, rainy Arctic or just about anywhere else, what we\u2019re watching is the potential destruction of the only world humanity has ever known.<\/p> And when it comes to global warming, we\u2019re not talking about a possible future crash from which, as in the Great Depression of 1929 or the Great Recession of 2009, we can recover in a limited number of years. We\u2019re talking about the potential for a forever crash, the Greatest Depression of all time that lurks all too obviously in our future and is already beginning to clobber us.<\/p> My point being: the news isn\u2019t just a matter of what\u2019s reported, but of how and where it shows up, of what\u2019s emphasized and what isn\u2019t. This, to my mind, is especially true with the subject that should, in fact, grip us all daily: that worst version of inflation ever. And yes, the temperature on this planet is indeed rising precipitously<\/a> thanks to the continuing use and abuse of fossil fuels and the release of staggering quantities<\/a> of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. And that, in the end, is likely to cause harm of an unimaginable sort, the kind that newspapers simply aren\u2019t used to covering.<\/p> In an all-too-literal sense, that is, we\u2019re creating a hell on Earth. And yet, despite the efforts of figures like the remarkable Greta Thunberg<\/a> or Bill McKibben<\/a> or the Sunrise Movement<\/a> and other groups<\/a> that have focused tellingly on climate change \u2014 despite the increasingly immediate extreme weather it\u2019s been producing from Pakistan<\/a> to China<\/a>, South Sudan<\/a> to Chile<\/a>, Europe<\/a> to the United States<\/a> \u2014 global warming remains a largely off-the-front-page phenomenon.<\/p> Screaming Headlines<\/strong><\/p> Mind you, the extremes of national (if not global) weather are regularly reported, often with remarkable enthusiasm, just largely without the necessary context. For instance, I watch the NBC Nightly News<\/em> with Lester Holt and one thing you can say about his show is that it loves<\/em> extreme \u2014 and extremely bad \u2014 weather. In news terms, severe storm conditions<\/a> sweeping across this country, often for days at a time, are pure attention-getters and, as a result, often that show\u2019s lead story, night after night after night.<\/p> Such storms are presented as both weather reports and remarkable dramas \u2014 tornadoes\/floods\/snow and ice\/the hottest or coldest weather<\/a> \u2014 as they spread damage of all sorts across the United States. On occasion, Holt or his surrogates will, in passing, mention climate change or, on rarer occasions, even have a separate piece<\/a> on the phenomenon. But at best, it\u2019s the equivalent of a passing footnote. And yet, sadly enough, the fossil-fuelized overheating of our world and its effect via weather events causing increasing damage<\/a>, including ever fiercer fires<\/a>, the melting of ever more glaciers<\/a> and ice sheets<\/a>, ever more devastating droughts<\/a>, or the record flooding<\/a> of countries<\/a> simply doesn\u2019t register in the way it should \u2014 not in a way that might make some difference in how we think about and deal with this planet of ours.<\/p> Yes, if climate change, or perhaps I mean climate anxiety, is already part of your worldview (as, for instance, it evidently is with Gen Z<\/a>) and you\u2019re searching for news about it, you\u2019ll always find some. Let me give you one recent example. If you go online and Google \u201ccoal use, 2022,\u201d you\u2019ll get numerous stories. For instance, on December 16th, based on an announcement by the International Energy Agency, CNN<\/a> reported that (thank you, Vladimir Putin!) demand for coal, the dirtiest and most polluting of the fossil fuels, rose by about 1.2%, or eight billion metric tons, last year. That\u2019s a record \u2014 and coal use may stay at that level for several years to come, which, in climate-change terms, simply couldn\u2019t be worse news for this planet.<\/p> And yet, honestly, did you even notice that story? Until I mentioned it, did you know that coal use soared again last year? Was it the lead on the TV news you watch or at your crucial mainstream news website? I doubt it. It passed as if in the night, as did stories on the staggering profits<\/a> of the fossil-fuel industry in 2022 \u2014 on, that is, how companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron continue to make unprecedented fortunes off the future devastation of our planet. In inflation terms, that coal report couldn\u2019t have been a more nightmarish tale and yet the inflated use of coal and the inflated profits that go with it really don\u2019t qualify as \u201cfront page\u201d news, even if they help ensure that we humans will burn ourselves off this planet.<\/p> After all, despite remarkable advances in the development of green-energy sources, as the New Yorker<\/em>\u2018s environmental journalist Elizabeth Kolbert wrote<\/a> last November: \u201cAt the time of the Rio summit [in 1992], fossil fuels provided roughly 80% of the world\u2019s primary energy. Thirty years later, fossil fuels still provide roughly 80% of the world\u2019s primary energy. In the meantime, total global energy use has increased by almost two-thirds.\u201d<\/p> Under the circumstances, you would think that some screaming headlines were in order, wouldn\u2019t you?<\/p> Of course, I don\u2019t mean to suggest that such a reporting phenomenon is restricted to climate change. Take, for example, the funding of the U.S. military. After all, nothing really beats it in importance, when it comes to spending your tax dollar. We\u2019re talking about a 2023 Pentagon budget of $858 billion<\/a>, or just over half \u2014 yes, more than half! \u2014 of the full government budget for that year. By perhaps 2027, if not sooner, it\u2019s expected to reach a trillion dollars<\/a>.<\/p> And mind you, that\u2019s not even \u2014 not by any means! \u2014 the full national security payout. When you include the budgets for the various intelligence agencies, the Department of Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, and the like, you end up at $1.4 trillion<\/a> or more. And last year, congressional Republicans and Democrats, who agree on so little, typically upped the military budget by $45 billion<\/a> more than the Biden administration even requested. Imagine that for a moment and the sort of headlines it should have generated.<\/p> I mean, more than half of your tax dollars are going into a military that, since World War II, has essentially won nothing of significance, though to this moment it\u2019s never stopped fighting in distant lands. (Just recently, for instance, American planes were conducting airstrikes in Somalia<\/a> and U.S. troops were still battling<\/a> in Syria.)<\/p> And again, though you might think screaming headlines were in order, this was basically stuff that, with rare exceptions<\/a>, the mainstream media was reporting but not making the slightest fuss over. For that, you had to turn to edgy websites like TomDispatch<\/em> or Robert Reich\u2019s<\/a> or William Astore\u2019s<\/a> Substacks.<\/p> Yes, such stormy news exists, but the question, as 2023 begins, is: Where is it? Why aren\u2019t such stories eternally screaming headlines in the mainstream?<\/p> Replacing the Gods<\/strong><\/p> Looking back on the history of humanity, of us, something regularly jumps out (at me at least). In this era, we\u2019ve figured out two quite different ways to act in a fashion that once was left to the gods, something that you would think might be eternally headline-making material; we\u2019ve discovered, that is, how to potentially destroy ourselves and end life as we know it on this planet in double time.<\/p> The first way is, of course, via nuclear weapons, the one kind of disaster that could actually cut short climate change by potentially creating a planetary \u201cnuclear winter<\/a>\u201d that might starve billions<\/a> of us. As has been true for decades, the \u201cgreat\u201d \u2014 and who knows why they\u2019re still called that \u2014 powers are capable of functionally blowing this planet to hell and back, as are some lesser powers like India and Pakistan<\/a>. And not faintly satisfied with that, in the coming decades, our country is planning to invest a couple of trillion<\/a> more of your taxpayer dollars in \u201cmodernizing\u201d the American nuclear arsenal. Only the other week, in fact, with staggering hoopla, the U.S. military rolled out<\/a> an all-new nuclear weapon, a B-21 stealth bomber, as if on a Hollywood set.<\/p> And yes, all of this has, in some fashion, been reported and, when Vladimir Putin implied<\/a> that he might use such weaponry in the Ukraine war, even crept toward the top of the news. Still, neither nuking the planet, nor overheating it beyond compare gets anything like the attention it deserves. <\/p> Ending the world as we\u2019ve known it, whether in a matter of weeks or in slow motion over countless decades should, it seems to me, evoke the screaming headlines of our times. And I can\u2019t help eternally wondering not where the reporting on such subjects is but where those headlines are when it comes to potentially the greatest versions of both depression and inflation ever.<\/p>\n