"What We Worry?"

On May 6, the United Nations Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) issued a comprehensive global assessment on the health of our planet.  It's not a pretty picture.

“The overwhelming evidence of the IPBES Global Assessment, from a wide range of different fields of knowledge, presents an ominous picture,” said IPBES Chair, Sir Robert Watson. “The health of ecosystems on which we and all other species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever. We are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide.”

“The Report also tells us that it is not too late to make a difference, but only if we start now at every level from local to global,” he said. “Through ‘transformative change’, nature can still be conserved, restored and used sustainably – this is also key to meeting most other global goals. By transformative change, we mean a fundamental, system-wide reorganization across technological, economic and social factors, including paradigms, goals and values.”

Despite the dire warning outlined in the report and the glimmer of hope held out for humanity, if we act quickly and comprehensively, the reports conclusions were largely ignored by the news media - most egregiously so in the United States.  Unfortunately, the report was issued on the same day as a little boy, who became 7th in line for the completely ceremonial role as British monarch, was born.  In the US, a country that tossed off the yoke of a real British monarch, the media coverage of a child who will likely grow up to be a minor celebrity was close to wall to wall.

Media Matters tracked broadcast news coverage on May 6 and found that ABC and NBC's nightly news programs failed to even mention the U.N. biodiversity report. They did, however, air two segments each on Archie. CBS was the only national broadcast network that ran a segment on the biodiversity report that night, and of course it ran one on the baby, too.

The perverse priorities of TV newscasters became even more obvious in the following days. Archie stayed in the news. Biodiversity and climate change stayed out of it.

One US network ABC, actually devoted more time on the royal birth in May than it devoted to climate change coverage through the entire year in 2018.