Hi, I'm Saturn, and this is Climate to Action, a California State University San Marcos student
podcast.
And my name is Alex.
We're here to amplify voices, explore solutions to climate change, and address climate justice
for all living things.
We are committed to incorporating discussions on Indigenous knowledge in addressing the
climate crisis and including a call to action in every episode.
First, we'd like to acknowledge that our university and studio are located on the traditional
territory of the Luiseno-Payómkawichum people.
CSUSM and its surrounding areas are still home to the six federally recognized bands
of the La Jolla, Paula, Palma, Pechanga, Rincon, and Soboba -Luiseno-Payómkawichum people.
It's also important to acknowledge that this land remains the shared space among the Cupeno,
Kumeyaay, and Ipai peoples.
For today's episode, we wanted to take a deep dive into how the climate crisis is reported
in the news.
To get a behind-the-scenes look into the world of climate crisis reporting, we've invited
two very special guests.
Let's welcome Mackenzie Elmer, an environment and energy reporter from Voice of San Diego,
and Kori Suzuki, a reporter and visual journalist from KPBS.
Thank you both for being with us today.
Yeah, thanks for having us.
Thanks for having us.
So you both report on climate and environmental issues, and you do really great work.
But before we get into that, please tell us a bit about yourselves.
All right.
Well, thank you guys so much for having us.
I'm Kori.
I am the South Bay and Imperial Valley reporter at KPBS.
My position is through the California Local News Fellowship.
So we're a network of reporters that are placed across the state for two years, and we are
placed in cohorts.
So I was placed in San Diego along with several colleagues at different newsrooms.
And I've been covering the environment and climate change for a while now.
I come from a mostly radio background.
I got my start in public radio working at small community radio stations in the Bay
Area.
Some of the first stories that I worked on at those stations were about tensions between
the need for more housing and for climate change measures and to protect endangered
species or species that are at risk of becoming endangered.
So it's something that I've been thinking about for a while.
In my position now at KPBS, it plays a really big role in both of the regions that I cover.
In South Bay, Chula Vista, National City, Imperial Beach, these are all places that
are experiencing, like the rest of San Diego County, the kind of early tremors of the climate
crisis.
And the Imperial Valley, even more so, is an area that sees some of the most extreme
heat waves in the Western United States and is also experiencing multiple different sort
of slow moving elements of climate change and how the crisis collides with things like
water use and agriculture.
So climate change is a really big part of all of the work that I do at KPBS.
Nice.
Well, thanks for all that you do.
Yeah, seriously.
Thanks for having me.
I have so many questions about radio, but first I want to give MacKenzie a chance to
introduce herself.
Yeah, thanks.
So I am from the Midwest.
I got my start in journalism at the University of Iowa, studying journalism.
That's where I kind of first got into like environmental topics.
I'm one of those kids who's sort of weird and who always knew they wanted to be a journalist
once I heard about that was a thing you could do for a living.
And I always was just interested in science as a person.
I remember reading about climate change in like a National Geographic magazine, like
late, like early 2000s.
And they were talking about throwing up huge mirrors in space to reflect the sun's radiation
to like prevent global warming from happening.
And I thought like, well, that's crazy.
There's got to be better.
There's got to be better solutions than that.
Like maybe not create greenhouse gases in the first place.
So I went to school, studied, studied up, started doing a little bit of environment
reporting there, but then kind of started in a very traditional like newspaper journalism
career.
I started at a small paper next to the Mississippi River, did a bit of reporting on some like
the problem of fertilizer on farms and how it can pollute the Mississippi River.
And then kind of just worked my way up.
I started, I did crime beat.
I did the state, I covered the state legislature.
I kind of dabbled in some water issue, like water wars when I started covering city hall
in Des Moines, but there weren't any environment reporting jobs back then.
They were kind of few and far between.
It wasn't really as it is now.
It's sort of taking off and it seems like every outlet has an environment or climate
reporter.
So I moved to California to do some graduate school work at Scripps Institution of Oceanography
and studied climate science and policy there for about a year.
And then this gig opened up at Voice of San Diego, where I work now.
And I started in March of 2020, right before the pandemic hit and just kind of spent a
lot of time thinking about these issues and studying them in my garage as there were a
lot of environments to go out into really during that time.
But climate, since I studied that at Scripps, it really permeates every topic.
You can pretty much find a climate angle.
Maybe you can challenge me later, like find a climate angle on like any topic you pick
because it is truly a global phenomenon that we really don't know how to stop or slow down
in any real way at the moment.
And so, yeah, I'm just I'm excited to sit here and talk to you guys about everything
climate reporting.
So do you think the climate crisis is being covered accurately and efficiently in the
news?
MacKenzie, would you like to share your thoughts first?
Well, the news is a very large grouping of people who are in the media.
I would say the climate crisis has become definitely a more accepted concept.
Maybe even just 10 years ago, you definitely had like a split where conservative politicians
and just sort of conservatively maybe news outlets sort of refused to acknowledge that
climate change was a thing or a real term or that was had any scientific basis.
And that's a lot of that's because there's a lot at stake for the economies of scale
that we can get into later.
Fossil fuels really drive the global economy and to say and to try to accept the climate
crisis as real, it means those those sorts of businesses are at risk.
And I think but I think more and more you kind of see, especially as we have experienced
more like climate driven weather related catastrophes, not to mention multiple catastrophic floods
locally, across the country, hurricanes.
Like I think you see this this divide sort of like smoothing out.
And I think there's been some more acceptance on both sides of the aisle.
And I think media outlets are doing a better job of hiring people who are more trained
in understanding the science and have more like backgrounds in science as well, which
can be useful.
So I've definitely seen like it getting better.
Can it always improve?
Of course.
But I think it's just a matter of kind of sometimes trial and error for a lot of these
news outlets and like what's the best way we can locally make climate matter?
And I'd be curious to hear what Corey thinks about that, too.
Yeah.
You want to share your thoughts on that?
Yeah, I mean, I I agree with a lot of what you said, MacKenzie.
I mean, I think that so much has changed in the way that the press cover climate change,
the press as a whole.
And like you like you mentioned, I mean, there's so many different parts of what today is the
news media.
I mean, like right now, it's newspapers, it's nonprofit news organizations, it's public
radio, it's public television, it's commercial television, cable news.
And then there's sort of like a whole ecosystem, too, of influencers and and other people who
are who are also, I think we can safely say now part of the media and part of the the
groups of people who distribute information and and influence how people think.
Although I think all of those have are at like sort of different levels of produce,
different levels of of accurate information.
But I think I mean, in terms of like sort of journalists in the traditional sense and
in terms of legacy newsrooms, I think for a long time, I mean, I think the the press
did a very bad job of covering the climate crisis and climate change.
I mean, in the you know, even in the in the early 2000s, the early 2010s, I mean, there
is has has for a long time been this sort of kind of instinct by journalists to create
some sort of equivalence between the people who say that climate change is happening and
the massive scientific consensus that this is this is something that is unfolding around
the world and to climate deniers, people who who would spread misinformation and who say
that climate change is a is a hoax or that it's not necessarily going to be going to
be as bad as as researchers predict it will be.
And so I think just for for a really long time, there was sort of that instinct among
the press to to kind of hold up both of those sides of or both of those perspectives as
equal instead of sort of looking to the researchers that were tracking these very real and in
places like like Hawaii and other parts of the world who were tracking this very real
rise in carbon emissions.
And you know, there were like I think we'll get into later, but there were there were
massive companies to fossil fuel companies that were doing research at the time and had
also come to some to similar conclusions.
So it's not necessarily that we should blame the press for for the slow pace of action
on climate change, for all of it necessarily.
But I do think it's important to to say that the press has played a role in being slow
to recognize the dangers of climate change in the beginning.
And I think part of that, I mean, is that, you know, it's such a massive thing to kind
of wrap your head around.
I mean, and and all of us as as people are kind of, you know, our brains aren't necessarily
wired to sort of think about problems at this kind of massive scale and massive time timeline.
That's that's sort of something that is not always easy for for us to to think about in
terms of, you know, thinking about like millions of of of birds or like or hundreds of thousands
of species.
Those large scales aren't are difficult to to comprehend.
But I still think it's I think it's important to to say that we we've played a role in the
in the slow pace of action on climate change.
But I agree with MacKenzie that things have have changed a lot.
And I really feel like, too, there there was one year to me that really stood out in terms
of when sort of I think these the climate disasters that we're starting to see, the
extreme weather that we're starting to see that has been linked with climate change sort
of started to take hold a little bit more within the kind of the the minds of sort of
everyone who is in the press or or journalists in the press.
And I think that was in in the the summer and the year after of of twenty twenty.
I mean, in January, there were these massive wildfires that were happening in Australia
of that year.
And then throughout the kind of that kind of whole year, there were just all of these
other on top of on top of covid.
There were all of these other environmental disasters that took place across the world
that I think in some ways, you know, the the wildfires in northern California that turn
the skies orange.
Yeah, things like things like that that were really hard for people to to look away from
and to to kind of to to pretend like they weren't happening.
So I think that to me, that was one year that I feel like was a little bit of a turning
point also in terms of awareness within within the press.
I think it's like scaring people to all of these things that are happening.
All of the like you guys are saying, the natural disasters, because before climate change wasn't
really something I would hear about often.
And now with media and the news and everything we have, it's also important for like youth
that we have like social media, TV, streaming, everything.
We have it more exposed if people are interested to talk about it and also to take climate
action.
So we want to talk about climate change, but then also not talk about what we can do to
combat it as well.
And I know you were going to say something.
Oh, yeah, sorry.
I just wanted to follow up on one of Corey's earlier points.
It's true that journalists, I think, in our ethos, we learn of, you know, objectivity
being like the most important thing in journalism objectivity, meaning like, you know, talk
to as many sources as you can and present all sides and try to get as close to the truth
as possible.
Kind of got in our way and the climate crisis perspective, because we for years, as Corey
was saying, we framed it as a debate, though we have, you know, 99% of scientists agree
that climate change is real and it's caused by use of fossil fuels, etc.
I would like that's a very accepted and well understood for decades by science.
But journalists and media continue to treat it as a debate.
And whenever we talk to a scientist about climate change, we would talk to a skeptic
so that we felt we had both sides of the story represented.
I think it wasn't until I think the LA Times may have been one of the first papers I realized
or recognized had taken a stance.
And they I think they produced like an editorial to that effect that said we're no longer going
to frame this as a debate.
We're just going to talk about climate change.
Like it's a fact.
It's real.
And we're no longer going to like take this stance.
And that's another thing about Voice of San Diego.
We don't purport to be like traditional like objective journalism.
We understand and accept and own that like objectivity is virtually unattainable.
We're all human.
We have subjectivity.
We have values.
And so that's why like as part of our mission statement, we share what our values are as
a news organization so that readers can go to that and they know that, you know, we believe
that climate change is real.
We believe that a clean environment is important.
And so we will have like a stance on some of these things to that effect.
And I think that's really important as well.
And more and more you see news outlets of all types of political backgrounds taking that
kind of stance.
Can I ask a question?
Yeah, actually.
I guess just going off of that, MacKenzie, I am kind of curious what you think about
how sort of coverage of climate change has been in this election cycle.
Because I feel like we've like a lot has changed.
But at the same time, I do like I've sort of throughout this last year leading up to
the November election, I've had this feeling kind of that the kind of question of what
a shift in the American political landscape will mean for climate change has not really
been at the forefront of the conversation as much.
And I feel like it to me, it sometimes feel like it should be like the thing at the forefront
of the conversation about what is going to happen over the next four years.
And so I don't know.
I'm curious what you all think about how that has looked.
I guess since you asked me first, Corey, I will just say looking locally at San Diego
politics, Mayor Todd Gloria, City of San Diego mayor, he talked about climate change a lot.
Talked a big game about climate, passed a new climate action plan, basically an updated
or his own version of it in his first term.
And then the second time around, climate change was not a topic at all in the political spectrum.
Very rarely was it brought up.
And I think that's climate change often falls off the political agenda locally, nationally,
particularly when there are other types of crises that sort of grab hold of everyone's
attention, which is often like everyone's dealing with the economic outfall of COVID,
inflation.
People are just worried about their expensive groceries and don't really have time to worry
about the sea level rising in 20 years and engulfing the beaches of San Diego necessarily.
I think it's and that's fair in some respects.
And politics is a natural four year cycle.
It's naturally set in these sort of short term vision timelines.
So it's hard to keep climate change relevant.
Unfortunately, the human race is one that doesn't respond well unless it's an emergency.
And so I think what we'll continue to see are like when we feel the grip of climate
change sort of like on our economy, like for instance, I do a lot of reporting on the Colorado
River, which is like the main source of water for San Diego.
And that is super affected by climate change.
The water is overused, it's drying up in certain areas.
We got to find out a solution.
When we had that drought that lasted a couple of years, two years ago, climate change was
kind of like back on the map.
And so we'll see it pop up again, I think, but this last election cycle really, you know,
there wasn't a lot of space for it.
It was a lot about like, you know, Biden v Trump and, you know, Kamala v Trump.
And then that was like the most pressing crisis was like, you know, this huge party swing
and we'll feel the outfall of that later.
And even locally, I think just like homelessness and inflation and, you know, petty theft that
can be at a CVS stores.
Those are the things that like everyday people really feel in their pocketbook and worry
about.
And we don't really talk about climate unless potentially we have like a flood sweep through
a neighborhood, which we did.
But how quickly we moved on to other things.
It's just the human nature, unfortunately.
But it's up to us journalists to keep it, you know, keep it in the, keep it in everyone's
headspace as much as we can.
And that's why I think you probably do this.
And I do this too, we try to like make those connections when relevant within a story,
even if it's not about climate change.
I make sure to mention like I'm talking about air pollution related to like talk about fossil
fuels.
I always mentioned like, you know, fossil like planet warming fossil fuels is what I
will say instead of just fossil fuels.
Or if I talk about climate change, I'll say human caused climate change to like on repeat,
with that message out to the public over and over again, that, you know, these those two
things are related.
Why is it important to you to say human caused climate change?
Because a lot of people get confused, I think, like there is a certain sector of the population
that doesn't want to like talk about climate change or be kind of on that.
They don't want to live in that climate crisis mindset.
And one excuse, which is still relevant is to say, well, the climate has always been
changing.
So why, you know, why you call it a climate change now?
And that's true.
The natural earth unaffected by humans, and our use of fossil fuels changed on regular
timescales, we had ice ages, and then those with melts, and we would have flooding, warm
periods.
It's important, though, to say human cause because we are part of the industrial revolution
still last 200 years, you've been burning fossil fuels, which puts CO2 in the atmosphere,
which form the planet.
And that's warming the planet on timescales like unseen by the, you know, billion plus
year history of the earth.
And so we need to.
So that's why I say human caused climate change, because I'm specifically talking about the
climate change that we are ourselves, basically, like speeding up with our activities.
So it's my way of like trying to sort of succinctly say all of that in a short terminology and
cause people to think too, like, why am I saying human caused climate change, instead
of just climate change?
Like, there's a reason.
And maybe it will cause people to think a little bit about it.
It just enrages people and I get emails about that.
What makes you really passionate regarding the climate crisis?
Corey, if you would like to go first.
Sure.
I don't consider myself a very outdoorsy person.
I'm not, I don't really like camping very much.
And I'm not sort of also necessarily like, I don't always feel like I have this like
deep connection with nature or wildlife.
And I think that I bring that up because I feel like that for a long time has been a
really sort of the dominant narrative of the environmental movement broadly, but also,
you know, just a very big part of environmental journalism.
And I don't think that, like, I don't say that to say that sort of, you know, movements
to save like the burrowing owls aren't important.
I think that's incredibly important.
Biodiversity is important.
And I do, on a very fundamental level, think that our relationship with nature is broken,
especially in this country where kind of the idea of sort of dominance over nature has
been a very kind of foundational idea from sort of the early years of the country and
tied in with other foundational ideas like white supremacy.
But I think that at the same time, I personally, I feel like what I'm always drawn to more
or so in reporting and in stories is just kind of trying to focus in on how climate
change, the climate crisis, other environmental issues are affecting people and people's lives,
and especially people who, you know, haven't necessarily have been ignored by the press
or haven't been listened to or have been spoken for.
Because I think that while all of these different facets of how the world is being affected
by the climate crisis are important, there, I think there's also something that is wrong
with an approach that where, you know, foundations and donors are pouring millions of dollars
into saving individual, these individual species of animal, for example, like the burrowing
owl, and not thinking about their neighbors and not thinking about people who are also
facing the impacts that are currently happening of the climate crisis, extreme heat, flooding,
all of these different things that are having a real impact on people's lives right now.
And so that's where I try to, I think that's where I'm most drawn to personally.
But that's also, I think, where I try to focus my reporting as much as possible.
And so that, I think that just in sort of the day to day work, that looks like a lot of, as much as I can,
reporting on environmental justice issues and indigenous sovereignty.
Those are sort of some of the main reporting threads that have come up, especially in my
work in the Imperial Valley, which is where a lot of my climate and environment reporting
takes place.
Those sort of specific threads are what I try to focus on.
Yeah, there's almost too many interesting pieces of the climate crisis to tell.
I think what the work Corey is doing in Imperial Valley is awesome.
And it's a very unforgiving landscape to be at reporting in.
I've done some mostly like Colorado River centric reporting out there and it's, it is
incredibly hot and it's insane to see people out there like harvesting.
There's a huge farming economy out there, served by the Colorado River and has been
treated as a very extractive place.
It's been mined, it's been farmed, it's, they have like a natural lake that's drying up
and the air pollution is really gnarly.
I myself usually have to carry an inhaler when I go out there.
And it, this whole concept of like lithium being the new thing to take from Imperial
Valley is just sort of a repetitive story.
Currently, the biggest sources of lithium are in like the deserts of Chile or Bolivia.
And it's largely American or Chinese corporations extracting that lithium and globally selling
it for the renewable energy boom, which has its own externalities, its own climate footprint
that's like very undercounted and a lot of these places that they're mining are indigenous
lands next to sort of poor communities who then rely on those jobs but don't really receive
much benefit from it.
So it's just sort of like interesting to see it land closer to home in California, which
is better for like the local economy and it's better to have everything you need to make
green energy happen.
Like it creates batteries on US soil in terms of just like cutting back on the global transport
of that kind of material and all of the just, there's so much to like manufacturing that
is globally that's affecting the climate crisis as well.
But it's interesting to see that kind of be repeated in Imperial Valley and it's important
that Corey is doing that work and covering it.
MacKenzie, I would love to hear about what you're passionate about regarding the climate
crisis.
Climate change is a bummer to talk about and it creates a lot of anxiety for people and
they just feel like there's nothing.
I think that's another reason why people turn from the topic because they feel like there's
nothing they can do.
So if I could like create my own beat, it would be to cover just all the crazy, interesting
technological ideas that we have.
Those also including like natural solutions, but we know that we're going to have to, we
can't like largely re-engineer the economy without fossil fuels.
We have to come up with some interesting stuff to try to combat what we've done to the atmosphere
already and it would be really interesting to like cover those kinds of topics like,
you know, we, you know, geoengineering, like we create rain in certain places with geoengineering.
It's highly controversial.
I think I mentioned like, maybe I didn't in the beginning, but what first got me interested
in climate change was this concept of like, I read about National Geographic.
They were like, oh, we're going to put mirrors in space to reflect the sun's rays away from
the planet.
And I just was like, blew my mind.
I was like, what else could possibly be a solution?
And so, and I also just wanted to say a lot like Corey, like admitting basically that
he's not that rugged, like outdoorsy, you know, camping, like environment reporter guy,
because there is like some kind of trope there that all of, anyone who's an environment reporter
is like some like wacko, like liberal, you know, like outdoorsy person, which I will
say that I'm probably leaning in that direction a little bit more, but I think we need, I
think we need like urban climate journalists or like to kind of like generate maybe some
like urban climate crisis minded people, because there's plenty to talk about within cities,
like urban heat waves and urban heat islands.
And, you know, we're going to get into social justice issues and climate justice issues.
And it's like, that's where a lot of that is unfolding is in those, you know, highly
populated cities.
So yeah, I could go on and on, but I know you have a lot more questions we want to tackle.
For us that aren't too familiar with climate related terms, how would you both explain
terms like climate denialism and corporate greenwashing to your readers?
MacKenzie, do you want to take that first?
Sure.
Okay.
Climate denialism, I feel like you can kind of surmise what climate denialism is from
the term, but it, I mean, it mostly just means to me, people that I would assume just say
the climate change, human caused climate change is not happening.
It's not real.
It's something natural.
It's something that is manufactured by the media, more like kind of dipping into that
conspiracy theories sort of realm.
And corporate greenwashing is something that I've done a little bit more reporting on.
It's just absolutely flagrant out there right now because it's like sexy to be a producer
of a product that is biodegradable and recyclable and like compostable.
But when you dig into these products, a lot of times, especially ones that are like coming
from plastics companies or like claim to be some kind of recyclable plastic, we are learning
right now, like in the news more and more that you really can't recycle plastic.
And it's just another way of monetizing fossil fuels because plastic is generated from oil.
So there's a vested interest in the plastics world to greenwash that product and make it
seem okay and make people feel okay about buying it.
And you see that everywhere now and it's like anytime I see a product that's being advertised
as compostable or whatever, I always take a picture of it and kind of try to find out
as much as I can.
Because once you start digging into some of the research, it's like, remember I found
a cup or a container and I dug into like, I tried to find the research paper that backed
their claim that it would break down and compost and go back to become earth again.
And it was based on like one paper out of Brazil where they had put the container in
the most ideal perfect conditions ever and where it would never probably end up if you
threw it away in a trash can.
And it broke down in like a year.
And it's like, okay, now we...
And then we stamp a claim on that says, oh, it's biodegradable.
There's so much there that needs unpacking.
And that's kind of how I would explain that to readers.
But Corey, if you want to add on to that.
I don't know if I have much to...
I mean, I totally agree with everything that MacKenzie said.
I guess I would just say that I think it's also part of our job is to try and kind of
sort of dodge around those terms as much as possible.
I think like the terms like greenwashing and climate denialism are certainly useful to
put a label on things and to kind of point out patterns of behavior.
But I also think that our job is also to try and explain as much as possible how these
things are happening and what's happening without getting too bogged down in the more
complicated language to try and just be clear and be direct and to not get too in the weeds.
For instance, we could say instead of corporate greenwashing, we could just say this company
lied about...
Exactly.
That would be more understandable for somebody like me.
I agree with Corey too, that these terms are often more politicized ones that maybe journalists
wouldn't naturally use in a story to describe something.
And it is certainly our role to be more explanatory.
But yeah, we do face having to break that down sometimes.
We have an example of climate denialism with us right now to quote an Inside Climate News
report.
Exxon conducted cutting edge climate research decades ago and then pivoted to work at the
forefront of climate denial, manufacturing doubt about the scientific consensus that
its own scientist had confirmed.
So how would you tackle this kind of disinformation or false information intended to mislead?
You mean lies?
Yeah.
Go ahead, Corey.
Well, I guess I was just going to say, I mean, in some ways, I think that yes, I mean, that's
clearly, just like probably the original example of greenwashing or of lying about climate
change.
I mean, that research is probably some of the earliest that proves that climate change
is happening.
In some ways, I do sort of feel like also though, like, wow, that...
I mean, this company did this research, found that climate change was happening, like had
it in writing, and then decided to hide it.
But in some ways, that feels like exactly the kind of problem that journalism and investigative
journalism is designed to uncover.
Somebody was meant to get leaked that paper or somebody was meant to find that paper in
like a recycling bin or like get it handed to them in a folder in like a parking garage.
But what to me feels like the more, the larger question now is almost like, what happens
when you have all of this research out in the open?
All of this research that's saying that climate change is happening and is going to be this
incredibly...
It is going to upend the lives of so many people around the world.
And still, you have so many people who are turning away from that reality.
I think that that to me is sort of what almost feels like a more insurmountable question
that all of us and also that journalists especially have to consider and are struggling to navigate
now because when there's this sort of...
There are so many questions about...
When it's become so easy to raise doubt or to cast doubt on what is a scientific consensus,
for example, I think that that is really...
Something that is incredibly serious and something that we're really going to have to figure
out how to deal with, but that I feel like so many journalists are still trying to figure
out how to approach.
McKenney, did you want to add to that?
No, I was just trying to find an article that I had read a while back that around the same
time there was a key moment in American history where I think it was around the 70s where
we had some report like this and they had a panel of scientists and the US government
saying it's time to call it now that climate change is happening.
We need to really ramp back on fossil fuels.
In the end, these scientists fell to political pressure and held off and said, no, I want
to go back to the 70s.
We're good for a while.
It's not clear.
We don't have enough evidence, that kind of thing.
To me, it's not really...
That blew my mind, but also wasn't very surprising.
It's not really surprising that fossil fuel companies like Exxon, they of course probably
hire cutting edge climate researchers or climate scientists.
They hire these people so that they have as much information as possible about what exactly
they're doing with their activities.
It's not a shocker that they knew this.
Then obviously, it's not within their business model to try to combat their own concept of
making money.
But yeah, just like Corey said, it's like we as reporters, it's our role to try to find
and hold accountable these companies that we all know, know this is a problem, but how
can we prove it?
There's been local evidence of local California natural gas companies that were found, they
were caught using rate payer money to fight against different energies that were in the
way of their own profit margins.
This happens all the time.
It's really not surprising that we knew back in the 70s that this was a problem.
We knew even earlier than that.
In fact, we knew the concept of climate change and how it worked back in 1856.
It was like a woman, Eunice Newton Foote, had discovered how the greenhouse...
She coined greenhouse gases as a term and discovered and demonstrated the effects of
CO2 on the atmosphere.
It's always been a battle of business versus science.
1850s?
That's crazy.
I did not know that.
To add on to what you said about both of you being journalists and your roles as journalists,
we know obviously you have an obligation to your audiences.
Have you seen reporting these issues lead to climate action?
I don't know.
I would say some of the most...as a journalist, you always hope that your reporting, especially
if it's investigative or something, can lead to a better outcome for the climate.
I would say there are little victories here and there.
There was an instance where Mayor Taglorio of San Diego, he had promised...as an administration
held up that they were going to put money towards climate equity projects, so money
in areas of town that have historically been underserved or redlined.
Then lo and behold, his budget cut that funding.
We put that into a story and blasted it.
There was enough political pressure to City Council reverse that move and put the money
back.
It takes having journalists out there in the first place.
It takes supporting organizations like KPBS and Voice of San Diego, which are all donation-based.
We rely on the public to support us.
They're not advertising, for instance, but we have to be out there watching these very
small...these kind of decisions can happen all the time.
We have to be out there to keep watch and hold them accountable when it does happen.
I don't know if, Corey, you want to share your own example?
I think probably the best example that I can think of isn't necessarily...I don't know
if it's necessarily one that I could say where change happened, but I think it's one that's
still happening right now.
Like MacKenzie, like you said, it takes reporters to be there.
It takes journalists to be there and paying attention to have a good sense of when there's
something wrong happening and when people might be able to act together to change it.
The Imperial Valley is really, again, one of the clearest cases where I've seen over
the last year just a very strong kind of movement where a lot of people, especially younger
people...these are organizers and young politicians and people who are sort of just concerned
about kind of, again, what's going to happen with the future of the lithium industry and
what that's going to mean for the Valley.
They have been sort of in lots of different pockets, sort of a very active voice in the
conversation in going to the powerful elected officials like the County Board of Supervisors
and going to Sacramento to speak with state legislatures, with state lawmakers, and going
to these companies, which are multi-billion dollar companies, Berkshire Hathaway, Controlled
Thermal Resources, major energy companies based around the world, and demanding that
they get a seat at the table and get to make these requests and get to guide the future
of the industry and have some decision-making power in how that industry should grow in
the region.
I think there's still, I should say, there's still a lot of open questions about the development
of lithium in California and in the Imperial Valley.
There are still a lot of those questions still haven't been answered.
So I think that there's a lot of, that's part of why there's so much uncertainty.
But I will say that just over the last year, seeing that, seeing how many people are willing
to just get up and say that they feel like they want to make sure that this is fair to
them has been really moving.
Yeah.
That's definitely really exciting for me to hear, especially as someone who's going to
college and still learning about the climate crisis.
And I feel like, Alex, do you agree, like hearing about how people our age are advocating
for change, especially when it comes to climate justice?
Oh, 100%.
I think it's important that we're learning about this.
I think it's important that we have a podcast about climate action.
Because again, like I said earlier, I hear climate change all the time, but obviously,
we don't really, we're not informed or educated and we're getting all of our information from
TikTok or Instagram.
And we're not taking the time to see things like you do and your job with KPBS and Voice
of San Diego.
So I definitely agree.
I think it's super important.
I would just mention too that I feel like even talking to a reporter about your concerns
over climate change is a climate action.
So it doesn't have to be, for instance, and climate action can even be as much as like
choosing to put your food waste in the compost bin, taking the bus, if you can find a convenient
way to do that, choose that over your car.
That's how I kind of get through the day and get through climate anxiety myself is just
try to focus on the little triumphs everywhere when it comes to climate change.
Because it is sort of like a collective effect, right?
If everybody made a few changes to their lifestyle.
Granted, the bulk of the blame for climate changes on fossil fuel companies and the wider
economy we can't totally control.
But it does help to kind of take smaller actions throughout your day.
I definitely agree.
I take public transportation practically everywhere.
The Sprinter and the Breeze buses are like my best friends.
We also wanted to talk a bit more about youth engagement in climate justice because we're
college students and many of our listeners are as well.
So we're wondering if you had anything else to say about why youth engagement is important.
It's probably the most important thing because young people, I mean, as the generations go,
I was once maybe the young people, right?
To another age group, as we go through time, the climate, the planet is going to be warming
and we'll be experiencing more extreme effects, more extreme weather, et cetera, et cetera.
And so as the generations move on, we're going to, those generations are going to be dealing
with worse stuff.
So I think the youth seems more engaged than ever on this topic on climate change.
That's just my view of it.
I could be wrong, but I actually talked to some young climate activists.
I read a biweekly newsletter called the Environment Report.
I just kind of gave them the mic and said, what do you guys ticked off about?
What do you think we need to do?
So that gives me some hope.
But I think the other thing too is I really hope that the youth engagement translates
to political, like speaking with your vote and getting involved in politics and paying
attention.
I think there's a tendency to tune out, especially since there's a lot of distractions.
I myself am addicted to TikTok, for instance, so I understand what's going on a little bit
there.
But some young people I talked to this last election, they were probably leaning Democrat
and they decided they didn't feel like their vote mattered, so they didn't vote at all.
And that's one very certain way to make your vote not matter, is to not even add your vote.
And to me, that's kind of a waste of your time because it still does count, I believe.
At least you can see it reflected in the popular vote and definitely in local elections.
If you do care about where you live and you want to be engaged in local climate decisions,
it's all dictated by specific, very careful vote counting.
And we had some pretty, the city of San Diego at least had some pretty important tax increases
that they wanted to pass.
I know that sounds boring, but a lot of the money was supposed to be used to fix flooding
stormwater systems that wiped out entire neighborhoods, for instance.
Or there's other climate things that that money desperately is desired for, and that
didn't pass and it was like a razor thin margin.
And maybe if we had more engaged 18-year-olds and above voting and caring about these things,
caring about transit, this huge tax or this bond measure to pay for better public transit,
which it's very expensive, there's not a ton of money for it.
And it failed too on a razor thin margin.
So I feel like the youth are kind of, or what I see the youth caring about these days is
sort of losing to the standard boomer era interests, which are very different.
They care about different things.
And so I really hope that college students are paying attention and at least translate
if you're pissed off about the climate, use your powers that you do have to make a difference.
Yeah, I totally agree.
And I would just say that, I mean, I think young people, talking to young people about
this as a young person always makes me more hopeful.
And I mean, I entered journalism in the era of the global climate strikes and sort of
the youth, a really strong youth movement around climate change and so around fighting
climate change.
So I think that there's a lot to really be hopeful about there too.
And you know, it makes sense because like MacKenzie said, young people are the ones
who have the most stake in this.
We all and everyone who's younger than us are the ones who are going to have to live
in the world that all of this is shaping.
Yeah, that's so true.
In addition to your news outlets, what other climate information resources do you guys
recommend to our listeners?
There's some good, there's more and more like national focused climate news outlets
like InsideClimateNews.org is one.
They basically exclusively talk about climate change through like science, politics, justice
and health, clean energy.
Canary Media is another one that mostly covers the clean energy space.
They do a really good job.
There's also a site called Industry Dive.
It's pretty nerdy, but like they cover like pretty specific topics like there's like Waste
Dive, which covers the state of the like solid waste industry, or they have like Utility
Dive version, which covers electric and gas markets and stuff like that.
Those are all really important topics related to climate change.
Yeah, I would totally back those up.
I would also add maybe Grist is an outlet that I think does a lot of really great reporting,
really great climate focused reporting.
I also think, I would just say that it's always helpful to just keep an eye out and sort of
if you like read a story or see someone talking about climate change and you like what they
say, like to just follow what they do and follow their work.
Some of my favorite writers about the climate change and environmental issues are Sarah
Kaplan and Daryl Fears of the Washington Post.
Daryl Fears until recently was a long term, long time reporter at the Washington Post
and recently took a buyout.
But I think that just, you know, there are so many people, so many incredibly smart and
talented and dedicated people who are working on this.
So I think if there's somebody whose work you gravitate towards too, it doesn't hurt
to kind of just keep an eye on that too.
Thanks for sharing those cool resources.
I'm sure our listeners and us will check them out.
For every episode, we like to ask our guests to suggest a climate action our listeners
can take to combat climate change.
What do you both suggest?
Okay, I'm going to go with an individual action.
I know that like MacKenzie brought up earlier, I mean, I think that's it's a really, you
know, it's a slippery slope when so much of climate change is or so much of the contributions
to climate change are sort of happened at a very large level, more so than one person
can change.
I'm going to say you can you can always eat less beef or eat no beef.
I mean, you know, a lot of it's something that most people can do.
And it is something that, you know, out of out of all kinds of different actions doesn't
necessarily cost you more, might cost you less, might be healthier for you.
And also, you know, it's a it's something that will measurably transform your your carbon
footprint.
You know, some studies have suggested that that can even cut down the amount of carbon
emissions that your diet produces by as much as a third or more.
So, yeah, it's that's that's what I'll that's what I'll recommend.
I think people can do that.
What about you, MacKenzie?
I'm going to go with the largely unpopular suggestion of taking public transit.
It's like not cool in San Diego for some reason, but like if you go to like New York or San
Francisco or it's like very kind of in in vogue to either use your legs, a bicycle or
take transit.
But I mean, it's like if you're going to the bars and you've got a bus stop that can get
you like someone of the way, I think it might make sense to do that in San Diego.
We have like nice weather walking is it's not that hard.
And it really the largest source of the greenhouse gas emissions locally, San Diego County is
driving driving is like the biggest problem here.
And I know that the city is the county itself is not set up well for transit, like very
little of California is.
But it's like when people start demanding it to be better and they like want to use
it, that's how that's how it gets built, honestly.
So at least if you come downtown, you can definitely like park and like take a bus into
the city into the central city and like take it back instead of trying to like drive around
and find a parking spot.
That might be just like a very niche pet peeve of mine.
That's what I do when I go to downtown.
It saves a lot of time.
Yeah.
Nice.
I'll have to spread the word more about the Sprinter.
I think it's fabulous.
But yeah, what do you guys have in San Marcos for transit?
Like what's the we have the Sprinter, which is the train.
And then we have Breeze, which is the bus.
And yeah, that's it.
Those are the main ones.
The bus.
Okay, the Sprinter.
So yeah, there's like some cool train vibes in San Diego that are sort of under the radar.
Like I like to take a train from San Diego to LA, even though it sucks because once you're
in LA, you usually need a car.
But I made it happen.
I made it work.
If you've got people in LA that pick you up, it's so much better than, you know, being
stuck in traffic.
So definitely.
I completely agree.
And those are some really sick approaches to climate action.
So folks listening at home, please try them out.
Thank you so much, Corrine McKenzie.
We appreciate your efforts as journalists and the stories you take on are incredibly
important.
It was so cool learning about how you two are reporting the climate crisis.
And for our listeners, you can find Corey Suzuki on KPBS and McKenzie Elmer on Voice
of San Diego.
Yeah, I just want to thank you guys for like elevating journalism and journalists because
it's like, I don't know, it's very kind of rare to be honored in this sort of way or
like to have journalism be like supported.
It's really important to us too.
So you know, we're all part of this community as well.
And we just want things to get better.
So thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you both.
I'm so glad we could make this happen.
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