Also, as with Covid, early mortality figures dramatically understated the death tolls to come. The U.K. Health Security Agency initially estimated that 2,877 people died from heat-related ailments in May and June. France estimated 5,700 excess deaths took place between June 17 and July 2. Other analyses, benefiting from more complete data and advanced methodology, blamed the heat for as many as 20,000 deaths across Europe. And that was before the June heat wave was followed by an additional four heat waves that surely boosted the number of sick and dying.
But despite such parallels, there are critical differences between the Covid and climate emergencies. In the opening weeks of the pandemic, scientists weren’t sure how the virus spread, or how to treat it. By contrast, science is unequivocal that today’s extreme heat waves—and the drought and fires they’ve kindled—would be “all but impossible” without human-caused global warming driven primarily by burning oil, gas, and coal. “Summer of 2026 is another step in the escalation of our world into a sort of hotter, more dangerous planet that climate scientists have been telling us about for decades,” Jeff Goodell, the author of The Heat Will Kill You First, said on CBS News.
But, with notable exceptions like those cited in this article, news coverage of this summer’s extreme weather has fallen well short of the Covid standard. Two-thirds of the articles that major U.K. newspapers published about the summer’s fires did not even mention climate change, much less explain how record heat makes fires more likely and more deadly. In the U.S., the evening newscasts of ABC, CBS, and NBC between July 13 and 19 lavished airtime on the extreme weather but did not utter the words “climate change.”
Khan was only half right, however, when he opined that “the climate emergency is here, and no one can say they didn’t see it coming.” Yes, the emergency is here, and “coming faster and harder” than even scientists expected, economist Matthew Agarwala of the University of Sussex said on Britain’s Channel 4. But as Khan’s own article goes on to lament, a small but noisy chorus of climate deniers still deny that climate change is happening at all.
Again, the contrast with media coverage of Covid is striking. On April 23, 2020, as Covid’s death toll was mounting, Trump suggested at a White House press briefing that injecting disinfectant into the body might kill the virus. News outlets responded with a flurry of stories quoting incredulous experts lambasting Trump’s idea as dangerous nonsense. Trump quickly retreated, claiming that he’d been speaking sarcastically (though video of his remarks showed he was serious).
Most journalists did better than this during Covid, and the public needs us to do better now.
This article is published as part of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now.
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