"(T)o say that the individual is culturally constituted has become a truism. . . . We assume, almost without question, that a self belongs to a specific cultural world much as it speaks a native language." James Clifford

Sunday, July 6, 2025

Climate Change in Europe: On the Culpability of the Media

A report by the E.U. Copernicus Climate-Change Service in 2024 contains the finding that “Europe is the continent with the fastest-rising temperatures on Earth, having warmed twice as fast as the global average since the 1980s.”[1] In spite of “fastest-rising” and “twice as fast” are alarming expressions, no such corresponding sense of urgency had translated into a political will capable of pushing through game-changing legislation and regulations in the European Union. The short-term financial interests of industry, cost-conscious consumers, workers not wanting to be laid off, and taxpayers would pale in comparison were a sense of emergency to take hold the domain of politics. “Weak” states (i.e., governments) that are not willing or even able to resist short-term political pressures from an electorate exacerbate the problem even in the midst of climate change, which scientists decades earlier had predicted would really begin to move the needle on air-temperatures globally in the 2020s (and just wait until the oceans become saturated with CO2!). You ain’t seen nothin yet may be the mantra for the 2030s.

It seems to be a case of the proverbial oblivious frog in gradually yet steadily warming water in a cooking pan on a stove, as the editors at journalistic media companies have been orienting their news to reporting on specific climate-related events that are disasters only in particular locales and thus do not point explicitly to global warming. For instance, on 4 July, 2025, a wildfire in the E.U. state of Greece “prompted evacuations in coastal areas south of Athens” and mobilized “75 firefighters, including five elite ground teams . . . alongside fire engines, volunteers, four helicopters, and two aircraft” as well as municipal water trucks.[2] “(O)ngoing heatwaves, drought and strong winds” kept the fire-risk high in the area.[3] Only at the end of Euronews’ article on the fire is climate change mentioned, and then only as an attenuating factor: “While fires are common in the area, experts say climate change is exacerbating them.”[4] That is to say: Oh, by the way, the warming of the planet’s atmosphere and oceans is in play here. Even as climate change is relegated thusly, that it is only exacerbating wildfires in the southern states such as Greece is a way of deflating claims that climate change ought to be handled as an emergency in terms of public policy. The media has thus been culpable.  


1. David O’Sullivan, “Firefighters Battle Wildfires in Greece and Turkey, Prompting Evacuations and Emergency Response,” Euronews.com, July 4, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.