• Three hundred thousand people evacuated in France and Spain due to wildfires.
  • Canadian wildfire smoke blanketed the Eastern seaboard and beyond.
  • Millions of acres burned in Utah, California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Arizona, Idaho, Hawaii and several other states this summer.
  • The Colorado River, Lake Powell, and Lake Mead all at their lowest levels in recorded history
  • Flash flooding in New York, New Jersey, Missouri, Alaska, and Pennsylvania.

These are not isolated incidents―they are one story. But the media isn’t connecting the dots.

You’d think with all these disasters that there would be urgent action in our Nation’s Capitol, in state legislatures and in newsrooms around the country about combatting climate change.

But no.

Instead, the media reports each of the incidents separately, not seeing the forest for the trees (no pun intended). Politicians console their constituents and scramble for funding to pay for the damages. At best, the powers that be talk about adapting to the new (finally accepted) reality of climate change, and about creating resiliency – an important subject, but far from enough.

Tell the media and our elected officials to call out these separate disasters out for what
they are – part of a climate crisis that urgently needs to be addressed.

It’s time to get serious about this issue. Focus on what politicians will actually commit to
do to reverse course on the impending climate disaster.

We need the media to make it clear: The climate crisis is here. It’s past time to put the individual news stories in context, to analyze the cause. Send a message to the news directors of CBS, CNN, ABC, NBC, Fox News, and MS NOW: Call the climate crisis what it is.

Thank you,

Jane O’Meara Sanders
The Sanders Institute