ZB ZB
Live now
Start time
Playing for
End time
Listen live
Listen to NAME OF STATION
Up next
Listen live on
ZB

Mike's Minute: Climate change "reporting" nothing but ideology

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Wed, 18 Sep 2019, 9:38AM

Mike's Minute: Climate change "reporting" nothing but ideology

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Wed, 18 Sep 2019, 9:38AM

I'm very happy to be proved wrong by the end of the week, but so far things aren't looking good. A bunch of global media, 200 plus, have bandied together to “report” on climate change this week.

My concern was this wasn’t so much about reportage, more about a bandwagon and promoting it. That's fine, if you call it a bandwagon, but they don't. They go under the guise of reportage, and call me old fashioned, but reportage to my mind, especially when it comes to themes, needs some level of balance. Especially on a subject that is so complex.

A lot of people believe in climate change, and get exercised about climate change. Not because they know much about it, but because they’ve been told to be worried about it.

It must be accepted that there are climate change critics. It must be accepted many argue that climate change is real but the man-made component is under real debate. It must be accepted there are those who argue that tiny countries like ours, make no substantive contribution to a global problem, and even if we turned ourselves upside down and inside out, we wouldn't fix it. It must also be argued that despite the world attempts so far to address carbon output we aren't doing a very good job, if in fact carbon reduction is an answer at all.

So a lot there to cover. But are they? Not so far.

Last article I stumbled across yesterday afternoon was on car congestion. We love cars in this country, have just about more cars per head than anywhere on Earth. Carbon from cars has gone up, not surprisingly, due to the fact we have more cars, we have more migrants, and they buy more cars. We have had a rock star economy for 10 years. You buy cars in good times.

Car emissions beat farm emissions, so the suggestion in the article was car sharing. And this is where it goes from reportage to ideology.

We are not car sharing. Why? Because car sharing isn't a new idea, it's been around forever. Has it taken off? No. Why? Because we don’t like having strangers in our car. We have lanes for car sharing, they don’t get used, why not? I repeat, we don't like strangers in our car.

And this is the problem with the overall climate debate, the solutions or alleged solutions, if they're not real, if they don't work, if they don't have buy in, if they're driven by a blind ideology, like Genter's "feebate" nonsense, they don’t change anything, they're just noise.

Which is what I hope this week's foray from the media doesn’t turn into. So far, not so good. But it's only Wednesday, so fingers crossed.

Take your Radio, Podcasts and Music with you