It’s not sad in the least that the Washington Post has cut its climate “reporting” team down to five lonely reporters. It is, in fact, encouraging that maybe we’re seeing the winding down of decades of political and scientific villainy disguised as concern for our planet. Give us more, please.
Not four years ago, the Washington Post announced it was “pleased to introduce” an “expansion of Climate coverage.” (Yes, Climate is so important to the Post that the “c” must be capitalized.) Readers were assured the newspaper was “a major investment that is commensurate with the story of climate (but no upper case here — why not?) change and its profound impact on humanity and the planet.”
The Post nearly tripled the size of its climate desk, racking up a total of “more than 30 journalists” (activists, in reality), all “part of a newsroom-wide commitment to covering perhaps the century’s biggest story.”
So big is the “century’s biggest story” that the Post cut the team to 19 last year, then just recently “sent layoff notices to at least 14 climate journalists,” says climate blogger Sammy Roth (or is it 13?), citing “newsroom sources.” The reductions were “part of a massive round of cost-cutting that will see more than 300 journalists lose their jobs.”
Roth, a former Los Angeles Times global warming nag, whined last fall that “CBS News just gutted its climate team” and helpfully points out a report which found that “Across the globe,” climate coverage “diminished 14% in 2025 from the previous year 2024 and is 38% lower than the highest year of coverage in 2021.”
As it turns out, “2025 coverage ranks just 10th in the past 22 years the” researchers have “tracked coverage of climate change or global warming across the global news sources.”
There was never a good reason for the Post, CBS, or any other media outfit to field a climate team — unless the goal was to stir up fear to boost circulation and viewership.
Well, there was also that reckless business of handing activists a forum from which to hurl lightning bolts and wind turbine blades at the poor, benighted regular folk who just want to live their lives.
Blessedly, it appears that the days of constant harping might be nearing, if not an end, at least a reckoning with reality.
Not long ago, our friend Steven Hayward wrote about “The Death Rattle of Apocalyptic Environmentalism” in an essay in which he noted “the era of apocalyptic environmentalism is fading, and its recycled doomsday warnings now sound more desperate than dire.”
Hayward mentioned that Bill Gates had “changed his mind about climate change and no longer” viewed it “as a serious threat to the future of humanity.” Gates’ departure was “not just a major blow to the ‘climate crisis’ camp,” he added, “but likely signals the end of a 50-year cycle of Malthusian catastrophism that has hobbled liberalism for the last several decades.”
What Gates uttered was “unsayable among acceptable elites even as recently as two years ago,” Hayward said, recalling that it’s still fresh on minds that President Joe Biden was “repeatedly asserting that ‘Climate change is an existential threat to humanity.’”
That is an improvement over the recent past, in which to cast doubt on the man-made warming narrative was considered “climate denial.”
Another sign that the climate tale is fading was brought to our attention by Mark Morano of Climate Depot, who wrote that California billionaire climate activist and Democratic gubernatorial candidate “Tom Steyer’s climate pivot signals new playbook for Dems” – it seems that global warming has been overtaken by “affordability” as an issue.
Clearly, the public has grown weary of the fearmongering and the wild exaggerations from the alarmists. “More people than ever are tuning them out,” writes veteran journalist Gary Abernathy.
“Americans in particular have grown wise to the predictions that don’t come true and the demands that don’t make sense. In fact, so badly has science become blatantly politicized that the number of people who have a great amount of trust in science keeps shrinking.”
We need trustworthy scientists. We don’t, and never did, need global warming activists in lab coats. The fact that the latter overtook the former is an outrage that required a course correction we hope we are watching in real time.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
I & I Editorial Board
The Issues and Insights Editorial Board has decades of experience in journalism, commentary and public policy.
