Dear Mr. Banquet,
New York Times Editor
As a former New York Times contributor I am wondering why you all have missed the ball on reporting about the environment? About Climate Change? Why is there is no environmental desk at your magazine? No Climate Watch?
This despite the fact that the US Military, an overwhelming number of scientists, the US President and many prime ministers throughout the world as well as leaders like the Pope and now billions of people see climate change as the greatest threat that humanity has ever faced.
It seems that your only real competitor, the UK Guardian, has left you in the proverbial radioactive fracking dust here.
I write this not as a science writer, photographer and journalist, but as a human being out here on the frontline of what is a huge calamity, unfolding in slow motion. You all are there, in New York City, also on the frontline, facing the fastest rising seas in the world. Your former Mayor and now the most recent one who marched through streets that four years ago were flooded by hurricane Sandy say, “Its Climate Change, Stupid”.
These events will overtake us. They are overtaking us. According to your very own Thomas Friedman, the Syrian conflict started because of climate change related problems. Islands are being lost, people are losing their countries, their homes, their lives. Humanity must come together now.
It is that dire.
From the pages of your newspaper one would imagine that its just another one of many stories, hardly mentionable. There on the science page we see how to not catch a cold on an airplane, a dry piece about how Global warming MAY make the California drought worse- no mention of how much water California uses for extreme energy like fracking. There is a lead article on how pretty the Earth is from space, an article on methane reduction in natural gas production that reads like an industry press release with no mention at all of the three recently published articles in the Journal of Geophysical Research out of the University of Colorado that have wildly different results than the Washington State study.
This stuff looks hand picked to appease industry, gloss over problems and is not meeting climate change head on. Where is the outcry and cutting stories over the crazed science deniers that have taken over our Congress? Why are you not going after them, rooting out their funders, digging into oil and gas money warping our politics?
We all depend upon you.
We all need to do our part but what part is that? You all have a role and responsibility to engage with this huge issue, give us real data and options to understand it and be a real leader.
Otherwise you all are part of the problem.
Regards
Jeffrey Barbee
Independent Journalist
