By David Calkin, Kimiko Barrett, Jack Cohen, Mark Finney, Stephen Pyne, and Stephen Quarles for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Broadcast version by Eric Galatas for Colorado News Connection for the Pulitzer Center-Public News Service Collaboration.

Consider several of the most devastating fire disasters of the last century. In August 2023, the wildfire-initiated urban conflagration of Lahaina, Hawaii, damaged or destroyed more than 2,200 structures and killed 98 people. In December 2021, the Marshall Fire sparked conflagrations in Superior and Louisville, Colorado, destroying 1,084 structures and killing two. In September 2020, the Almeda Drive Fire in the communities of Talent and Phoenix, Oregon, destroyed 2,600 homes and killed three. In November 2018, the Camp Fire initiated ignitions in Paradise, California, destroyed 18,804 buildings, and killed 85. In November 2016, fires spread through Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, destroying 2,460 structures and killing 14.

These fire disasters burned in vastly different environments. But all had human causes (power lines contributed to at least three), were near communities, occurred during extreme wind events, then inflicted their damage as urban conflagrations. Almost all destruction occurred within the first 12 hours after ignition. These fires immediately overwhelmed wildland and structural firefighting efforts, which were largely ineffective during the initial and extreme phase of the fire. Further, all these fires occurred since 2016. It's clear that structures and whole communities were vulnerable to ignition and burning-irrespective of what initiated the fires.

Society largely regards the wildfire problem as the destruction of human communities. Collectively, disaster fires, such as those mentioned here, have been lumped into a category of wildland-urban interface fires. These problem fires were defined as an issue of wildfires that involved houses. In reality, they are urban fires initiated by wildfires. That's an important distinction-and one that has big repercussions for how we prepare for future fires. To date, these repercussions have not received enough attention.

The Right Framing

Community fire destruction has become a national crisis, a systemic problem that will only worsen without aggressive, appropriate intervention-and this intervention will have to look far different than the current dominant paradigm. Climate change is blurring the boundaries that had defined where, when, and how fires burn (1). The needed changes will challenge ideas, institutions, and policies. The first step: reframing, from a focus on the wildlands to one centered on the structure and its immediate surroundings.

To effectively address this urban conflagration crisis requires that we fundamentally redefine the WU fire problem. Calkin et al. (2) developed a community wildfire risk framework that starts with a focus at the individual home level and identifies realistic objectives, effective mitigations, and responsible parties to reduce WU fire risk. The framework highlights the critical role of individual homeowners and local government, while recognizing that the traditional federal and state land-management agencies with responsibilities for wildland fuels management and suppression response have limited impact on community destruction. However, many of the recent investments to address wildfire risk to communities, such as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, are primarily directed toward fuel treatments in natural areas governed by public land-management agencies.

The wildfire management system's default response is to suppress wildfire wherever and whenever possible, with few exceptions (3). It extends an urban fire service model into the wildlands. With fire exclusion as the primary solution to both community and wildland protection, risk reduction translates to fire suppression and landscape fuel reduction. As wildfire losses increase, the assumption that community protection should be a primary focus of federal wildfire management efforts has become entrenched within both agency culture and federal legislation.

But even as wildfire suppression costs and use of technology have skyrocketed, we are experiencing more damaging urban fires. Clearly, the answer to community adaptation resides in the communities themselves (2, 4), and until the WU fire problem statement is redefined to recognize the key role of structure ignition and focus on creating ignition-resistant communities, risk-reduction strategies will continue to be ineffective and insufficient.

The Right Response

In 2022, the US Forest Service released the Wildfire Crisis Strategy, outlining an ambitious goal of treating an additional 20 million acres of US Forest Service land and 30 million acres of other federal, tribal, state, and privately owned land "to address wildfire risks to critical infrastructure, protect communities, and make forests more resilient" (ref. 5; see also ref. 6). While federal land-management agencies-primarily the US Forest Service and Department of Interior-have been tasked with wildfire risk reduction, most wildfire ignitions are caused by humans and occur on private lands (7), including those that destroy a majority of structures in the western United States (8). Furthermore, what has often been considered a western United States issue has now come to the fore in locations with limited wildfire experience, such as Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and Lahaina, Hawaii, thus creating additional challenges. As a result, actions on private land are essential to achieving fire-adapted communities across the country.

The community disaster sequence occurs when more homes are ignited than responders can protect (Fig. 1). Once structures are burning in a community, they become sources of lofted embers, radiant heat, and flame contact. Thus, community fire growth can accelerate quickly, resulting in urban conflagration that's exacerbated in higher-density development due to structure-to-structure fire spread. Reducing the likelihood that a home will ignite interrupts the disaster sequence by enabling effective structure protection. New construction siting, design, construction materials, and landscaping requirements should take wildfire potential into account. This will improve community resilience and ensure that new development does not increase community risk. The best way to make existing wildfire-vulnerable developments ignition resistant is to work within the limited area of the "home ignition zone"-a home and its surroundings within 100 feet (which may include neighboring homes). There are ways to reduce home ignition risk. Homeowners should install nonignitable roofing materials and flame- and ember-resistant vents; clean gutters of flammable debris; ensure that wooden steps, fences, and decks do not directly contact a home's flammable materials; and remove flammable materials immediately surrounding buildings and under attached decks (9-11).

Initiating substantial changes to the built environment requires that all levels of society address deeply rooted cultural expectations and develop a fundamentally new paradigm for community and homeowner responsibility. Such changes will take time. Communities need robust evacuation planning, including resilient early warning systems, identification and enhancement of egress routes, and consideration of support for individuals with mobility difficulties that all recognize the complexity of individual decision-making during emergency events (12). The community disaster sequence typically occurs during extreme wind events; thus, ignition-prevention programs should address infrastructure resilience and human behavior under these conditions.

Unfortunately, many communities and local governments often lack the resources, budget, staff, and experience to implement and maintain parcel- and neighborhood-level risk-reduction measures. The practice of modifying the built environment to growing wildfire risk requires multidisciplinary understanding of wildfire behavior, structural ignition vulnerabilities, urban resilience, and landscaping vegetation. Such know-how is not intrinsic institutional knowledge for public land-management agencies. As such, an appropriate response may resemble public health measures, where protecting the host from infection (home ignition prevention) is emphasized over trying to eliminate the infectious agent (wildfire).

Community leaders and locally elected officials are central to implementing effective wildfire mitigation strategies. And these leaders require significant technical assistance and financial support from federal and state levels. They need administrative mechanisms to direct funding and technical assistance to communities; this will require enhanced interagency coordination among federal and state-level departments, which can administer resources to local jurisdictions. Initial efforts in California, Colorado, and Oregon are structuring home ignition mitigation programs on this model, with the underlying objective of delivering funding, support, and expertise to communities and individual residents (13-15).

A New Perspective

All such projects and reforms must recognize an important truth: The current wildfire management approach has inverted the wildfire problem. wildland fires do not, per se, encroach on communities. Rather, it's communities that have impinged on wildlands, where fires play an important ecological role. Predominant strategies continue to apply limited, risk-averse reactions that emphasize community protection at the expense of both resilient landscapes and safe, effective wildfire responses. Forward-looking ecological and practical thinking would help move communities away from continually degrading fire-adapted ecosystems and underinvesting in community resilience. Instead, this change in thinking will move toward a sustainable approach that consistently promotes ecological and human ecosystem benefits.

Communities and governments need to accept living with wildland fire. They must recognize that fire in the wildlands is ecologically appropriate and inevitable-and it does not significantly influence community fire destruction (16). To do this, we must communicate differently on the nature of the WU fire problem and the ecological necessity of wildland fire. We must empower our public land managers and tribal partners to utilize fire appropriately to sustain resilient ecosystems and adapt our communities to this natural reality.

Inasmuch as people and communities are implicated in the wildfire problem, so, too, are they part of the solution. Federal land-management agencies cannot resolve this crisis alone; we all have a role to play in reducing wildfire risk in the places we live. Stronger collaboration in public and private partnerships, such as those that increase alignment between insurance providers, residents, and local and state governments, could further encourage and incentivize risk-reduction measures at the individual parcel and neighborhood scale.

The Wildfire Partners Program in Boulder County, Colorado, offers a model for an integrated approach to wildfire mitigation. It supports homeowners in reducing risk on their property by local government providing technical and financial support, including individual home assessments, vulnerability reports, and grants to subsidize necessary work, while offering a platform where insurance providers actively engage with homeowners to retain coverage on mitigated homes (17). This interdisciplinary approach builds wildfire resiliency from the bottom up and helps temper the expectation that the federal government is exclusively responsible for community protection.

Wildfire risk is complex, and local context matters. The ability to adapt reflects the realities, resources, and diverse needs of any one community. Effective solutions must account for localized nuance (18). Federal and state administrations can help direct funding, assistance, and technical expertise for wildfire mitigation. Communities with high social vulnerability will likely need additional support.

The recent addendum to the "National Cohesive wildland Fire Management Strategy" (19) specifies an important goal: "Human populations and infrastructure are as prepared as possible to receive, respond to, and recover from wildland fire." Achieving this vision means confronting the failed approach of trying to remove fire from our landscapes. We must recognize that our communities were developed in a climate and environment that no longer exist. We have the tools and knowledge to reduce community wildfire risks. But we must address the profound and deeply rooted misalignment of political and social expectations regarding what it means to live with wildfire. Now is the time to invest in long-term, economically efficient solutions, rather than short-term, risk-averse tactics.

We have to live with wildland fire. We don't have to live with fire in our communities.


David Calkin, Kimiko Barrett, Jack Cohen, Mark Finney, Stephen Pyne, and Stephen Quarles wrote this article for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.


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By Jessica Scott-Reid for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Kathryn Carley for Maine News Service reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

Last month the U.S. Department of Justice indicted two employees of Russian-state funded news outlet RT, formerly known as "Russia Today," for paying a content creation outfit called Tenet Media to push a wide range of climate misinformation on social media. Included in the raft of misinformation are false social media posts downplaying the very real climate impact of meat, according to a new report from the group Climate Action Against Disinformation, CAAD.

The Russian government wants no part of climate action - including the kind that shifts diets from meat-heavy to plant-rich - political researchers surmise. While Tenet's site has since gone dark, these influencers continue to post misinformation on social media channels, including Rumble, X, YouTube and TikTok.

Social Media Influencers Spread Misinformation About Meat's Climate Impact

In the report, the climate disinformation researchers looked at 69 websites and social media accounts belonging to Tenet Media and its founders, Lauren Chen and Liam Donovan, and six affiliated content creators, from September 1, 2023, to September 23, 2024. During that time, influencers with over 16 million combined total followers and subscribers made 183 total posts nabbing 23,555,000 views and 1,048,902 shares and likes. According to the indictment, Chen and Donovan were aware the funds were coming from Russia. Still, the influencers characterize themselves as "victims" of the campaign.

Some of the misinformation content was, and continued to be monetized, according to the report. Some examples include mocking prominent climate activists, such as Greta Thunberg, as well as standing up against "disruptive" lifestyle changes, like replacing gas stoves with electric models, and eating less meat. Eating a more plant-forward, less meat-heavy diet is one of the most effective forms of individual climate action, according to Project Drawdown, a non-profit aiming to help the world reduce carbon emissions.

Other posts feature the conspiracy theory that Bill Gates is trying to rid the world of animal farming and replace livestock with lab grown meat and bug burgers, while others claim Americans are "revolting" against the United Nations' call for western countries to cut back on meat consumption.

From Buzzfeed Reporter to Pro-Trump Influencer

One notable content creator associated with Tenet, Benny Johnson, posts often, though not accurately, on the topic of meat-eating. Johnson falsely characterizes voluntary recommendations to shift diets towards eating more plants as authoritarianism. In his 2023 video regarding the UN's food system road map, Johnson said that "fascists" want to rid Americans of their self-governance and autonomy, in part by taking away their meat.

"The purpose of this is control," Johnson said. "If they can control your food supply, if they can control your energy supply, if they can control your transportation, then you don't have freedom. You are a slave."

The facts: meat has a massive climate impact. Meat and dairy production are responsible for between 11 and 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, and is a documented drain on our planet's water and land reserves, and a leading cause of deforestation and ocean degradation. But efforts to change meat consumption are not mandatory.

At the same time, Johnson creates branded content for meat companies, while telling followers to "Eat like an American," and offering discount codes. Meat companies use Johnson as a spokesperson to sell their products, and just last month, Johnson shared a video entitled "Women eat raw steak to support Trump."

Johnson wasn't always a right wing influencer. He was once considered a credible journalist, working for Buzzfeed covering "viral" American politics. He was fired by the outlet in 2015, for plagiarizing 41 articles. One year later he was accused of plagiarism again, by the conservative outlet Independent Journal Review.

Why Russia Wants Climate Misinformation to Proliferate

Russia is the world's fourth greatest emitting country, and is warming four times faster than the Earth. Yet according to its own government, Russia benefits from climate change and from maintaining global reliance on fossil fuels - an approach debunked by scientists.

Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, the RT staffers named in the U.S. indictment, allegedly paid out nearly $10 million to the Tennessee company to "create and distribute content to U.S. audiences with hidden Russian government messaging," by contracting online influencers with big audiences. They have since been charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Though the company is not named in the indictment, it is described as "a network of heterodox commentators that focus on Western political and cultural issues" - which is also how Tenet is known to describe itself.

For now, the named content creators - Matt Christiansen, Tayler Hansen, Benny Johnson, Tim Pool, Dave Rubin and Lauren Southern (who traveled to Russia in 2018 to meet with and make content with neo-fascist philosopher and Putin ally, Alexander Dugin) - all say they didn't know their efforts were being paid for by Russian operatives. They describe themselves as the "victims" of the Russian scheme. But the evidence continues to stack up. CNN reports the creators were specifically recruited for their right-wing leaning content, as the RT employees hoped to "plug in to the commentators' vast network of fans to exploit divisive narratives that achieved the Kremlin's goals."


Jessica Scott-Reid wrote this article for Sentient.


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By Jessica Kutz for The 19th.
Broadcast version by Alex Gonzalez for Arizona News Connection, reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

Hazel Chandler was at home taking care of her son when she began flipping through a document that detailed how burning fossil fuels would soon jeopardize the planet.

She can't quite remember who gave her the report - this was in 1969 - but the moment stands out to her vividly: After reading a list of extreme climate events that would materialize in the coming decades, she looked down at the baby she was nursing, filled with dread.

"'Oh my God, I've got to do something,'" she remembered thinking.

It was one of several such moments throughout Chandler's life that propelled her into activist spaces - against the Vietnam War, for civil rights and women's rights, and in support of other environmental causes.

She participated in letter-writing campaigns and helped gather others to write to legislators about vital pieces of environmental legislation including the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, passed in 1970 and 1972, respectively. At the child care center she worked at, she helped plan celebrations around the first Earth Day in 1970.

Now at 78, after working in child care and health care for most of her life, she's more engaged than ever. In 2015, she began volunteering with Elder Climate Action, which focuses on activating older people to fight for the environment. She then took a job as a consultant for the Union for Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit science advocacy organization.

More recently, her activism has revolved around her role as the Arizona field coordinator of Moms Clean Air Force, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group. Chandler helps rally volunteers to take action on climate and environmental justice issues, recruiting residents to testify and meet with lawmakers.

Her motivation now is the same as it was decades ago.

"When I look my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren, my children, in the eye, I have to be able to say, 'I did everything I could to protect you,'" Chandler said. "I have to be able to tell them that I've done everything possible within my ability to help move us forward."

Chandler is part of a largely unrecognized contingent of the climate movement in the United States: the climate grannies.

The most prominent example perhaps, is the actor Jane Fonda. The octogenarian grandmother has been arrested during climate protests a number of times and has her own PAC that funds the campaigns of "climate champions" in local and state elections.

Climate grannies come equipped with decades of activism experience and aim to pressure the government and corporations to curb fossil fuel emissions. As a result they, alongside women of every age group, are turning out in bigger numbers, both at protests and the polls. All of the climate grandmothers The 19th interviewed for this piece noted one unifying theme: concern for their grandchildren's futures.

According to research conducted by Dana R. Fisher, director for the Center of Environment, Community and Equity at American University, while the mainstream environmental movement has typically been dominated by men, women make up 61 percent of climate activists today. The average age of climate activists was 52 with 24 percent being 69 and older.

Part of the gender shift, she says, can be traced back to the mass demonstrations and protests that flourished in response to former President Donald Trump.

"Starting with the Women's March and the day after the inauguration of Donald Trump ... women are more engaged and women are more likely to be leaders," Fisher said.

"Which is nice, because especially in the environmental arena it has historically been quite the dude fest."

A similar trend holds true at the ballot box, according to data collected by the Environmental Voter Project, a nonpartisan organization focused on turning out climate voters in elections.

A report released by the Environmental Voter Project in December that looked at the patterns of registered voters in 18 different states found that after the Gen Z vote, people 65 and older represent the next largest climate voter group, with older women far exceeding older men in their propensity to list climate as their No. 1 reason for voting. The organization defines climate voters as those who are most likely to list climate change, the environment, or clean air and water as their top political priority.

"Grandmothers are now at the vanguard of today's climate movement," said Nathaniel Stinnett, founder of the Environmental Voter Project.

"Older people are three times as likely to list climate as a top priority than middle-aged people. On top of that, women in all age groups are more likely to care about climate than men," he said. "So you put those two things together ... and you can safely say that grandma is much more likely to be a climate voter than your middle-aged man."

In Arizona, where Chandler lives, older climate voters make up 231,000 registered voters in the state. The presidential election in the crucial swing state was decided by just 11,000 votes, Stinnett noted.

"Older climate voters can really throw their weight around in Arizona if they organize and if they make sure that everybody goes to the polls," he said.

In some cases, their identities as grandmothers have become an organizing force.

In California, 1000 Grandmothers for Future Generations formed in 2016, after older women from the Bay Area traveled to be in solidarity with Indigenous grandmothers protesting the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.

"When they came back, they decided to form an organization that would continue to mobilize women on behalf of the climate justice movement," said Nancy Hollander, a member of the group.

1000 Grandmothers - in this case, the term encompasses all older women, not just the literal grandmothers - is rooted at the intersection of social justice and the climate crisis, supporting people of color and Indigenous-led causes in the Bay Area. The organization is divided into various working groups, each with a different focus: elections, bank divestments from fossil fuels, legislative work, nonviolent direct actions, among others.

They make frequent appearances alongside other climate activist groups at protests in front of banks like Wells Fargo, which finances oil and gas infrastructure, as well as participating in the annual Anti-Chevron day, protesting at the Chevron Refinery in Richmond, California.

For Hollander, 85, the work has been energizing, a continuation of the political activism she was a part of throughout her life. It's also helped her mentally cope with the multiple crises the world is currently experiencing.

"It facilitates a sense of agency and of me being in concert with my values and my ideals. It also puts me in touch with other people, other human beings, who are motivated by similar desires and commitments," she said.

Many of the activists emphasized how important that sense of community is, especially when the work can lead one into a sense of despair over all that has been lost. Action, they agree, is an antidote, a way to cope with that feeling and show their care. Much of their work centers on protecting the younger generation - from the threats of the climate crisis, but also in activist spaces.

"There are women in the nonviolent direct action part of the organization who really do feel that elder women - it's their time to stand up and be counted and to get arrested," Hollander said. "They consider it a historical responsibility and put themselves out there to protect the more vulnerable."

But 1000 Grandmothers credits another grandmother activist, Pennie Opal Plant, for helping train their members in nonviolent direct action and for inspiring them to take the lead of Indigenous women in the fight.

Plant, 66 - an enrolled member of the Yaqui of Southern California tribe, and of undocumented Choctaw and Cherokee ancestry - has started various organizations over the years, including Idle No More SF Bay, which she co-founded with a group of Indigenous grandmothers in 2013, first in solidarity with a group formed by First Nations women in Canada to defend treaty rights and to protect the environment from exploitation.

In 2016, Plant gathered with others in front of Wells Fargo Corporate offices in San Francisco, blocking the road in protest of the Dakota Access Pipeline, when she realized the advantages she had as an older woman in the fight.

As a police liaison - or a person who aims to defuse tension with law enforcement - she went to speak to an officer who was trying to interrupt the action. When she saw him maneuvering his car over a sidewalk, she stood in front of it, her gray hair flowing. "I opened my arms really wide and was like, are you going to run over a grandmother?"

A new idea was born: The Society of Fearless Grandmothers. Once an in-person training - it now mostly exists online as a Facebook page - it helped teach other grandmothers how to protect the youth at protests.

For Plant, the role of grandmothers in the fight to protect the planet is about a simple Indigenous principle: ensuring the future for the next seven generations.

"What we're seeing is a shift starting with Indigenous women, that is lifting up the good things that mothers have to share, the good things that women that love children can share, that will help bring back balance in the world," Plant said.

The coordination between the two groups is one instance of intersectional work happening in the climate activism space. Though younger climate activists tend to be part of a more diverse movement, Fisher notes the movement is still predominantly White.

"People of color are mobilizing, but in many cases, they're not mobilizing and engaging in activism that is specifically focused on climate," Fisher said. "They may be engaging in work that is more climate justice, frontline community focused or against systemic racism, but it's framed really differently than in most of the groups that are doing this kind of climate work ... so there's still a very big gulf there that needs to be crossed."

Some of the older generation of activists see working on issues surrounding the climate as a way to try and correct some of their generation's historical wrongs.

Kathleen Sullivan, an organizer with Third Act - a national organization started by environmentalist Bill McKibben - said that's part of what has motivated her to become a climate activist in her later years.

"I couldn't live with myself if I didn't because I've been gifted with so much in life, and those gifts have come at a huge price," she said, reflecting on how resource extraction, slavery, genocide, have built this country and led to the climate crisis. "And, when you wake up to that, first you weep and and then you say, 'Oh my God, there's a whole other way to live a life, another way to understand how to be on this planet.'"

Sullivan is one of approximately 70,000 people over the age of 60 who've joined Third Act, a group specifically formed to engage people 60 and older to mobilize for climate action across the country.

"This is an act of moral responsibility. It's an act of care. And It's an act of reciprocity to the way in which we are cared for by the planet," Sullivan said. "It's an act of interconnection to your peers, because there can be great joy and great sense of solidarity with other people around this."


Jessica Kutz wrote this article for Inside Climate News.


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By Jessica Scott-Reid for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Nadia Ramlagan for Kentucky News Connection reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

When “misinformation” was declared 2018’s Word of the Year by Dictionary.com, the website stated at the time that “the rampant spread of misinformation poses new challenges for navigating life.” The year prior, Collins Dictionary named “fake news” as its word of the year. Misinformation has since proliferated — made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic — as both social and traditional media have become viral vectors for the spread. Two hot topics have become especially susceptible to media misinformation and bias — climate change and our food system.

For readers seeking balance and objectivity on these issues, the current media environment can be tough to navigate. Corporate interests, polarizing politics and social media influence make the truth more and more difficult to decipher. To help readers traverse this challenging media landscape, we asked experts in media literacy for tips on how to spot misinformation red flags. Here’s how to separate fact from fallacy, and truth from conspiracy.

Why Misinformation Exists in Media

Though the concept of misinformation in media might seem relatively new, according to Sander van der Linden, professor of psychology at Cambridge University, and author of the book Foolproof: Why We Fall for Misinformation and How to Build Immunity, this threat to the public has actually been around since the late 1800s; back then in the form of media propaganda.

“A lot of people traced the first example back to the Spanish American War,” he explains, “where there was this sort of fake news about a U.S. tanker that sank, which was blamed on the Spanish even though that wasn’t true.” This false information “swayed public opinion in favor of the war,” he says, and was an early example of what came to be known as “yellow journalism: — journalism based on sensationalism and crude exaggeration. Since then, the problem of misinformation in the media has persisted.

Van der Linden points to cable TV news as the medium that took media misinformation to the next level. “In journalism you have editorial standards, you have fact checkers,” he explains. That’s no longer always the case, he says, as “cable news dropped some of those standards.”

As Flavia Roscini writes in her research for Boston University, “cable news is a business that runs on ratings and advertisements. In order to capture people’s attention, it needs to be engaging. It has, therefore, increasingly blurred the lines between information and entertainment.”

The emergence of social media then blurred those lines further, with “no barriers to entry,” says van der Linden. “Right on YouTube, we have content creators who can say anything now without any type of fact checking. There’s no regard for accuracy.”

John Cook, an expert in the cognitive psychology of climate science denial, says that “by removing gatekeepers [editors, fact-checkers, etc.], social media makes it possible for any individual to potentially reach millions of people.” But, he adds, “it’s worse than that. Misinformation spreads faster and deeper than facts on social media because it’s usually more eye-catching and salacious than dry facts.” And once misinformation takes hold, he adds “it’s notoriously hard to undo the damage.”

With online misinformation spreading quickly, and “more and more by inauthentic accounts and AI generated content,” van der Linden says, “the problem has gotten away from us.”

How to Add More Media Literacy to Your News Diet

The abundance of misinformation in the media today has created an increased need for media literacy among readers and audiences. Media literacy is the ability to critically analyze media content to determine its accuracy and credibility. To do this, says Jon Greenberg, a few steps are required. Greenberg is a senior correspondent for PolitiFact, and he teaches journalism at Poynter Institute.

The first step in looking critically at a piece of media, Greenberg says, is an emotional check-in. “If there’s a sense of, ‘Damn it, I knew that was the case,’ or ‘holy smokes, no way’ shock,” then, he says, the next step is the hardest, but most important: “hit the pause button.”

If media consumers can hit that pause button, says Greenberg, the following step is to then ask who or what the source of the information is. “Then you can ask the question: do they have a dog in this fight? What’s their interest?” Consider whether there are any potential conflicts or financial gains at stake.

The next step, Greenberg says, is to look at the news and interrogate the evidence. “Is it believable? Just because it comes from a group that is, say, the ‘Center for Really Savvy Insights’ doesn’t mean that they are squeaky clean,” he says. “They may not be insightful, and they may not be savvy.”

Judging the credibility of a source is key. “Do they have a setup that allows them to go through internal challenges to make sure that the information is accurate?” Greenberg says that if a source appears to be a “lone wolf researcher” — though they may have a PhD — readers should beware. “If they’re working by themselves, they haven’t gone through the process of having their findings and their conclusions vetted by their colleagues, peer reviewed.” Facts are learned through being challenged, he explains, “and that which survives challenges becomes our accepted truth.”

Finally, Greenberg says readers should be interested in what other people are saying about the topic or story. “Plug the phrase into Google and see what bubbles up,” he says. Look to see if certain advocacy or political groups have taken up the same issue, and what fact checkers and debunkers have to say. “And in this way, you can round out your picture.”

Navigating News on Climate Change

Some topics have become more vulnerable to misinformation than others; particularly those that are polarizing, political or with vested financial interests. Climate change is one of those topics, and Cook says that the tendency of mainstream media to present both sides of a debate has allowed for misinformation on climate science to easily enter the public discourse. Presenting both sides of the argument may be “an appropriate approach when it comes to politics or matters of opinion, but misleads the public when applied to matters of scientific fact.”

For example, “it would be inappropriate to give a flat-earther equal coverage with a scientist from NASA, in the same way it’s inappropriate and misleading to give a climate science denier equal coverage with a climate scientist.” Cook’s research has found this format “gives the audience the impression of a 50/50 debate among the scientific community, when the actual scientific consensus on issues like human-caused global warming is greater than 97 percent.”

Another red flag to be on the lookout for when maneuvering through mainstream news on climate change? The omission of the role food systems, and specifically meat and dairy, plays. A 2023 study conducted by Sentient and Faunalytics revealed that animal agriculture is systematically underreported in climate media coverage; 93 percent of the climate news stories reviewed didn’t even mention it. This, despite the fact that animal agriculture is a leading cause of deforestation, and is responsible for between 11.1 and 19.6 percent of global emissions.

Climate misinformation also makes its way into mainstream media via political leaders promoting false arguments about climate change, Cook adds. “Unfortunately, several studies have found that one of the biggest drivers of changes in public opinion about climate change is cues from political leaders,” he says. “People are tribal and respond when our tribal leaders speak.”

Seeking out peer-reviewed sources is the best way to find reliable information on climate change, Cook asserts — however, he recognizes that asking the public to read technical studies from scientific journals may be a bit much. “There are a number of other authoritative and thoroughly-vetted sources on climate information,” he says, “such as the NASA climate website and the National Academy of Science, which are also written to be accessible to non-scientists.”

Navigating News About the Meat Industry

News covering the meat and dairy industries is particularly ripe for misinformation, as the bias goes deep. Tayler Zavitz, a sociologist and critical animal studies scholar, describes this as an entire “corporate-controlled system” at work, made up of “the media, invested corporations (the animal agriculture industry), and the state.” One result of this system: journalists rarely, if ever, include animal suffering, let alone animal welfare, in their news coverage.

For example, while it is common to see quotes from industry sources, such as farmers and lobby/trade groups, rarely are animal advocates sought out for comment, or are the experiences of the animals considered.

Consider news coverage of barn fires. Often, the stories highlight the loss of money or product, as well as the devastation of the farmers. Reporting on how the animals died, often horrifically, is almost never included. “Readers should look at whether the coverage is written through an anthropocentric lens” says Zavitz. Pointing to our barn fire example, she says, “we often see headlines like ‘No injuries in barn fire,’ but the article will then go on to note that 30,000 hens were killed. So, this sort of discourse highlights the human-focused, capitalist ideology underpinning the mainstream news media, as that animal lives are seen as so insignificant and worthless outside of their economic value.”

Meat and dairy industry groups are also pouring money into academic centers created to train researchers in communicating industry-aligned messages to the public. While food industry funding for public research is nothing new, the focus on “communications” and “public trust” is a more recent and worrying invention, because the emphasis is on the message, rather than on research to improve the way food is produced.

One such example is the CLEAR Center at University of California, Davis created by Professor Frank Mitloehner, a scientist with a long public record of downplaying the climate impacts of meat and dairy. A 2022 New York Times and Unearthed investigation revealed Mitloehner did not disclose the full extent of his industry funding on the center’s website. Yet that revelation did little to discourage livestock industry groups from communications funding, and a similar initiative now exists at Colorado State University. And the pork industry has pledged to fund research to boost “public trust between pork producers and pork consumers,” to address animal welfare concerns.

The blurred lines between industry and public research is tricky for journalists to navigate, but also critical in this moment. A 2023 Washington Post-University of Maryland poll found 74 percent of Americans think — wrongly — that not eating meat would make little or no difference for climate change. The scientific research actually shows the opposite: eating less meat with a plant-rich diet is one of the most effective forms of individual climate action, according to Project Drawdown. When in doubt, journalists should avoid leaning on single studies in their reporting, but look instead for the scientific consensus or what most of the research points to.

The Bottom Line

In a media landscape increasingly saturated with misinformation, the need for critical media literacy is growing. As readers navigate topics like climate change and the food system, skills to discern fact from fallacy are crucial. By questioning sources, examining evidence and seeking diverse perspectives and peer reviewed conclusions, readers can better understand the truth amidst the noise of media sensationalism and industry bias.


Jessica Scott-Reid wrote this article for Sentient.


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