JP/Zul Trio Anggono

As students in Europe, the United States, Australia and several countries in Africa started organizing climate strikes, a journalist from Europe asked whether climate change was a big issue in Indonesia.

Other colleagues wanted to know whether Greta Thunberg, the petite, pony-tailed 16-year-old with Asperger’s syndrome turned climate activist, inspired Indonesian schoolchildren the way she does children around the world to demand better climate action.

Sadly, it’s much less so. Thunberg, the youngest candidate ever nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, is little known among children across Indonesia. And while Indonesian media do cover climate issues, they rarely convey the insistence or urgency over climate-astute policy. In conclusion: Neither climate change nor Thunberg are big in Indonesia.

Here are several reasons why. Firstly, climate reporting is often of complex scientific reasoning. Just as not all men are created equal, not all journalists are eloquently knowledgeable of the science behind climate change. Those who have the grasp of climate science would be far fewer than those who don’t.

But even if half the newsroom is decorated with degrees in science, there are also funding and resources issues. Climate news often calls for field reporting — going places with climate emergencies or visiting disaster laden regions caused by climate shift.

Both can be long and costly. While resources in most media today are in short supply, justifying climate reporting can be hard. Especially since readership or clicks for science news is difficult to guarantee.

In other words, science reporting needs more resources but attracts a smaller audience — again, not the best combination to encourage the newsroom to report on the subject.

Lastly, and this may be the real reason to why reporting on climate is such a daunting task, it is because of the profound sense of bad news fatigue felt by audiences across platforms.

Climate reporting is frequently conducted by shoring up threats of a climate crisis; unless certain measures are taken, disasters are going to strike.

This can be in the form of drought, floods, landslides, extreme weather, ruined crops and so on. But most Indonesians are highly accustomed to the maladies above. Drought, floods and landslides were seasonal occurrences even before the term “climate change” was known.

Climate change or not, this is the reality for a severely troubled Earth and for Indonesians. So, what is the incentive for pushing for more frightening narratives from climate reporting — as if the barrage of headlines on corruption, political conflicts and sectarian clashes is not enough?

American essayist Arthur Miller said a good newspaper was a nation talking to itself.

And these horrific headlines, while they may feel like a nightmare forced down on our consciousness, oftentimes — if not most — are the only chance we have at a national conversation about our crisis.

An environmental campaigner once told a story of rampant logging in West Kalimantan of the only tiny pristine forest left. Local residents, including security personnel, were used to trucks loaded with newly cut logs from trees aged a bit older than teenagers going to and fro, not minding the fact that those were illegal logs.

Not until a Jakarta-based national newspaper started to pick up the story and continuously hammer down that officials started to notice. The reporting changed the practice, at least then, since pressure was sent directly from Jakarta to the local government.

The media, climate campaigners conclude, are the best alliance to fight for environmental causes. Conversely, when the media choose to ignore an issue, there is little hope for it to gain traction and public support.

While this may not sound like rocket science, many, especially those in the newsrooms, may not be aware of the fact.

The First Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was completed in 1990 and broadly used by the United Nations to argue for astute global climate policies.

But nearly 20 years later, such policies are rarely unanimously accepted and sometimes even completely abandoned by prominent countries. The public needs the constant reminders of how badly this would end for our children and grandchildren.

Even for most of the Western media, it took over two decades to catch up with the message. Climate reporting was behind the quick rise of Thunberg — only a year after she started to sit alone in front of the Swedish parliament in Stockholm bearing a placard saying "Skolstrejk för Klimatet" (School Strike for Climate).

She has since spent her time sailing the Atlantic to the US and leading marches for climate in cities around the world.

Thunberg has given climate change a face and media outlets highlight this eagerly. Her near stoical gaze, small voice and insistent on “Don’t trust me, trust the science!” is followed by hordes of journalistic crews everywhere.

The movement has kicked the ball rolling so far that the “Greta effect” is believed to have created a greater urgency on climate issues than any other similar campaign before.

While Indonesian media may lack resources, we can certainly start by stating the obvious: that we are highly vulnerable to climate threats. Seasonal reporting on natural disasters needs to be strongly stressed as worsening signs of climate crisis.

Extreme heat: why yes, it’s the climate. Prolonged draught: also a sure sign of climate problem. Drowning cities: absolutely part of climate effects.

Saying it out loud and acknowledging it as the root cause of problems we face today will hopefully initiate the conversation to solving the problem. It’s high time to get the climate issue rolling.

Popular

Volcano erupts in North Sulawesi, hundreds evacuated

Dubai roads, airport reel from floods after record rains

Ramadan boosts consumer confidence, retail sales