Lousy for years
Never mind the lethal temperatures, the important thing is what reporters are saying about them.
Italy is sweltering in abnormally high temperatures, but its media appear to be more interested in how the extreme heat is being reported in the foreign press than delving deeply into the effects in a country deemed to be among the most vulnerable in Europe to the climate crisis.
Over the weekend, several outlets picked up on reports on Italy’s heatwave in leading foreign news websites – including the Guardian, the Times and the BBC. They were particularly fascinated by a headline in the Times calling Rome – where temperatures are forecast to reach highs of 43C on Tuesday – the “Infernal City”, a play on the nickname “Eternal City”. So much so that it was still a talking point come Monday.
At this point it’s impossible not to mention fiddling while Rome burns.
That the climate crisis is not well covered by the Italian media is unsurprising, said Gianni Riotta, the director of the school of journalism at Rome’s Luiss University. “It is lousy and it has been lousy for years,” he said.
Much of this is due to the dominance of the rightwing media, which for decades have been owned or heavily influenced by the late former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. Still today, rightwing newspapers such as Il Giornale, Libero and La Verità serve as mouthpieces for Giorgia Meloni’s government, whose strategy on tackling the climate crisis is vague.
Not that other governments are doing much better.
For the last few nights, temperatures here have been below zero (Celsius). This is proof that there is no such thing as Global Warming. Temperatures should be hotter, everywhere, every time.
So sayeth the fool who doesn’t understand the difference between climate and weather.
Headline: Coldest morning ever in Adelaide today, therefore no global warming!
Correction issued two days later, buried in the tiny errata section: coldest morning in Adelaide this year. Sorry. Conclusion still true though.
Whatever one stands in this argument it is important to stick to the truth (as you do, of course, Ophelia). A few days ago Sandrine Rousseau (a leading light in Europe Ecologie Les Verts, who came close to being elected party leader a few months ago) claimed that temperatures had reached 60° (140°F) in Spain. This was a straight lie, and when challenged on it she said it was a wake-up call and that she was referring to the temperature in full sun. That is meaningless, of course, but it seems she is stupid enough not to understand why temperatures in the shade are normally quoted. It is important to make people, especially politicians, aware of the problem, but you don’t do that by lying about the facts. The truth is serious enough, but lying about it is not the solution.I already thought she was pretty stupid a couple of weeks ago when we were faced with a week of rioting (not where I live, however), when she expressed sympathy with the rioters: apparently it hadn’t occurred to her that setting cars and buildings on fire may not be the best way of protecting the environment.
Eeeeesh.
It is of course important to remind everyone that already hot temps are even worse in the sun, so people who have to work in the sun need extra protections, but you can do that without making a bonehead mistake.