BBC World Service environment reporter Matt McGrath argues that we need more perspective and less preaching in our reporting of climate change, particularly in relation to developing countries

A few years ago, commuters in the UK were told that their trains were running late because of the 'wrong type of snow'. But, as an environment journalist grappling with the challenges of communicating climate change, I can readily sympathise with that excuse. For me, global warming is often the 'wrong type of news'.


Journalists and scientists often struggle to understand each other as our perspectives are so different. This is never truer than in the field of climate change.

Trying to fathom the temperature changes that are affecting the planet is a really difficult exercise that requires an enormous amount of complicated, often contradictory, data gathered from multiple sources over many, many years.

And then I come along and sum all that up in 30 seconds.

Like most reporters I abhor uncertainty - I dislike the scientific propensity to say "Yes, but?". I struggle to reflect the complex links that exist within climate science. So often I expect the scientists to have all the answers. And too often I find that, while they are experts in one particular aspect of research, their view of the big picture is no clearer than mine.

Climate change is not going to go away? and we need to be able to report it in a clear-headed way

Trying to cut through the detail and reflect the complexity of the story is difficult enough in the West. But in the developing world there are added levels of complexity. Take China. It must be the most well-worn cliché in the world at present - 'China is opening a new coal-fired station every week.' This encompasses a view that's very reassuring for developed countries, as it helps absolve us from responsibility for the global climate mess.

But a closer look suggests that the cliché is just one aspect of a very complicated picture. Noted climate scientist James Lovelock, father of the Gaia hypothesis, says that the Chinese, rather than being villains of the piece, are in fact one of the most environmentally friendly governments in the world. They are world leaders in hydroelectric power and are also committed to nuclear. And, rather bizarrely, some 18 million Chinese homes now get their heat and light from gas derived from animal manure, a highly renewable source.

But they also have a massively growing economy that needs energy now. And coal in China is abundant and cheap.

From the IPCC 4th Assessment Report • Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have increased markedly as a result of human activities since 1750 and now far exceed pre-industrial values

As a story, climate change is not going to go away. It is happening right here, right now and we need to be able to report it in a clear-headed way. It is just too damn easy and too damn wrong to preach doom in the gathering gloom. There are many worrying aspects to climate change, and it is in our nature as reporters to underline the emotive and scary bits.

But there is danger in this. Audiences will become depressed and jaded, and feel powerless. Their response to calls to curb emissions could be to turn off their TVs, radios and computers whenever they hear the words
'climate change'.

We have to trust people with the facts and avoid moralising. We have to reflect all aspects of the story. Climate change is not just a long drawn out disaster. Climate has always changed as long as there has been life on earth. Sometimes it has even changed as rapidly as it appears to be doing now.
And there are positives. Often complicated ones. Late last year, I visited a small company in California that is using GM technology to develop rice and other crops to be far less dependent on the artificial fertilisers that are hugely damaging to the environment, releasing masses of nitrous oxide, a deadly greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere.

But using GM technology to achieve this is controversial in itself. The EU and Japan already ban imports of GM rice. Would they also ban GM crops from the developing world that drastically reduce emissions of carbon, given that the agriculture sector as a whole is the biggest contributor to man-made non-carbon greenhouse gas emissions?

Reporting climate change stories like this is complicated - but then so is life. Too often we report global warming as if it is a moral panic for the world. The reality is far more than that. We have to find the right voice and the courage to tell it as it is.

Matt McGrath is BBC World Service Environment reporter. Prior to this he was Science and Technology Specialist at BBC Radio Five Live for a number of years
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