When Sen. Bernie Sanders announced his $16.3 trillion climate plan, corporate media were quick to throw cold water on it, arguing that the Democratic presidential candidate’s plan was too expensive, and logistically and politically impossible (FAIR.org, 9/6/19). As Sanders fleshed out his plan in more detail, the media pushback continued: “Sanders’ Climate Ambitions Thrill Supporters, but Experts Aren’t Impressed,” announced a recent New York Times headline (11/14/19).
Reporter Lisa Friedman first compared Sanders’ plan to Trump’s border wall (“with the fossil fuel industry footing much of the bill, much as Mexico was to pay for the border wall”) and then panned it in no uncertain terms: “Climate scientists and energy economists say the plan is technically impractical, politically unfeasible and possibly ineffective.”
Who are the ‘experts’?
The New York Times (11/14/19) describes Bernie Sanders as “the climate candidate with the most expensive plan.”
Who are the “experts” who are troubled by Sanders’ plan? The piece quotes 11 sources, two of whom are “thrilled supporters” of the sort referenced in the headline, and another a Sanders spokesperson. A fourth is Joel Payne, who suggests Sanders’ program doesn’t “exactly check out,” but described as a “Democratic strategist,” he’s not exactly an “expert.”
Of the remaining seven sources, two are offered as examples of how “not everyone sees doom” in the Sanders climate platform: Daniel Kammen, identified as “an energy expert at the University of California, Berkeley,” who called it “audacious but doable,” and Noah Kaufman, a “researcher at Columbia University” (more specifically a climate economist), who said Sanders is “proposing policies that match” the scale of the crisis.
That leaves five critical “experts,” some of whom are not particularly critical. Paul Hawken, author of a work that “analyzes solutions to global warming,” said Sanders’ “sense of urgency in here is correct,” but it could be “more effective”—specifically, by embracing nuclear power. Jesse Jenkins, an “energy systems engineer” at Princeton University, credited Sanders with “trying to set a marker in terms of the pace and scale of spending that he’s proposing,” but doesn’t think it “represents a very nuanced understanding.” Michael Oppenheimer, “a professor of geoscience and international affairs at Princeton University,” questioned Sanders’ backing off from support of a carbon tax, but defended the candidate’s approach as appropriate for “the political arena.”
Finally, there are two people cited in the piece who are entirely critical of Sanders’ blueprint. David Victor is quoted as saying it “can’t work in the real world,” though his identification as a “professor of international relations at the University of California San Diego and a climate adviser to Pete Buttigieg” might lead a reader to question his objectivity. And Severin Borenstein, “a professor at the Haas School of Business of the University of California, Berkeley,” said, “I just don’t see that getting off the ground.”
So of the seven “experts” quoted by Friedman, two are supportive of Sanders’ proposals to fight climate disruption, two are critical and three somewhere in the middle—a weak validation of her sweeping thesis, that “climate scientists and energy economists” as a whole call the Sanders plan “impractical,” “unfeasible” and “possibly ineffective.”
Undisclosed conflicts
Worse, the bulk of the “experts” quoted by Friedman have unacknowledged conflicts of interest. Borsenstein, who can’t see Sanders’ plan “getting off the ground,” is faculty director at the Energy Institute at Haas, which takes funding from energy companies like Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric. Jenkins, who said Sanders wasn’t “very nuanced,” works at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, whose “E-Filliates” include ExxonMobil, NRG and Siemens. Hawken, who complained Sanders was too anti-nuclear, leads the Highwater Investment Group, whose top holdings have included Ford Motors and EnerNOC, now part of the energy conglomerate Enel, which produces nuclear power.
The Times did mention Victor’s connection to Buttigieg, but didn’t note that he runs UCSD’s Laboratory on International Law and Regulation, funded by BP and the electricity industry’s Electric Power Research Institute. (His earlier project at Sanford was bankrolled by more than $9 million from BP.) The non-“expert” Payne, in addition to being a “Democratic strategist,” is a PR consultant who has worked for General Motors, South Jersey Gas and the American Chemistry Council.
Funding doesn’t necessarily dictate the views of academics, of course; Kaufman works at Columbia’s Center on Global Energy Policy, which is backed by BP, Shell, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil, but still managed to be supportive of Sanders’ program. But corporations do give money to think tanks in the hope of influencing scholarship in their favor, so the Times’ general failure to note such connections when quoting critics of Sanders does a disservice to readers.
Even with a roster of “experts” skewed towards industry-funded research, the actual quotes from Friedman’s sources, as opposed to her paraphrases of what “climate scientists and energy economists say,” present a range of disagreements about the exact methods by which the climate crisis should be addressed, but a general consensus that the crisis must be addressed urgently. And Sanders is one of a few candidates treating the climate crisis as an urgent matter—which you would think should inform the framing of an article about expert opinion of his plan.
A truly informative and fair piece here would compare Sanders’ plan to those of the other presidential candidates (including Trump). Some prominent environmental organizations do this, and rank Sanders’ plan at the top of the primary crowd. (Greenpeace awards him its only A+ score, and 350.org gives him 3/3 thumbs up, along with Cory Booker, Julian Castro, Tom Steyer, Elizabeth Warren and Marianne Williamson.)
But instead, the only comparison the Times gives readers is the misleading and unhelpful parallel it draws between Sanders’ insistence that the government-subsidized fossil fuel industry help pay for his climate plan through “litigation, fees and taxes,” and Trump’s demand that the government of Mexico foot the bill for his wall. Note that the fossil fuel industry, which has spent massive amounts of money to deny climate science and block restrictions on carbon, is made up of corporations subject to US law (at least in their US subsidiaries), unlike the sovereign country of Mexico.
Sanders’ plan to prevent global climate catastrophe and Trump’s anti-refugee wall are not obviously alike in any substantive or significant way; it’s as if the paper can’t resist slipping in gratuitous digs at Sanders any chance it gets, even as the world burns.
Meanwhile, in the presidential debates, journalist moderators have devoted fewer than 10% of their questions to the climate crisis (FAIR.org, 10/17/19). Until media start to treat the climate crisis with the urgency the scientific community continually tells us it requires, they will continue to be a major part of the problem.
You can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com (Twitter:@NYTimes). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message in the comments thread.
i depend on your information. thank you.
Great source checking, I felt icky after reading that article. Here is my email:
Hello,
I’m a 25-year-old regular New York Times reader who has found that its recent coverage of Sanders is sometimes so misleading, it shakes my trust in the rest of the paper. After reading the article, “Sanders’ Climate Ambitions Thrill Supporters, but Experts Aren’t Impressed,” I felt that the headline grossly misrepresented the article. Sure enough, this Fair.org article points out that of the 11 sources quoted, only 7 are climate “experts,” of whom 2 are supportive of Sanders’ plan, 2 critical, and 3 a mixture of both. I think it’s obvious that the phrase “experts aren’t impressed” is meant to convey, at the least, a majority opinion. But the article fails to elicit that even from its small sample of sources. This feels deceitful. Furthermore, some of the sources quoted have ties to the fossil fuel industry, an age-old tactic to undermine the urgency of climate change that I’ve traditionally only seen on conservative sites.
I am left wondering what the New York Times agenda is on climate change? Certainly, you don’t have to agree with Sanders to support climate action. But reaching out to the fossil fuel industry and manipulating the term “expert opinion” is not the way a supporter of climate action would express criticism of a proposed climate change solution. The NYT has fought against climate change denial for a long time. Its coverage of climate action, however, has me wondering if it’s possible to decry the existence of a problem while balking at real solutions.
As climate change ruins more and more lives, I grow increasingly uncomfortable reading a paper that is so suspicious of climate action.
Best,
Alec
Very well said, pretty much perfectly captures my own thoughts on the matter (including why I no longer bother with the NYT).
And we can/should extend this general criticism in a couple further ways- it applies to more than just climate action, but the way NYT covers progressive policy and/or candidates in general, such as NYT’s treatment of Medicare For All, and/or Bernie Sanders as a POTUS candidate. It also applies to more outlets than just NYT, encompassing basically the entirety of center-left corporate media- MSNBC, CNN, WaPo etc. Its quite the needle the center-left corporate media is trying to thread here: maintaining their anti-Trump bonafides, while fighting violently against any meaningful structural progressive reforms that will hurt their owners/donors/interests.
Excellent response and info, Enai. Thank you.
I find it hard to believe that with California burning, the Midwest flooding, and crises around the world, the New York Times promotes a “take it easier” approach to climate action. We are facing a truly urgent and planetary crisis– and a question of species survival (including humans).
I am grateful that Senator Bernie Sanders is willing to take the challenge head on.
AND, if you haven’t heard today’s news, Australia is also on fire. What has to happen before the corporate media and politicians (and yes, “corporate” does distributed over both nouns that follow) to take this crisis as seriously as so many of us do?
And Alec, I applaud your comment to NYT. I’ve found far too frequently that my own posts lately, especially regarding the Times’ motives around election-related pieces, somehow don’t show up in the comment feed.
If that particular silencing has happened to anyone else here–and it seems at least possible–I would suggest that you screenshot every comment you post to NYT on these issues so that when/if those comments don’t get posted, you have evidence, both that you posted AND that there was nothing objectionable in the post itself to justify censorship.
Strange to see so many I’ve worked with or conversed with on the tsunami approaching that is climate “disruption”(…like calling a wave that is wiping out everything you have built and drowning your infant daughter a “disruptive” event…) as being somehow now part of the spin around why a plan won’t work. This is an obnoxious reduction of what should be scrutinized not for it’s detractors, but for whether it’s points and focus are actually relevant and useful. Squelching the ambition is just another failure to acknowledge the magnitude of what tipping points in an ecosystem actually mean. Yes it is scary. Yes we may actually have no real solution. But don’t shoot down a potential solution just because you can’t fathom that that level of band-aid might actually be not only necessary, but maybe not even enough.
It saddens me that there is such a target rich environment in American media to fact check and correct, not just in detail but in the entire premise of the piece itself. Well done and thank you for validating my Spidey ‘critical thinking’ sense!
Why is it that one side must be 100% correct and the other side 100% wrong. It is my opinion that there may be some truth in the climate change discussion. But the problem seems to be deciding what the causes really are, what can we realistically do- both as a single nation (without taxing or destroying the tenuous economic balance) and as a world wide issue where the the most egregious nations have little to no inclination to do anything that does not support their attempt to move up the economic ladder. This article explains little beyond the pro-liberal views of supporting radical climate change agendas and loses at any attempt for ‘Fairness” of views of the non-radical solutions of mediating climate occurrences if this phenomenon is not totally man made.
It appears that the NYT is comfortable in ignoring Science and passing off what is said to be news, and then actually trying to get people pay for this silliness, which the NYT presents as news.” The TIMES they are a changing, ” and the NYT is useless, except for possibly being used as a wrapper for expired fish or household garbage.
“there may be some truth” in something that is considered conclusively proven by a near unanimous consensus of experts in relevant scientific fields? I hereby nominate this comment for “Understatement of the Century”. Yeah, there may be some truth to it, Lol.
And there really isn’t any question as to what the causes are or what we can do- the real problem is a question of WILL, whether we have the motivation- politically/socially/economically/morally- to enact what we know are the necessary steps to combat the well-known causes of anthropogenic climate change (and the subsequent social and economic disruptions it causes).
My note to the NYTimes regarding this: Your article titled “Sanders’ Climate Ambitions Thrill Supporters, but Experts Aren’t Impressed” is yet another example of the pace at which the term ‘expert’ is being downgraded in our culture at large. The five academics who were quoted in the article are neither highly expert in climate research, nor are they without suspect interests in other, competing campaigns, both political and lobbying campaigns for carbon energy sectors.
Shame on the team of editors at The New York Times.