In my opinion (but I’m not alone) Andy Revkin (Wikipedia, his substack) is one of the giants of climate change reporting. His 1988 reporting, putting James Hansen’s pivotal testimony in broader context, and his later Dot Earth blog for the New York Times would be enough, on their own, to cement his status. But there is much more to say. Please read and share this excellent interview he has generously given to All Our Yesterdays. (Also, suggest other people to be interviewed!)
1. A little bit about yourself – where you were born, grew up, how you found yourself doing journalism.
I was born and raised in Rhode Island, a lucky circumstance that came with lots of access to the sea, from snorkeling to sailing to fishing. Some great high school teachers led me to ecology, ocean science and resource management. I headed toward a career in marine biology while at Brown University but after I won a traveling fellowship that took me around the world, I shifted to a focus on writing about the environment and science instead of doing the research. There is a lot more on my journey to, and within, journalism in this Sustain What post: Can There Be Passion and Detachment in Environmental Journalism?
2. Do you remember when and how you first heard about carbon dioxide build-up, and what you thought?
Late in 1984, my second year at Science Digest magazine, I was asked to write an article about nuclear winter – the hypothesis that vast plumes of smoke from cities burned in a nuclear war could reach the stratosphere and dangerously chill Earth. My reporting at the now-threatened National Center for Atmospheric Research introduced me to the supercomputers and models already being used to study global warming from accumulating heat-trapping carbon dioxide. That cover story ran in March 1985 and my first
cover story on global warming, at Discover Magazine, ran three years later. At first in my reporting, climate change felt like a simple pollution problem (like smog, acid rain, etc.) that would respond to regulation. But even in that first big story there were hints this was a vastly harder challenge. I’m glad I included this line, which really nailed a core reality: “[E]ven as the developed nations of the world cut back on fossil fuel use, there will be no justifiable way to prevent the Third World from expanding its use of coal and oil. How can the developed countries expect that China, for example, which has plans to double its coal production in the next 15 years in order to spur development, will be willing or even able to change course?” (Folks can download a pdf of the October 1988 Discover Magazine cover story here.)
3. What happened in 1983 that brought you to the environmental beat?
My youth in Rhode Island and my education all drew me toward environmental science and related challenges. That carried forward into my journalism. My first big prize-winning magazine feature story, in 1983, was on worldwide perils from worker exposure to the weed killer Paraquat. That also led my editors to sustain that focus.
4. That period, 1985-1992, was – it turns out – foundational (in good ways and bad). What are some of your most vivid memories of that period?
After my nuclear winter story was published in 1985, I quit Science Digest to join a sailing friend delivering a sailboat from Dubai to the island Republic of Maldives. Spending time in those low islets reinforced my interest in environmental and social change. I then moved to a reporting job at the Los Angeles Times, writing about regional pollution issues, wildfire risk and the like before returning East to magazines and that global warming cover story. Doing that climate reporting, I’ll never forget meeting a diplomat from the low-lying Maldives wandering halls at a big climate meeting in Toronto in June 1988, musing on how his country, most threatened by warming, was essentially invisible in the discussions. In 1989 I left my magazine job and headed to the Amazon rain forest for three months to do research for my first book, The Burning Season, on the murder of forest defender Chico Mendes. That experience reinforced for me how most environmental issues are symptoms of societal issues (Brazil’s military dictatorship at the time was promoting policies fostering clearing of the Amazon and that threatened the rights of the region’s inhabitants). The biggest insight that emerged for me through those years came in 1991, when when I was writing my second book, Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast. In that book, published in 1992, I posited that humanity’s planet-changing surge was taking us out of the Holocene and into a “a geological age of our own making” that I proposed calling the “Anthrocene.” This was a decade before Paul Crutzen and other earth-system scientists formalized a proposal for the Anthropocene. (I ended up being a member of the Anthropocene Working Group from 2010 through 2016.)
5. What of your own work are you proudest, and why?
“The Burning Season” is by far the hardest and best thing I ever wrote; my 2,810-post, 100,000-comment Dot Earth blog for The New York Times has been described by others as a ground-breaking model for a learning-journey style of journalism on complex subjects; I think a few of my songs will stand the test of time – among those, “Arlington” and (hopefully) “Life is a Band.”
6. Who else would you like to give a shout out to, in terms of climate reporting/advocacy/activism (go as long as you like)
My shout-out would be to the full community of tens of thousands of people devoting time to bending curves toward progress on climate understanding (from basic research to education) and affordable access to clean energy (from basic research to policy to communication to innovation and commerce). That’s because there’s no single strategy, tactic, focal point, or person that matters most. And it’s because a diversity of responses to this kind of problem is not only essential; it’s also inevitable given human nature. Read my writing on the concept of “response diversity” as a sustainability strategy for lots more (here on climate solutions, here specifically on activism)
7. Complete this sentence “It’s important that we remember the (long) histories behind climate science, policy and activism because…”
…a focus on day-to-day politics and debate can miss vital long-timescale realities that really shape what societies can, and can’t, do addressing grand challenges of all kinds – from global warming to immigration to poverty alleviation to public health.
8. What next? What are you working on at the moment that you’d like to give a shout out to
I’ve had several book ideas simmering for a long while, but one’s life gets shorter every day and it’s also time for me to get more of my music out in the world. Since the mid 1990s, songwriting and performing have been a vital second communication pathway for me. Through this year, I’m working on a couple of albums of original songs, building on my one album, “A Very Fine Line,” released way back in 2013. Readers can learn about my songwriting side and listen to heaps of music in this Sustain What post: When Reporting Gives Way to Singing.
