The media needs to cover the climate crisis as seriously as it covered Covid | Mark Hertsgaard and Kyle Pope

With some exceptions, the news industry is still not responding to the true scale and danger of global heating

In much of what we see, hear and read, the climate crisis has become inescapable. On Netflix, Don't Look Up spent weeks as the most-streamed movie ever. Pop star Billie Eilish sings about hills burning in California. At the bookstore, climate fiction has become a genre of its own, while Jeff Goodell's The Heat Will Kill You First, a harrowing nonfiction account of what life on a warming planet will mean, is entering its second month on the New York Times Best Sellers list.

And where is journalism in all of this? Despite our living through the hottest summer in history, as well as wildfires, tropical storms and crazy-hot oceans, the news media continues to be outdone by the rest of popular culture when it comes to covering the most urgent story of our time.

Mark Hertsgaard, CCNow executive director, author, and environment correspondent for The Nation, and Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of Columbia Journalism Review, are founders of Covering Climate Now