When Truth is Buried, So Are We

In this episode of Three Degrees Apart, I speak with Emily Atkin, founder of Heated, about the evolving landscape of climate journalism and the role of media in shaping public understanding of the climate crisis. We explore how misinformation, political influence, and corporate narratives have distorted climate coverage, and why independent journalism is more important than ever. Emily also shares insights on building Heated into a trusted platform, and how clear, honest reporting can help young people stay informed, cut through the noise, and turn awareness into action.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

This episode was supported by the Climate Junction. Hello, I'm Nikhil Kothari, and you're listening to Three Degrees Apart, the podcast where voices from three generations, X, Y, and Z come together to export shared challenges and ideas. This season we're diving into climate change and the anxiety, urgency, and hope it stirs in all of us. Today, our guest is Emily Atkin, the founder of Heated, one of the most influential independent climate media platforms today. Her fearless pursuit of climate truth and her ability to connect the dots between science, politics, and culture have made her a vital voice in climate journalism. Miss Atkin, welcome to Three Degrees Apart. We're excited to have you here. Heated is known for its unapologetically direct approach to climate accountability. How do you think this style of journalism has changed public understanding of climate change compared to 20 years ago?

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Well, it's interesting. 20 years ago wasn't paying attention to climate change very much. 20 years ago, I was 15. So I think like my understanding of climate change when I was 15 was something like, you know, it's real, the ice cups are melting, like we should do something about it. And that was about it. I can certainly speak to maybe 10 years ago, where I think that climate change was really seen as more of an individual problem, or at the very least, a systemic problem that didn't really have any villains. It was just like an unfortunate side effect of something that we were all doing. And it wasn't until a lot of reporting came out on the internal communications of some of the world's biggest polluters that showed that there were actual villains holding back our progress on solving climate change. There were actual companies, oil and gas companies in particular, profiting from the release of carbon into the atmosphere, who privately acknowledged the science of climate change and privately acknowledged that this would be, if it got worse, really detrimental to society and the economy and human life. But it would also be really detrimental to their profits to do anything about it really substantial, require them to stop profiting from carbon, right? So I think in the last 10 years, there's really been a renaissance of people understanding that there was always gonna be climate change, but it didn't have to be so bad. And the reason it's so bad is because of a handful of polluting companies and politicians who are in those companies' pockets, right? I think people, especially in the journalism and activism worlds, people are understanding that this is an accountability story. It's less of a science, it's less of a story about science and the environment and like, oh, look at this interesting thing that's happening. It's just as much a story of power and corruption and profit and you know, capitalism, really. I think that's probably the biggest, the biggest realization.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

So through your work in journalism, how do you balance being direct with keeping people hopeful and engaged?

SPEAKER_00 3:10

So funny, because like I would say for the vast majority of my career, I've been totally not caring about giving people hope because I'm a journalist, right? So the facts say that we're screwed, that I'm here to tell you that we're screwed. I'm not here to hold your hand and tell you, but it's all gonna be okay, and like here's a reason for hope. I'm like, that's for somebody else to tell you, and it's not for me, it's not my job. And that kind of like gels with my personality a little bit. Yeah. And I've been happy to do that. However, I think that I've in the last couple of years especially come to the realization that like telling the truth doesn't just mean telling the bad news, right? Yeah. Being a news reporter, there is actually good news. But I think what I really had to realize was that like the good news is showing people how organizing and activism works. Because I think one of the biggest reasons that particularly like younger people have no hope is that they haven't been alive enough to see how the long process of organizing and activism has changed policy, has changed the way the world works. And even if they know that it has happened, they don't know how it happens. So as a reporter, I've been realizing that like it's just as much my job to tell stories of activists and organizers that are getting things done, that are engaging people, that are moving the needle. And that's the good news, right? And that shows people how to make change for this situation that like desperately calls for change. So I've been doing that. Like I just ran a story on Heated about these two former high-level Microsoft employees who like very courageously quit their jobs at the company to expose these contracts that Microsoft has with oil and gas companies. We're about to run a story about a TikTok influencer who spent like tens of thousands of dollars to show people where in the Arctic Trump is trying to drill and like he engaged like hundreds of thousands of people on that issue, whereas like traditional media has failed. So, like, I'm just trying to show different paths to activism while showing all that's still happening.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

Your newsletter, Heated, speaks strongly to the urgency many millennials and Gen Z feel while also recognizing the lived experiences of older generations. What do you think each generation gets right and maybe misses in how they approach the climate crisis?

SPEAKER_00 5:50

Well, I will say no generation is a monolith, so anything I say is purely anecdotal and does not apply to everybody in these generations. Um, I will say a pattern that I've noticed, because heated has readers across the age spectrum for sure. Something I notice a lot from my older readers is they get a little almost like annoyed and sometimes they'd be confused about when I bring up issues that maybe don't seem like they're about climate change to them. Like when I'm talking about like police brutality or something like that, or I'm talking about, let's say, immigration or you know, what's happening in Gaza, right? Like they cannot see why it's relevant to the climate crisis to talk about other issues of oppression. Even like, you know, I I once I've written two articles now about like drag queens and trans people. And those are when I see the biggest dips in uh in subscribers for heated. And it's a lot because like I think the older generation doesn't understand that like this that climate change is like a symptom of a system of oppression, right? It climate change isn't just like some something that happened out of nowhere, right? It's a symptom of a larger sickness, which is like profit over everything, extractive mindset, oppressing groups of people in order to achieve those large profits for a small group of people. Um, so whereas like climate change is a symptom of those symptoms, so is oppression of other groups. And climate change worsens the oppression of other groups, it worsens LGBTQ inequality, it worsens immigration, it causes massive amounts of displacements of people causing refugees, causing migration, which leads to more immigration problems if you have like really strict borders. War, you know, like war is a carbon bomb, right? Like all of these climate change intersects with every single issue. And some of my old older readers like don't understand that and think that it's bad to like talk about it because you'll be you'll be alienating certain people that don't want to talk about that, right? That don't want to talk about other forms of oppression. They just want to talk about climate change. Whereas younger people they don't understand that younger people, like particularly my Gen Z readers, they don't trust a climate news outlet or like a climate activist that doesn't intersect their climate activism with the oppression of other groups. Because then what they see is like some journalist or activist or somebody that only cares about like trees and plants and doesn't care about people, you know? Like younger people want to know that like that climate activists are here for like to take care of people that recognize that people are part of the environment and the fight to stop climate change is inherently, it's not just a fight to protect ecosystems and animals, right? It's a fight to protect humans, particularly the most vulnerable humans. So justice, I think, is a really important aspect for a lot of younger readers that are climate concerned people, whereas like older people sometimes take a little while to understand that independent outlets like heated often challenge legacy media's climate coverage.

SPEAKER_01 9:07

What unique role does heated play in shaping public narratives around climate change?

SPEAKER_00 9:12

You know, I was in traditional media for about a decade before I started Heated five years ago. And so, and one of my frustrations with traditional media that led me to start Heated was that even at progressive leaning outlets, there was a um hesitancy to constantly be calling out polluters for being perpetrators of the climate crisis because it does seem biased to do, right? When you label one group as an enemy, it kind of goes against this very journalistic rule of like you must seem unbiased and you must seem fair and you must give everybody a side. And my frustration back in the day was that I believe from my years and years of reporting on climate change that the facts were solid enough to show that there was a clear perpetrator and that the facts actually required us to not trust the fossil fuel industry when they say they're doing something, doing something about climate change, because literally every time they've done it in the past, they've been lying. So we have no basis as journalists to trust this industry when they make claims. They have a very high burden of proof, right? I think that traditional outlets can be so wedded to the perception of their neutrality that sometimes they err on the side of giving, of misleading people about the trust that certain companies and institutions and people deserve. Um I'm of the I'm really of the mind that you don't get trust from me as a journalist until you earn it. And the fossil fuel industry in particular has not earned your trust or my trust when it comes to climate change. You know, he did, when he did burst on the scene um in 2019, that was the thing that I was saying. I am so happy. I don't think, you know, it was just heated that did this. There were many other outlets and journalists and people saying this at the time. But I really think that so much of journalism, climate journalism, has moved towards that. I think we're still, we still struggle with that. I mean, you can see a lot of that is you can see like in some of the best journalism outlets, like New York Times, Washington Post, uh even NPR, right? Like they're doing some of the best climate journalism, but you'll still see ads and sponsorships by fossil fuel companies saying that like we're on the path to reducing carbon emissions and like we're doing our best, you know? Um, and that's fundamentally like that's fundamentally why like readers don't trust these outlets, right? Is that one hand they're saying one thing, right? They're reporting that these companies are doing all these awful things for climate change, and yet right on the page is it ad from Exxon that's like Exxon doing the most for climate change all the time. And you're like, well, which one is it? And why are you funding yourself with that with Exxon's money? Why I don't want to be supporting, I don't want to be like paying for a news outlet that does that. So he didn't exist to like push in that way and push in this in area of journalistic principles. Like I really try to keep it grounded in that so people know like what can be.

SPEAKER_01 12:32

Can you share a moment from your work or the broader climate movement when voices from different generations came together in a way that shifted a conversation or sparked meaningful action?

SPEAKER_00 12:43

It's tough, you know. Like I think that one I will say that I think as journalists and activists and people who care, we're always looking for like that one moment or that one thing that like shows that we can do it. And and that's very tough because like for climate change and so many other big issues, right? Like progress is not seen in big moments, but in small, in small, like inching forward moments. And you can like maybe trace to something that kicked it off, but but I don't know. I think that like I think Greta Greta Thunberg's you know, school strikes, I think were a massive wake-up call for those really, those school strikes and her activism really engaged the younger generation. Um, there's a wake-up call, but also like it gained traction with mainstream media. Um and and therefore when things gain traction with gain mainstream media, they gain traction with some of the older generations as well. So sometimes there's like a face, one activist that starts a conversation, but like Greta's activism would not have been possible without the activists that she was learning from, right? Like, and a lot of those activists were also youth activists, and they're youth activists of color from you know the global south, which don't tend to get as much attention, right? So you can start like I think you could start it with Greta, but it actually goes far more. And I find that it's you know, people want to know like what's your journalism doing? And I'm like, well, it's really hard to track what it's very rare that like one thing leads to one outcome. It's yeah, it's a buildup of stuff over time, but yeah, I I do think that's one.

SPEAKER_01 14:34

What lessons can younger and older activists learn from each other?

SPEAKER_00 14:39

Yeah, I mean, I think that like it never whatever feels like is completely impossible now, like you know, it it felt impos all what what older generations have is that lived experience of actually getting through humps that seemed insurmountable at the time, right? Like it didn't seem possible to get women the right to vote, right? Like that never seemed possible. It didn't seem possible to give black people the right to vote. It didn't seem so many like gay marriage didn't seem possible, right? And progress, what I think the older generation has is that they have the perspective of progress not being linear, right? Of like, here's I don't know if you're mirrored to me or not, but this is how I see it. It's like that's the bottom of the graph, and then like there's the top, there's progress, and how it goes like this.

SPEAKER_01 15:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:33

Right. If you're younger, you've only seen this part, particularly if you've like only been alive or like politically conscious during the Trump years, it's like you've only seen this like pretty significant dip, and it doesn't so like I I think that older generations, what they have is steadfastness and the understanding that like every upswing is gonna have a downswing. And that's really important. And also I think what older generations understand that I think young people could, especially ones that are like deeply embedded in like doomerism and nothing's gonna happen, is that through those people who've been fighting for something for a really long time aren't doing it because they've been guaranteed an outcome of success. In fact, they probably understand that like they might not see success in their lifetime, but that's not a reason to not do it, right? You don't need an a guarantee of success in order to do what you know is right. It's kind of like super like super, right? Like I find this helpful for myself because like sometimes I get into doomerism too. Sometimes I get like, oh man, I don't see how we're gonna get out of this one. So, like, does that mean I stop doing journalism? Does that mean I stop writing about what's happening? Like, even though like sometimes I'm not sure? No, I'm still gonna push forward because at the end of the day, like on my own deathbed, I want to at least say, like, I want to have the peace of mind knowing that like I was working towards it.

SPEAKER_01 17:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:05

And you need you need to be able to also like express your feelings of doom somewhere, like find people that that feel that way with you, but that are also still working anyway. Right. And not all older people have that, but like older activists, they really do. They really do have that.

SPEAKER_01 17:23

Climate misinformation remains a major barrier. What's one climate change myth or misconception you wish you could debunk once and for all?

SPEAKER_00 17:32

You know, I'm going between like the the one that's getting the most traction right now on younger people is that climate change is real, but it's not that big of a deal. Like it's real and it's like a problem that we have to deal with, but it's not like a huge problem. And it's like exaggerated by scientists and exaggerated by activists. And I just like I really want, I really wish that I could go into people's brains and make them understand like who is saying that and who benefits from that. The reason that people are saying, like the number one perpetrator of that piece of information right now is the head of the Department of Energy, Chris Wright. He's going everywhere saying that, right? Chris Wright is a fracking executive, right? And Chris Wright has to say that climate change is real because it's undeniable. He would look like an idiot, right? Like if he was just like, oh, climate change isn't real. Obviously, it's real. Like, we all have eyes. We're all, we have all lived long enough, like at this point, to see it. It's very hard to deny. So he's shifting it from you know, the old climate denial of it's not real, to like, yeah, it's real, but it's not that bad. Don't listen to these people. Don't listen to these people who have like a major personal, financial, and powerful stake in us not tackling climate change about whether climate change is real or not. Listen to scientists. Let's like and real scientists, right, who are publishing peer-reviewed papers. They are the ones that are saying, like, I don't want, by the way, I don't want climate change to be real and dangerous. Like, personally, I it's like this weird thing where it's like, you just want it to be bad. I'm like, I I wish that you were right about it, my guy. Like, I wish that Chris Wright was right about it. Unfortunately, he's not. It is a huge deal. And I don't have any personal financial stake in that, right? So, like, that's one I really wish I could just snap out of existence. And then the other one is like the one step after that, which is when you ri recognize that climate change is super dangerous and like we really need to do something about it. I wish I could erase the piece of misinformation that says that there is some other way that we can solve it without like significantly reducing society's dependence on fossil fuels. Anyone that says there's like another way to do it cannot point to any credible information that that shows that that's true. Like, what's your model that shows that we can remove this much carbon from the atmosphere while keeping relatively the same amount of fossil fuel use? Like, they cannot do it. But yeah, it is such a prolific talking point. It's so annoying. So, yeah, those are probably my big two.

SPEAKER_01 20:12

Thank you so much, Miss Atkin, for sharing her time, insight, and decades of experience with us. It's been a true pleasure. And thank you to our listeners for joining us on this episode of Three Degrees Apart, a podcast where voices from three generations come together to explore the big questions shaping our world. We hope this conversation sparked new ideas and reminded you that even across age, experience and perspective, we're all a little closer than we think. Until next time, stay thoughtful, stay engaged, and keep the dialogue going.