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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. By the way, one quick addendum to what we were just talking about with Sarah Kliff. I have it on good authority from someone who may or may not be my producer with a three-year-old that the health and hospital corporation sites in New York City will test kids that young. Hopefully, that helps somebody out there. You've been hearing about the horrific and historically worst ever fires in the West, right?

Climate journalist Emily Atkin points out in her newsletter called HEATED that while US media may be US-centric, similar things are occurring elsewhere. Oh, not many places. Only Greece, Brazil, Argentina, Bulgaria, and Indonesia, all at the same time. Can we talk about climate and not just weather? By the way, Tropical Storm Sally might become Hurricane Sally as it gets ready to batter the Gulf Coast.

Yes, Sally, which means they're up to the letter S already. They've only run through the whole alphabet one time in the past, 2005, the same year as Katrina. Since the hurricane season lasts until the end of November, that's a real possibility this year. Remember, the big one, Sandy in the New York area and up the East Coast didn't happen until the very end of October. Here, we set in September and they're up to S already.

They go to the Greek letters in case you're wondering what's happening. If they get past Z, beware the arrogance of an Alpha Hurricane. Remember, a Beta Hurricane isn't just in its testing phase if they get to those Greek letters. Emily Atkin joins us now. She's becoming known as a top climate journalist and she left her staff position at The New Republic last year to launch her full-time climate reporting newsletter called HEATED. Emily, thanks so much for coming on to this. Welcome to WNYC.

Emily Atkin: Thank you so much for having me. I'm a native Hudson Valley, New Yorker, so it's really nice to be here.

Brian: Great to have you. Would you start with the global view and your story called Firefighter Everywhere? What's happening there?

Emily: Well, I wrote that story just to give a larger picture to the fires that we're seeing out on the West Coast. Just to point out that though your Twitter feed might be filled with pictures of orange skies there, global warming is global and the world has warmed about one degree Celsius because of humans and that's causing extremes everywhere. California isn't the only place seeing wildfires.

We're seeing extreme wildfires in Greece, Bulgaria as you saw and especially in the Amazon, in Brazil, and in Argentina. We don't see those every single day in our news feeds just because I think we have some trouble covering climate change as a full news media here. This phenomenon is affecting people far more vulnerable than even the most vulnerable people on the West Coast, which is quite a shame because those people are the people who have contributed least to climate change.

Brian: For example, something I learned from your newsletter HEATED that I did not know until last night is that the story in Greece is that one of the fires is hitting the country's largest refugee camp. Do you know enough about that to give us any more details?

Emily: Well, it's tough because even for me, I'm a US-centric journalist and it's tough to pay attention to all of the climate events happening around the world. I do know that that fire affecting the refugee camp in Greece, that's the largest refugee camp in Europe. Thousands of people have had their belongings destroyed. It's a fire that-- One of my readers correctly pointed out.

They said, "Well, Emily, that fire was caused by humans. Humans started that wildfire, so it's not climate change." Absolutely true. The first part, humans sparks that wildfire, but we live in a warmed world where every single weather event is exacerbated by the fact that it's really hot. That's why the fire is able to spread more intensely than it would have in a climate that wasn't warmed by humans.

Brian: As you note in your piece, this seems to be on pace to be one of the hottest if not the hottest year on record for Planet Earth. I heard on another show that it is already on pace to be the hottest year on record on Planet Earth. Aren't most of the hottest years currently on the books already from just recently?

Emily: Yes, heat records are being shattered everywhere. Every single year I've been a climate journalist, it's been-- I'm coming up on my seven-year anniversary here. Heat records has always been a major story every single month because you can do a yearly heat record, a monthly heat record. Oh, it's the hottest June we've ever experienced. It's the hottest July. It's the hottest summer in California that's ever happened. These records have been piling up for the last seven years one after the other and in so many different ways. At this point, even talking about the record, it's starting to feel pointless because every year is practically guaranteed to be hotter than the last year was.

Brian: That's right. Listeners, help us report this story. Are you listening in a fire-affected area in California, Oregon, or Washington, or anywhere else in the world? What's happening with you personally or anyone you know or to your hometown if you're no longer there? 646-435-7280. If you're in California, Oregon, or Washington, or if you're anywhere else listening to us and know people there and have been in touch with people there, tell us a story about someone you know who's being personally affected if it's not you, yourself.

Any other thoughts on the context? Do you see public officials responding in the ways that you think they need to or anything you want to say or to ask Emily Atkin, publisher of the newsletter HEATED? 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280, or you can tweet @BrianLehrer. About the fires in the West, Emily, you've complained about too little media context for them as part of climate change as opposed to just stuff that happens out there, but you also retweeted a positive media example. Yesterday's front page of the LA Times, the Sunday LA Times headline California's Climate Apocalypse: The Calamity Is No Longer in the Future. It's Here Now. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Emily: Sure. The LA Times is really, I think, a model for major newspaper coverage of climate change. I think a big part of that is that they're based in an area that really sees the effects of climate change very clearly. There's probably no greater visual representation of climate change than a huge fire. It's increasingly obvious to those journalists, I think, that they need to be covering their extreme weather in the context of climate change because that is the journalistic why.

I think, as a journalist, you're always thinking about, how do you cover a story with the five Ws? The who, what, where, when, and why. In terms of extreme weather, the LA Times, over the weekend, they published this large front page saying, "Climate changes here," all these different stories. Just generally, they cover the why. Even in their stories about record-breaking heat, record-breaking wildfire, they say and scientists say that these weather events are being made worse by climate change.

Therefore, the readers get an understanding that these aren't just natural acts of God that are happening that are making these events so bad. Their readers get a constant reminder and understanding that it doesn't have to be this way and that there are ways that they can vote, that they can advocate, that they can take actions as citizens to prevent these things from happening in the future.

The LA Times has really been a model for that, whereas I think a lot of our East Coast media publications consider climate change to be something-- still consider climate change to be something a little more niche. You don't see references to climate change in lots of news articles about weather events that are record-breaking extreme and, clearly, if you ask any climate scientist, driven by climate change.

Brian: I think for a lot of people in the East, and I guess maybe journalists included, we hear about fires in the West and we think, "Oh, Western wildfires happen every year." How do you begin to explain as a journalist who specializes in this that there is a demonstrable climate effect?

Emily: Sure. Of course, there are wildfires there every year, but we're getting to a place like we're talking about before. It's like the records are so numerous. Every single year that it starts to almost seem meaningless to talk about them, there is an expectation of wildfire that California officials have been able to prepare for for a long time. The cost of responding to them, the difficulty of responding to them keeps getting larger and larger.

There's a stat that stands out to me that, back in 1995, the cost of suppressing wildfires in California is about $900 million just for the federal government, the US Forest Service. That skyrocketed. 2018, it was $3 billion. The cost is more and more every single year. It's becoming something that a state that has a history and should be able to manage these natural events can no longer manage them.

That's not unique to California or the West Coast. It may be unique to wildfires, but you see this happening on the East Coast as well. New York City, the sea level is rising. Beaches are eroding. Every single year, you see a bad hurricane. It gets harder and harder to recover. That's not just because of climate change on either coast. It's because we're not building-- This gets into a kind of a complicated territory, but we're not building in a way that plans for these extremes, right?

We're not taking climate change into consideration when we're planning for the future. Another reason these California wildfires get so bad is that scientists-- despite the fact that they've been telling us for years and years that these wildfires are only going to get worse, California is still building in the wildlife urban interface, still building houses, millions more houses in areas that are subject to burning. We're just not listening to our scientists.

Brian: We'll continue in a minute with Emily Atkin, author of the newsletter HEATED, and take some of your phone calls on your stories of the fires in the West. Stay with us.

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Brian: Brian Lehrer on WNYC and with journalist Emily Atkin, author of the climate-oriented newsletter HEATED. Tony in Powell River, British Columbia, you're on WNYC. Hi, Tony. Thanks so much for calling in from there.

Tony: No problem, Brian. This is very exciting for me, a long-time listener, first-time caller. I am a former Brooklyn resident now living in British Columbia for the last couple of years. I just want to let you know that the smoke from all the fires in Washington State, California, and Oregon rolled in here about two days ago. We have some of the worst air quality in the world currently.

We've had a pretty mild summer in British Columbia. We also have a history of forest fires related to climate change. This summer, it's been mild. Now, we're just getting the residuals and it's terrible. You cannot be outside for more than a minute or two. We're really feeling the brunt and it's crazy. I don't even know-- I've never experienced anything like this in my entire life. It's really just a crazy thing.

Brian: I think a lot of people don't even really have the words. Tony, thank you so much. Good luck out there. Mike in Boise, Idaho, you're on WNYC. Hello from New York, Mike.

Mike: Hi, Brian. Great to talk to you. My wife and I just moved out here about a month and a half ago from New Jersey. [chuckles] Just like the gentleman just said, we can't go outside very much because I just turned 78 today. The air quality, it's like over 200, 300 parts per million. I know how they measure it, but I know you guys are much lower on the East Coast.

Brian: Oh yes. Well, we're not having the fires right now, but Mike, happy birthday. Anyway, thank you for checking in with us, but what a shock, right? Ralph in Astoria, you're on WNYC. Ralph, thank you for calling. Hi there.

Ralph: Thank you. I just like to maybe personalize by giving a name of a firefighter out from Montana, Bozeman, Montana.

Brian: Thank you.

Ralph: A family friend, his name is Tom Duffy, 40 years old. He comes from three generations of a helicopter family and fighting the fire right outside of Portland. I think it was 40 miles outside of Portland. About a week and a half ago, he succumbed. He died because his helicopter crashed and everybody that knew the person-- I didn't know him as well. I knew other family members, but they say that he will give anybody the shirt off his back. It's just sad. I guess you multiply that by all these people that are losing their lives fighting fires and one tips their hat to them because what would it be without them even more?

Brian: Right. Say his name out loud one more time.

Ralph: Tom Duffy, 40 years old, left three children and a wife.

Brian: Wow. Ralph, thank you for saying his name. Mildred in Eugene, Oregon, you're on WNYC. Hello, Mildred, is it Eugene or Eugene?

Mildred: Eugene.

Brian: I'm glad I asked.

Mildred: We know right away that you're not a local if you say Eugene. Anyway, let me just say every single person in the Pacific Northwest has been impacted by this. I've had ash coming through my window sills the first few days of it. This has been apocalyptic and everyone knows it. The combination of Trump misinformation. There are people, Lars Larson, they are blaming the fires on Antifa, which blows my mind. There's a combination of truth.

Trump is correct in saying forests need to be thinned. Yes, we've known that forever. Forest Service has had this data forever. Big trees need to be left. Forests need to be thinned. There's never any money for it. They could hire everybody to thin for us. Anyway, so it's a bizarre mix of truth and untruth. We've got people. The cities are rational and kind of evolved people. All around the rest of Oregon is we got huge, big pickup trucks with giant Trump flags and--

Brian: Right, right. People have evolved or not evolved, but Mildred, I get your big point. Emily Atkin, we've got about a minute left in the show. I was reading in The Guardian too, and I don't know if you've covered it on HEATED yet, about a lot of misinformation being purposely spread around the Western states about the fires. Say anything you want. I also want to give you an opportunity to just tell people how they can sign up for HEATED because you're doing such great stuff all the time.

Emily: Oh, thanks so much. I started HEATED because I truly realized over six years of covering this that misinformation about climate change and, honestly, disinformation, which refers to the intentional spread of misinformation, is our biggest problem when it comes to fighting climate change. For the last 30 years, we've had almost a pandemic of science denial when it comes to climate change. The science is strong today on climate change and it has been strong for the last 30 years. There are many ways that you can distract from climate change in order to say, "It's not this," and we see that with the Trump administration today.

Brian: 15 seconds, so give yourself a big fat plug.

Emily: Sure. You can go to heated.world. Sign up to the newsletter to learn more about the actual science behind all this.

Brian: Heated.world started by Emily Atkin. Emily, thanks so much for giving us some time today.

Emily: Thanks for taking it.

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