Elizabeth Kolbert and David Roberts: Covering Catastrophe




Commonwealth Club of California Podcast show

Summary: Elizabeth Kolbert's book Field Notes from a Catastrophe was instrumental in creating and shaping Climate One. Greg Dalton’s interview with Kolbert in 2006 prompted the Arctic trip that inspired Climate One. She returns to discuss her recent reporting on the Trump administration and how facts don’t seem to change people’s minds. She also will touch on the themes in her Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. When Al Gore visited Climate One recently he gave a shout-out to the writing of Dave Roberts, who hails from Tennessee. Roberts earned a wide following covering climate for Grist and eventually got so burned out that he walked away from that beat for a time. He’s back now writing insightful stories for Vox and, in response to the recent doomsday story in New York magazine, says it’s okay to talk about how bad the climate situation really is. But that doesn’t mean he’s a downer. He writes frequently about top solutions and what you can do that matters. Join a conversation with two veteran writers about covering the climate story in an age of fake news, climate denial and rising public concern about the reality of rising seas and temperatures.