On media websites, the menu bar should not be seen merely as a tool to navigate. It’s a signpost to what is truly important in this world. Or at least, it should be.

The techy people put the website together, but journalists choose the categories. Journalists tell us: ‘These are the broad subjects we are covering, that you should be interested in’.

If the climate crisis is not there, front and centre, then journalists are telling you it’s not a major topic. If you have to scroll through sub-headings and sub-sections, through ‘science’ or ‘other’ to find the climate news, then it’s not being given the prominence the facts demand.

If the subject is seemingly impossible to find, then it’s a safe bet that the fossil fuel industry is part-funding the title.

Here we’ll look at many of the major news outlets of the UK, US and Australia, as examples.

It tells a front page story in itself.

We cannot, of course, expect all media outlets to report honestly on the climate crisis. As journalists, they absolutely should do this, but as puppets for billionaire, fossil-fuel serving media owners, many will never adhere to the principles of their journalistic training.

Which is why you should also refer to my article about being the media yourself.

Independent environmental journalism relies on the generous support of readers to continue. If you are in a position to help fund my work, thank you very much…

The Honest Journalists

Let’s call a spade a spade. Human-accelerated climate change is a fact. It is now a crisis; a global emergency.

Journalists are trained to follow a code of conduct that demands they report the truth. So if they aren’t platforming the climate crisis as a major topic, they aren’t being truly honest with us. That’s my opinion, of course, but how else are we supposed to view the matter?

The BBC has a global reputation for fair, balanced reporting. The corporation annoys both sides of the political spectrum, which is how you know for certain that, most of the time, it is achieving close to independence of view.

The BBC was one of the first major media outlets to give Climate a place in its main menu bar, where it remains today - even if it does look like it’s been tagged on the end as an afterthought.

The Guardian publishes editions for countries across the world, and goes one better than the BBC. It’s the most honest, most heavily resourced climate and nature desk of all the major titles here.

And it spells the issue out clearly in the menu bar: Climate crisis.

This earns a berth near the top of the list, given its vital importance. Environment also has its own section, because the climate crisis is a major news issue all by itself. Every journalist from every other publication, please take note.

This is the way to do it. This is honest journalism, because it is based on facts.

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The Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal are traditionally conservative titles, given their money-led subject matter. Opinion columns tend to follow this line.

News journalists on the titles, however, have been forced to recognise that the climate crisis is also a financial crisis; an economic crisis. The major companies they are reporting on have climate resilience built in, so this cannot be ignored by the writers.

I’ve included WSJ here, even though climate is not mentioned in the main menu bar, as it is listed as the leading topic under ‘U.S.’

Despite heavy cuts to the climate desk under title owner, Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, The Washington Post is still dedicated to some honest climate and nature reporting.

The Los Angeles Times has one of the strongest remaining US desks, as can be seen from its sub-sections in the drop-down menu.

In Australia, much of the media has lived in denial about the climate crisis, but SBS News carries honest, factual reporting on this subject, with Climate Change being a section under top-level Environment.

Reuters is the world’s largest news agency, and though it is perhaps strange that it chooses ‘Sustainability’ as the top signpost, the website nevertheless filters into more sub-sections than most.

Again, very encouraging.

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‘Should Do Better’

Sky News in the UK can, when it wants to, present genuinely informative and supporting news and features on the climate and nature crises.

Even so, management cancelled The Climate Show in 2024, and now bizarrely lumps climate in with science and technology as an overarching topic.

Perhaps Sky is the only major media player to be linking AI and climate change. Nevertheless, climate should earn its own place in the headlines.

CNN stands out as a major American network prepared to tell the truth about the climate crisis, yet prefers not to shout about it

You’ll find the most important stories in the world at the end of the menu bar, under ‘More’.

The New York Times also hides its climate coverage, but does at least have a dedicated section, if you can find it.

Same again for Bloomberg. An impressive sub-menu but you’ve first got to navigate through ‘More’ and the vague ‘Green’ label.

ABC News in Australia provides a hidden Environment section, though there’s little alarm reported.

The UK has come to expect more when it comes to climate reporting from The Independent and Channel 4 News. Their homepages were encouraging when I checked them; the menu bars, less so.

For a left-leaning publication (The Mirror) and the BBC’s main broadcasting rival in the UK (ITV), I would expect far more from their own vague menu bars.

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Dishonest Journalism?

So to the media outlets who won’t signpost any kind of climate crisis. I’m calling them out as ‘dishonest’ in a journalistic sense. It’s my opinion that honesty in journalism equates to factual reporting.

In this case, factual reporting would be to honestly tell the world the most important story, about the devastating climate and nature crises. That’s what journalists are here for, to tell the truth.

By not telling this story, or by underplaying it, we have to suspect that underhand tactics, such as fossil fuel funding, are setting the news agenda.

Either that, or blinkered devotion to the right of politics, which we know for certain is heavily funded by polluting billionaires.

Any other excuse for misreporting doesn’t wash well. For it start, it calls the quality of the journalism into serious question.

And so to Fox News. You might not expect any environmental coverage from Trump’s media mouthpiece, but it actually has a section, should you wish to dig for it, called Global Environment.

Of course, there are no real environmental stories there. Just look at the example from when I took a scan - the words “climate zealots” embarrassingly emblazoned.

Fox News is not only misrepresenting the truth on the climate crisis - it is misrepresenting journalism.

Exactly the same can be said for GB News in the UK. The hedge fund run by Sir Paul Marshall, the co-owner of GB News, almost tripled its investments in fossil fuel companies in the first quarter of 2026 to $2.8bn, the Guardian revealed.

The GB News homepage is below. I wasn’t going to pay, or accept cookies from 890 partners, but you can see from their other stories where their priorities lie.

Another right-wing title pretending to have an environment section is The Telegraph. If you look a bit closer, it’s just an excuse to twist the knife into Zack Polanski, leader of the Green Party in England and Wales. Fortunately, this kind of thing simply fuels Zack even more.

Here’s a strange one. CBS News leans left, but there’s no obvious route to climate stories - and UFO Files are up there ahead of it on the menu bar!

In Australia, the channel formerly known as Sky is also ignoring the climate emergency, but you’d expect it of News 24.

Their top links include ‘Immigration Crisis’, without an educational nod to the fact that the country will be receiving millions more immigrants soon, due to droughts, heat, wildfires and famine caused by the climate crisis.

And now for a selection of more well-known titles which show no easy route to climate stories - some, you’d expect no more, no less…

Beneath the menu bar

Outright denial of climate change has largely disappeared from mainstream outlets. You can’t fool readers who are using the newspaper as a fan to cool themselves down in yet another heatwave.

Now, it is climate policy that’s in the firing line - specifically net zero initiatives, with the fossil fuel-funded media successfully poisoning the phrase ‘net zero’ to the point of such toxicity that it should probably never be used any more by climate communicators.

Analysis by the professionally honest nonprofit Carbon Brief found that 2025 was the fourth record-breaking year in a row for media opposition to net zero policies.

The counter-argument to the points I have made, which the titles I have criticised make themselves, is that scrutinising the cost and delivery of net zero policy is legitimate journalism, not denial.

That’s true, of course. But presenting cost figures without the counterfactual cost of climate inaction, and without presenting the true facts about economic climate damage, leaves readers with a distorted, dishonest picture of the truth.

As a journalist myself, it still astounds me that the natural built-in nose for news, and terrier-like digging for the biggest stories on the planet, completely eludes many journalists at the ‘top level.’

The climate crisis is the biggest story they will ever cover, if they choose to do so.

Journalists have abandoned the heart and soul of their craft, if they are not reporting the truth.

That’s an internal as well as external breakdown of values. That’s why the world needs us all to share important, factual information, and no longer leave it to the media.

The climate crisis and artificial superintelligence are both threatening our very existence - and in the short-term. Despite the gargantuan magnitude of that fact, this sentence is likely to be dismissed by most as doom-mongering, which nobody has the appetite for. Life is difficult enough to navigate.

The evidence must be studied closely, however, because dishonesty and suppression are hiding the true picture, with the world’s respected experts being the ones who are sounding the latest alarms.

First, the climate emergency, and the associated ecological breakdown. This particular failure to share vital information could happen anywhere, but for now it happens to be taking place in the UK.

The government is refusing to release the full national security assessment, titled ‘Global biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and national security,’ despite heavy campaigning to do so, notably by former Green Party leader Caroline Lucas.

Produced with the Joint Intelligence Committee - the body that oversees MI5, MI6 and GCHQ - the report has been teased only in heavily redacted form. Presuming, as we reasonably must, that the redacted information is the most inflammatory, this assessment is already dark enough to induce mass panic.

Independent environmental journalism relies on the generous support of readers to continue. If you are in a position to help fund my work, thank you very much…

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Security and prosperity at risk

The report concluded, with high analytical confidence (its own words), that global ecosystem collapse now threatens UK national security and prosperity. The same applies to all countries, as we are all interconnected by ecosystems.

Those high confidence paragraphs read: “The world is already experiencing impacts including crop failures, intensified natural disasters and infectious disease outbreaks. Threats will increase with degradation and intensify with collapse.”

Not enough for you? Try this: “Ecosystem degradation is occurring across all regions. Every critical ecosystem is on a pathway to collapse.” It helpfully places in parenthesis: “(irreversible loss of function beyond repair).”

To complete the picture of high confidence predictions: “Critical ecosystems that support major global food production areas and impact global climate, water and weather cycles are the most important for UK national security.

“Severe degradation or collapse of these would highly likely result in water insecurity, severely reduced crop yields, a global reduction in arable land, fisheries collapse, changes to global weather patterns, release of trapped carbon exacerbating climate change, novel zoonotic diseases and loss of pharmaceutical resources.”

The assessment’s timeline for this hellscape developing is 2030-2050.

‘The world is in peril’

So to AI. Resisting the temptation to take a sci-fi route to “robots taking over the planet,” let’s instead look at the facts.

Recent months have seen an increasing number of concerned former AI leaders and employees, blowing the whistle on the battle between Sam Altman, Elon Musk and others to be the person widely regarded as the one to nail the coffin on the human race.

Two of the people who built modern artificial intelligence, Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, put their names to a statement calling for the brakes to be pulled on the development of superintelligence, until it can be shown to be safe and controllable - and until the public has a say.

Safety researchers have been resigning from the leading labs, and not quietly. Mrinank Sharma, head of Anthropic’s Safeguards Research Team, resigned in February 2026 with a five-word note: The world is in peril.

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‘A sixth mass extinction may be underway.’

So there we have it. Two of the gravest forecasts imaginable, delivered by some of the most reliable sources on the planet. And yet… an eerie silence.

Reported in some sections of the media, yes. Latched on to by a number of YouTubers, also correct. But combined into a picture of systemic, establishment dishonesty affecting the immediate future of the entire population of Earth? That hasn’t been communicated loudly, if at all.

Suppression of the true facts is the important thread, here. Scientists have documented the collapse of wildlife populations for decades. They have warned about the implications for the human population. The government assessment, even in redacted form, makes no bones about the direction of travel: “The rate of extinction is tens to hundreds of times higher than the average over the past 10 million years. It suggests that a sixth mass extinction may be underway.”

With AI, we can use hyper intelligent models daily. They have already replaced skills to make millions of people jobless, and seeking new identities. But the AI behemoths are not transparent about what they are working on right now. This is where we look to former employees to inform us, and you can see the fear in the whites of their eyes.

The fossil fuel thread between both threats

Both existential threats are conjoined by secrecy and dishonesty, but they intertwine more meaningfully, too. The race toward superintelligence runs on a massive amount of electricity. The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that data centre electricity demand will roughly double by 2030 to around 945 terawatt-hours - that’s close to the entire annual electricity consumption of Japan.

That power has to come from somewhere, and increasingly it is coming from fossil fuels. The consequence is clear in the tech companies’ own accounts. In 2025 Microsoft’s emissions rose 25 per cent, its largest jump since the pandemic. Google’s rose 18 per cent, leaving them more than 80 per cent above 2019 levels. Amazon’s rose 16 per cent, its biggest one-year increase on record.

Of course, burning fossil fuels warms the atmosphere, and this contributes to the triggering of ecological collapse. But pollution is also a major threat to ecosystems, and the fossil fuel industry’s ‘Plan B’ is culpable here - plastics. The IEA expects petrochemicals to drive more than a third of global growth of oil demand by 2030.

You need only accept, as the experts do, that there is a real possibility of ecosystems collapsing, and AI becoming the superior intelligence, both within the lifetimes of people now walking the Earth.

The rational response should be obvious. If human life is threatened by a genuine probability of catastrophe on either front, the sane thing would be to work together, urgently, to improve our odds.

Instead, look around you. Read or watch the media. The powerful are accelerating toward both points of no return, while simultaneously waging wars.

They are failing to tell us not to stand too close to the edge. We don’t know how close the edge is - that’s the problem.

The worst of the threats may ultimately not arrive. But it’s certainly possible that they will. The refusal to speak honestly about them is happening now, in plain sight.

We should be asking why, and demanding answers. That includes you.

Environmental and Ethical Journalist, Writer, Communicator and Content Creator

You will find a common thread through many of my articles here on Substack - if you want people to care about nature, pollution, the climate and related issues, then making them aware is only half the battle.

We need to communicate in a way that they are familiar with, using language that allows us to genuinely connect.

Once we connect, then we can nurture an understanding, a following, and loyalty, even.

As an environmental and ethical journalist, my mission has always been to put the work of planet-friendly people, businesses and organisations in the spotlight.

I don’t do it for anyone else. Seriously. I’m a greenwash detector, though - I only want to work with organisations and people who are genuinely a force for good. It’s just who I am. It’s important to me.

So, if you fit the description, and you’re looking for a very experienced environmental writer and content creator, to assist with a project or more, then I would be positively delighted to help…

How Can I Help?

I work remotely for worthy causes across the world. I can assist you with services including:

• Website content

• Blog articles

• Press releases and media pitches

• Social media content

• LinkedIn management

• Newsletters

• Case studies

• Reports

• Campaign messaging

• Award writing

• FAQs and explainer content

• Op-eds and thought pieces

One of my recent longer-term projects was as freelance communications manager for solar and battery smartgrid operators, SNRG:

“Mark has played an important role in supporting the business - particularly across our media announcements, award submissions and wins for key projects, and the coordination of our case study and LinkedIn content. Thank you for the impact you’ve had across the business. We look forward to continuing to work together.”

Alec Hussain, Co-Founder, SNRG SmartGrids

I Offer a Unique Service

I believe that eco-conscious businesses and organisations are torchbearers - they lead the way in environmental and ethical practices. They are an example to all.

I’m 100% on your side, and I know that ethical enterprises often don’t have the time, budget, or capacity to handle any of the important needs mentioned above.

I can make things easier for you.

As a journalist, I bring something a bit different from standard marketing or social media support. I’m used to finding the story, asking the right questions, and writing in a way that makes people trust what they’re reading.

That means I can help you sound like experts in your field without sounding stiff, salesy, or even worse - like AI wrote it.

You may have noticed that there is a real pushback against low-quality AI content right now, and a desire for human authenticity.

Quality editorial content is a powerful tool to gain trust. Here on the Substack platform, I often spend time listed among the top rising Climate and Environment writers in the world.

What To Do Next

My services can be called on as and when required. I’m offering peace of mind that, when you need a boost, you can turn to a communications expert who is also green at heart.

If you want to get the ball rolling, please email myself, Mark Campbell, at action@ethicaldisruption.earth

How Much Will It Cost?

I try to be ethical in my approach to this, as well. I am an experienced journalist and content creator, and this carries worth and value, but I’d prefer to chat with you about what your needs are, and what your budget is - and we can then come to an arrangement that suits everyone.

Thank you for reading….

I look forward to working with you!

Mark Campbell

More about me…

Hello, lifeforms of the year 2100. I trust your technology has been successful in accessing this article, which was written in the year 2026.

By the time you read this, I will be long gone, bar a medical miracle. I hope my children are living in old age, and my grandson, too.

I fear for the life they will be experiencing, because it is evident that my generation has caused you many problems.

I want to apologise for this. Personally, I have tried my best to educate people about the devastating consequences of their actions, that you are now having to live with. But in truth, we are all to blame.

As I write this, there are some things we just can’t change. No matter how hard we try - the damage is already locked in. I feel helpless about this, and again, I apologise.

I know that sea levels will have risen, and that you will have lost a lot of coastline that we still enjoy in 2026. Low lying islands may have disappeared too. We certainly expect them to.

This will have caused many millions of people to relocate their homes, losing everything they had to escape to higher ground.

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Our ‘extreme weather’ will be just ‘weather’ to you. It will be the norm to struggle through suffocating temperatures, navigating devastating wildfires, floods and droughts. To be honest, it is getting to be that way in 2026.

Excess deaths caused by human-accelerated climate change are already numbered in the many thousands during every heatwave. I dare not hazard a guess as to how many lives are being claimed by the weather in 2100.

Our greenhouse gas emissions have caused a global warming so deep and intense that its effects will be felt long after you depart the Earth yourselves, I’m afraid.

Here in 2026, we know that the oceans have soaked up 91% of the excess heat we have caused. Without that sponge, we would all be dead now.

There is some trade between the oceans and atmospheric heat, but the largest concern - and we know you are living with this - comes from the fact that warm oceans swell in size, and fuel terrifying storms.

The oceans will have also swollen because of the melting ice. I could talk for ages about how wondrous it was to see vast expanses of ice sheets and glaciers. Projections in 2026 lead me to believe that only half of them, at most, are still there in 2100.

We also expect the cold water from the melting Greenland ice sheet to change the behaviour of the AMOC current, so that Europe experiences extremely cold winters, and shorter crop growing seasons. This has probably already occurred as you read this.

You may discover images of warm water coral reefs, like the one above - magnificent colourful gardens of marine life once found in some of our oceans. I am sorry that you can not see these for yourselves any longer.

Everything else, as I write this, is still to play for. Our future choices may have made things even worse for you. Hopefully, we will have woken up to our destruction and ensured that you still have plenty to enjoy.

There are many good people on this planet in 2026. People who are trying to make a difference, to make the planet cleaner and greener, to protect all forms of life, and to ensure that the people of 2040, 2050, 2100 are not struggling through each day because of the vandalism of past generations.

After all, we are talking about the lives of our children and grandchildren, and many of us are going to have to live through challenging times ourselves, too.

But there are sadly many people who are making this progress difficult for us.

In writing this letter to the year 2100, I am honestly expecting that Artificial Intelligence - as we call it today - has taken control of the world’s systems.

People are scared in 2026 that the ‘machines’ might take over. In reality, it might be the best chance the human race, and all animal species, have of survival - if beings more intelligent than us are in charge.

But it probably hasn’t turned out that way. Certainly not smoothly, anyway.

I hope you do not suffer wars any more. There is a land over the sea from myself, called the United States of America - I don’t know if it still exists in 2100 - where the government actually has a Department of War, but not a Department of Peace. That says everything about the kind of people we have put in charge in 2026. That’s on us, sorry.

I hope you do not have to fight over essential resources like water. I hope that you have found a better, fairer way to live than to give power to politicians and allow them to dictate the distribution of wealth. I hope you have no need for money.

I hope you are not divided by primitive religions. I hope you look back with disgust at why people in 2026 killed THREE TRILLION animals each year for food and other purposes - when there were so many cruelty-free options we could have chosen instead.

I hope so many good things for you, because I know my generation has made so much of your life more difficult to navigate, certainly more difficult than the relative paradise we have enjoyed.

You are probably wondering WHY we have allowed things to get so bad, that we can’t reverse a lot of the damage.

That is a very good question, and it is not easy to answer.

It is not a lack of awareness, nor knowledge. We know what we are doing. That must sound callous to you. It does to me, too.

As a species we are slow to change, slow to adapt, slow to see the need, if it doesn’t directly affect ourselves. The year 2100 is a long way into the future, and matters not to most people. But 2030 is less than four years away, and most people don’t care about what happens then, either.

We live for today, because life is tough for most people. Getting through the day is a challenge and an achievement. It is made that way by the wealthy power-holders across the planet, who divert the blame to such unfortunate people as migrants.

Migration has, of course, taken place since the start of time. You will have witnessed much more than I have, however. Lands that have become too hot, too dry, unproductive - they will have been abandoned.

Those in power in 2026, who call for more burning of fossil fuels, and more animal agriculture, are creating the accelerated climate change that increases the flow of migrants.

You wonder why people can’t see this? You wonder if people are stupid? Well, many of us certainly call them stupid, In reality, there is a lack of education, a lot of denial, endless misinformation, the desire to punch down and blame someone else for their own struggles. Like I said, for most people, it’s an achievement simply getting through the day.

Many of us also put our faith in the same technology we fear. AI will surely find a way to suck all the carbon out of the atmosphere…

I don’t seek to make excuses for the extremely difficult situations we have thrust upon you. But I can’t rationally explain why we have done what we have done.

The wealthy wanted more riches. That has been the same since the dawn of time. The disappointing thing is that the rest of us have allowed this to happen.

Every tree planted, every animal saved, every fraction of a degree of warming quashed, all makes life more bearable. I hope that those of us who act with love, empathy and positivity, have left a world for you to enjoy in 2100 - notwithstanding the damage we have already caused.

For this, I again apologise.

For your history books, let the record stand that a great number of us in 2026 did genuinely desire to save the lives of all species, now and in the future.

I hope we achieved some meaningful success.

Take good care of yourselves - and of future generations.

Mark Campbell

Because we also have a communication crisis, which is hampering progress.

Only when more people understand the true picture, and the dangers we face, will they vote for politicians who can actually make a positive difference.

This video is based on this article.

Please visit and subscribe to the Ethical Disruption YouTube channel here.

Because we also have a communication crisis, which is hampering progress.

Only when more people understand the true picture, and the dangers we face, will they vote for politicians who can actually make a positive difference.

This jargon-free video takes less than four minutes to explain the basics.

Please visit and subscribe to the Ethical Disruption YouTube channel here.

Because we also have a communication crisis, which is hampering progress.

Only when more people understand the true picture, and the dangers we face, will they vote for politicians who can actually make a positive difference.

This video is based on this article.

Please visit and subscribe to the Ethical Disruption YouTube channel here.

Animal lovers are furious after a couple in Pembrokeshire, Wales were given permission to breed guinea pigs for food.

Little, ickle squeaky friendly guinea pigs.

Or, if you live in large parts of South America and Africa - meal time.

This story will read differently depending on where in the world you are reading it. And that’s the whole point.

The off-grid Welsh couple secured planning permission under the government’s One Planet Development policy, which encourages sustainable living.

The story has thrown up a couple of angles which the media just hasn’t covered:

• Where do ethics, and the killing of animals, sit within ‘sustainable living?’

• Why is one species valued more than another?

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Dave and Mayu Phillips also received planning permission to raise pigeons and rabbits for food, apparently in an effort to live sustainably on the land. There will also be increased production of honey and walnuts on the site.

Interestingly, there has been no public or media outrage about the killing of rabbits and pigeons. Nor the farming of honey bees.

But the outcry over the fate of the cute little guinea pigs has been deafening. It includes a petition signed by thousands of people, with many comments chasing the line of “WHAT NEXT?! ARE WE GOING TO EAT DOGS AND CATS??!!”

Well, why not? It’s just the same as eating guinea pigs. Or regular pigs. Or cows. Or chickens….

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Backyard executions do not match an eco-conscious way of life

What was your immediate reaction to the story? If you live in the Western world, it was likely a mix of disgust and moral superiority. You maybe pictured a beloved childhood pet, with a name and a personality.

Let’s stop pretending that disgust comes from a place of deep ethical alignment. It doesn’t. It comes from a place of cultural conditioning. It is yet another example of speciesism.

The One Planet movement demands that humans live within the biological means of Earth. Under that rigid framework of carbon footprints and resource efficiency, large livestock is an environmental disaster, but small-scale livestock like guinea pigs, rabbits, and pigeons make perfect sense.

They require minimal land, breed rapidly, and convert to protein with minimal emissions.

But this is where the sustainable living movement runs into trouble.

The spirit of environmentalism is supposed to be about dismantling human dominance. We are urged to stop treating the Earth as a resource, to be extracted, mastered, and consumed. We are told to see ourselves as part of an interconnected ecosystem.

And yet, if you look at a tiny, off-grid backyard hutch and see it primarily as an efficient unit of protein, you are practising the exact same philosophy of dominance. You have just downsized the scale of the violence.

We do not need to replace massive slaughterhouses with thousands of backyard executions. The ethical failure isn’t the size of the farm, or the types of animals killed - it’s the premise that these animals are ours to use as tools.

If the One Planet mission is really about moving toward a less destructive way of inhabiting this earth, then eating meat is a total contradiction.

Speciesism: Why a guinea pig is the same as a farm pig, or a chicken, or my Border Terrier…

The public outrage over this story centres on something else entirely - speciesism.

In the Western world, we treat animals like dogs, cats and guinea pigs as companions worthy of names and love, while reducing equally intelligent and sentient animals like pigs, cows, and chickens to commodities meant for consumption.

In the Andean region of South America, guinea pigs - known as cuy - have been raised as a staple protein source for thousands of years.

Meanwhile, in India, the cow is a sacred symbol of life, protected by law from the fate it routinely meets to supply your local burger joint.

Parts of Southeast Asia have historically traded in dog and cat meat - although the practice is now facing shutdowns, including an historic ban in South Korea.

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People are completely blind to the fact that their outrage is geographic. They don’t actually object to the slaughter of sentient beings; they object to the slaughter of the wrong types of sentient beings.

Speciesism ignores an animal's actual capacity to feel pain or desire life.

There is absolutely no biological, neurological, or ethical distinction between the suffering of my Border Terrier, or a guinea pig, or a farm pig.

In fact, a pig possesses the cognitive complexity, problem-solving skills and social capacity of a three-year-old human child - easily outsmarting many of the dogs and cats we tuck into bed at night. Including mine!

I’ll never understand how you can look at a guinea pig in a frying pan and call it cruelty, then look at a pig in a slaughterhouse gas chamber and call it lunch.

That cognitive dissonance underlies so much of the nature and climate battles we contest every day.

It won’t have escaped your notice - and I sincerely hope that you have not been personally affected - that life appears to be at breaking point, in so many ways.

As a climate and nature communicator, I am particularly concerned about the rising frequency of extreme weather, which has killed thousands of people in recent months; also, the devastating decline of nature, and animal welfare.

There are many superlative climate and nature writers out there. An increasing amount of impressive podcasts. The occasional hard-hitting environmental TV show.

No slight on any of them, but I don’t believe the vast majority of even our ‘best’ climate and nature communication has come close to cutting through where it matters.

Hardly any of it is moving the dial. It’s informing an audience that is already informed. It’s preaching to the converted - people who choose to listen to a climate podcast, or choose to read an environmental story on Substack.

So where does it matter most?

It matters chiefly at government level. And we the people elect our governments in most countries. So the power - and blame - lies in our hands.

A president, a prime minister, a government, has the power to make overarching, meaningful changes to environmental and energy policies, that truly do make a difference to people’s lives, and to the natural world, for decades to come.

More so than anyone, or any business, or any organisation. Overwhelmingly, government policy dictates the direction of travel for our quality of life.

At present, we the people have elected some of the most irresponsible ‘leaders’ across the planet. And we the people are forecasted to elect even more damaging governments in future, in many places.

The solution, of course, is to educate the population. Something the climate and nature movement has been trying to do for many, many years. Largely without meaningful success.

I know that sounds harsh, because so much progress has genuinely been achieved. Yet, when it comes to election time, where is climate and nature on the list of priorities for voters, never mind candidates? Where does it sit within the media coverage?

It’s nowhere. Or it’s an afterthought. Pollution, in some forms, is breaking through as an issue that people care about, but that often tends to be localised.

Reaching the mass middle

At one end of the population, you have people who consume lots of content about environmental matters. They care. Many of them act upon their concerns.

At the other end, you have people whose opinions will never be swayed, perhaps through blind political loyalty, or religious beliefs, or an association with polluting industries.

The mass middle has been estimated, in US and UK surveys, to include about 60-65 per cent of the population. These are people who are open to being educated, these are the people we need to have on our side to make positive changes.

But these are the people we frequently lose.

Sometimes we talk down to them. Sometimes we inject too much fear. Sometimes we underplay the seriousness of the situation, so that everything doesn’t seem too bad after all. Often, we attack them.

I believe we need to communicate powerful messaging without people even realising we’re doing it. We have to smuggle in the message. Those on ‘the right’ have been doing it far too well for years.

We need to turn up on our target audience’s territory. We need to speak their language. We need to make issues relatable to their lives. And we need to do it using formats and methods they are familiar and comfortable with.

I’d be a very rich man if I had a pound or dollar for every time I’d heard someone say “the media won’t tell you that…” Look, the media will never tell people what you want them to say. Sadly, most of the larger titles and channels have their own agendas.

If we want to educate and influence people, we have to do it ourselves. And we have more opportunity than ever before to reach the right audiences.

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Talkin ‘bout a revolution

When I talked about “communicating powerful messaging without people even realising we’re doing it”, you can look to the right of politics for the best examples.

I know too well as a journalist, frustratingly, that most people who still buy a newspaper, do not do so for the news. They buy it for the sport, for the puzzles, for the TV guide, for the births, marriages and deaths column, for the small ads.

They happen to read the news as well, and the messaging about there being too many immigrants seeps in like a sedative.

Narratives are smuggled in across social media. Much of the opposition and cynicism about climate issues, veganism and the like, comes from the over 60s, according to surveys. They live on Facebook and YouTube. That’s their territory.

But then pretty much everyone these days lives on YouTube. It’s the world’s second largest search engine, it has just introduced crucial new features for communicators - and the right became aware far earlier of its power.

Where progressive people run channels on climate, nature and animal welfare, the right run talk shows. Multiple millions watch Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Candace Owens, Triggernometry and more.

Novara Media and Pod Save The UK are examples of left-leaning podcasts and shows that are growing audiences, but they are nowhere near the scale of the Conservative talk show.

It’s Show Time

Social media is increasingly becoming the new Netflix. You sit on your couch and binge it on the big screen. And that gives the climate, nature, anti-war, empathetic, animal-loving movements a lot of opportunities.

YouTube, Substack, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest and X are all launching or testing features that turn short or scattered content into structured, bingeable “TV-like” collections.

YouTube calls it Shows. With good reason. The data shows that social video is now the second-most-watched video type on big screen TV - and is rising fast.

YouTube already captures more TV viewing time than Disney and other major streamers. Crucially, one hour of social video makes roughly three times more ad revenue than an hour of linear TV or streaming.

Platforms are trying to move from isolated phone scrolling to shared, lean-back viewing. Legacy media can only compete with major live events - and even now, much sport is also being shown on smaller YouTube channels.

Why does this matter to climate and nature communicators?

YouTube’s new Shows feature is an opportunity for progressive creators to compete more effectively with the right’s dominance.

At present, right-leaning online shows command roughly five times the audience of left-leaning shows across YouTube and other platforms

As I’ve already pointed out, right media also dominates in niches such as sports and lifestyle, where ideology is smuggled in under the premise of it being “just entertainment”.

Many of the biggest right-wing programmes I’ve previously mentioned are structured as daily or weekly shows, with recurring formats.

Progressive creators have often been stronger at single videos and explainers, but weaker at long-running, branded series that people can settle into like a routine.

YouTube Shows is designed precisely for that.

I’m aware I’m talking ‘left’ and ‘right’ here - that’s simply because climate issues, and often nature issues, do tend to separate down these political boundaries.

The right’s shows thrive because people watch them repeatedly, often in sequence.

So it’s over to progressives to start making TV content, because YouTube autoplays episodes in order if you have a showlist.

Journalists can also present their work as a series, rather than a stream of articles.

Niche topics, such as the environment (yes, it’s seen as niche), will increasingly be served by creator-led channels or shows that feel like their own mini-networks.

So what do we do?

We don’t necessarily need a left-leaning, nature-loving, vegan version of Joe Rogan hosting a show. I mean, it would be helpful, and there are a number of YouTuber scientists slowly making their mark, but even faceless explainer channels can be successful as shows.

If we want to get into people’s homes and be part of their everyday conversations (yes, we do), then the chance to produce bingeable shows, on whatever platform, are a promising development that should quickly be explored.

I’m already doing it - and you can help

Ethical Disruption is where I’ll show the receipts of my own efforts to improve effective climate and nature communication.

But there is no funding for the climate and nature journalism and content creation that connects with the mass middle of the population.

It is not a job, as such. There is no obvious employer. There are no easy, ethical ways to monetise it.

There is funding available for investigations. For scientific studies. Rightly so. They are vitally important in the landscape of communication.

But I have taken a different path, where language is simpler, because the aim is to connect with more people. Where scientific terms are translated into plain talk, where data isn’t quoted if it confuses.

I have written Substack articles and media articles across many countries, for many years. Now I’m focusing a lot of my content on audiences that need to hear it, if we want to see meaningful change.

I rely on the goodwill of readers like yourself to keep my mission going, and I thank everyone dearly, who has helped me on my journey so far.

If any of this resonates with you today, and if you are in the fortunate position to help support my efforts to move the needle on meaningful action, then I would be extremely grateful if you could help to fund my work. Thank you.

To subscribe on an annual or monthly basis, or as a supporting partner, please go here with my thanks:

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If you wish to make a one-off contribution, I also thank you very much. Please go here:

Support My Work

Now, everybody - on with the show!

Have you ever thought about writing for the media? For newspapers or magazines?

Don’t think that you have to be an experienced journalist to do this. There have been thousands of redundancies in the media over recent years, largely due to the impact of the internet, and many section editors are now grateful for submissions - from anyone who knows their subject, and can write about it in a way that doesn’t require too much editing on their part.

And you’ll get paid for it - sometimes paid well.

Only a journalist knows what goes on behind the scenes, which is why I’m giving you this insider information to get ahead of everyone else pitching articles…

What Can You Write?

You can pitch an idea to a journalist, but if they don’t know you and your writing already, you are unlikely to be encouraged.

However, you can pitch a completed article - a story or feature - and if it’s judged as being interesting for the publication’s audience, and well-written, then you might even have found yourself a regular gig.

As magazine and newspaper staffs are small these days, the use of freelancers is common.

Specialisms are particularly valued. Once upon a time, a media publication would employ vast numbers of them. I have been environment reporter, music and entertainment editor, council reporter…

The cause closest to your heart might fit into a category that the publication values.

News or Features?

Will you write a news story or a feature?

Don’t think of ‘breaking news’, crime and politics - unless you want to go there.

A news story can simply announce someone as the winner of a community sustainability award, or reveal the line-up of a local festival.

A news story is the announcement of something that has not been reported before, especially in that publication.

A feature is a longer article, a deeper dive, a story-behind-the-story, a profile on a person, a day in the life of a charity, an interview with someone interesting and relevant.

Remember - you can always ask me for advice on any article you have in mind, and in which camp it sits.

Keep It Simple, Unless Complexity Is Valued

To effectively communicate your message, you must usually write in plain language and simple terms. No jargon - unless you are writing for a specialist media outlet which understands the complexities of technical terms you might want to use.

What you are trying to do is this:

• Make the journalist understand what your story is about and why it is newsworthy. A journalist-first approach will bring you more success.

• Make it easy for the journalist to pass on that story to the audience.

• Make it easy for the audience to understand what the story is about, why it is important, and to make a meaningful connection with them.

What Makes a ‘Green’ Story Newsworthy?

There are many different types of media outlets. National newspapers, local newspapers, trade publications, online news sites, radio stations, television networks and podcasts all have different priorities - and all have multiple methods of communicating your messages.

While national newspapers focus on major events and trends, local publications are always on the lookout for community-focused stories. Anything that chimes with the audience in their catchment area will be considered.

Although journalists now rely on a healthy flow of pitches and media releases, there are hundreds each day flooding into their inboxes. So yours has to grab their attention, and most importantly, it has to be newsworthy.

What you may consider newsworthy, may not be the same in the eyes of a journalist.

Remember these main points:

• Your story must be interesting to the media outlet’s audience

• It cannot be a blatant free advert that carries no news value

There are key factors in determining newsworthiness:

Timing

You’ve got to put the ‘new’ into ‘newsworthy.’ Old information is not going to open doors for you. So if you’ve already shared your news on social media, or given it to a rival media network, don’t be surprised if your story is turned down.

Journalists prioritise fresh stories, so your announcement, whatever it is, must be current and relevant.

Is the subject topical? It’s not absolutely necessary, but if you can tie in with something currently in the news, or something recently the subject of debate, or if you can relate your story to a forthcoming event or date, you will have a greater chance of getting your article in print, online and shared across social media.

It can be a National Awareness Day (there are so many of these now), it can be an event like a vegan food festival or a nature conference, it even be regular dates like Christmas or Mothers’ Day.

Remember that timing is also crucial when it comes to submitting the story, though - don’t miss the deadline to tie in with the appropriate event.

Relevance

When your article lands in front of the journalist’s eyes, they will also be thinking ‘how many of our readers will be interested in this?’

A story must appeal to the audience of the publication or media outlet you’re targeting. What’s newsworthy for a local newspaper may not be relevant for a national business magazine. Research your target media and tailor your story accordingly.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that the issue of relevance can change, according to who you send your media release to.

If you run a restaurant and you’re launching a new menu for vegans, that’s not likely to be enough to persuade a news editor to run a story. It just sounds like an advert.

But if you’re targeting a food magazine, or even the food and drink reporter of your local paper, you’ve got more of a chance.

Human Interest

This can be the most important aspect of an article, because most stories relate to people. Even if it’s a new building, the interest in that will surround the people who are going to be living or working in it, or in the shadow of it, or the number of people employed in constructing it, or the person who designed it.

Journalists love stories that evoke emotions - whether they inspire, educate, or provoke thought.

Maybe your article is all about a person - a new appointment, an award-winner, someone who has gone the extra mile to help the community, or help save animals or habitats.

In this case you have got the human interest angle already. Just make sure you give as much detail about them as you can - don’t leave any questions unanswered.

Perhaps, though, you’re involved in the launch of a new product or a new service. If this is the case, emphasise how people will benefit from this. Why should it matter to them?

Proximity

Where a publication has a clear, dedicated circulation area, as a local newspaper does, the word ‘local’ is first and foremost in the journalist’s mind.

If you are giving them information which relates to a place outside their circulation area, your email will almost certainly be deleted. (Your pitch should always be sent by email!)

Uniqueness

If you or your subject matter is doing something groundbreaking, or has perhaps achieved an impressive milestone, or is solving a unique problem, this increases its media appeal.

Controversy

Don’t shy away from the fact that your piece of news might lead to a debate. Controversy or conflict can make a story newsworthy.

Prominence

If your story contains information about a celebrity, well known person or well-known place, that will certainly grab the attention of the journalist.

To determine if your story is truly newsworthy, ask yourself: Would I read this in a magazine or newspaper? Would it interest someone outside of my company? If the answer is no, consider adjusting your angle.

Let’s Cover The Essentials

Answer the 6 W questions

This is at the heart of every story you will write for the media. All it requires is to give the basic details of the story, making sure every elementary question a journalist would ask is already answered for them.

So this is the 6 Ws. This is pretty much the first thing a journalist learns. Many coaches will tell you it is the 5 Ws, but that would involve leaving out some crucial information.

I’m actually cheating by calling it the 6 Ws because it’s strictly 5 Ws and a H that ends in a W, but never mind that!

Just remember you have to do exactly the same as every journalist does in writing every article - answer these questions:

WHO?

WHAT?

WHERE?

WHEN?

WHY?

HOW?

Bear these in mind when you are writing your media release, and go through the list again when you have finished.

Make sure all six questions are answered, otherwise that means the journalist will be left without the whole story - and they may simply decide to ignore it, rather than check with you for further information.

Remember - make the journalist’s job easy for them!

Essential Information

Write in the Third Person - It’s “Wendy’s Electric Wagons has signed a lucrative new distribution deal...”

Don’t Jazz It Up - This isn’t a design exercise. Keep the type black, no fancy colours and definitely no fancy fonts to grab the attention of journalists.

Short and Sweet - Keep your paragraphs as short and snappy as you can, and leave a line space in between each paragraph for easy reading.

Check your spelling, punctuation and grammar - If a story comes in that is littered with spelling and grammatical errors, it won’t have much chance of being considered. Why? Because journalists don’t want to spend time correcting all your mistakes! If they can copy and paste your words, and simply tweak things, many journalists will be happy with that.

Always use a spell checker - but this won’t recognise any mistakes you’ve made with names or addresses, of course. Read through your story or feature several times, checking every fact, name and spelling. Most word processing software will highlight spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors as you go along.

Check the style - This is far less important than it once was, but all media, especially print media, has its own ‘style book’. This is a set of rules for such things as when to include capital letters, which abbreviations to use and which words to avoid.

There’s no way you can know what’s in this style book, and these days they are a loose set of rules, but I would always advise to research the publications you are targeting to get a feel of the language and tone they use.

There are some rules I have always followed, such as numbers being spelled out from zero to nine, and written in figures from 10 upwards. And try not to use old fashioned language like ‘whilst’ and ‘amongst’, when you can use ‘while’ and ‘among’.

Scan the publications you are targeting - it will be quicker online - to see if you can get a feel for their treatment of the kind of topics you are writing about.

How To Structure A News Story

The first thing to write on your story is the headline, right?

Wrong! No journalist writes the headline first.

Maybe you’ve got an awesome headline in mind and you know exactly what you want to write, to try to grab a journalist’s attention.

If so, write it down and you might want to change it later.

Your headline sums up the article and sells it. But until you’ve written the article, you won’t be able to sum it up, and you won’t know the best selling points.

Your headline also has to make an immediate impact. If it doesn’t grab the journalist’s attention, your email might be deleted without even being read.

One very important thing here - don’t try to be clever. Leave the actual published headline to the journalists, don’t try to use puns or be ambiguous. No clever play on words or smug alliteration.

You have to sell your story in the media release headline, simple as that. Just tell it as it is.

‘Newtown vegan cafe funds 100 bat boxes for local woods’ has a far better chance of success than ‘Cafe goes batty for nature’.

The headline shouldn’t be too short or too long, but must sum up what the media release is about, taking into account those factors mentioned in our other articles, like human interest and the 6 Ws.

Remember: You don’t want your story to appear like an advert. If that’s the impression given, it won’t be given the time of day.

So instead of a headline saying...

‘J Clark & Sons helps community project’ try ‘Community project boosted by local firm’.

The exceptions to this rule are where the company is well known, so it has become newsworthy whatever that company does.

Write the Introduction

If you are writing a news story, then you are submitting a Media Release.

You are going to write up to three summarising bullet points between the headline and the story - but you probably can’t write those yet.

As with the headline, you have to work your way through the story first, then determine which are the most important points to highlight.

When you do include them, make sure they are brief, and no more than one line each.

The intention is to get all the most important points across to the journalist in the space of the first few seconds of them looking at it.

So let’s move on to the intro - the introduction - the opening paragraph.

This is an exercise in summing things up neatly and succinctly, while making it so good, people will want to read on - first the journalist, then the article reader.

You must give a summary of the main thrust of your media release, preferably in 15-20 words, while answering as many of the 6 Ws as you can.

Here’s a reminder of those:

• Who is making the announcement or who is featured in the story?

• What is happening?

• When is it taking place?

• Where is it happening?

• Why is it important? Why should people care?

• How does it make an impact?

It is quite a skill to sell the story in such a short wordspan, but that’s the guideline journalists get for their own stories, and they’ll expect the same from you.

If you’re really struggling, you can stretch to 30 words, but no more!

It’s simply another version of the ‘hook’ that everyone on social media is obsessed with. It’s true, though - first impressions count.

Now The News In Detail...

After you’ve written the intro, explain your story in short, easy-to-follow paragraphs.

When you do your research into the titles you are targeting, if you notice that they are open to longer sentences, by all means add extra words if it helps you to get your point across or add more detail.

Media releases should follow what many call the ‘inverted pyramid’ structure, meaning the most important information comes first, followed by supporting details.

Don’t bury the best part of the story at the bottom, don’t work up to it like a ‘reveal’ at the end. Media releases work in the opposite way.

Be careful not to make it boring or confusing. Retain an easy flow - read it back time and time again, and if you stumble anywhere, change the wording.

Make it easy to read and easy to follow. Use bullet points or sub headings if it helps to explain or break down the details.

Answer your 6 Ws and remember that local newspapers in particular can be very strict about requiring full names of all people in the story (correctly spelt of course), and where relevant, the ages and addresses (street name, town) of the people you mention. Readers like to know this kind of information.

Provide more background and details that add depth to your announcement. Expand on the benefits and features, provide statistics, data, or facts that support the news. Offer context if relevant.

Imagine your media release is on A4 / US letter size paper - try not to write on more than one side. So that’s roughly 300-400 words, including a paragraph or two of quotes.

The Value of Trusted, Strong, Meaningful Quotes

Include in the main body of your media release a paragraph or two of quotes from somebody most relevant to the story. Maybe it’s yourself, maybe it’s a company CEO or a speaker at an event. Somebody trusted, someone with genuine authority.

Quotes offer an extra human element and give your story extra weight because an expert is supporting, with authority, the words you have written.

Not only that, if you submit a photo of the person quoted, there’s a good chance it will be used, helping you to achieve more free coverage due to it being more prominent on the page.

What should the quotes say?

This is really important. I’ve seen so many media releases that have included absolutely pointless quotes.

The quotes have to say something meaningful, and don’t waste the space - they should add something to the story that hasn’t already been said.

If the quote amounts to repetition, it is not going to be used.

Avoid bland quotes; instead use them to highlight vision, impact, or expertise.

And keep it authentic - don’t make it sound like the quote has been scripted. Ask yourself, does anyone actually talk like that?

Be Helpful To The Journalist… Then Send Your Article

When writing and presenting and sending your media release, always have this in mind - are you making it easy for the journalist? If you do, you’ll have a far greater chance of achieving success.

From the little details to the bigger picture, give the journalists exactly what they need.

For the last paragraph of your media release, it is worth inserting a Call To Action (CTA) - an instruction to readers which may or may not be retained by journalists.

Something like ‘Book your place at the Electric Vehicle Show’, followed by your website address.

Then, at the conclusion, underneath the final paragraph, type ENDS.

That’s what has always confirmed the end of an article to journalists, letting them know there is no more hidden on another page.

Beneath this, write ‘For more information’ and add your contact details, and if you need to, the contact details of anyone mentioned in the story, in case the publication needs to check anything.

Make sure you give phone numbers, email addresses, even social media accounts.

You want to put the message across that you, and/or the person or people quoted in your story, are ready, willing and able to help the journalist and give them more information immediately, if required.

Next comes a section often labelled ‘Notes To Editors’.

If you wish, you can call this Extra Information, Background Information, Helpful Notes, Further Details etc.These are short notes which give the story some background, context or explanation.

It looks better when you present them as bullet points.

This information is sometimes used by the journalist in the published story, but is more often used to help the journalist fully understand things.

After all, they might not be very familiar with the subject matter you have written about.

Within these notes, you can give information about your business.

The nuts and bolts, what it does, why it does it etc.

Feel free to mention if you’ve won any awards, repeat any recent news that may have been published, for example, a huge expansion or the opening of a new headquarters.

All these things give the journalist some background and context, and you may be lucky enough to get some of the information mentioned.

Especially if they need to pad out the article to fill a hole of another 200 words or so!

Mentioning too many business details in the media release would have turned the journalist off, but you can get away with them in the notes, as long as you keep your bullet points brief.

Final Touches

Make sure you have put the date at the top.

If your location is important - for example, if it is a local story - you can write that as well.

Let the journalist know when this story can run.

If straight away, type FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.

Presenting the Media Release

I would urge you to paste the story into the body of the email, below your initial message.

I would do this because the busy journalist has to take one more step to open an attached document, and what if the file does not open on their computer?

Paste it in the email and they can see the story immediately, and cut and paste the words to their own document.

Attaching Photos

It is very important to attach between one and three good quality photos for a news story, and up to 10 high quality photos for a feature.

Without a photo, the story is going to be shorter when it is published on a website, or printed in a newspaper of magazine.

One decent photo could elevate it into a lead story.

One decent photo would help it to be shared across social media.

Now, there are important things to get right here.

• Make sure the photo is sharp and clear.

• Make sure it is framed well - save the journalist time, and give yourself a better chance of the photo being used, if it is cropped around the subject matter.

• Do not include any advertising in the photo unless the story absolutely demands it. Often, if a submitted photo has a company’s logo in there anywhere, it may not be used - that’s seen as watering down the news value of the story, with free advertising.

• Make sure the images are eye-catching, interesting and relevant.

• Don’t attach anything that is too large - the email might not even be received. Don’t send anything too small - it won’t reproduce well. Use software, if required, to compress the size of your images without losing too much quality. You can, of course, explain to the journalist that higher resolution photos are available if they need them.

Can You Include A Video?

Do you have a video to complement your story? If you do, it could be dynamite. As long as it is short, to the point and attention-grabbing within the first five seconds.

If you do have a video, don’t include the whole file on the email, just include a link at the end of your story, in your call to action section. You’ll probably have it on YouTube.

It’s unlikely to be copied in print, but on the newspaper’s website and social media channels it could be included as a link, or even embedded into the story.

If you’re putting on an event and have a well known guest singer appearing, for example, media websites will almost certainly run a video from YouTube and the like, so that readers can click on and hear a song - and you will have provided the direct link, of course.

Crafting The Perfect Pitch To Journalists

Once your story or feature is written, the next step is getting it in front of the right journalists. Those who can really help you. Those who might empathise with your mission. Trusted journalists on trusted publications.

A well-crafted pitch (that’s effectively just an email message) can mean the difference between your story getting published or being ignored.

Journalists receive dozens - sometimes hundreds - of pitches daily, so you need to ensure yours stands out.

Please avoid sending generic, mass emails. Instead, research the journalist and their publication. This is easily done on the internet - find the publication, find a journalist who has written about your subject, and see if you can get their email address from that story - it is usually shared at the end, or by clicking on the journalist’s name.

This will allow you to write an email, introduce yourself briefly and reference a recent article they wrote, explaining why your own story is also relevant to their audience.

As well as the individual journalist(s), address the email to the newsdesk or news editor as well - you will find this information on the publication’s website.

Writing the Email - and Making Sure It Will Be Opened

Reporters and section editors will try their best to go through everything in their inboxes, but sometimes they really are so busy that they are just going to scan the email subject lines to see what interests them - that’s their filter and you’ve got to get through it.

I see an ever-increasing use of emojis in subject headlines these days.

While these undoubtedly make your email stand out, there is something about them that journalists won’t trust. Perhaps because so much spam comes littered with emojis, too.

Your email subject line is perhaps the most important part of your whole pitch.

Personally, I’m not in favour of wasting a valuable email subject line word count by starting with ‘Media Release’ or ‘Story For You.’

Because it stands to reason, you’re contacting the media, it’s likely to be some form of story pitch or announcement.

Instead, focus on selling your article. And making it sound like an email they really, really need to open.

I find it’s often the best tactic to use phrases that journalists themselves would use.

So perhaps start your email subject line with ‘Urgent’ or ‘Latest News’ (as long as it really is).

Or relate it to the subject matter:

‘Newtown Windfarm Expansion’

‘Wildlife Sanctuary Owner Speaks Out’

Maybe use the headline you’ve written on your media release, if it’s a really good one. Shorten it further, if it needs to be.

Or if you’re offering the story as an exclusive, by all means start the email subject line with:

(PUBLICATION NAME) EXCLUSIVE: (Main angle of the story)

Whatever in your story is the most interesting angle, the biggest selling point, use it in your email subject line.

Don’t try to be clever or witty, don’t make puns or plays on words.

Just tell it as it is.

A journalist needs to assess quickly if any of the emails in their inbox might help them fill a few holes in the next publication.

So tell them straight. And impress them.

Be Courteous and To The Point

Start your email by introducing yourself to the journalist and explaining what your article is about - and make it as brief as possible.

Write a friendly, courteous introduction, explaining from the top that you have an article you believe their readers will be very interested in.

Give a line or two explaining what it is and offer to assist with any further details they may need. As simple as that.

So it may be:

Hello Catherine (you found her name online), hope you are well.

I am sending you some information about a new preloved fashion store due to open in Newtown next spring.

I have spoken to the sisters running the store, and I’m sure this is something your readers will find interesting.

If you need any information or photos other than those attached, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Thank you for your time…

And then it’s into the media release. Leave a few lines of space and paste it in.

When To Send The Email

Timing is crucial. If you are sharing news that coincides with a particular date, be sure to give the journalist as much time as you can ahead of the event, to write up the story.

Also, think about what else is going on locally or in the wider world. Avoid pitching late on a Friday or during major news events, unless your story ties in somehow with the news - in which case this will be perfect timing.

The deadline of a printed publication is a crucial piece of information you need to know, and if you can’t glean the details you need from the publication or its website, just give them a call or email someone to find out.

Every printed publication and section of that publication has a deadline, after which there is no more time to add or change anything before it is printed.

Some deadlines are way far in advance of when you might think they are.

A magazine will usually have a three-month run-in period, with contents being agreed and then worked on or set up for the publication that far ahead.

So if you’re targeting the Christmas market, the rest of the world might think it’s too early to discuss this in August, but not if you want to pitch a feature in the festive edition.

Some magazines will have far tighter deadlines, others far looser.

Newspapers are usually daily or weekly publications, but in the world of cutbacks, many printing presses have been closed down and operations centralised, so ‘local’ newspapers might in fact be printed a long way from home.

When this happens, deadlines will be far earlier than you might think, because there needs to be time to print the papers, then load them into the vans, to drive back to your area and distribute the publications.

So don’t be caught out. And remember this, only the most important news pages are finished on deadline - you might be targeting the business page, for example, and this could be designed a whole day earlier.

Or if it is a specialist supplement being printed, it’s not unusual for that deadline to be a couple of weeks before publication.

It’s imperative you find out these things ahead of sending your media release.

All it takes is a phone call, but even better, a polite, short email asking when the deadline for publication will be in the title you desire, and on the date you’d prefer.

And if they have any relevant specialist pages or planned supplements.

Find out the email address of the section editor (news editor, business editor, gardening editor, sports editor, etc.).

Addressing it to ‘The Editor’ will not usually bring you results.

The actual editor won’t be dealing with enquiries of this nature.

When it comes to reporting your news on websites and social media, the deadlines are of course far more fluid - information can be added, updated or changed online at any time.

But if you want to appear in the printed product as well, take care to research the deadlines.

Following Up Your Email

If you don’t receive a response, or see your article published, within a few days, a polite follow-up email can increase your chances of a reply. However, avoid being pushy - journalists don’t like aggressive PR tactics.

Building Relationships with Journalists

If you become a reliable source of high-quality information, and really good reads, journalists will begin to reach out to you for stories and features, rather than the other way around.

So try to establish long-term relationships with key journalists. Always stay courteous, don’t bombard them with emails or calls, engage with them on social media, share their articles...

If a journalist expresses interest in your story, respond quickly and provide all necessary information without delay.

If you need any assistance, do contact me!

Thank you,

Mark

After the hottest US Independence Day ever, and record temperatures recorded across Europe, causing thousands of excess deaths, even the media has woken up to how dangerous global warming has become.

The conversation has turned to asking: “Is this normal now? Will it get even worse? Can’t we do something about this?!”

As if the crisis has sneaked up on people and shocked them by the ferocity of its bite, when in reality it’s been stretching its jaws for at least five decades. Many of us saw the snake in the grass. We shouted. We were ignored.

But here we are.

So the question is simple: Can we stop these heatwaves from happening and getting worse?

The answer? Yes and no.

‘It’s too late. The heat is already baked in’

This is the narrative that numbs progress and depresses millions. In part, it is true, but not enough to give up hope.

Let’s look at what the evidence actually says.

Our oceans have absorbed about 90% of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases. And yes, that heat is in the system. It will move around, but it won’t leave.

Because of this, sea level rise is guaranteed for centuries to come. Ice sheets and glaciers are melting due to the temperature we’ve already reached.

Even in a world that hit net zero tomorrow (we’ll talk about that soon), the seas would keep rising for hundreds of years.

Credible estimates suggest at least 80 centimetres of additional rise is already locked in. Anyone living on coastlines simply cannot ignore this fact.

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The extreme weather that we’re living through now is also the product of warming that has already happened.

Europe is the fastest-warming continent on Earth. In the 50 years since the famous 1976 heatwave that Britain still mythologises, Europe as a whole has warmed by about two degrees.

This June’s heatwave was, according to World Weather Attribution’s rapid analysis, the most severe ever recorded over the region studied.

So yes, a hotter baseline is here. The summers of the 2020s are the new floor. That’s ‘baked in’ heat.

So does that mean all efforts to reduce global warming are futile?

This is where we find the most encouraging and, equally, most frustrating news…

When carbon dioxide emissions reach net zero, warming essentially stops.

The current scientific consensus, reflected in the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment, is that once CO2 emissions reach net zero, global surface temperatures stabilise within roughly ±0.2°C.

The oceans and land will continue to draw carbon out of the atmosphere, so CO2 concentrations start to fall the moment we stop adding to them. The leftover warming from the first process is roughly offset by the cooling from the second.

This is encouraging, because we have a solution before us. It confirms that if we reach net zero, we can genuinely start turning the juggernaut and reduce the worst case scenarios we are currently veering towards.

It’s also frustrating, because the term ‘net zero’ has been so politicised and associated with rising energy costs, that vast swathes of easily-manipulated voters are choosing the wrong people to address the damage.

Instead, their votes are giving the green light to yet more devastating CO2 production, through extra drilling for oil and gas, and continued burning of coal.

And yes, we’ve told these people. They don’t seem to believe us. This is where the communication battlefield is taking casualties. The education is out there, vast armies of it. Hitting the target is proving more difficult.

So what will work?

The solution is right there, smacking us in the face time and time again like a mismatched boxer.

Stop burning fossil fuels.

Four words which are easily said, but which seem impossible to deliver.

As much as we can all make efforts to be clean, green, low carbon machines, our individual contributions make very little difference.

Until election day arrives.

A single change of government alters the trajectory of an entire economy’s emissions for at least a decade.

The direction of traffic is not promising across the world. Fossil fuels are built in to every model of growth, for energy and for ever-increasing plastic production.

Politicians must be held to account. Also, voters.

I urge you to read these articles I have already written on the subject:

A video by Holy Koolaid has amassed nearly two million views on YouTube in just three months, for pointing out harsh realities which suggest that all Americans are brainwashed.

While that video is fascinating, I think it is even more revealing to watch ‘a typical average American’ (Tyler Rumple) visibly and audibly have his whole worldview collapse in front of his eyes, as he digests Holy Koolaid’s words.

So please watch the video to witness that.

This is all important through my own, non-American eyes, because I’m concerned about how we communicate the climate and nature crises to general populations.

Videos like this make you realise that every new method communicators come up with are mere strategies - but getting important messages to land requires an understanding of how people actually see the world around them.

And I don’t think most environmental communication comes close to connecting on that level. Which requires an honest appraisal of where we are, and where we go from here.

What The Video Shows

The original Holy Koolaid video argues that many Americans are raised inside a system of national propaganda that shapes how they see history, freedom, politics, religion, and their own country’s place in the world.

There is no claim that America is uniquely evil, merely that Americans are often not taught enough to question the country’s myths and contradictions.

The video claims the following:

• US education is heavily America-centred. The video argues that school history and geography often present the US as the centre of the world, while leaving out a lot of global context and uncomfortable parts of American history.

• Cold War thinking still shapes politics. It says Americans were taught a simple “capitalism good, communism bad” binary that erased nuance and helped justify US interventions abroad.

• “Land of the free” is a myth. The video argues that the US is not the freest country by many measures, pointing to press freedom, incarceration, and broader freedom rankings.

• The military is glorified too much. It claims Americans are taught to treat huge military spending as patriotic, even when domestic needs like healthcare, education, and infrastructure go underfunded.

• The pledge of allegiance is framed as propaganda. The video treats daily school recitation as a loyalty ritual that conditions children before they can even understand what they are saying. By the way, this does seem pretty bizarre for those of us outside the US…

• America is not a Christian nation in the founding sense. It argues that Christian language was added later as Cold War messaging, not because the country was originally founded on Christianity.

• American exceptionalism is the master myth. The video says Americans are taught that the US is inherently superior, and that this makes criticism feel like betrayal rather than civic responsibility.

Read On: The Problem With Patriotism, The Communication Crisis, How Patriotism Affects Climate Messaging

“Climate campaigners are not just arguing against fossil fuel interests or bad policy. They are often trying to get their message across to people whose understanding of the world has been shaped by patriotic myths, consumer ideology, political media, and a deeply broken educational culture.”

Read more

In Britain, across Europe and in the United States, different strategies have been enforced to protect our homes from the elements. None are fit for purpose any more.

Basically, the Brits have insulated homes, the Americans have cooled them and the Europeans have largely done nothing - except in really hot places.

Britain has spent the past decade making its homes better at trapping heat, with a vast insulation programme designed to lower bills and reduce emissions.

In June 2026, these cosy homes became dangerous heat traps, as outside temperatures broke all records for the month.

But don’t think this is an article about the need to reconsider.

Winter is coming…

Across the Channel, France recorded its hottest day since records began. The country counted roughly a thousand more deaths than expected in the few days after June 24, most of them among the over-65s.

In the south of mainland Europe, homes have been built for many years with thick lime-washed walls, small windows, outside shutters and rooms shaped around a through-draught.

But that wisdom thins as you head north, into France, and across the continent, as most homes have been left as they are, and only about a fifth of homes have air conditioning. Compare that with roughly nine in ten homes in the United States.

For a long time, most of Europe didn’t need cooling. Now the continent is warming at twice the global average.

June saw a stampede for portable aircon units, selling out in France and Germany.

But the American answer is not the solution. In May, before summer had properly arrived, an early heatwave drove power demand so high that the US Department of Energy issued an emergency order for PJM Interconnection - the grid operator for 13 eastern states and 67 million people - clearing it to fire up backup generation to stave off blackouts.

Run on a fossil fuel grid, the electricity behind the world’s air conditioners already rivals aviation as a dangerous source of emissions.

By turning on the AC units, we are literally trying to fight warming with the very thing that has accelerated it.

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Insulation is great - if done properly

Insulation does not know which way you want the heat to travel. It just slows it down. That’s helpful in winter, but not in our modern oven-cooked summers.

In England, the millions of existing homes being insulated under government schemes are assessed for one thing - how much heating energy they’ll save. Thats the EPC score. Nobody considers what the numbers are like in June or July.

Insulation done properly protects you in both directions. A deep retrofit would include external shading on the glazing and cross-ventilation, to stay survivable in a heatwave and also cheap to heat in winter.

The government doesn’t pay for this, of course.

In England and Wales, the Office for National Statistics and the UK Health Security Agency counted close to 3,000 heat-related excess deaths across the summer of 2022, which was the summer the region first crossed 40°C.

The Climate Change Committee’s latest assessment warns that, without adaptation, the share of UK homes at risk of overheating could climb from around half today to roughly 90% by 2050.

And now for the big freeze…

So with a warming planet, hotter summers and sealed homes, more people dying indoors, we should insulate a bit less?

Not a bit of it.

Climate change can also bring harsher winters - and extremely harsh winters are heading to the UK and Europe, perhaps sooner than later.

There is a river in the Atlantic Ocean. It runs warm water up from the tropics to the coast of north-west Europe, hands it to our air, and then sinks. It is called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation - the AMOC - and it is the reason a country sitting at roughly the same latitude as Moscow has a climate that allows for agriculture and gardens.

Research now puts the AMOC at its weakest in over a thousand years. It’s on the verge of collapse - in fact, it might have already started. Huge climate changes could conceivably play out over the next 20 years.

As I’ve written before, Iceland is the only country to have taken this threat seriously.

The UK Government’s own science office puts a full collapse as possible. If the AMOC goes, Britain and Europe get colder. Much colder in winter.

Europe could be the one corner of the planet that gets cooler in a warmer world.

But there would be climate adaptations needed across the world.

So where does that leave the housing policy?

Well, the same house that is cooking its occupant in a 40°C July heatwave, is the one that would keep them alive in a −20°C January.

Britain at least is ok, it’s insulating for a climate catastrophe.

It just doesn’t know which one.

All my work is dedicated to education about crucial environmental and ethical issues. All of it. Writing and videos. Not because I have the luxury of savings - I am funded solely by readers like yourself, and ethical organisations I partner with - but because it’s my passion, and my mission, and I want to contribute something meaningful before it’s my turn to depart this crazy planet.

But it’s not easy. And it’s always been a struggle.

I have always loved nature. I am most at home when I am away from human influence.

My journalism career began at the age of 18. I had also become a vegetarian at the age of 18. The two passions united and I tried where possible to write about environmental issues I cared about. But man, it was difficult.

As a teenager I had always created my own printed publications - my versions of what newspapers and magazines should have looked like. It came naturally to me, then, to fill in 16 blank tabloid pages with my own content to become the Liverpool Echo Junior Journalist of the Year.

Running my ideas past newspaper editors and news editors, once I was working in the industry, was less successful, which is why I have spent 18 years of my career as a freelance, writing about the issues I believed were the most important ones to share.

Closing down a zoo

Incidentally, becoming vegetarian was a big thing in 1986. There were not many veggie food options in stores and certainly not in restaurants. I only wish I’d gone vegan - but that was considered impossible at the time. I finally got there.

Back then, I also had to do jobs I really didn’t want to do. I was sent to visit Southport Zoo to meet two newly-arrived chimpanzees. I hate the caged cruelty of zoos, but I was fascinated by the chimps as I sat next to them and they attempted to share their meal with me. Remarkable, beautiful creatures.

But I wanted them to be in the wild, not in the untidy office of a random tourist attraction in north-west England.

A couple of years later, I launched my own magazine in my spare time - Wildlife Watch. I campaigned against the zoo, with photos I had taken in secret. The zoo had also been ordered to improve living conditions for the chimps.

More animal rights campaigners got on board, and within a few years, the zoo was forced to close, losing its licence. A sweet taste of success, even though the local council served it.

From circus performer to agitator

I was also forced to take part in the American Three-Ring Circus for a newspaper feature. I abhor circuses that feature animals, chaining them up for most of their lives and only bringing them out to entertain crowds who should know better.

I was given the choice of going in with the lions, clowns or Moroccan acrobats….

Let’s see… Lions. I’m totally against the use of animals in circuses. I’m also worried I might be mauled to death.

Clowns… they would also eat me alive.

So the Moroccan Acrobat Troupe it was.

Yes, that’s me, in 1988. I was given a sparkly, revealing gold outfit and pointy orange shoes to wear. Fortunately, these were the days before newspapers shot in colour film.

The acrobats couldn’t speak English, so I was ushered through the darkness of night, from their caravan into the circus tent, not knowing what to expect.

Before I knew it, I was standing in the middle of the circus rings (three joined together) in front of 2,000 people, blinded by the lights, hearing the ringmaster announcing me as their latest attraction.

I was guided to stand on the end of a line, and then a Moroccan acrobat put one foot on my right thigh.

Ah… they were forming a human pyramid. Great.

I was the crucial balance on the end of the bottom row. The dependable corner of the triangle. What could possibly go wrong?

I’ll tell you what went wrong. My leg buckled, and five layers of shiny acrobats came tumbling down from the spotlights.

I’ve got to hand it to those guys, they landed really well, even threw in a forward roll and a smile.

Arms out, they signalled to give it another go. This time I just about held my ground. Nobody died, and I was ushered away to change back into my own garish 80s clothes.

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Riding high on principles

About five years later, on another newspaper, I was sent again to cover the local circus visit. This time it was a circus famed for its poor treatment of an ageing elephant, Janey. The task given to me by my news editor, for a nice, fluffy, feelgood story, was to have a ride on that very elephant.

I refused. By now, my personal activism had instilled in me a determination never to do anything that would cause or promote harm to animal or human. In that order.

I was threatened with the sack. I was about to lose my job because of my principles. It felt good.

The editor must have been impressed that I’d taken a stand. I was instead sent to cover the story of the animal rights activists trying to close down the circus. I chased the circus owner for an interview, and he threatened me with violence. My colleague got to ride the poor elephant.

In 2012, circus owner Bobby Roberts was found guilty of causing unnecessary suffering and failing to prevent animal abuse, in relation to another veteran elephant. He received a three-year conditional discharge.

Getting through… and getting locked up

Throughout my career in journalism, there were occasional concessions made to environmental issues, when editors believed that the public cared sufficiently to warrant such a focus. But it was never consistent, and reporting could never upset advertisers, however complicit they were.

Outside of work, I would be attempting to get into my own paper for protesting with Friends of the Earth, or the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection. I achieved limited success, but it was clear I was getting through to people with a message of compassion, and a warning of what was to come in the future. The fire was ignited in my belly.

As a freelance journalist, I could write about what I liked - but I didn’t have the financial or legal support that sometimes came in useful. I still don’t.

I was exposed during one freelance mission to interview an animal rights activist in a top security prison. I wanted to tell his side of the story. He was very well known. After all, he’d firebombed some (empty) meat industry vehicles.

I’d arranged to meet his mum at visiting time, and she would take me in to interview him. Relying on British public transport was never a great plan for the day. To cut a long story short, my train was cancelled, I missed a connecting bus and had to walk three miles to get to the prison. This was about 250 miles from where I lived.

I arrived too late for visiting hour. I decided I would wait and speak to the prisoner’s mother afterwards. Stupidly I took a photo of the prison, for use in my article (we didn’t have internet file pics back then). I was spotted, arrested, and shut in a cell for the day, an aggressive Alsation dog guarding my door. I refused to tell the prison officers who I was there to see. Those principles again.

My camera was confiscated and the prison staff developed the film. To be fair, they sent me back some nice family photos that were also on the roll…

Over the years, I have found more freedom to report on the environmental and ethical issues that matter. The internet brought many more reporters and campaigners to the fore, and awareness about global warming, pollution and nature destruction grew to the position it stands at today:

Pretty much everyone knows the basics of how screwed we are. Pretty much everyone doesn’t care to do anything about it.

I tried…

As I have watched wildlife decline by 70% in my own lifetime, as the world has warmed, ice has melted, seas have risen, plastics have permeated every part of our body… it feels like failure, to be honest.

I tried, I really did. In educating - through words, pictures and videos. In activism - taking myself out of my comfort zone to talk to people about pressing eco issues. In my own personal being - from always trying to choose the greener option, to always voting for the party with the greenest policies.

And here we are. In a mess. Facing an extremely worrying short-term future, never mind 2050 and 2100, predictions for which understandably don’t land with the general population.

My own writing and videos are now constructed through the lens of ‘ethical disruption’ - challenging narratives, including those put forward by scientists and the media, both of whom are notoriously poor communicators of fact.

We indeed have a communications crisis, and that has to be tackled with urgency in order to gain more support to take on the climate, nature and pollution crises.

I’m determined to get to the end of this journey, and have the luxury to be reflective on my death bed, to think: I did everything I could, and things are now changing for the better.

If my final day was today, I would drift away without much consequence, and with tears in my eyes.

I’ve always tried to be optimistic. I’ll drink every last drop of that. I simply have to.

Thank you for supporting me.

Europe has been melting in its highest ever recorded June temperatures. People have died because of the excess heat, and also because of associated drowning as people seek refuge in something cold. It’s been grim.

It was also London Climate Action Week. And this happened…

Yes, you read that correctly. An event to discuss the problems of extreme heat was cancelled… because of extreme heat.

The venue did not have air conditioning - much of the UK does not have aircon, because the country has never needed it.

The UK is not ready for what’s coming. For what’s already here. The same can be said for many other countries.

It gets even worse….

Also in London, the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference was being held.

As The Guardian reports:

More than 4,000 delegates from 85 countries – ranging from the Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, through to US anti-abortion activists and representatives of European far-right parties – are attending this year’s conference.

Dubbed by some as an “anti-woke Davos,” themes being championed from the stage at the Olympia conference centre included libertarian hostility to green economic policies, social conservative causes such as opposition to abortion and also opposition to multiculturalism.

It is being funded by a large number of US fossil fuel interests, as well as major Trump donors and anti-abortion groups.

Speakers included UK Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch and Reform UK puppet Nigel Farage.

Another key speaker was Chris Wright, a former fossil fuel executive who Trump appointed as energy secretary.

London was on fire again. And it wasn’t ‘great’. Temperatures nudged 40C (104F) and the far right gathered in the capital to say climate change is a hoax, and everything is fine.

You seriously couldn’t make this up.

The Guardian continues:

Chris Wright, who believes the threat from the climate crisis is exaggerated, predicted that a “change of leadership” in the UK would radically reverse energy policy and align it more with the US.

“Most of the major European countries are well aware of the energy mistake they have made and are trying to understand how they are going to pivot away from it.”

So Let’s Get This Straight….

Right-wing politicians, sweltering in their expensive suits, in the middle of a fatal heatwave, and record high temperatures, were calling for MORE fossil fuel production, the precise thing that science has proved ADDS HEAT to our atmosphere.

This is tantamount to manslaughter.

Seriously. Lock these people up.

The UK media bubble has recently been obsessed with one thing - the resignation of Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

I watched an interview on Sky News with Tory leader Kemi Badenoch. As the streets around her buckled under the heat, she launched into her funded spiel of how Starmer’s Labour had failed on energy, and how Britain needed to start drilling for more oil and gas immediately.

And the journalist never even challenged her! Because the media, sadly, is largely also inept.

It should be a criminal offence to purposely make a catastrophic situation even worse.

The Guardian completes the picture of a delightful gathering of lovely people:

“Aside from hostility to conventional narratives around the climate crisis, the event has also drawn together thousands of political activists and politicians from across Europe, the US and Australia who are hostile to immigration and multiculturalism.”

Are we going to let these dregs of society ruin the world for the majority?

Oh, we already have….

I hope most of you still have some fight inside. We’re going to need it.

The mainstream media won’t change. Stop trying to make it do so.

Stop blaming the media for spreading hate, division and climate crisis denial.

You’re wasting your breath and needlessly losing skin from the tips of your fingers every time you angrily fire off another post.

You’re usually preaching to the converted, anyway. Stop it.

I tell you this as a journalist. I have more than 35 years’ experience in the game. and even working on the inside, I have struggled to get my educational, ethical and environmental stories on to the public-facing pages.

Which is why I packed my trunk and left the media circus, to send out those important messages on my own terms, as a freelance journalist and publisher.

You should do the same. Whatever your line of work.

What’s The Problem?

I always believed that my job as a journalist was to inform, educate and entertain. This very principle was established in the 1920s by the BBC’s first Director-General, Lord Reith.

Sadly, the ‘inform’ and ‘educate’ pillars have largely collapsed in many mansions of the media. These are often set on foundations of bias and misinformation.

A real journalist investigates and gathers information from all sides of a story, then presents the facts for the reader to form an opinion.

This still tends to happen in local journalism. It is straight reporting. Incompetent and error-strewn, sometimes, but nevertheless untainted by higher influence.

The major TV and print channels you’ll be most familiar with - the ‘mainstream media’ - don’t follow the basic principles of journalism training.

Instead, their stories are viewed through the lens of the media owners - the vast majority of them right-wing billionaires.

This article won’t go through who owns what - that information is out there in abundance, and you’ll be more than aware of the political bias of various publications and channels.

You’ll also no doubt be aware of the major players in the media world, from Murdoch to Musk to Marshall, from Bezos to Rothermere. Their agendas are well documented.

What frustrates me these days is not that the media constantly fails to deliver on balance and accuracy - it’s the surrender of the left to this fact.

I am sick and tired of reading articles and social media posts from left-leaning politicians, climate and equality campaigners, attacking the media for failing to tell the world about their own point of view, or the facts that have been ignored.

STOP MOANING AND DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

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The Alternative Media

There are better examples. There are journalists and entrepreneurs who have already realised the scale of the problems and taken positive action in launching their own publications and channels.

I just worry that they, too, are preaching to the converted.

Let’s give them some deserved credit first. Check out Babelfish, Better Future Media, Carbon Brief, Grist, DeSmog, Inside Climate News, The Narwhal, Byline Times, Novara Media, Mother Jones, The Canary and The Tyee, as examples of media outliers and disruptors.

This very publication of mine, Ethical Disruption, is hosted on the Substack platform, and I’m a frequent visitor to the Top 15 rising climate and environment writers in the world.

I am in illustrious company - many excellent, experienced journalists report each week on crucial environmental and ethical issues.

But is it just noise, adding to more noise?

I have already written about the urgent need for environmental communicators to wake up to the fact that the needle is still not being moved towards true progress:

So What Do We Do?

First, we have to recognise that voting for a political party is among the most important actions we can take - in favour, or to the detriment of, our environment and quality of life.

Connecting with people who vote for the planet-wreckers across the world is the most important mission we can now undertake.

If you’re sceptical about that, let’s just remind ourselves of the actions of just one man in the first stages of just one political term - Donald Trump in his current reign of chaos.

Trump has launched a sweeping, accelerated rollback of US environmental protections and an assault on air, water, wildlife and climate laws.

At the same time, Trump has promoted increased fossil fuel production and accelerated extraction on public lands, and in the oceans.

The oil and gas industry spent about $450 million to influence Trump and Republicans in the 2024 election cycle, including direct donations, lobbying and advertising.

See a pattern emerging?

In the UK, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has resigned, as this is written. The Conservatives and Reform immediately called for a General Election, being up-front about policies to resume drilling for oil in the North Sea, but lying about the impact this would have in the short term on energy bills.

Reform UK and their even more racist cousins, Restore Britain, are full-on climate crisis deniers. Funded by fossil fuel interests, of course.

Encouragingly, the Green Party have made impressive advances this past year in the UK, but they have done this by relegating from the public conversation their usual main topic of environmental destruction.

New leader Zack Polanski has concentrated on inequality, the cost of living and political corruption - and The Green Party are now serious contenders to hold a share of power in a probable future hung UK parliament.

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Make a Connection

So is that what we have to do? Sneak in by the back door and then make everything better while we’re in?

Of course not. We have to talk frankly and openly about the quite frightening scenarios we face in all our lifetimes, however old we are.

But we have to connect with people while we do this. We have to talk the language of the audience we need to connect with most. They have to believe us, at the end of the day.

All environmental writers should ask themselves these questions when they write a new article / newsletter:

Who am I writing this for?

Could it change the bigger picture?

If it’s yet another report about our planetary woes, that will be consumed by people who are already aware of the facts, then it’s worthy, but just more noise.

We need strong voices to move the dial, shift the needle, disrupt the narrative.

What Can We Learn From The Right?

There is one clear obstacle to effective communication that always gets in the way. Money.

The fossil fuel lobby, tech bros and other billionaires influence public discussion by funding and lobbying influential politicians, and flooding social media with misinformation bots.

They can afford to bankroll TV stations like GB News, which record huge losses every year, but act as an important mouthpiece to a growing audience.

This is difficult to counter.

There are more subtle methods, however.

Ever wondered why so many of the older generation buy Conservative-leaning newspapers? The news narratives permeate their brains like microplastics, without them even realising - I’ve seen it happen in my own family.

But the boomers weren’t pulled in by politics. It was the TV guide. The puzzles section. The sports pages. The celebrity gossip. The competitions.

It’s a clever way to radicalise people.

Meanwhile, the left have caught up with the right in the blossoming world of podcasts. Politicians (like Zack Polanski) have launched their own, to bypass the media and get their messages out to the masses.

But does this really happen? Or does it just reach those who are already sympathetic to those views?

We Need a Plan

For my own part, I’m available to chat through ideas with subscribers of Ethical Disruption, and anyone else who cares to get involved with the mission of connecting.

This is not an easy task. But it is one we have to master. And quickly.

I also share your disappointment in journalists.

We expect more from my industry colleagues than they are ever likely to deliver.

Most of them are generalists, which means they need to know a little about a lot.

So don’t expect them to understand everything about the climate crisis or biodiversity emergency - they need educating, too. And you can connect with them individually, personally, to offer your support in this.

The thing that really gets to me is that journalists are ALL about getting the big story, the big scoop, the front page, the lead article.

Yet so many are failing to understand that they are sitting on the biggest story EVER to have occurred in the whole of human existence.

The facts are there to back it up; the data, the actual measurements, it’s so easy to report. But their news sense is so off-radar, they can’t see it.

What a time to be alive! They could be reporting on the biggest story ever! The extinction of the human race and most other life on earth!

Instead, YOU can do this. We need an army of green, ethical, environmental communicators.

Choose your weapons - Substack, YouTube, Facebook, Podcasts… wherever and whenever, you have the power to influence people.

You need a strong, attention-grabbing message, delivered in the right way, to the right audience - and that means turning up on the right platforms, where they all hang out.

Forget the media. BE THE MEDIA.

We’ve already established that plastic is the insurance policy of the fossil fuel industry. It’s the reason we can’t stop drilling for oil and fracking for gas.

We’ve also come to realise the horrific reality that microplastics have seeped into every part of our body.

Plastic pollutes our oceans and rivers. It strangles wildlife. It takes hundreds or thousands of years to break down.

So, all we have to do is replace the plastic with something more environmentally-friendly, right?

That’s going to be a problem.

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Are There Alternatives To Plastic?

The honest answer is yes. And no. Overwhelmingly no, at the moment.

It’s certainly possible to replace plastic at small scale.

Seaweed, corn starch, bioplastics, cellulose, mycelium, tencel, hemp… the list goes on. Alternatives that offer many of the same qualities as plastic, but without the devastating damage to our planet and invasion of our bodies.

Then reality bites. None of this is produced at large scale. And even if we inject millions into doing so, providing real green jobs and tangible benefits to all life on Earth… it’s just a drop in the plastic-infected ocean.

The world currently makes about 431 million tonnes of plastic a year. Every planet-friendly alternative combined accounts for just half of one percent of that.

Hope is on the horizon, because global capacity of bioplastic (made from plants) is forecast to roughly double by 2030, from about 2.3 million tonnes to 4.7 million.

But then… conventional plastic production is also climbing, and that’s heading toward 600 million tonnes.

Anyway, we’re not even using the small capacity we’ve already built. In 2025 more than a quarter of the world’s existing bioplastic-making capacity sat idle, because the demand and the economics just aren’t there yet.

Doesn’t Recycling Help?

We all like to think recycling helps. We drop a yoghurt pot in the green bin and feel satisfied with ourselves that we’re taking positive action, and that the problem is now handled. No need to worry.

Sadly, we’re being sold a lie.

The global number has barely moved in decades, so you might be familiar with it - only 9% of the world’s plastic waste is recycled.

The rest - 91% of the 431 million tonnes of plastic produced a year - is either landfilled, burned or dumped, depending on which part of the world you are being polluted in.

Burning is now the single most common method the world uses to dispose of plastic. Releasing the trapped carbon straight into our ever-warming air.

The United States is even lagging behind the pathetic global figure. Only about 5% of plastic is recycled in the US.

Britain, on the surface, looks to be progressing far more healthily - more than half of UK plastic packaging is recycled or recovered, says the official government line.

But “recovered” means it’s burned for energy, and the recycling figure counts plastic the moment it’s loaded onto a ship, and sent abroad. The UK government doesn’t care what happens to it after that.

The Big Plastic Count, run by Greenpeace and Everyday Plastic, put the real UK household plastic recycling rate at about 17% in 2024, - and the UK generates more plastic waste per person than any country on earth, except the United States.

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What Happens To Our Recycling?

The majority of UK plastic collected for recycling is exported to Turkey and Malaysia - but investigators who track the plastic keep finding it dumped by the roadside or burning in open fires. “Recycled” often means “someone else’s problem.”

Even the plastic we do recycle has a short lifespan. Each pass through the recycling machine degrades the polymer, so a bottle becomes fleece or carpet, not another bottle - and after a cycle or two it’s already poor quality and sent to landfill.

The newest version of the recyling industry is “chemical” or “advanced” recycling. Much of this is energy-hungry, unproven at scale, and in practice often turns plastic into fuel to be burned, rather than back into plastic.

But I Use Compostable and Biodegradable Packaging….

These labels often amount to greenwashing. Most compostable plastic does not actually break down in your garden waste - or the hedgerow, or the sea.

It needs an industrial composter, which involves sustained high heat and controlled conditions - a facility most people and places simply don’t have.

‘Biodegradable’ can also be a misleading term. Agricultural mulch films, for example, have been found to continue shedding microplastics - and in cold climates the process stalls completely.

Surely There Are Some Worthwhile Alternatives?

There are, but some have issues. Ethical Disruption will never promote swapping fossil extraction for animal extraction, so it’s a big ‘no’ to films made from chitosan, which is extracted from the shells of crabs and shrimp. Also bioplastics made from casein, milk protein, and packaging from silk and gelatin.

Bioplastics are produced from plants, and are considered the main hope for an eco-friendly alternative. But scaling up the growing of sugarcane, corn, wheat, cassava and potato means using more farmland, more water and more fertiliser.

Cellulose works well. That comes from wood pulp, regenerated into films and moulded fibre. This is scalable but still relatively tiny as a contributor.

Then we have seaweed and algae, which require no farmland or fresh water, and grow fast.

Mycelium, grown from fungal threads on agricultural waste, makes a credible replacement for polystyrene packaging. Ramie is a silk replacement made from a nettle plant. Bagasse comes from sugar processing, while coconut coir is also growing in popularity.

But none of these alternatives are anywhere near ready to overthrow demand for plastic.

We’re stuck with this problem, forever it seems. As plastic is placed as an integral cog in the fossil fuels industry wheel, and as microplastics continue to threaten the health of all living species, we need to keep plastic front and central in any communication about climate and nature collapse.

Fossil Fuels v Renewable Energy. Dirty v Clean. Climate Catastrophe v Hope. The battleground has been well established and we’ve been trading blows for decades now.

But the real fight was never on the card.

More than 99% of plastic is produced from chemicals sourced from fossil fuels. So, as long as we are using plastic, we are still going to be demanding the extraction of fossil fuels.

We could hit peak fossil fuel energy demand as early as next year, but even if we do stop burning for fuel, we are definitely not going to stop drilling and fracking. Our lives depend too much on plastic.

Plastic. The material that chokes our waterways and increasingly, our bodies.

It makes a mockery of the ‘Just Stop Oil’ campaign, sadly. Just stopping oil is just not feasible at the moment.

Roughly one barrel in 12 becomes material for plastic production, rather than energy. But when cleaner, cheaper renewables complete their global takeover, plastic will become the only reason left to keep drilling.

The fossil fuel industry knows this better than anyone. Plastic is its Plan B: the reason to keep the rigs running and the fracking pads producing, long after our cars and homes have gone electric.

Our dependence on plastic is their insurance policy.

The global plastics market was valued by Fortune Business Insights at $524.48 billion in 2024, with the market projected to reach $754.23 billion by 2032.

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But isn’t making plastic cleaner than burning it?

When you burn oil for fuel, you pull carbon out of the ground, burn it and send it up a chimney, into the atmosphere, as carbon dioxide.

Making plastic involves turning the oil into a solid object, not smoke. But it’s far from clean.

First, you have to cook the oil to turn it into plastic. This is called cracking. I’ve just learned this myself. The oil is heated to roughly 850°C, round the clock. So you are still burning oil and gas to make plastic.

Add in the drilling, the fracking and the methane that leaks along the way, and the process of making the world’s plastic now accounts for about 5% of all global greenhouse gas emissions. That’s more than the world’s entire aviation industry.

Much of the carbon that does end up locked inside the plastic will still be released one day. A vast amount of the world’s plastic waste is eventually burned - in incinerators, or on open fires - and the moment that happens, the carbon goes up, exactly as if you’d set light to the oil in the first place.

Increasingly, however, plastic is a material we simply can’t live without.

Why The World Needs Plastic. And Why We Need To Ditch It.

If you have ever been seriously ill, plastic will have helped to keep you alive. Consider the cannula in the back of the hand, the bag of saline on the pole, the tube carrying it down.

The blood, if it was needed, would have been stored in a soft plastic pouch, because glass shatters. The oxygen mask, the catheter, the syringe, the sterile peel-open wrapper…

Four common plastics - polyethylene, polypropylene, PVC and polystyrene - make up about 70% of the mass of modern medical devices.

And then we bin it, of course. Less than 5% of healthcare plastic is recycled in North America and Europe, because reusing it between patients is how you carry infections from one body to the next.

Our home life relies on plastic, too.

There’s a good chance the water that comes out of your tap spent its last mile inside plastic piping. India’s national rural water programme to connect more than 150 million households runs overwhelmingly through plastic pipes.

Clothing is riddled with plastics - polyester, nylon, elastane and spandex among them. Every time we wash them, it sheds microplastics into our waterways.

In the kitchen, unless you’re seriously into green living, you’ll find plastic bottles, cling film, sandwich bags (often polyethylene), sponges and scourers (often polyurethane or polyester).

Head to the bathroom and scan your toothbrushes (usually polypropylene with nylon bristles), shampoo and shower gel bottles, wet wipes, dental floss, make-up items….

Laundry pods and dishwasher tablets often contain plastic (not in my house, I’m happy to add).

I don’t need to go on…. you know there is plastic EVERYWHERE, from furniture filling to pens, from candles to sanitary pads. Everywhere.

Our food supply relies on plastic, too

It seems nonsensical to shrink-wrap a cucumber in plastic. But then, that process roughly triples how long the cucumber lasts, and food waste is itself a vast climate and economic problem.

In the growing fields, mulch films warm the soil, and silage wrap preserves winter feed. Substituting plastics in agriculture isn’t currently possible without threatening food security.

And then there’s the plastic you don’t even realise you’re quite literally consuming.

If you like chewing gum, that chew is down to plastic. The gum base is built from synthetic polymers - polyethylene (as used in carrier bags), polyvinyl (white glue) and butyl rubber.

A 2025 study found that chewing on a large stick of gum can released as many as 3,000 microplastic particles into your body. That’s simply horrendous. What are we doing to ourselves?

Take tea bags, as well - most of the “paper” ones are heat-sealed shut with polypropylene. The silky pyramid kind are nylon or PET.

A 2019 study in Environmental Science & Technology found a single plastic teabag at brewing temperature can release around 11 billion microplastic particles, and billions more nanoplastic ones, into one cup.

Talking of cups, you might think you’re making an eco-friendly choice by using paper cups, rather than plastic ones. But a disposable coffee cup is actually a paper-plastic composite, lined with a thin film of polyethylene so your latte doesn’t dissolve the skin on your hand. That lining is why the cups are almost impossible to recycle.

The uncomfortable truth about plastic in wind turbines and solar panels

Yes, I’m afraid our cleaner, greener renewable energy currently requires fossil fuels as well - to hold the components together.

Wind turbine blades require a resin that bonds fibres. These are often epoxies, polyesters and vinyl esters, which come from petroleum.

This also contributes to the problem of how to recycle the blades after their 25 years of use.

Solar panels use EVA (ethylene vinyl acetate) in thin sheets between the solar cells and the front and rear surfaces. The protective backsheet is a fluoropolymer film. All derived from petrochemicals.

What can replace plastic?

And perhaps more importantly, can it possibly scale?

I’ll save that for the next article. In the meantime, please have a read of this connected piece I recently published, explaining where microplastics are found in our body. Or watch my video. The facts are shocking.

And remember - this is Fossil Fuels 2.0.

Migrants are being demonised across the globe. Like they’re the biggest problem we all face. Here in the UK, the small boats keep coming across the English Channel, and right-wing politicians are vowing to stop them.

These same politicians are also promising to ramp up drilling for oil, while supporting gas and fracking as energy sources.

The problem is, increasing production of fossil fuels also increases the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (that’s fact).

This adds to the already catastrophic global warming (that’s fact), which causes extreme weather conditions and forces hundreds of thousands - sometimes millions - out of their homelands and in search of somewhere safer to settle (again, fact. I know I’ll be challenged).

So in the case of Reform UK, for example, their attack on Net Zero and promise to drill “every last drop” of oil from the North Sea, will actually lead to many more migrants coming to our shores in small boats.

In the same way that Farage-led Brexit caused a vast increase in immigration.

So what’s it to be - stop the boats or drill, baby drill? Like the headline said, you can only pick one. Though of course, many of us would choose neither.

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Europe Has Strengthened Its Wall

On June 12, the EU’s toughest-ever migration rules came into force.

Echoing Trump’s clampdown, there will now be mandatory screening at every external border, faster deportations, longer detention, and even plans for deportation centres outside of Europe. It’s the biggest wall the continent has ever built.

So will this solve the UK’s and Europe’s perceived problem of rising immigration?

Let’s look at the facts.

Who Is On The Boats? And Why?

The single biggest group arriving in the UK on small boats over the past year are Eritreans. Then Afghans, Sudanese, Iranians and Somalis. Those five nationalities account for more than half of everyone who arrived.

Numbers are growing from Sudan, Somalia and Ethiopia, on the Horn of Africa. So what do these countries have in common?

Wars, yes. But look underneath and you find something else they share. Climate damage.

The Horn of Africa has just lived through its worst drought in 40 years. It suffered five failed rainy seasons, back to back. Crops are gone, wells are dry, millions of livestock perished.

In Somalia alone, the drought killed an estimated 43,000 people in a single year. Half of them were children under five. More than three million Somalis were forced from their homes.

Scientists who studied the disaster came to the conclusion that the drought could not have happened without climate change.

And what do people do when the land dies? Well, what would you do? You walk. First to the nearest city - but there is no work there, because thousands got there ahead of you. So you walk to the coast. Then, if you’re desperate enough, onto a boat.

Home wasn’t survivable any more. They can’t ever ‘go back to where they came from’.

It’s not just Africa. In 2022, floods put a third of Pakistan underwater, and eight million people were driven from their homes in one summer.

Scientists studied that one, too, and believe the rainfall was made around 75% more intense by global heating. Pakistan flooded again last year. And the year before that.

Meanwhile, in Central America, two devastating hurricanes in a fortnight displaced 1.5 million people, many of whom ended up walking north towards the US border, where American politicians made the same speeches about ‘invasion’ that those in the UK make about the English Channel.

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Why Do They All Come To The UK? (They Don’t. Only A Fraction Do)

When disaster forces people from their homes, the overwhelming majority stay inside their own country. Last year, disasters drove about 30 million displacements worldwide; the year before, it was a record 46 million.

Almost all of those people are still in their own countries, in camps or cities or the spare rooms of friends or relatives.

Of the minority who do cross a border, two-thirds only get as far as the country next door.

Britain takes a tiny fraction. In the year until March 2026, 39,271 people arrived by small boat. A second-tier football crowd, in a country of 69 million.

Where Most Climate Migrants Go

Bangladesh into India is the largest single international migration movement in the world, according to the Asian Development Bank. Yes, more in number than those travelling from Mexico to the US border.

And get this round your head. By 2050 - just 24 years away - nearly a fifth of Bangladesh is projected to be underwater, due to climate change.

Under. Water.

About twenty million people will be displaced. So of course, India’s response has been to fence the border and strengthen its citizenship checks. Sound familiar? It’s what governments do, largely with the support of the population. We are an intolerant breed.

Millions also leave climate-stressed farmland in South Asia for the Gulf - about 30 million migrants now work in the petrostates, many of them building air-conditioned cities outdoors in some of the deadliest heat on the planet.

In economies bankrolled by the very product that burned them off their land.

What’s Heating the Planet?

We don’t need to go into a long explanation here. The science is settled, no matter what fossil fuel-funded politicians and agitators tell you.

Burning oil, gas and coal produces about 90% of the carbon dioxide that’s heating the planet. Fossil fuel companies agree with this number - they just seek to complicate matters by calling them ‘Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions’.

So, more drilling means more heating. More heating means more dead land. More dead land means more people walking, and more immigrants arriving. It’s not rocket science.

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The Reform Hypocrisy

Reform UK’s pitch pretty much rests on two main policies.

One: ‘Stop The Boats’. Cut immigration drastically. Deport people, Trump-style.

Two: Scrap ‘stupid’ net zero and drill the North Sea for - in deputy leader Richard Tice’s own words - “every last drop.” Bring back fracking. Open new coal plants.

And it really isn’t surprising that Reform are making this call when you find out who’s paying them and pulling their fragile strings.

Reform has taken £24 million from fossil fuel interests, climate science deniers and polluters, according to a recent investigation by DeSmog.

To be fair, let’s look at the other parties in the UK. Analysis of Electoral Commission records shows the Conservatives took £8.4 million from the same shady crowd over the last parliament.

Labour took £41,600, including money from Drax - the single largest source of carbon dioxide emissions in the UK.

But nothing compares to the level of influence Reform have bowed down to. It’s pretty much their business model, their method of survival.

Let’s state the obvious again:

You cannot promise to stop the boats while taking millions from the industry that launches them.

Now the tricky part - communicating this to the millions being swept along by the media-enabled BS of Reform being ‘there for the regular person’.

What’s Coming Next?

The World Bank projects that on our current path, climate change could force 216 million people to move home by 2050.

The same report claims that if we act decisively on emissions now, that number will fall by 80%.

So - the single most effective border policy that could be brought in by any government, is to keep the places people already live survivable, so they never get on a boat in the first place.

UK Prime Minister (at least of the time of writing) Keir Starmer was right in saying that we need to deal with the cause, not the symptoms. But his view that ‘smashing the gangs’ would solve immigration were way off mark.

So What Do We Do?

Take Australia’s lead. The country has signed a treaty with Tuvalu, a Pacific nation that is literally going under, to create a planned, orderly route for its people before the climate chaos fully arrives.

The choice for all governments is a planned future, or a chaotic one. Certainly not making it worse by stoking the fires of global warming - however much people pay you to take that suicidal route.

If you genuinely want fewer people getting on boats, then you want less of the thing burning their homes.

Anyone telling you that you can have endless drilling and closed borders is lying. And they’re being paid to say it.

More than half of the world’s population - at least four billion people - could die over the coming decades because of climate change and societal collapse.

I would wager that’s the most important story of your lifetime.

But chances are, you haven’t even read it, heard it, seen it. It was in the news cycle briefly in January 2025, and came from extremely credible sources.

It was reported on by the likes of The Guardian, Grist, and the insurance media but soon disappeared.

No doubt Taylor Swift released another song about a former boyfriend, and journalists became distracted.

Thankfully, some people did not forget. As I write, an event is planned for June 16, 2026 at 7pm BST - if you’re reading this before that date, you can sign up to The 4 Billion Dead International Public Call at tinyurl.com/4-Billion-Dead.

What Are The Facts?

A report titled Planetary Solvency - Finding Our Balance With Nature was published in January 2025 by the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) in collaboration with the University of Exeter.

The IFoA is the professional body for actuaries, who underpin global insurance and pension markets - so it’s basically the insurance industry, which is why it carries significant weight. They understand the risks. They need to know the facts.

The report found that, at 3°C or more of heating by 2050, there would probably be more than 4 billion deaths across the world. That’s half of Earth’s population.

As money seems to be the only thing to move the needle in politics and the media, it was also predicted that the global economy could face at least a 50% loss in GDP, unless immediate policy action is taken.

Crucially, the report explicitly stated that there was no realistic plan in place to avoid this worst case scenario.

And incredibly, even the official report did not make the bleakness of the situation clear - more on that later when we look at the communication crisis.

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What Is The Likelihood of 3°C by 2050?

First of all, let’s not forget that all projections come with a ‘best case’ scenario and a ‘worst case’ scenario. But ALL scenarios are possible.

Humans tend to dismiss the ‘worst case’ as scaremongering, which will one day be our downfall.

If there is even the slightest chance that half the world’s population will die over the coming few decades, shouldn’t we be doing something about that?

Current mainstream projections point to an average temperature rise of roughly 2.8°C by 2100 (The United Nations Environment Programme). But that level is built on climate assumptions that the report authors now consider to be incorrect.

The IFoA/Exeter report, using risk management methodology, rates the probability of a ‘catastrophic’ 2°C+ by 2050 at more than 90%, and an ‘extreme’ 3°C+ by 2050 at a staggering 40-60%.

For insurance companies, 40-60% is not an unlikely event. It is not extreme, it is not scaremongering. It is now built in to their calculations for our future premiums.

Furthermore, a subsequent IFoA/Exeter University report in January 2026 - Parasol Lost - identified that global warming is accelerating faster than models predicted.

And once you account for insane developments like the US pulling out of the Paris Agreement - a legally binding international treaty on climate change - the projections spin even more towards the upper end.

Who Is Behind The Public Call?

Renowned Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) expert Dr Peter Carter is joined by Extinction Rebellion (XR) founder Roger Hallam in leading the June 16 event - though there have also been initiatives and public Zoom meetings across the world.

You’d expect something a little more ‘in your face’ for a warning that half the world is about to die, but climate communication continues to fail, badly.

The Public Call encourages us to “take courage, come and hear this truth, and find out how we are going to act together. We are doing this for all of us.”

When you consider that claims of ‘4 Billion Dead’ has solid foundations in verified climate science and insurance industry risk predictions, it is simply staggering that most people have no clue about this.

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Why Is Communication Failing?

This is a whole internet of articles by itself. But in this case, I believe there is one over-riding reason.

It’s in the future.

The 4 Billion Dead campaign states that half the world could die ‘this century’.

The end of the century is currently 74 years away - that’s not going to be treated as urgent by the media, or by the general public, even though it will severely affect our children, our grandchildren, and maybe even ourselves.

The report itself focuses on the shorter term. But even 2050 is seen by most people as too far in the future to care about.

Today there are bills to pay, bombs to avoid, riots to swerve, jobs to be lost. There is too much going on to care about what might happen by 2050 or 2100.

Even when that’s the death of half the world.

We always need to make climate, nature and pollution crisis communication about NOW.

And then we link the policies of fossil fuel-supporting political parties to those four billion deaths. Let’s not beat about the bush here.

Real talk saves lives. Hopefully.

Spot The Apocalypse

Even the official report did not spell out the 4 billion figure. No wonder, maybe, that the media couldn’t be bothered to spend time on it. Though I would hope the press release did at least lead with ‘Half The World Might Die’.

This is where the biggest story in human history lies hidden. On page 32, in Appendix 1: Risk Impact Matrix / Figure 12…

Let’s zoom in on the devastation contained within a neat table…

You can read the full report here.

Seriously humans, we’ve got to get better at talking about these things…