Last year, seven large banks reaped more than a quarter trillion dollars by using higher Federal Reserve rates to jack up interest rates on mortgages, auto loans, and credit cards — all while those same banks paid low interest to depositors, according to new letters from Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Jack Reed (D-R.I.). One of many examples the lawmakers document: The Fed pays JPMorgan Chase 4.4 percent interest on its deposits, but “customers continue to earn a negligible .01 [percent] on their savings” at JPMorgan Chase.

In all, banks have used this scheme to reap more than $1 trillion in new revenue over a two-and-a-half-year period, according to the Financial Times — and new federal data show net interest income is rising. Read The Lever’s ongoing coverage of the Great Bank Robbery and listen to our podcast episode on the topic.

Banks can deposit your savings at the Fed and get paid 4.4 percent interest, while paying you almost nothing — but unlike banks, you can’t deposit your money at the Fed to get that same rate. The difference between Fed rates offered to banks and bank rates offered to you recently hit “a modern high.” While some countries have taken action against this scam, and proposals for a new U.S. public banking system could combat this problem, Wall Street lobbyists have blocked those initiatives. 

The process of switching banks to get better rates is often an annoying rigmarole (by design). When the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau last year finalized a rule to simplify switching banks, JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon vowed a “knife fight” against regulators and deployed his lobbying group to file a lawsuit against the rule.

Trump’s administration stalled that rule, tried to dismantle the CFPB, and dropped the agency’s lawsuit alleging that Capital One cheated depositors out of $2 billion of interest payments. Trump’s regulators also repealed guidelines aiming to slow bank mergers (like Capital One’s), which tend to reduce competition to offer better interest rates. One recent study found “a 35 percent reduction in deposit interest rates” in counties that experienced such mergers. reduction in deposit interest rates” in counties that experienced such mergers.

Today’s Lever story: You’ve already paid $6 billion to develop weight-loss drugs you can’t afford.

👇 Spend four minutes reading this 974-word newsletter to learn about: 

• The team-up in professional sports that nobody asked for.
• A Federal Reserve scam to jack up your mortgage rates.
• The $1 billion check corporate landlords don’t want you to know about.
• How the woman who made Stone Cold Steve Austin famous is planning to dismantle public education.

📚 Trump’s DOE is DOA. President Donald Trump could direct WWE founder Linda McMahon to dismantle the Department of Education as soon as today, according to a draft order obtained by the Wall Street Journal. The move is torn from Project 2025’s playbook. McMahon announced “profound changes” to staffing, budgets, and agency operations in a Tuesday memo titled “Our Department’s Final Mission.” 

It’s unclear whether President Donald Trump will crack down on weight-loss drug price gouging. While Biden regulators selected two top-selling weight-loss medications for Medicare price negotiations this year, potentially lowering their price for millions of Americans, Trump has sent mixed messages about the future of price-negotiation programs and nominated people who’ve sold or promoted weight-loss drugs to oversee related matters. 

Diabetes and weight-loss drugs drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy have become increasingly popular — and are incredibly expensive. What may be surprising is that Americans have already spent $6.2 billion towards the research, development, and implementation of these medications through federal research grants from 1980 to 2024.  

This taxpayer spending isn’t unusual. Americans shelled out at least $11.7 billion to help develop the ten high-cost prescription drugs that were selected for Medicare price negotiations last year.  

Here’s how researchers from Bentley University in Massachusetts uncovered just how much taxpayer money went into the development of GLP-1 drugs for weight loss and diabetes:

“I can’t cover my expenses anymore,” said Vargas, who, like almost a third of all renters in the country, spends more than half her paycheck on rent. When Vargas asked her employer for more hours or better wages, she was told the company couldn’t afford it. “They tell us they are limited in the hours they can give based on the amount they are making from sales,” Vargas said. “They tell us that if we don’t like it, we can find somewhere else to work.”

While Vargas and her coworkers struggle to make rent, however, government assistance meant to support housing affordability is instead enriching the supermarket’s private equity owner, Apollo Global Management. Through another tentacle of its private equity empire, the nearly $1 trillion firm has tapped billions in publicly-supported funds from the Federal Home Loan Bank System, a little-known relic of the Great Depression originally established to encourage affordable mortgage lending. 

Today’s Lever story: Private equity is looting billions from a Depression-era housing assistance program.

⏪ ICYMI in The Lever: This is how David Sirota would run DOGE. 

👇 Spend four minutes reading this 982-word newsletter to learn about:

• Roundup’s big lobbying blitz for the Cancer Gag Act.
• The loophole in The White House’s “no tax on tips” proposal.
• The latest banks let off the hook by Trump’s gutted CFPB.

🏭 Actions speak louder than Trumpisms. In last night’s address to Congress, President Trump spotlighted a child whose “cancer likely came from a chemical he was exposed to when he was younger” and he declared that his administration’s “goal is to get toxins out of our environment (and) poisons out of our food supply.” Also yesterday: News leaked that Trump’s administration will drop a lawsuit against a chemical maker accused of increasing cancer risks in nearby communities. Trump is also advancing a GOP proposal to block states from warning consumers about toxins in food.

ICYMI in The Lever: Many clean energy boom towns voted for Trump. Will his administration put their jobs at risk?

👇 Spend four minutes reading this 996-word newsletter to learn about:

• A fresh SCOTUS ruling that could force Americans to literally eat shit.
• The history behind the tariff obsession.
• Trump’s massive jailbreak for corporations under investigation.
• Crypto’s newest ally on the Hill.
• The White House’s plan to lower egg costs.

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💩 San Francisco and SCOTUS team up to make you eat shit. The Roberts Court this morning delivered a 5-4 ruling for San Francisco in the city’s fight to kill off regulation of sewage discharge. The Environmental Protection Agency fined San Fran for dumping sewage into the ocean, but the city argued the rules were too vague. The court’s decision prevents the agency from holding a  polluter “responsible for the quality of the water in the body of water into which (it) discharges pollutants.” SCOTUS also recently limited EPA’s authority to combat climate change and protect wetlands.

Today’s Lever story: The plan to make America hazardous again.

🎧 New on Lever Time: The planet is heating up — whether you’re paying attention or not.

⏪ ICYMI in The Lever: How crypto mined Kyrsten Sinema.

👇 Spend four minutes reading this 964-word newsletter to learn about:

• Trump’s gift for his private prison donors.
• A new antidote against the microplastic takeover.
• Democrats’ latest losing strategy.
• How your tax dollars are enriching Big Crypto.

Read This To Understand Gaza

In The World After Gaza, Pankaj Mishra, one of our most prolific public intellectuals, offers an essential reckoning with the war in Gaza. His work reframes our understanding of the conflict, its historical roots, and the fractured global response. “This is a rare text: courageous and bracing, learned and ethical, rigorous and mind-expanding.” — Naomi Klein.

Purchasing this book here directly supports The Lever’s work.

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😶‍🌫️ Make America Opaque Again. Trump’s administration says it won’t enforce a new anti-money laundering law that Trump’s own administration said is needed. Last month, Trump’s Justice Department defended the 2021 Corporate Transparency Act, which requires greater financial disclosure, saying “the absence of company-ownership information threatens U.S. national-security and foreign-policy interests.” Business groups have been trying to kill it, but the Supreme Court and a Trump-appointed judge recently ruled that it could be enforced. On Sunday, Trump officials announced that it won’t be.

Glyphosate, a commonly used herbicide chemical linked to cancer, has been found in almost every kind of common food sold in the United States. That’s because the chemical, often applied through the product Roundup, is a core staple of Big Ag’s food production system to kill off weeds and other unwanted vegetation. The chemical is also sprayed on wheat and oats before harvesting to help them dry faster.

Here are some of the foods and other products that have been found to be contaminated with glyphosate:

Last month, Trump issued an executive order mandating agencies “fully address the growing health crisis in America.” But the initiative from Republican attorneys general — which would usurp state labeling authority — is now being moved forward by Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency. The measure would declare that any label citing scientific findings not acknowledged by Trump’s EPA would “constitute misbranding.” 

Here’s what The Lever published this week:

🪫 The Red State Workers Caught In Trump’s EV Battle. Many clean energy boom towns voted for Trump. Will his administration put them at risk as they fight to save their factories — and protect their workers’ health?

🔋 BONUS: On The Line In The Battery Belt. Dig deeper into this story with a bonus report for paid subscribers. Hear from EV plant workers about the risks, rewards, and uncertainties of working toward “the future of the automotive industry” amid Trump-related upheaval. 

The Battle For Musk’s Lair. States are quietly weakening corporate accountability to lure Elon Musk and other business interests.

How To Combat The Information War. Fox News just screamed the quiet part — and told a brutal truth.

Trump Removes “Zombie” Pipeline Safety Rules. The administration has withdrawn carbon dioxide pipeline regulations inspired by a horrific gas leak, and a former industry lobbyist is now overseeing such matters.

The Firefighting Fire Sale. After U.S. Forest Service layoffs, will for-profit contractors protect you from wildfires?

Making Tax Day Expensive Again. While raking in campaign cash from tax prep companies, the GOP is trying to kill a free filing system and gut IRS customer service.

Google’s New Private Tax. With little fear of competition, the tech giant is jacking up prices for its cloud-based software as it aims for another monopoly.

Musk’s Empire Is Reaping $2 Million Per Day From Trump. While the billionaire is touting cuts to the government, the new administration has already delivered $86 million to Musk’s rocket company since the inauguration.

Ted Cruz Just Legalized More Corruption. How the Texas senator’s latest money-in-politics scheme could increase the price of cars.

The Gas Station Wars. The environmental disasters on every street corner are prompting a local backlash.

LIVE EVENT REPLAY: Billionaires Get Tax Cuts — What’s Left For Us?. A special virtual live event with Accountable.US.

The Planet Is Heating Up Whether You Care Or Not. People say they care about climate change. Why won’t they talk about it?

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🔌 A secret society is fleecing you. New data show that in the last three years, private corporate utilities have jacked up electricity rates 49 percent more than the rate of inflation, while publicly owned utilities have raised rates 44 percent less than the inflation rate. Since private companies provide 70 percent of American electricity, this scheme is probably ripping you off right now. Blame state regulators — and this secret society of consultants.

😢 Private equity killed the craft store. Joann Fabric is going out of business — despite previously announcing it would keep some stores open — after the legacy craft store was auctioned off to the private equity firm GA Group, which has decided to strip it for parts. The only chain options left for crafty people now are Michaels — acquired by private equity giant Apollo Global Management in 2021 — and Hobby Lobby, owned by conservative billionaire Trump supporters.

🤑 Elon’s already cashing in. After dropping nearly $300 million supporting Trump and his allies in 2024, Musk’s personal wealth has increased 50 percent since Election Day, sending his net worth soaring toward $400 billion. Moreover, Musk’s businesses have gained a combined $613 billion in valuation since Nov. 5, according to a Bloomberg analysis. In the words of the inimitable economist Richard D. Wolff, it pays to buy a U.S. President.

Not yet reading Lever Daily? You’re missing out — make sure you’re subscribed right now.

Every week, we bring paid subscribers a newsletter full of good news — policy wins, environmental victories, and initiatives that are improving your life. This week, your fruit bowl comes to the rescue, a traffic tax hits the jackpot, anti-abortion activists get buffered, and the Granite State goes green. 

Lever Leaders provide us with our highest level of support and score additional perks in return, including an annual gift of limited-edition Lever merchandise, a yearly gift subscription for friends and family, and access to an exclusive Lever staff meeting for a sneak peek at our future plans. Every week, we highlight folks who’ve taken that step:

• Luis R.: “Good journalism is indeed needed to hold power accountable, so I'd like to support it.”
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• The Financial Diet — David Sirota joined the personal finance-focused YouTube channel to explain how the government and the economy are rigged against working people.
• ZDF — The German public-service television broadcaster featured our reporting on Biden’s farewell warnings about the master plan.
• Uprise RI — The publication used our reporting as an example of how independent journalism can thrive outside of corporate control in the wake of Jeff Bezos turning The Washington Post’s editorial page into his personal propaganda machine.
• MSN — The news site highlighted our scoop on DOGE slapping firefighters’ credit cards with a $1 spending limit. 
• AlterNet — The independent news website amplified our reporting about the Trump administration slashing firefighting resources.
• Canary Media — The climate-focused publication featured our reporting on Trump’s move to weaken carbon dioxide pipeline safety regulations.
• East End Beacon — The local publication featured our reporting on the chemical lobby’s move to obscure safety disclosures for chemical risks.

Got Microplastics? Have A Banana

A new study found that an apple a day really can keep the doctor away. Antioxidants that give fruits and flowers their vivid colors counteract the danger of microplastics to our reproductive system, according to research conducted by the National Institutes of Health.

The research conducted by the federal public health research agency — that the Trump administration has since moved to defund — found that compounds widely present in nuts, fruits, and vegetables protect against a range of plastic-induced impacts on reproductive health, including reductions in testosterone and estrogen, decreased sperm counts, lower sperm quality, erectile dysfunction, and ovarian damage.  

But then why does it feel like nobody is taking the problem seriously? Despite the growing threat, climate change still struggles to capture people’s attention. Today on Lever Time, David Sirota sits down with a group of environmental writers and journalists to hear their experiences covering climate and what mainstream discourse around climate change is missing. 

To read an unedited transcript of the episode, click here.

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Arjun Singh 0:00
Hey, everyone. Today on lever time, we're going to do something a little different. Last week, David Sirota and I met up at on air fest, which was a podcasting Festival in New York City. While we were there, David was invited onto the stage to moderate and host a panel that was all about climate change, but this wasn't your typical climate conversation. Normally, these panels talk about the impending dangers of a warming planet, and at some point it'll come up that there's a general scientific consensus around humans being the key factor in climate change, and critically, we are the ones influencing how wide reaching the impacts of climate change are. These are important discussions, ones which we shouldn't be tuning out. But at the same time, it feels like the issue constantly lives in the background. Yes, the climate is covered and it's discussed, but sometimes in an obligatory way. But in the last six months, we've seen devastating hurricanes in Florida and North Carolina, and then there are the fires in Los Angeles. Extreme weather is real and it's here. Perhaps most importantly, climate change is happening, whether we want to take it seriously or not, but that's why I found this panel interesting. In this panel, not only will David and his guests discuss the science and stories around extreme weather, but they'll also unpack the fight for attention in a media environment that changes topics at the drop of a dime. So I hope you all enjoy the panel as much as I did, and let's start the show.

David Sirota 1:18
Thank you. Thanks for Thanks for having us. And I want to thank the sponsors of this panel. First and foremost, impact us and covering climate. Now, if there are any creators here that want to learn more about their work, they have a booth out in the in the Creator space. This is a great panel of amazing people who cover climate, and what we're going to discuss today is the not just the significance of covering climate and making sure that climate is part of storytelling in journalism, but but how climate is really a part of Every story that I think is unfolding in our world, and how to make it part of the stories that we're all covering. So I'll just introduce our our panel here, before we before we get to every everything, there's I'm going to go in no particular order. There's Kate arnoff, who's a staff writer at The New Republic. She's the author of overheated, how capitalism broke the planet and how we fight back. And co author of a planet to win, why we need a green New Deal. She's also a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and serves on dissents editorial board. There is Kendra Pierre Lewis, an award winning climate reporter. Her work looks at how our climate is changing and the impact of those changes on everyday people. She most recently worked at Bloomberg and previously was a reporter and producer on the gimlet media podcast how to save a planet. And there's Lauren Casey as a meteorologist for Climate The climate Matters program at Climate Central, Lauren specializes in communicating the connections between climate change and extreme weather. In her role, she supports climate Central's network of meteorologists and journalists to provide tools and resources that best enable them on the front lines in so many communities, to tell the climate stories impacting their audiences. And there's macdel meskal, a journalist, fire mediator, artist, landtender and therapeutic guide in learning. They work as an engagement, Director of journalism collaboration, the journalism collaboration project covering climate now. So these are amazing people who cover climate and tell stories of climate. And in to my mind, as a journalist, I am constantly frustrated by the fact that climate stories are not being told, and I'm sure, I'm guessing, a lot of folks on this panel share that frustration. So I want, I want to start by asking, going around this panel and asking for some examples of stories and reporting that they've done that profiled what's going on in our climate and and told stories of what's going on in our climate, that that surprised them, or they came upon things that were unexpected, or covered those things in a in a new kind of way. So why don't we go left to right here? Like, have you talk about a story or two that you've done, where you went in, perhaps thinking one thing and coming out thinking another thing, or found a new way into the issue.

Lauren Casey 4:48
Thanks. Thanks for having me, everybody. So I work with I was a broadcast meteorologist for many years, but with my role in climate central the last several years, I work with broadcast meteorologists and journalists to. Helps apply. You know, pitch store ideas, we provide resources. We also conduct our own research. So one story that I particularly found fascinating and really drove home the point that, you know, climate change is all around us and affects our everyday lives. I was working with the chief meteorologist out of Albany, New York, a gentleman named Steve Lapointe, and it was 2023 when we're having all that bad wildfire smoke coming in from the Western wildfires in Western Canada. And so he did a piece. We have a tool at Climate Central. It's an attribution science tool. So it helps us we use model data to kind of integrate and show the impact of climate change on daily temperatures. So the likelihood that climate change has increased or the likelihood that it's decreased those temperatures on a given day. So it's called the climate shift index. So stick with me. So they were having particularly hazy skies because of the wildfire smoke coming in from 1000s of miles away. So local news, you know, they have the sky cam. He's like, Oh, we have, you know, terrible, hazy skies. You know, it's impacting our air quality at the surface. And takes that connection and drives it back to the Western wildfires in Western Canada, 1000s of miles away from Albany, New York, and then shows the climate shift index, which is showing that those temperatures in Western Canada were made at least five times more likely by climate change. We know that heat and dry weather in particular helps to fuel these fires. So making that connection of people just looking up in the sky and going, Wow, the sky looks really weird and hazy, back to climate change. I thought was really just a really interesting and fascinating connection.

David Sirota 6:45
Kendra, before you go, I want to see if we can play these clips. I don't know who I'm looking towards, but we should be able to play some audio clips. Charm

Arjun Singh 6:56
Miller's point earlier, the perspective of the federal government. Governments are simply to let people keep building.

David Sirota 7:02
Sorry, that's the wrong clip, the second clip, my bad, Kendra's clip. Oh,

Unknown Speaker 7:20
it's fun to move powered

Speaker 1 7:22
by you and not through fossil fuels. Ride down some stairs, park anywhere.

Speaker 2 7:27
That's the beauty of biking. Fun, clean, healthy. That's the beauty of cycling. Accessible,

Speaker 3 7:34
physical mountains and roads. That's the beauty of biking. It's fun, clean, healthy. That's the beauty of cycling, accessible, physical mountain roads. That's the

Unknown Speaker 7:46
beauty of biking. It's worth a move

Speaker 1 7:49
powered by you and not do fossil fuels. Ride down some stairs, park anywhere. That's the beauty of biking.

David Sirota 7:58
Okay, so that's a good preface for

Kendra Pierre Louis 8:02
Yeah, so for two and a half years, I worked for a podcast called How to save a planet, and our focus was on climate solutions. And we weren't looking for like, individual solutions. We weren't there to tell you to recycle your cans or whatever. We were looking at systemic solutions. And one of the things that came up is, how many of you guys have heard that, like, you should bike to work, that bike instead of biking instead of driving, right? But when we have that conversation, it's often positioned like, biking is the sacrifice, right? Like you want to take the car, but you you should take the bike. And the thing is, is I grew up in New York, and I didn't learn how to drive until I moved to rural Vermont for a year, and driving has always been low key traumatic for me, but I loved riding my bike like I actually got hypothermia, and then decided to learn how to drive. And so I was, like, we were talking about three ideas, and I realized that when I was, like, in my late teens, I desperately wanted an Isuzu amigo, and the azuzu Amigo commercial was based off of the slinky song, which is based off that jingle that we just played. And it made no sense. I lived in New York City, and I did not know how to drive. Why did I want an Isuzu amigo so badly? And it was the ad. I loved the ad, and so we ended up doing a whole episode that sort of started with my love of the azuzu Amigo, and talked about how whenever you look at popular culture, we really reinforce this norm that the car is great. The car is the thing that you want. Like you look at clueless. You look at so many movies, a car is freedom. It's like liberty. It's all of these things. And when you look at how bicycles turn up in popular culture, it's the 40 year old virgin. It's like losers, unless you're a kid, we Herman. Yes, it's Pee Wee Herman. And so I kind of took us through in the episode, I took us through the history of, like, the early days of the bicycle. The bicycle only dates back to, like, the 1800s and when people first got their hands on the bicycle, they weren't crazy. They would say things like, it was better than flying, even though they'd never flown before, because they hadn't been. To the airplane yet, and talked all about that. And then I went to learn to an adult learn to bike ride class, and I recorded the adults learning to ride a bike, and they sounded like children. It was so great. And then I got and so the whole episode was really about the beauty of biking. And to cap it off, I got our engineer, Peter Leonard, to make a jingle about the beauty. You can find it on Spotify and and like, six months after the episode aired, I learned from someone in Albany that it was the hold music for their bike shop. And so one of the things that I like this is weird coming from a journalist, but there is a little bit of propaganda when you're thinking about climate change, which is that we it's so often framed as a sacrifice, like you should do the you should change your lifestyle, and x, y and z as a sacrifice, but we don't think about the ways in which a fossil fuel economy is costing us right in a very personal way. Biking, 99% of the time, especially if you're talking small distances, especially if you're talking with decent infrastructure is more fun than driving. It just it is, and you don't have to worry about what you're gonna do with your bike at the end of the trip. Like, it's just easier, especially like with city bike, it's even gotten even better. And so that was kind of the negative. The episode is, like, we talked about the climate benefits of biking and everything, but that wasn't the point. The point was a little bit of propaganda that, like, actually, this thing that is good for the planet, is good for you, and it's fun.

David Sirota 11:24
Kate Arjun off, if we can put Kate's book image on the on the the There we go. There's Kate Arjun OS book. Kate, something that surprised you was unexpected.

Kate Aronoff 11:36
Yeah, I'll just say a little bit about the mechanics of my job, which is the context for this, which is that I am a staff writer at The New Republic, which means that two or three times a week I have to find something new to write. And I don't know if all of you have original thoughts two or three times a week, I do not. So that often means I have to, you know, look pretty hard for things that are climate related, and most things are. I think that, you know, that is the title of this panel, obviously, but finding sort of a way in. And have been doing, you know, this beat for a long time, and so have found ways to, yeah, find sort of the climate side of different things, which partially because there are just not that many climate reporters, it's a pretty small sort of set of us that, you know, you can often find something that people aren't writing about, particularly if the subject is not one that is sort of intuitively about climate so one, for instance, is about the border right? And you sort of look at border politics and think this is the thing that is in the news, obviously more more so than even the climate crisis itself, and doesn't typically get talked about as a climate issue, when in fact it is, you know, one of the sort of biggest climate issues, because it is making our world more dangerous and keeping people who are fleeing, in many cases, situations that are either exacerbated or caused by rising temperatures, by droughts, by hurricanes. That is a sort of way that the literally, our borders are being policed to keep out climate refugees, whether or not those terms are used, whether or not that is a language that is talked about, that is sort of the story is that this is a major, major part of why people want to come to this country and leave their homes that they wouldn't want to leave otherwise. And so that's, you know, I think the more serious end of it, there is also sort of more superfluous stuff that I get to write about sometimes, like last summer during the eras tour, there's a lot of coverage of Taylor Swift's private jets and their emissions. And so she her press team put out a statement about how she had bought a lot of carbon offsets, which are nonsense, which are completely, sort of made up, and really sort of, you know, I don't want to get into too big of a tangent on that, but our total bunk anyway. So this piece was just about, you know, why did she say this? What does that mean? Because you hear that kind of thing, and that sounds, I think, that people who don't spend most of their days thinking about climate change in very sort of like zoomed in ways that sounds kind of reasonable. Okay, she flew and she bought these carbon offsets. That's all good. And, you know, it's kind of complicated. It's kind of complicated understand both what they are and why they are nonsense. And so, you know, having sort of like events like that can be an entry into, into finding, you know, ways to talk about it. And it's, I don't know, I mean, it's, it's interesting having to write so much, you sort of throw a lot of things at the wall and see what sticks. And I'm always a little bit surprised as to what ends up catching people's attention. Plenty of things that I think are interesting, most people don't, and often the things that I you know think this is a total throwaway. Okay, I have something to file by 5pm I end up getting a lot of attention in very unexpected ways. So I don't know if I have a math for like, what draws people into climate coverage? I've not figured that out in 10 years, but it is often surprising the things that people kind of grasp onto,

David Sirota 15:15
macdel. Could we put the covering climate now? Image up here.

Mekdela Maaskal 15:21
What about you? I am the engagement director at covering climate now, which is a journalism collaboration, yeah, and it's great to chat right after you saying all of that, because I think what we do really is try to make connections to all beats, all journalists around what how the climate is connected to the subject matter that they're covering. Our ideas is that really, this is something that we all deal with. We all live on the earth, and we all need to factor in. I kind of like to think about it as, like, the reciprocity beat, like, what are we taking from the earth, therefore, what are we giving back? And so as human beings, it is a part of our lives, inherently. And so we do trainings. We make connections between journalists and sources. A lot of also, as Kate said, there aren't that many journalists who are dedicated to climate, and so if they are, then they sometimes feel alone in the newsrooms that they work in, or feel alone just on the teams that they're interacting with. So it's just nice to have a bunch of other people who they can talk to and get advice from. And I think overall, I like to consider kind of reframe climate coverage from this crisis doom and gloom led coverage to considering how communities are responding to the circumstances that are that they're dealing with, and that, for me, is really empowering. I live in Grass Valley, California, which is a wildfire stricken area, but it's also actually like a fire loving landscape, so even that re shift to oh, shoot so many wildfires, to well, actually, this landscape really loves fire. And how has fire been used historically here, and why is it now being exacerbated into wildfires? Shifts the way that I orient to the crisis. Shifts the way my heart feels in the place that I live, and I think some of my work in mediation and conflict work also helps, because I think, yes, it's a human made cause and made crisis, but guilt and shame aren't great emotions to shift into action. And so how can we share the climate story with people that enable choice and agency versus inhibit movement through guilt and shame. So some of the bigger frames that we're dealing with, yeah,

David Sirota 17:50
and I'll address my own question. Some of the most unexpected things that I find in our reporting has to do with the decisions that we've made in the past. I'm pretty interested in how, how we got here, and all sorts of stories that I cover, but in particular climate, because I think climate feels like this thing that just happened, not necessarily inevitably, but we don't have a really good idea of all the decision points. So now I want to play, if we can that first clip, to give you a sense of what we do at the lever, to try to add a historical perspective and

Arjun Singh 18:32
to charm Miller's point earlier, the perspective of the federal government and local governments was simply to let people keep building.

David Sirota 18:38
This is about California.

Arjun Singh 18:43
In what was likely a well intentioned policy, the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s subsidized continuous construction in flammable areas by offering tax relief and low interest loans to rebuild. One thing you need to know, though, is that California was settled in a blaze of violence and fire

when European settlers first arrived, they saw how indigenous Californians made ample use of controlled burning, in some cases, burning up to 10% of the state's land mass annually. For the settlers, this posed a problem. The fires made the terrain inhospitable to commerce and industry, so their response was murder. In waves of brutal attacks, settlers killed the indigenous Californians. Then they sought to tame the land, whereas the indigenous Californians made ample use of fire, the settlers thought they could suppress and control it, and in the name of industry, they created the bedrocks of a political economy dedicated to pushing the boundaries of how far humans could manipulate the environment around them.

David Sirota 19:52
So the idea there, I think what was unexpected for me, which is kind of I. Yeah, somewhat embarrassing, and that I live out in the American West, was that I didn't have a full grasp of how the suppression of fire in a climate, a climate intensified world, how the suppression of fire can create more fire. I didn't fully and it's kind of in some ways, counter intuitive until you think about it for a second, and I hadn't really thought about it for a second, and what we try to do is try to put those points and those revelations into our reporting, in particular about about climate change, to try to get people to have those aha moments. I mean, I think that's like, one of the things that people enjoy most, I think, in any media, are those moments where you're like, Oh, I, I didn't get that before. Aha. Now I completely, I completely get it. So I want to ask everybody another question, and we're going to try to open this up to Q and A towards the end, it's a question that I've thought about a lot since, especially since doing the movie that I worked on. Don't look up which was, which is, if climate change is a threat multiplier and impacts everything we do, why do you think climate conversations, climate content, even where climate is in the background of a story or a movie or or journalism. Why does climate still seem so isolated and siloed from other topics? So we'll go the other way. Macdel, you start.

Mekdela Maaskal 21:41
Well, my initial answer is that I think it's shared as a really divisive issue politically, and that's strategic, because when you divide, I think you can slow down progress when there's a perception that there isn't a consensus on something, but that's false. 89 actually covering climate now working on a project based on a study that 89% of the population of the world wants climate action. So there's a large consensus of people who know this is an issue and who want to do something about it. So that's, that's my first gut response. I wonder, curious what you all think.

Kate Aronoff 22:25
Yeah, I would agree with that. I mean, I think the extent to which climate politics have become the sort of like object of ridicule can't be overstated. That is this sort of long running ideological project, you know, not, this isn't the biggest example of this, but like Al Gore on South Park, right? It's like this is a silly thing to care about. Well, this is, you know, cause that only sort of bleeding heart liberals are interested in. And I think that is with us in some ways. It's changed a lot, obviously, but I think the sort of idea that climate is this really sort of kooky thing for tree huggers is still just a part of the way it's thought about, including by people who you know wouldn't say they're climate deniers or wouldn't, you know would say they're sort of supportive of doing something about rising temperatures, but still just don't Think of it even if they, you know, are progressive on a number of other fronts, and I do think that's changing to some extent. But, yeah, I mean, I think it has been hard to communicate that climate change is just a thing that affects everything else around us. So if you look at people who their insurance is going up by double because they live in Florida or California or somewhere else, that is a direct result of climate and there's a lot of other stuff found up with it, but getting sort of the point across that that these sort of basic cost of living issues, these things that are you know, really talked about in a more mainstream way than a lot of climate coverage is able to be getting the point that this is all sort of a part of our you know, the fact that the world is changing in ways that we do not recognize has been really difficult to communicate, in part because there has been such an effort To sort of sloth off climate from the rest of the sort of conversation about any other venue of politics, I

Lauren Casey 24:27
think I'm going to come at it from a slightly different point of view, which is, I think part of why climate ended up siloed is because we silo science. And so much of early climate reporting was kind of really narrowing coming in from the science perspective. And so if you're a story, like a lot of creative people, a lot of storytellers don't necessarily feel comfortable with science, like I'm using science in air quotes, but like the idea of science and the technical parts of science, I interviewed Roman Emmerich, who did day after tomorrow. And if you watch that movie, there are two things that. Really, I actually you should watch it as a independence day and day after tomorrow, double feature. And if you watch them back to back, one of the things that becomes apparent pretty quickly is Day after tomorrow is Independence Day, but make it climate. And when I was talking to him, I was like, really nervous, because you don't want to accuse someone of being derivative. And he was like, no, no, we did that on purpose, because I was coming out, he was coming off of the success of Independence Day, and he knew that if you said it's like Independence Day, but make it climate, that it would be easier to get it green lit. And the source material for that is this wackadoo book that's like, not very good Scientifically speaking, but it's great from a storytelling perspective. So that was how we got around, kind of the difficulty of the science bit, and I think that's the issue for a lot of people who are creative, is that they don't necessarily have good source material. I think that's changing. Like Wi Fi is now a thing. There's more climate storytelling. I might one of my favorite TV series on Netflix recently was partner track, and there's a whole climate like subplot in that tell it's rom com. It's a frothy, legal rom com. But I think early on, the biggest difficulty was a lot of people who are creative are naturally tuned off to science, and climate was coming in from that science track.

Arjun Singh 26:15
After the break, we'll hear the rest of David's panel from on air fest. We'll be right back. You.

David Sirota 26:28
Can we put the Climate Central website up here? And this is a good question. The idea of climate as a separate story from other stories, in some ways, media, meteorology. How can climate be separate from from the weather report and what? What do you I guess, what's your feedback on how to make climate part of the way Americans understand their day to day weather? Yeah,

Mekdela Maaskal 27:00
that's a great question. Obviously, they're inextricably linked, so it's important to have that conversation. But I think some of it is, you know, fear based. They don't, you know, people don't want to go out there and talk about climate because it has become politicized when and I think there is this perception that there are so many deniers out there. However, Yale program for climate change communication, conduct surveys every couple of years, and a category of people dismissive. So these are the people that climate change is a hoax, type of people around 10% of the country. That's it. So it's really just they have the loudest voices, but it's not the majority of people. And as of 2023 it was 10% and as of 2013 also, the dismissive people were about 10% of the population. So it has been, and continues to be, a small segment of the population. A lot of people do want to hear about this. And the amount of negative feedback I started talking about climate and my role as a meteorologist probably around 2012 and you would get some negative, you know, feedback from viewers, but in more recent days, you know, you get actually more positive responses from people saying, Thank you for teaching me. I wanted to learn about this. I want to know more. And I think a way too to talk about climate is talk about climate solutions. I mean, communication itself is a climate solution. And to kind of veer away from the Doom ism, you know, climate change is, as you said, a threat multiplier, but Climate Solutions is also a benefit multiplier. It's the climate solutions are quality of life improvements. You think about urban heat island and planting urban trees that has so many cascading benefits for the local community, from reducing urban heat island effects, reducing the temperature, surface and air temperatures, reducing energy use. There's a body of research growing that shows, you know, improves mental health, physical health, reduces crime. You know storm water runoff helps reduce that. So there's so many benefits to climate solutions, and I think if you can talk more about that. I mean, who doesn't want a greener, healthier, you know, neighborhood, I think that's a good way to kind of tackle it. I mean,

David Sirota 29:13
I think a lot about this when I watch television, you know, feature, move, feature films, scripted television, that when you're watching these shows, I find you're you. They're mostly happening in a climate that doesn't exist, right? Like, I like you watch these shows and it's, it's like, there's there's rain and there's snow and there's a sunny day, and the climate crisis just doesn't really exist at all. And I think about the movie parasite, which I guess you could argue it either way. Is it a climate movie? Is it not a climate movie? I don't think most people who watch it, who aren't told, hey, this might be a climate Movie. Think of it as a climate movie, even though the climate is like right there in the in the background, sometimes in the foreground. And I think about that movie a lot because it masterfully, I think at least showed an ecological setting that is clearly impacted by climate without trying to grab you and say, Hey, this is the scene about climate change. It's, at least though, a relatively realistic portrayal of climate as people deal with it day to day. And I think a lot about that, because I think, to my mind, that's part of the way to meet people where they are, meet the audience, where it might be, where there's this thing that is the climate crisis that's happening, and then there's lives lived inside of that climate crisis, and something doesn't have to be, quote, climate content, in order for the climate crisis to be there. And I think the lack of it being there in journalism and in the entertainment world makes it easier to take the issue and say this is just some weird cause of weird people and not a real thing because it's never really represented on your screen in any other way, other than a climate story or a climate movie. And I think that's a that's a segue to one more question I want to ask before we open it up to some questions from the audience, which is just real quick. You're you're you're what you think about when you think about the challenge of lots of people who even acknowledge climate change may not want to think about it, may not want to listen to or consume media content about it, simply because it makes them sad. Like, what? Like, I think about that a lot, and I don't know what the right answer is, but there's an amazing group of people up here who probably have some thoughts on it, like, how do we how do we bust through that?

Kendra Pierre Louis 32:14
I used to have a role at my first job in journalism at Popular Science, where if nobody died in a story, I could make it funny. And I think that's true in general. Like climate is deeply serious, but it's also really absurd. And one of the things that I really loved about how to save a planet is we were really, I don't know if we were really funny, but we were at least trying to be humorous and engaging with each other. And I think humor is a big way into it, like reality is funny. We're currently living in kind of the most absurd timeline ever. If you tried to script it, it would seem fake, and you can use that like you can't like, I just, yeah, I think make it funny.

David Sirota 32:50
Any other thoughts about how to break through the Doom? Yeah? I

Kate Aronoff 32:52
mean, I don't consume content about climate change that is not work, and that is partially because it's what I do for work, and I if I have free time, I don't engage with it as much. Obviously, you can't escape it, etc, etc. But a lot of it is just really cringe. I mean, it's really, it's like, like things that are branded climate are just hard to listen to. It's often not funny. It's like any political art is really hard, in general. I think it's really hard for political art not to be bad. And I think climate in part, you know, obviously this is very close for me, but I spend all day working on it, but I think it's really hard not to, not to have it be bad. And so getting people who are genuinely funny to talk about it is important. And, you know, and I think that to what you were saying earlier, I think there is this barrier to people who, you know, spend their lives like perfecting the art of comedy, how to make people laugh, or how to entertain people in other ways, and have not spent a lot of time thinking about the science. And I think there is this sort of barrier to being able to engage in that level. It's not hard. It's not, you know, I think it's not hard for people to figure that, but I think having the sort of people with genuine talent do things that are literate in the kind of things that we're talking about in, not even climate science, just the sort of basic dynamics of climate politics, could go a long way, rather than trying to reverse engineer and have people, You know, I'm not funny. Like having people like me try to make like, interesting content about, you know, a comedy podcast or something like that, I think you have to. I don't know how to do it. I don't have, like, a real answer, but I think having people who have a skill set become literate on climate is maybe the way?

Speaker 4 34:41
Yeah. I just wanted to quickly add, if any of you are on Youtube, like, I think Raleigh Williams, he does a show called Climate town. He does a decent job of kind of trying to thread the needle between humor and like, actually good climate science. He does, like an episode a month, because he actually has decent production values.

Audience Member 34:58
Yeah. Yeah,

Mekdela Maaskal 35:00
any other thoughts? Yeah, I think it was about just how everyday people are interacting with the climate. Like, that's, to me, it's it can be both, like absurd and also so menial and routine that there isn't so much doom and gloom, if that makes sense, like I'm thinking about when the LA Fire is struck. I live in Northern California, and we haven't had a fire that has hit a city like LA, but we've had many, many fires where I live, and that have been much larger in like, their acreage, than the LA Fire. But of course, the symbolism and the destruction of La fires were the largest that we've seen. And I had family call me from Ethiopia, where my family is from, and their first question was like, why is everyone building with wood? Like, you know, it's sometimes just like those, those kinds of questions that are like, call me into like, a, oh, yeah, what? And how do we explain this and dig into this in a way that's interesting to people? And so it threw me on a whole train of the history of like capitalism and lumber in this country, and why we build with wood, and what's inhibiting us from building with Adobe or cob or all these other materials that are accessible and free and there for us. And so maybe it's just me because I'm interested in it, but it's those types of like everyday kind of questions and absurdities that really grab my attention.

Now, I would say maybe just debunking dismiss information for yourself. I remember I was reading years ago, about the wind turbines, right? And the narrative recently has been all the turbines are killing whales, which is not true. And then a few years ago, as wind turbines are killing all the birds, it's killing all the birds. And you're like, Oh, my God, that's terrible, like we need climate solutions. What's killing all the birds? Wind turbines, land based wind turbines, do kill birds, about 230,000 a year. But building collisions kill about 6 million birds a year, and cats kill about two and a half billion, sorry, birds, birds per year. Like, yeah, if you just hear that figure, like, oh, that's that sounds awful, but then you're like, Okay, cats are out there. Like, you know, really cramping the bird style. I think we're good with the wind turbine. So even things like that, it's like, okay, you know, I don't have to worry so much. So really digging in and trying to debunk those narratives, I think can make you feel a little better. I

David Sirota 37:32
feel you on the on the comedy stuff. I mean, we again, I go back to don't look up. I mean, we made a movie that was an allegory or metaphor for climate. Lot of people thought it was funny. We also blew up the world at the end. So I think those two things can exist together. I do. We're going to open it up for questions. We got 10 minutes or so for questions, if you want to raise your hand, I don't know if there's going to bring a mic over. Are we going to are we going to mic the questions? Yes. Okay, great.

Audience Member 38:01
Go for it, hi. Oh, that's a bit loud, but I wanted to return to something that you mentioned the beginning. Kate, you talked a little bit about how Taylor Swift's private jet debacle got her in a little bit of hot water. I just wanted to ask this is part of my preamble here, but I wanted to ask the entire audience if anybody knows who Mike worth is, raise your hand if you can tell me who Mike worth is. Okay, nobody here knows who that is. He's the CEO of Chevron. I say this because, as people who cover you know climate and things like this, we've kind of forgotten Aristotle's poetics. In a way, we don't tell climate stories like we tell other stories. We don't do a character and a conflict. And I think one way we can break through, and this is kind of shown in your work about Taylor Swift, is kind of naming and shaming the polluters and the people who are ruining our planet. And the fact that nobody here knows who Mike worth is kind of shows like, Wait, we don't really know who these people are. And I think that leads into people feeling like, you know, well, this problem's so big, and there's all these statistics being thrown at me, and I don't know what I can do, but in the end, it's people. There are people who sit at the top of these corporations and boards that are making these decisions. And people are malleable. They can be moved, they can be named, they can be shamed. And I think it's important in climate journalism to, you know, introduce that aspect. And I was wondering what you thought about that as well. You know, naming and shaming, per se,

David Sirota 39:42
I'll take a crack at it. I mean, I run you, I run the lever. It's accountability journalism organization. The mission of the organization is to hold people accountable. So I totally believe in naming names of the decision makers who are making the. Decisions that are bringing us to the end of the movie. Don't look up so, you know, an end of the livable ecosystem. I also think that we focus a lot on governmental decision makers. Because I think there's an argument to say that this is not in any way to absolve corporate leaders, but that corporations exist to be as rapacious and greedy as they can get away with, to make as much money as they can make. That's sort of we've that's the way our system, our society really is structured for better and in many cases for worse. The government is supposed to be the entity to prevent that behavior from running rough shot over the rest of society. That's what that's what their specific job is. So we tend to focus a lot on the lawmakers and the policies that are enabling that behavior, that are not confining or ending that behavior that is threatening the livability of the planet. So I guess that's it's not to say don't focus on corporate leaders, and only focus on the government. It's both. But I remain speaking for myself. I remain obsessed with the people who we have put in power to confine that behavior, who are instead enabling it because they have the most power to actually stop that greed and that, you know, ecocidal behavior from running rough shot over everything else.

Mekdela Maaskal 41:54
I think I'd add something to I think it's always like a both and answer, but I find holding the powerful accountable one step of illuminating some of the like systems at work that are getting us in this place. But that doesn't it leaves people that can also immobilize people, because it's like, okay, we're blaming these people for doing this thing. Okay, what are we gonna do about it now? Like, what am I gonna do today about the fact that my house burned down in LA right? I was seeing a lot of that happen after the LA files, just like a blame game. Basically, it was like, Who can we blame for this happening? And there was a lot of coverage that was just trying to point in different directions with that. And it left my many of my friends, feeling just as helpless. And so I'm always wondering, like, what actually is the information that serves people to do, to make action in their lives? It's one of the reasons, like, I got trained in wild and firefighting where I live, because I was like, I'm gonna know, I need to know personally, how to protect my home and my friends and family's homes, and I need to understand how fire moves through this landscape, and in doing that now, I have so much more information to be able to get involved in local politics. I wish that there were pieces that dug into that more like the everyday

Kate Aronoff 43:20
steps. Yeah, just, just briefly. I mean, I to maybe, maybe sort of bridge the gap between those two things. A lot of, a lot of what I do is writing about people like Mike worth and Darren woods and the CEOs of these fossil fuel and petro chemical companies. But I thinking about the LA fires, you know, I saw the thing that happens sort of, when there are climate disasters, you'll say we should name these storms or these fires after the CEOs of these companies, which I think is totally right for people who are going to be unable to rebuild their homes in Altadena or other Parts of LA County. I don't know if, like x, if Darren woods or Mike worth are the enemy. In that case, it might be the CEO of the insurance company that pulled out of California, even though it was a profitable market for them, right? It's like, I think there's a question of when to target, when and who to target, to channel people's anger in the right direction. And I am not an organizer. I, you know, do not run campaigns, but I think there is a sort of interesting thread there to pool in terms of what, where is people's anger, actually, and what will sort of make them feel like they can, you know, get involved in something. And that's less of a journalistic question than it is an organizing question,

David Sirota 44:44
I think, very quickly, one more Yes, yes. Go ahead.

Audience Member 44:48
Hi. So my question, you all mentioned that there are not that many climate journalists, and so the first part of my question is, how can the public. Like, support climate journalists so that they don't burn out, because I know that this work is very difficult. I personally support heated newsletter by Emily Atkins, and she writes a lot about burning out and has, like, had to take breaks as an independent news journalist. So curious there, what can we do to help support you all and then, because this is for creators, what recommendations or advice would you have for creators so that they don't burn out in this work talking about climate change? Thanks.

David Sirota 45:38
I mean, I have so many thoughts about burnout being in independent journalism, I guess I'll start because real quick. Look, I think covering climate, being in journalism is a burnout job. Covering climate is like a burnout on top of burnout, because you want to change things, and you can see the crisis. And the crisis, in many ways, in many cases, doesn't feel like it's changing. But I think, I guess the one tip I would have for people who are doing this kind of work, it's to try, it might sound trite, it's to try to take sort of the long view. I think we live in an instant gratification culture, right? Where social media is how much dopamine Can I get in the next 30 seconds off of posting something and seeing what happens? That climate journalism is in some ways, the ultimate long game of trying to chronicle what's going on, to try. I mean, we're still, we're still dealing in the denial phase, right? As opposed to the acceptance and what do we do phase? So combating that we haven't won even the denial part. So I think it's just about trying to lengthen the horizon of your vision in your work, which is not to say don't cover the day to day. It's to say, I'm covering the day to day, knowing that all of the days together are going to be the impact I have, not really necessarily one day now you gotta, you gotta be in kind of a Zen state like that, like and I'm typically not in that Zen state.

Speaker 4 47:17
I would say it's kind of two things. One is that climate is not just bad things, it's also good things. It's communities banding together. It's, you know, bunch of stuff. And then this is gonna sound trite, but I think it's real. Is you need to touch grass like, Oh God, I can't remember his name. He's like, a racist. He did, oh God, he did the monkey wrench King Edward Abbey has this quote about being a half hearted activist to make sure that if you want to fight for the land, you need to love the land. And that means like going out into the land. And I think that's true. And by the land, I define that as you you know, go to the beach or go hiking like I'm not. I'm being prescriptive. I'm being descriptive here. But I do think it's really important to go outside.

Mekdela Maaskal 48:01
It's such a kind question, too. Thank you. Yeah, I think sharing with journalists that you appreciate their work goes a long way, like directly, it's a lot of my day at covering climate now is like letting journalists know that they're appreciated and they're just something that they've done that has impacted someone else in our organization, another journalist or a person. And then also, there's a few funds I'm not remembering them right now top of my head that supply mental health and psychological support to journalists. And if you have extra funds, donating to those is really helpful as well. Yeah.

Sorry. Go ahead. I would just say, you know, arming people with education and knowing that we live in this new climate normal, so they can best prepare themselves and their families, I think, is a good takeaway. You know, in an example is as extreme as you know, la wildfires, but something as simple as like the lengthening allergy season. So you know, if you have a kid that has allergies, or you do, you can have medicine on hand, or you can best prepare yourself to kind of navigate these situations that climate change is intensifying and enhancing in our everyday lives. And a big way of helping people be prepared for that is to educate them.

Kate Aronoff 49:13
Yeah, just quickly. I mean, I think it's hard to disentangle what is burnout inducing about climate journalism, specifically from journalism, this failing industry we happen to be in that, you know, very hard to get publications funded, very hard to get any sort of long form, interesting journalism funded, and so on and so forth. And also, you know, I have a wonderful psychoanalyst who has helped me a lot for reasons, for things climate related and otherwise and yeah, I think giving people the means to access that, because therapy is expensive and almost never covered by insurance and inaccessible for so many people, is great, and I think everyone you know should maybe give it a shot

David Sirota 49:56
at therapy. I want to thank everyone for joining us. I want to thank. The sponsors of this panel, and I want to encourage everybody who's here to echo this support climate journalism and also think creatively. If you're a creator about how to put climate into the stories you're telling, doesn't always have to be in the foreground. It should always as much as possible, at least be in the background, because it's in the background of all of our lives. Thanks again.

Arjun Singh 50:29
Thanks for listening to another episode of lever time. This episode was produced by me Arjun Singh, with editing support from Joel Warner and Lucy Dean Stockton. Our theme music was composed by Nick Campbell. We'll be back next week with another episode of lever time you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai