BusinessClimate ChangeWall Street Journal climate change denial

Wall Street Journal Ads Call Out The Paper’s Bias On Climate Change

Well, this is awkward.
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By 

National Reporter, HuffPost

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Beginning Tuesday and running until the end of the Republican National Convention in July, the most widely circulated print newspaper in the United States will run a series of ads calling out its own bias against climate change.

The ads are being paid for by a group calling itself the "Partnership for Responsible Growth" and will run twice a week on The Wall Street Journal's Op-Ed page, a place long inhospitable to any sort of science-based climate pieces.

(The Journal's climate change denial isn't just limited to the opinion pages, either: A 2015 study conducted by researchers at Rutgers, the University of Michigan and the University of Oslo found WSJ rarely mentions the threats posed by climate change, and, when it does, tends to downplay them.)

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Rupert Murdoch, Chairman of the News Corporation, which owns the Wall Street Journal.
Pool via Getty Images

The Journal did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The first advertisement, published Tuesday, recalls comments made by Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson in 2012 in which he acknowledged "that increasing CO2 emissions in the atmosphere is going to have ... a warming impact," and as a result we would see shifting weather patterns impact crop production and rising sea levels.

"If the CEO of the world’s largest oil company accepts the basic physics that humans are heating the climate with excess CO2, why won’t the editorial board of this newspaper?" The ad asks, rhetorically. "Isn’t it about time?" 

Other topics in the series include a basic primer on the physics of CO2 and how it affects the atmosphere, how rising sea levels might impact the world's major cities, statements from military leaders who see climate change as a "threat multiplier," and more.

“If the CEO of the world’s largest oil company accepts the basic physics that humans are heating the climate with excess CO2, why won’t the editorial board of this newspaper?”

“The Wall Street Journal is the nation’s largest and most influential newspaper,” former Rep. Walt Minnick (D-Idaho), a co-founder of the Partnership, explained in a release. “What business and Republican leaders are unlikely to have read on its opinion pages is neither the latest science, nor that there is a bipartisan, business-friendly way to combat climate change. If The Journal won’t cover it, we will.”

Last December, in response to the historic climate change agreement in Paris, the WSJ's editorial board sneered, "if climate change really does imperil the Earth, and we doubt it does, nothing coming out of a gaggle of governments and the United Nations will save it."

In sharp contrast to The Journal, last month the editorial board of the Financial Times, a competing publication, predicted the oil industry is facing "a future of slow and steady decline."

"Instead of railing against climate policies, or paying them lip-service while quietly defying them with investment decisions," the FT's editorial board wrote, "the oil companies will serve their investors and society better if they accept the limits they face, and embrace a future of long-term decline."

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story said the Partnership for Responsible Growth's ads target the Journal's reporting. If fact, they are meant to call out the paper's editorial board. 

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Before You Go

Countries Facing Greatest Climate Change Risks
Bangladesh(01 of09)
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Climate change will inundate Bangladesh -- one of the world's most densely populated countries with some of the least arable land per capita -- with “extreme river floods, more intense tropical cyclones, rising sea levels and very high temperatures,” a 2013 World Bank Report warned. Floods, tropical cyclones, storm surges and droughts are already becoming more frequent in coastal areas and in arid and semi-arid regions, the European Union's Global Climate Change Alliance reports.

"For my country, Bangladesh, the goal of combatting climate change and its impacts is crucial, as we are on the frontline of this global threat," Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina wrote on The Huffington Post in September, noting that the nation has experienced 50 percent more rainfall than average this year, causing serious damage to crops. "The pledges on reducing emissions submitted for the Paris climate meeting must be measurable and verifiable."

In the photo above from 2011, a man affected by floods in Bangladesh's southwest Satkhira district stands on high land waiting for a rescue boat. (credit:Probal Rashid via Getty Images)
Chad(02 of09)
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Verisk Maplecroft's Climate Change Vulnerability Index and the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index rank Chad as the No. 1 and No. 2 most climate change-threatened nation, respectively.

As one of the poorest countries in Africa, Chad is not well-equipped to handle catastrophic climate disasters. Extreme weather events in the country may take the form of increasingly severe droughts or devastating floods, the Global Climate Change Alliance reports, and will take a huge toll on Chad's agriculture, livestock breeding, fisheries, health and housing.

The most striking symbol of climate change in the region is Lake Chad, which has shrunk to nearly one-twentieth of its original size since 1963, according to the U.N.

In the photo above, a boy floats in what was once one of the world's largest lakes. Other countries bordering Lake Chad -- Niger, Nigeria and Cameroon -- are also severely affected by climate change and the lake's shrinking size.

“In all, the experience of countries sharing the Lake Chad further illustrates the mutual challenge we face today and which must be collectively addressed without further delay," Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari said Monday in Paris. (credit:Klavs Bo via Getty Images)
Pacific island nations(03 of09)
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Low-lying Pacific island nations face the daunting possibility of being completely underwater if climate change isn't addressed in time.

Kiribati President Anote Tong, whose 33-island nation of 105,000 people has an average elevation of less than 6.5 feet above sea level, said at the Paris summit Monday that Fiji has already offered to shelter its residents in the event that the islands become uninhabitable, Slate reported.

Pictured in the photo above from September, Kiribati villager Beia Tiim said the extreme high tide that used to come every three or four years now comes every three months, and most wells are underwater.

But Fiji is already faces its own climate disaster. At a gathering of Pacific island nations last month, The Guardian reported, Fiji foreign minister Ratu Inoke Kubuabola said the country was seeing a re-emergence of climate-influenced diseases, including typhoid, dengue fever, leptospirosis, and diarrheal illnesses. (credit:Jonas Gratzer via Getty Images)
Niger(04 of09)
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Niger is considered one of the most climate-affected countries because of its high-stakes agriculture sector, which engages more than 80 percent of the population, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

"Niger is indeed one of the world’s most vulnerable countries because of its exposure to climate risks and its landlocked position," World Bank economist El Hadj Adama Touré explained in 2013. "Compounding this situation are the risks it faces from both internal and regional political extremism. One way or the other, all these factors affect the performance of the agricultural sector and therefore food and nutritional security."

Resources are stretched in Niger, which has the world's highest birth rate at 7.6 births per woman, and is predicted to double its population by 2031.

In the photo above from 2005, a Nigerian boy works an agriculture field with his father. (credit:ISSOUF SANOGO via Getty Images)
Haiti(05 of09)
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Haiti is a "striking example of how this combination of physical exposure and socioeconomic conditions could lead to extreme climate change vulnerability," Columbia University's Earth Institute explained.

Haiti's climate vulnerability is amplified by over-exploitation of its forest, soil and water resources -- all of which will be further strained by a changing climate, the Global Climate Change Alliance noted.

Haiti lies in a hurricane corridor and is predicted to face more frequent and more severe hurricanes as climate change intensifies, according to Columbia.

In the photo above, a Port-au-Prince resident drains muddy water from a flooded house in 2012 after Hurricane Sandy brought extreme rains. (credit:AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)
Democratic Republic of Congo(06 of09)
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Climate change is likely to strike agriculture hard and increase the spread of disease in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In a country where nearly 90 percent of the people rely on agriculture for their livelihood, climate change will likely wreak havoc on crops with more intense rainfall and floods, landslides and soil erosion in the central Congo basin, according to a BBC report. The country can expect the opposite in the south, where the Katanga region will likely see its rainy season shorten by at least two months by 2020.

Malaria and cardiovascular and water-borne diseases also may increase as a result of the warming climate.

In the photo above, a Congolese man helps plant casava between acacia trees that will keep carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere as part of the first "carbon-well" to be registered by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. (credit:AFP via Getty Images)
Afghanistan(07 of09)
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The U.N. identified Afghanistan as one of the countries most at risk of climate change and implemented a $6 million climate change initiative in the mountainous, landlocked, dry country in 2012.

Climate change increases Afghanistan's likelihood of drought, floods and desertification. The warming climate will likely disrupt agricultural and security developments after three decades of war, warns the Global Climate Change Alliance.

In the photo above, an Afghan girl walks with her sheep down a dusty street in Kabul in 2007. (credit:SHAH MARAI via Getty Images)
Central African Republic(08 of09)
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The Central African Republic, one of the world's poorest nations, is experiencing intense civil unrest following the ousting of its leader that will only get worse with climate change.

“By building adaptive capacity, you’re really taking care of some of the development issues, and by bringing people together in a genuinely participatory process, you can really contribute to reducing the conflict and tension within the country,” Denis Sonwa, a scientist and agro-ecologist at Center for International Forestry Research, said.

Agriculture in the country is "still artisanal" without irrigation systems, Sonwa explained, which keeps it dependent on the rainy season.

Meanwhile, recurring floods in Central African Republic capital Bangui cause on average $7 million in damages and losses a year, The Guardian noted.

In the photo above, Central African Republic troops stand guard at a building used for joint meetings between them and U.S. Army special forces, in Obo, Central African Republic. (credit:Ben Curtis/AP)
Guinea-Bissau(09 of09)
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Climate change will have severe consequences in Guinea-Bissau, which is largely made up of low, coastal areas and faces intense solar radiation, a government report warned.

The nation's reliance on rain for its irrigation-free agriculture system is already becoming a problem.

"Rainfall is becoming increasingly irregular in space and time, a phenomenon accompanied by increase in temperature, thus causing low-yield agriculture, soil degradation by intensification of the phenomenon of evapo-transpiration," the report noted.

In the photo above, farmers plow rice fields outside Contuboel, Guinea-Bissau. (credit:Bengt Geijerstam via Getty Images)
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