Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman was startled to find the press room at the U.N. Climate Change Conference eerily quiet this week. Rows and rows of computers sat unused. At last year's climate meeting in Copenhagen, the room was buzzing with hundreds of reporters.
Today, however, climate change seems to be a forgotten story. Thus, it was not surprising to find that the major TV broadcast networks in the United States seemed to be ignoring the conference. Democracy Now! producers reviewed the transcripts of last week's evening news broadcasts on ABC, CBS and NBC in the United States, and found that the Cancún climate talks were not mentioned a single time.
Eventually, a lonely reporter ventured into the media center, giving Amy Goodman someone to talk to. Oliver Morton, the energy and environment editor for The Economist, talked about the difficulty of tracking down U.N. diplomats at the vast Moon Palace Hotel and compared it to his experience reporting from Copenhagen.
Democracy Now! will be reporting from the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Cancún all week. For the complete interview, transcripts and audio/video podcasts, visit Democracy Now! Click here for our complete coverage of the climate change talks. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.