COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW – 30/07/2019
Andrew McCormick
FOR YEARS, CONVENTIONAL WISDOM has held that climate coverage is not especially good for business. The story always seemed too abstract, or too technical, to command attention. “It was pathetic,” David Gelber, who for decades was a producer at CBS’s 60 Minutes, says, reflecting on the consistent absence of environmental reporting in mainstream outlets. “It baffles me. This is such a dramatic story. When they write the history of journalism, this is going to be a very long chapter, the refusal to look at this issue.” In 2011, Gelber left CBS along with a fellow 60 Minutes producer, Joel Bach, to develop Years of Living Dangerously, which cast celebrities (Harrison Ford, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Don Cheadle) as climate-journalism field correspondents. It aired for two seasons on two different networks; the show drew praise and won an Emmy, but couldn’t sustain interest from studio executives.