‘Media should cover everyday consequences of climate change’

ISTANBUL (AA) – Portugal’s former minister of Europe on Thursday used an Istanbul forum on environment to raise awareness among media outlets to cover everyday consequences of climate change.

“So we need the media to detect these everyday consequences into the political waves” and release the “full picture,” said Bruno Macaes, addressing a session titled “Climate Crisis and Responsibility Sharing” as part of Türkiye’s first Environment Forum organized by Anadolu Agency.

The session was moderated by Yusuf Erim of TRT World and discussed the differences and the justice of policies and implementations that countries have carried out regarding the climate crisis.

Macaes said climate change is “becoming obvious” and “the full picture has to be given by the media together with scientific evidence.”

“If you Google what is the day in human history where we use more fossil fuels, it is not five years or ten years ago. It's today and tomorrow will be the day you're going up,” he added.

Media should “stop focusing too much on the science,” he urged. “There is no one denying the science anymore.”

He complained of insufficient coverage of “the consequences on the ground for normal people for everyday life.”

Macaes said he just came back from the Latin American country of Colombia, where even “a taxi driver brings up climate change” because they see how the weather in Bogota has changed drastically.

For her part, Sezen Yesil, Meta's Türkiye and Azerbaijan Public Policy head, explained her company’s sustainability goals until 2030.

“We carry out awareness raising activities by publishing the publications of reliable organizations.

“We are trying to fix the well-known but wrong issues. For example, people still think that there is no consensus among scientists about climate change, but we tell people that there is a 97% consensus among scientists,” she said.

She also gave information on studies that they have carried out jointly with Yale University, such as global climate change public survey.

“We have more than 3 billion users worldwide so it is very easy for us to do these surveys,” she added.

Yesil also shared details of one their recent survey conducted with the participation of more than 100,000 Facebook users.

According to this survey, she said, the level of knowledge about climate change is still not sufficient and it also varies from country to country, like it is very high in Finland, while low in Nigeria or Congo.

The countries most concerned about climate change are Mexico and Chile, she added.

Erik Solheim, president of Green Belt and Road Institute, also addressed the session.

The one-day forum aims to tackle issues such as the need to create a new media language on environmental and climate issues, international news agencies raising global awareness, the duties of traditional and new media outlets, and the pursuit of environmental awareness in new news areas.