Where climate journalism is now: Interview with Emily Atkin, the fire behind the Heated climate newsletter

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).FundingThis research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.FundingThis research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.Notes1. See https://heated.world/about.2. See “Introducing: The Fossil Fuel Ad Anthology,” Heated, Emily Atkin, December 13, 2019 https://heated.world/p/introducing-the-fossil-fuel-ad-anthology.3. See “Good Grief,” Columbia Journalism Review, Spring 2020, by Emily Atkin. https://www.cjr.org/special_report/good_grief.php.4. A few months before this interview, Atkin hired Arielle Samuelson, “a mid-career journalist, older than I am, whose judgement I could trust” to help with putting out Heated every week. Atkin said: “Heated is worker-owned. Arielle and I make the same amount of money, take the same amount of stock, have the same percentage of profits, and we leave the rest to someday hire another person.”5. See “Who gets arrested for climate crimes? People protesting the climate crisis are getting arrested around the world while actual alleged climate criminals walk free,” Heated, Emily Atkin and Arielle Samuelson, July 18, 2023 https://heated.world/p/who-gets-arrested-for-climate-crimes.6. The piece says “Musk is popularizing electric cars so we can keep driving everywhere. Gates is pushing carbon capture so we can keep using fossil fuels. Bezos is trying to move millions of humans to space while extracting energy from other planets so we can keep emitting carbon, but on other planets.” See “The climate colonizer mentality,” Heated, Emily Atkin, October 12, 2021 https://heated.world/p/the-climate-colonizer-mentality.7. See “When Exxon used Mickey Mouse to promote fossil fuels,” Heated, Emily Atkin, March 5, 2020 https://heated.world/p/when-exxon-used-mickey-mouse-to-promote.8. Atkin has worked fulltime at a number of journalism outlets including The New Republic, Sinclair Broadcast Group, and ThinkProgress, among others. Her freelance writing has appeared in places such as Slate, Mother Jones, Sojourners, CityLab, and The Hill. In addition, she’s appeared on MSNBC, CPAN, and NPR.9. See “Cranky Uncle: The smartphone game designed to fight climate denial,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, December 4, 2019, by John Cook https://thebulletin.org/2019/12/cranky-uncle-the-smartphone-game-designed-to-fight-climate-denial/.10. See “Peter Davis of the British Antarctic Survey on changes in the Thwaites Glacier,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May 1, 2020, by Dan Drollette Jr. https://thebulletin.org/premium/2020–05/peter-davis-of-the-british-antarctic-survey-on-changes-in-the-thwaites-glacier/.11. In 1991, a front group for a collection of fossil fuel and utility companies calling itself “Informed Citizens for the Environment” ran a series of ads claiming that the evidence for climate change was “weak,” the proof “non-existent,” the climate models inaccurate, and that the physics was “open to debate”—while knowing the opposite, as subsequent records revealed. For more, see “The forgotten oil ads that told us climate change was nothing,” The Guardian, November 18, 2021, by Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/18/the-forgotten-oil-ads-that-told-us-climate-change-was-nothing.12. See “ExxonMobil lobbyists filmed saying oil giant’s support for carbon tax a PR ploy,” The Guardian, June 30, 2021, by Chris McGreal.https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/30/exxonmobil-lobbyists-oil-giant-carbon-tax-pr-ploy.13. See “Heaven or High Water: Selling Miami’s Last 50 years,” Popula on-line, Sarah Miller, April 2019. https://popula.com/2019/04/02/heaven-or-high-water/.14. See Drilled News at https://drilled.media/.Additional informationFundingThis research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.Notes on contributorsDan DrolletteDan Drollette Jr. is the executive editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. He is a science writer/editor and foreign correspondent who has filed stories from every continent except Antarctica. His stories have appeared in Scientific American, International Wildlife, MIT’s Technology Review, Natural History, Cosmos, Science, New Scientist, and the BBC Online, among others. He was a TEDx speaker to Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and held a Fulbright Postgraduate Traveling Fellowship to Australia—where he lived for a total of four years. For three years, he edited CERN’s on-line weekly magazine about high-energy subparticle physics, in Geneva, Switzerland, where his office was 100 yards from the injection point of the Large Hadron Collider.