Why Did NPR Fire Its Climate Editor?

“It is a death sentence for us if larger nations continue to open new fossil fuel projects,” Feleti Teo, the prime minister of Tuvalu, said in 2024. Located roughly halfway between Australia and Hawaii, Tuvalu is a nation of extremely low-lying reef islands and atolls. Sea level rise—driven primarily by burning fossil fuels, which boosts global temperatures and melts polar ice sheets—threatens to put those islands and atolls underwater within the lifetimes of Tuvalu’s current inhabitants. No wonder Tuvalu, along with other Pacific island nations, will co-host a follow-up meeting to the landmark First Conference on Transitioning Away From Fossil Fuels held six weeks ago in Santa Marta, Colombia.So it comes as a shock to learn that Tuvalu’s government is heavily invested in fossil fuels, as revealed by an investigation published on May 28 by the global news agency Agence France-Presse. The Tuvalu Trust Fund, the nation’s largest financial asset, according to AFP, “has invested in coal mining, gas exploration and the world’s largest crude oil refinery,” reported correspondent Steven Trask, referring to the Jamnagar petrochemical complex in India. Income from the fund helps pay for government programs in Tuvalu, but it’s unclear how aware government officials were about the investments. Since 2022, the Tuvalu Trust Fund, which was first established in 1987, has been operated by Mercer, a consulting firm based in New York, which told AFP it did not comment on its clients’ portfolios. Presented with AFP’s findings, a spokesperson for the trust said it would review the fund’s holdings and continue “to seek to minimize its exposure to fossil fuel reserves and carbon emissions.”AFP’s exposé points to a jaw-dropping conflict in an investment portfolio for a nation that is quite literally disappearing as a result of climate change. It is also public-minded journalism at its best. It holds power to account. It reveals surprising information about two vital, often overlooked issues: sea level rise and fossil fuel production. It notes the implications not only for Tuvalu but for the broader world. And it accomplishes all of this at a time when some news outlets, especially in the U.S., are retreating from the climate story, as a recent white paper by Covering Climate Now, or CCNow, shows. AFP is demonstrating the value of staying the course.In the U.S., National Public Radio also offered fine climate reporting recently, airing a 19-minute podcast on May 24 that challenged the notion that the Trump administration’s hostility to climate action makes progress impossible. Julia Simon, NPR’s climate solutions correspondent, shared audio from the Santa Marta conference to illustrate what’s happening outside the U.S. Then it was off to Denver to hear about a city program to heat and cool buildings more sustainably. Then to Massachusetts, where volunteers plant carbon-absorbing “pocket forests” on abandoned land. Citing one of the studies behind CCNow’s 89 Percent Project, Simon concluded by reporting that “80 percent of people worldwide … want stronger climate action from their governments.”That widespread public sentiment makes what happened next all the more head-scratching: Four days later, NPR fired its climate editor and disbanded its climate desk. “Today, I was laid off by NPR,” Neela Banerjee, the head of NPR’s climate desk, posted on LinkedIn. She added, “The climate desk no longer exists separately but has been folded into the National Desk.” In other words, NPR still plans to cover climate change but without the focus and expertise provided by a dedicated team. Simon remains on staff.NPR’s climate desk was shut as part of broader budget cuts management said were necessary after Congress voted last year to eliminate federal subsidies for public media. But NPR’s “commitment to climate journalism has not changed,” NPR spokesperson Juliet Barbara said, in a statement to the Climate-Colored Goggles newsletter. NPR “has not eliminated our Climate team,” she added, “we have reorganized our newsroom.” Nevertheless, it’s hard not to conclude that NPR saw dedicated climate expertise as nonessential.At a time much of the planet is broiling in unseasonable heat, with worse to come this summer, that is a grievous misreading not only of the climate crisis but of the public’s interest in tackling it. CCNow’s white paper identified a number of news outlets—AFP, along with The Guardian, The New York Times, CNN, AP, and more—that are bucking the trend of deprioritizing the climate story. Most of them employ a climate team because it makes for more informed, engaging coverage.