The petition to ABC News, CBS News and NBC News reads: “Cover the climate crisis with the urgency it deserves.”

There’s an emergency happening; it touches every corner of the globe, will irrevocably change life on this planet, and has the potential to kill millions. But if you watch the daily news, you may not be aware of how serious it is. No, it’s not the pandemic, it’s climate change.

Media watchdog Media Matters has just released their 2020 assessment on how the major broadcasters on both sides of the political spectrum have covered the climate crisis over the past year. Their conclusion? Horribly.

Tell corporate media to cover the climate crisis with the urgency it deserves. Sign our petition.

With all the hype on green energy and the electric vehicle revolution, one might be fooled into thinking that the crisis is waning, but that is far from the truth. Governments, businesses, and everyday citizens aren’t doing nearly enough to stave off the looming global disaster. Yet, when Media Matters evaluated corporate media coverage, they found that it had actually dropped rather than increased — from 0.7% of network airtime in 2019 to a dismal 0.4% in 2020.

Even the increasing onslaught of climate-change-related disasters in the U.S — the devastating fires in the West, the cold wave that tore through the South, haven’t pushed the networks to give global warming the priority it deserves.

Tell ABC, CBS and NBC it’s time to put the spotlight on climate change. Sign our petition now.

With the pandemic taking the front page almost daily, one might think that any other issue, including climate change, would understandably be put on the back burner. But the roots of the COVID-19 crisis can be directly connected to the climate emergency, and major broadcasters repeatedly failed to make that clear to their viewers.

The exploitation of natural resources, as well as the constant encroachment of humans further and further into animal habitats, not only destroy precious carbon absorbing forests that help stabilize the Earth’s climate, but also bring us in closer contact with wild animals that often have diseases our bodies are ill-equipped to fight, including COVID-19.

Tell major broadcasters to do their jobs and educate the public about the threat of climate change. Sign the petition.