Media Storm - S4E2 Ulez: Pollution or politics? Plus Eurovision boycott and Voter ID

Episode Date: May 16, 2024

The climate crisis is wreaking havoc in headlines this week: heatwaves in southeast Asia, flooding in Kenya and Brazil, and exotic spiders smuggling their way into the UK - all this marks a record leap in atmospheric CO2. One climate-related story has haunted UK news cycles for almost five years: The London mayor’s controversial Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ). Yet it's not reported as a climate story at all - so much as a political one. This week, we're joined by Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, mother of the Ella, the only person in the world with pollution listed as her legal cause of death. She tells us air pollution is a human story, not a political one. We're also joined by Akshat Rathi, award winning climate reporter at Bloomberg Green, host of the podcast 'Zero', and author of Climate Capitalism, to discuss solutions-focussed climate reporting. Plus, your round up of the headlines through a Media Storm lens - we discuss Rwanda, Voter ID, the power of boycotts at Eurovision and The Great Escape festival, and why no journalist should doorstop national treasure Rylan's mum. Hosts: Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia) Music: Samfire (@soundofsamfire) Assistant Producer: Katie Grant Support Media Storm on Patreon patreon.com/MediaStormPodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to Media Storm. This week, Matilda has made herself ill by not sleeping more than four hours a night for basically the whole last week. It's okay, I've literally stuffed so many things down my throat and up my nose that you probably can't hear it too much. No, you do actually sound better than you did yesterday. But that is because we're trying to get a lot of prep done before she goes off for a couple of weeks to do some exciting top secret filming. More is to be revealed soon. So this means that next week there will be a guest host and that guest host is drum roll.

Oh, very exciting. Coco Khan host of Pod Save the UK and she'll be joining me in the studio. It's very exciting but it's also very sad that Matilda won't be present for a couple of weeks. I'm honestly scared that I'm going to come back and you're going to be like, I'm with Coco now. Media Storm is Coco and Helena.

I will have my revenge. You'll create a different podcast, Matilda's Revenge, a mini-series, Matilda Storm. Well, that's what's going on with us, but let's turn our attention to the rest of the world. Israel has pushed into Raffa displacing a further half a million people. Russia has pushed towards Kharkiv, and Stormy Daniels has pushed closer than anyone yet towards getting Trump behind bars. The Crown lost eight BAFTA nominations, Eurovision happened, and a twin who's saved her sister from a crocodile, was given a bravery medal by the king. But what are some important stories listeners might have missed? I have one. My Google Alerts showed me an absentee

story that feels pretty damn relevant here in the UK, and that is that the Rwandan army has been blamed by the US for a deadly bombing in a refugee camp in the Democratic Republic of Congo. An allegation Rwanda denies, but this feels pretty topical to me, given that the U.S. UK has just defined into law that Rwanda is a safe country for refugees. I mean, it is exactly this lack of transparent, open assessment that makes it really hard to trust anything the government is saying about their Rwanda deportation deal. Just think how terrifying this must be for the people currently detained to board those first flights to Kigali as refugees.

I honestly had not heard that story until this very moment. I'm sure it's the lack of mainstream coverage, but perhaps I was more focused on some music news this week. Were you listening to Sad Indy Dad Rock again? Okay, while that is what I do with most of my time, I was actually talking more about Eurovision, which don't worry before anyone comes at me, I boycotted. But it got me thinking about the power of boycotts.

So people were calling on organisers to block Israel's participation in Eurovision. And when they didn't, they called on the public to boycott. the show. Oh yeah, did we see that materialise? Was that felt by Eurovision? It was apparently Eurovision's viewing ratings plummeted. Last year there was a peak of 11 million watches and this year 8.46 million. Wow. And it's not just Eurovision. Currently, as you're listening to this, the Great Escape Music Festival is taking place. It's a really well-loved music festival in Brighton with many acts, big and small. And currently, as we're recording this, over 100, and 20 acts have now dropped out of the Great Escape in solidarity with Palestine.

The Great Escape is sponsored by Barclays, which has been a source of controversy amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza because of the bank's financial investment in companies that supply arms to Israel. Now, this was organised by the Bands Boycott Barclays Movement, who are supported by the BDS movement. The BDS movement is boycott divestment sanctions, and it works to end international support for Israel's oppression of Palestinians and pressure Israel to comply with international law.

And I was on Instagram and I saw what one of the organisers of band Boycott Barkley said about the power of boycotts. Every time you get an artist to pull out and make a public statement about, you know, the reasons why they're boycotting the Great Escape. That's like free political education for hundreds of thousands of people. Every single artist, like some of these artists have over 100,000 followers. on Instagram and they're like putting it across all their platforms and like I'm so sure for so many of these fans it'll be like the first time they've heard of BDS won't be the last well it's

really impactful hearing that because I do think it's easy to forget the power of collective action it's not something that we see reported in the media a lot that grassroots mobilisation another story that caught my eye an old drum the government keeps on banging on Sunday foreign secretary David Cameron told Laura Kunsberg on her BBC show that the BBC should reconsider its practice of referring to Hamas as militants rather than terrorists. It's a very interesting debate and listeners can actually learn more about it in our earlier episode, One Man's Terrorist, Resistance and Radicalism in Gaza and Beyond. But I was tickled by the Telegraph's headline, which read, BBC ignores Lord Cameron's demand to brand Hamas terrorists, as if the BBC

was doing something outrageous and not just sticking with independent off-com guidelines rather than simply deferring obediently to the government's orders on how they should do journalism. Is it just me or is it super weird to refer to the Foreign Secretary with his peerage title, Lord Cameron, like everyone knows who David Cameron is. And it implies he's in some way like infallible. I don't know, it's just something about the weird, the wording. It's the Lord Cameron demands. He demands this as if he's like giving a order from a higher power.

Yeah, it's like an edict from above, not like a government position that we should fully be scrutinising and holding to account. Maybe we have to do something on like Britain's weird relationship with nobility down the line. Yes. Anyway, time for one more? Yes, one more. Oh my God. And this is a national outrage, okay?

Rylan. Oh, my God. TV presenter and one of my favourite people on the planet even though I've never met him actually that's a lie I've met him once

and I don't think he saw me because he was about three foot taller than me yeah he was like looking down like hello I'll be off now this actually does have a point okay I promise I don't just want to talk about Ryland Ryland tweeted a message

calling out a journalist for door stopping his mum to ask if he was dating Judge Rinder he wrote in a tweet she said you was a lovely man but she's 71 years old and it makes me feel slightly uncomfortable

now doorstepping is one of the tabloid practices that has given journalists such a bad name and it's something I've heard that young journalists have been forced to do early on in their career at certain tabloids to somehow like prove their worth so yeah

I think we also need a future episode on like the shit junior journalists have to do and the issue of doorstopping Okay, I see what you did there, but be honest, you're just wanting any excuse to get Ryland on the podcast. I love Ryland. He's a national bloody treasure. Listeners, you can learn more about Helena's one woman war against the British media's treatment of Ryland in our series one episode on drugs. I love how frequently Ryland comes up on this podcast. I didn't even know who he was until that first time.

I know. You know nothing about pop culture, but I'm slowly teaching you. You are. But other than Ryland, tell us, Matilda, what is our main story? for today. Today, we are covering the climate emergency, because it's been unleashing havoc in headlines around the world this week. We've seen deadly heat in Southeast Asia, flooding in Kenya, flooding in Brazil, tornadoes in the US, and a major reading just in from an observatory in Hawaii, which logged the

atmosphere's biggest annual leap in carbon dioxide levels. Why? Humans are burning more fossil fuels than ever, and the ever. El Nino weather event is causing ecosystems to release the warming gas at ever faster rates. Meanwhile, here in the UK, we now have exotic spiders. What? It is literally so warm that they are smuggling themselves from the Caribbean to Cornwall in people's luggage. Oh my gosh, that is absolutely terrifying.

I can't think of some other stories worth mentioning, though, on the climate crisis. 31 oil and gas licenses were granted, which will allow offshore operators to extract fossil fuels equivalent to 600 million barrels of oil for years after the net zero target date of 2050. This also came one week after the High Court ruled the government's climate policy was unlawful. The opposition party backtracked on its biggest green pledge in a general election year and a mayoral debate was fought over not crime, not healthcare, but an old. ultra-low emission zone in London. And still, no one knows how to recycle. No, oh, but thank God, Rishi Sunak is coming to the rescue to make sure we only need to have one bin in any household.

Just one bin? Yeah, like, I genuinely think the Tories are so desperate to stay in power. They think they can win the election by putting a policy on us of only having to use one bin. No, I did see this. It was Rishi Sunak was like, I will not, I will not. I will not rule in a country where people are forced to separate their rubbish into seven piles. I will not do it.

It's so funny. Anyway, look, these stories are often buried in our media, not the bin, the climate crisis stories. Which bin, though? Which bin? They're often buried in our media and they're isolated from the global context. And we're seeing a strange thing happen. Many of these stories are not reported. as climate stories at all.

Rather, they hit our media as political stories, primed and ready for a media storm. Either the saviour of Londoners' health or the destroyer of their personal finances and lives. It's just simply a cash grab on motorists. But their solution to everything is to tax people. On the campaign fuelled by anti-U-led sentiment and our government is failing on their energy policies

and their climate pledges. But you'd accept, wouldn't you, that it's a very complicated discussion. discussion. Welcome to Media Storm, the news podcast that starts with the people who are normally asked last. I'm Matilda Mallinson. And I'm Helen Awadia. This week's Media Storm. Politics or Pollution. Ulaz and Climate Change in the News. Welcome to the Media Storm studio. We are joined today by two very special guests. Our first guest is the founder, director and trustee of the Ella Roberta Foundation. She's one of the most prominent advocates for clean air worldwide. She started campaigning as soon as she realized the role of pollution in her daughter Ella's death.

Her determination to highlight the human cost of air pollution has led to her addressing audiences all over the world and now here on Media Storm. We are truly honoured to be joined by Rosamund Adu Kissy Deborah. Thank you very much for having me. Our second guest is an award-winning climate reporter at Bloomberg News. He is the host of the podcast Zero, exploring the policies, tactics and. and clean technologies taking us to a future of zero emissions. He's also the author of Climate Capitalism, the book which tracks the unlikely heroes

driving the fight against climate change. We're sure to talk about that a bit more later on, but for now, welcome to the studio, Ushad Rati. Nice to be here, thank you. Now, there are many stories we could pick for this discussion, but we wanted to focus on one in particular, purely because there is just so much to say, and that is Ulaz, a local traffic.

policy. Oh Lord, you said it all, Rosamond. It is supposedly a local traffic policy, but it's been spun into a scandal of sensational proportions. Ulaz, an acronym for the ultra-low emission zone, is an attempt to improve air quality in London by establishing an area free of the most polluting vehicles by charging drivers a daily fee to bring them in. It was introduced in central London in 2019 and then expanded last summer to include most of Greater London. On the face of it, Yulez is a cross-party climate policy conceived by a conservative London mayor, Boris Johnson,

and implemented by his Labour successor, Sadiq Khan. But in reality, Yulez has become a political cage-fight drama dominating British electoral politics. And what a point there straightaway. I'm not sure many people actually know that it was an initial conservative policy. Akshach, maybe you can explain to listeners why Yulez has been so controversial in our media. Because ULAS requires drivers to pay a fee to bring it in is not popular.

Nobody wants to pay any extra money than they already were paying. But then it's the government's job to explain the benefits that will come from that process. Reduces traffic, reduces air pollution. Having had ULAS for a few years, we can actually look at data and look at the air pollution levels in London. They have fallen. And another thing to note is that that policy has now been copied by other cities. So there are benefits, but because it starts off from a place of punishing somebody doing something bad, that punishment is seen as a thing to hang your hat on and complain about it.

I don't know. I think I'm going to go back further. I think we can actually link it to my daughter's death. Boris Johnson, good morning, Mr. Johnson. Boris Johnson did a study of schools. I think 563 of them or 68 of them were in areas of high air pollution. illegal levels of air pollution. Now, unfortunately for my late daughter, I think Mr Johnson realised Yule's wasn't very popular and he also wanted to be a popular Prime Minister. Now, rather than tackle it,

what he did apparently, and I say that so I don't get sued by him, is he opened a draw and he put that research in there and left it for the next mayor to deal with. In the meantime, a quarter of a million children in London have asthma. and they continue to die.

Something we will never know. If Mr. Johnson had carried on Yuley's doing what Sadiq Khan had done, whether my daughter would have lived, we would never know that. So this is a very serious matter. Air pollution is about health. It's not about politics. And the way it has been manipulated, goodness me, it is very clever.

What people need to say is, oh yeah, in the 50s, I could wipe it off my shoes, which is true. but now the air pollution is different. It is invisible, and I call it a silent killer. And it's linked to so many illnesses, especially respiratory, and you need to be worried about that. Your politicians are lying to you. I think that something that we also gather from this is pollution.

The role that pollution has in this story is so underplayed. I mean, this has been reported in our news as a business story, an electoral story. It hasn't been a climate story. It's been reported as a completely. conspiracy story. I mean, just a couple days ago, G.B. News published the headline, ULES, to be discussed by Sadiq Khan with the Pope in Behind Closed Doors Meeting. The key context that G.B. News failed to mention in that headline is that the Vatican

happens to be hosting a climate summit for mayors around the world. So why is our media painting this as an economic and political firestorm? Ultimately, what you do so well, Rosamund is remind us why, at its core, Ulaz, is a climate policy. Maybe you could explain to us a little bit more about why your daughter's death is so relevant. Ella, unfortunately, became incredibly ill. And by the way, 1.1 million children in the UK have asthma. And in London, I've mentioned it is... Two right here. Me and Henley. Oh, I'm sorry. And every time there's a spike in air pollution, there are more people hospitalized through asthma attacks and heart attacks. Air pollution is linked to so many illnesses like obesity, low birth weight. It is a health

issue. Global statistics are far worse than London statistics and I'm not trying to minimize the harm it's doing to Londoners. But 9 million people, according to the United Nations, die of air pollution every year. About 4 million of them are because of outdoor air pollution. That's mostly down to fossil fuels. Five million people die of indoor air pollution. This is when in developing countries you're using wood to burn and cook. And so air pollution is a huge stain on public health globally and a much bigger one outside of rich countries. I had no idea that that figure was so huge

because here in the UK, I mean, as far as I'm aware, Rosamond, your daughter Ella's death was the first case we had of a coroner ruling that her death was caused by pollution. I think it's a scandal really. Ella still remains since 2020. That's almost four years ago now. The only person in the world to have air pollution on a death certificate. So you mentioned a figure of 9 million.

For me, the interesting question, why is Ella the only person in the world? And really, the only reason why she is is because we fought and asked for another inquest. So if I hadn't, nobody would still have air pollution on a death certificate. Scientists know that people die from air pollution. So why isn't it listed on a death certificate? it. We think some governments don't want to be held accountable. Is that quite controversial to say that? No. What? No, as journalists, every time I go to the government, I'm like, so I think you've done

this thing wrong. Can you give me a statement? They're like, yeah, oh my God, we hold our hands up. We did it all wrong. Thank you for exposing us. I thought, do you know what? I naively thought that once Ella's death had been exposed, I was thinking of more people being able to succeed. I've looked at what's going around the world. People have tried to, in front. France and other places, there's been a massive pushback from government. What was so sorely lacking in the media storm surrounding Ule's was any sense of proportionality. We didn't really hear the facts of how many people ULES actually affected.

Do either of you have any big misunderstandings of ULES? Yeah, I do. The fact that 97% of vehicles in London are ULES compliant. By November 2022, even because, Before Ulais had extended to Outer London, 702,000 vehicles had already changed. To get that right, the 97% of cars compliant, so this whole media storm was really upsetting for 3% of drivers,

but actually it affects 100% of children. Let's be compassionate. They do count, and maybe some of the poorest we're in the 3%. Let's not, you know, minimise it. That does live 3%. And also, I do admit that the time, timing of it was not great from a cost of living point of view. But yeah, the fact that eight to 12 children in London alone still die from asthma every year, we have one of the

worst death rates in Europe. I am always going to push for it. I don't make any apologies about that. I do apologize for those who've been hard-hitted. But 97% of vehicles are already compliant. And that's why the election result looks the way it did. Because people thought all these people in outer London, we're going to vote against Sadiq. And they couldn't understand why in some of the boroughs, his vote had gone up. There was a little rumour put out that Sadiq Khan was losing or something. And Rosamund confusion about Sadiq not losing the election is such a good point. We want to give a sense here to listeners of just how tokenised Yulez became in the run-up to the local elections earlier this month.

These elections saw Sadiq Khan win an unprecedented third term as a lot. London Mayor, a win that surprised many after months of media coverage that implied Ulairs was hammering his approval ratings. And now, when this backlash never materialized at the polls, the BBC reported his record third mayoral victory came after the threat of a Tory surge in the suburbs simply evaporated. No explanation. Like the threat that they'd said existed, it just evaporated. And we were left wondering, was it ever there?

Or was this just another media storm? A crisis in the headlines and not in reality. We had a flick through the London mayor's voters handbooks. Everybody got one of these through their letterbox with all the campaign ads for every candidate. Left, right, up, down. All dividing lines disappeared and were replaced by one line only, pro-Eulers or anti-Eulers.

We're just going to give you a little taste of our most unhinged highlights. So the first thing to say is that overall, half of the candidates, six out of 11, had abolish ULES as one of their top priorities. Yet only one of the anti-ULULES brigade actually mentioned air pollution. In fact, air pollution only came up twice in the entire booklet, one of them being on Sadiq Khan's page. For an election, essentially fought on U-LES, this tells us everything we need to know. Susan Hall, who was the Conservative candidate this year, on her page, she felt so strongly about you, Les,

she literally had the same sentence, the exact same sentence, twice on one page. It's not a lot of room for many sentences. It's not, it's a small A5 booklet. What's you say? Twice, she wrote, she'd scrap you, Les on day one, because Londoners are struggling to make ends meet because of new driving charges.

Another of my favourite quotes from a candidate, Amy Gallagher, Her key message was stand up to woke, whatever that means. What is, oh no, please, please, explain. What is woke? If you ask us, what is woke? No, no, please, please, please, you've got to. Historically, she is derived from the civil rights movement in America. You're awake to injustice.

Thank you very much. I'm glad. As a teacher, I'm having my teacher hat on. She's under 30, y' old. She's young. I needed her to explain what woke is. My children, if you're listening to this, stay woke. And I'm only 30.

It sounds like, Amy Gallagher needs to listen to this lesson on what woke is. This really made me laugh because she wrote, I will end you, Les, I will depoliticise London's transport system. She says as she gets involved in one of the most highly politicised concepts of the entire 21st century. I forgot today to bring my rainbow lanyard. Sorry, Esther McVeigh. Yes.

I think some people will know what I'm talking about. Let's keep moving though. But look, I think to wrap up this section on you, Leson, I feel that essentially with you, Les, we were just constantly, and we still are, constantly missing the context. It reminded me of similarly to when Justop Oil protesters were blocking motorways, the press, the right-wing press in particular, would always go out of its way to find the one person

that was on their way to the hospital and couldn't get there because Justop Oil had blocked the motorways. And then what they would do is that they would fail to include in that article what Justop Oil's key mission or message was. And similarly to this, it's like we crucially miss out the context. The press play up the extreme cases of anti-Eulez, and they miss the crucial context that we spoke about, such as the amount of cars that are already compliant.

Can I just end by saying on a very serious note, I hope Eulays is the start of the year improving. It is a matter of life and death. And for those who have already lost their life this year, to those parents, you have my commiserations. And thank you to all those who could afford it, and did change their cars and who believe in clean air and who want a better life for their children.

Thank you very much for going out and doing so. As we've just heard, as a news story, ULES has been over-politicized and under-contextualized within the wider health and climate discussions. And this is typical for many similar discussions, ranging from net zero policies to climate protests to COP and in international media too, A very striking thing is that when we assess the nature of climate reporting, the divisions

fall very neatly across the right-wing, left-wing political divide. We have an example of this from the news last week. A new study on plastic pollution showed us that five companies create a quarter of all plastic pollution. These are companies such as Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestle. It appeared that right-wing papers had a complete blind spot regarding this new research. It was covered in 15 major outlets, 67% center-left or left-wing, such as The Guardian, the Washington Post, 33% center such as science magazines, and you guessed it, 0% right-wing outlets.

Aisha, is there any logic to this, like, political divide in climate reporting? Let's start with what is agreed upon by tens of thousands of scientists in the world, right? We know that climate change is occurring. we've known that for 30 years. We've had an intergovernmental panel on climate change that has been putting out reports after reports which are 30,000 pages long that take all the research in the world

and give you the latest understanding of where things are. And yet, we continue to think of it as a political story and that's partly down to how journalism was done. And so we know our media is partisan, right? There would be some papers that are right wing. There are some papers that are left wing.

That's how things operate. In that process, because a science, story is treated as a political story because you need to hear not just from the scientists, but people who oppose the scientists, not just from a left-wing person, but also from a right-wing person, that false equivalence that comes in a politic story versus a science story is what's causing the problem. 99.7% of scientists will tell you climate change is happening because we are putting greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. The 0.3% are then treated as a single voice against the weight of evidence.

That has been the problem for the first 20 years. What's happening now is that because climate impacts are here and there's just no way to deny them, they are trying to poke holes in the solutions that you'll need to tackle climate change. So electric cars could be one where we tied back to ULAS, but all kinds of other things, heat pumps. You know, oh, it's too cold, it's never going to work.

Oh, you know, they're loud and they're very noisy. Oh, they're so expensive. All these types of tactics that are going from what you to be climate denialism to climate delays. See, I'm more cynical than you. I really am. When I went with Ella's law to the Houses

of Laws, which was really interesting, there was one person in particular who literally wouldn't support it. So all you do is you go to the register and you see where their self-interest lay and you see they are on a board or shared or things like that. So I'm even more cynical than you are. I believe that

they are profiteering from it and therefore it is in the interest to show this divide. Yeah, I mean that we can't talk about climate coverage in the news without talking about lobbying. An article this week in The Guardian revealed fossil fuels companies are reportedly forcing governments to compensate them for lost earnings in the transition to a low-carbon global economy

and subsequently destroying the world's ability to counter their harmful activities. No, listeners, you did not misunderstand that. Fossil fuel companies are literally telling governments they have to financially reward them with billions in compensation when countries reduce their reliance on oil, gas and coal because basically their lucrative gamble on a famously finite resource is coming to an end.

And the sheer power required for this legal audacity gives you a sense of what climate reporters are up against. Teams of lawyers, lobby groups with opaque funding try to undermine facts about long-established citizens. science. Actually, from a journalist's perspective, how much of a problem are lobby groups in undermining facts and coverage about the climate emergency? I mean, the history of climate reporting shows that lobby groups have tremendous power. So going back to the 90s, there was a global climate coalition that was created by a group of all companies, gas companies, utilities,

coal companies, and they so doubt about science. They publish these advertorials they are called in the New York Times, which sat alongside news reports, and they tried to essentially poke holds in the science, which didn't exist or were very small. And that really stopped policies from taking place. I mean, the United States of America, which historically as a cumulative emitter, is the largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world, has always been a laggard on climate policy because the lobby groups have won, because they've stopped the U.S. government from adopting climate policies. Yeah, I mean, you just reminded me in court at Ella's inquest

and from a mother of losing my daughter in a terribly horrible way. You sit there and you all have these eminent scientists and you realize that air pollution is something they've known about for ages. The only people who didn't know is us the public. Seriously, you sit there and you just look at them. They all knew. Scientists, they have all known. and then for a very, very long time.

And so the question, really, I don't know whether you've answered it is, why haven't we the public? And it became ill in 2010. How much did you know then about air pollution? I mean, The Guardian have been great. Every week almost there's a story. But I didn't know then because it wasn't in the public domain. Some of the stories you've said for today, I didn't even know about it.

So it's still not really, really getting out there. And you're right, the Guardian, for example, is really, really good on coverage. and coverage is totally lacking from other outlets, but it's not just that coverage is lacking. There is coverage that is like firmly anti. And honestly, some of it makes me wonder, is this an intelligent strategy by media outlets in terms of staying relevant down the generations?

I scrolled through my weekly newsletter from the Telegraph. I read three titles and it made me think, wow, you're not even shy about the fact you literally hate young people. It was one, nobody is buying into the net zero madness. Two, Jeremy Clarkson has exposed the lie at the heart of veganism and then three, in case you had any doubt, was just hiring Gen Z is a nightmare. They literally don't show up for the first day of work. Is this a good strategy for longevity?

It's just triggered me. Look, when I used to teach Sixth Form, one of my thing, 18 to 25 year olds, I've noticed already you're being sidelined. It's not who the politicians are talking to because their attitude is you don't vote and you don't care. And do you know what? They are using that. Why don't you show them differently?

I'm not going to tell you who to vote for. Get off your backside. Do not allow these people to detake to you what's what. I've got my head off of a six form hat on again. It's making me feel like with school again. I'm scared. I would say I would push back on the fact that doesn't exist in other media outlets. I come from Bloomberg News.

I know other financial publications, financial times. They do cover climate change and cover it really well. If anything, in the past 10 years, climate coverage has been only getting better, bar some places. Those exist, and they probably will exist for a long time. But the people who deal in facts and people who want to make money have to deal in facts. So one of the reasons why I've always worked in business publications is that actually businesses care about facts. Because if you don't have facts on your side, you can't make money, right? follow the money is actually a good strategy.

So, you know, the point you were making, which is fossil fuel companies are pushing against regulations because they are going to lose money, absolutely true. They will. That's their job because they want to make money selling fossil fuels. The good thing that's happening now is you can actually make money selling solutions for climate change. And that's partly what my book is about,

that there are all these solutions that are coming through where companies can make money. On that topic, at MediaStorn, we obviously call out what is wrong with the way our media reports on a certain topic, but we do also want to promote solutions-focused journalism. We often see climate news being catastrophized in our media. And maybe that's because it is a catastrophe.

Yet, despite the fact that we are actually living through climate disaster, most people aren't exactly cowering in fear every day about the future of our planet. And many are simply doing something about it. Also just look at numbers, right? You know, sometimes it feels like on a day-to-day, basis and it's true. When you look at the headlines, it feels like, you know, things are getting worse. But the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015. Before it was signed, the world was on track to

be warmed by more than 4 degrees Celsius. Now it's on track to be warmed by less than 3 degrees Celsius. That 1 degree Celsius is a very big shaved off catastrophes in the future. Not to say 3 degrees Celsius or less is good. Not at all. We need to get to 1.5 degrees Celsius, which is what the Paris Agreement says, but the fact that we've been able to make progress, we shouldn't lose sight of that progress. And that's been made in less than 10 years. Does our media do enough to demonstrate the solutions? We don't do that often because journalists care that their stories are read by many, many people. And so there's a burden on people too. Catastrophe stories do sell. One of the reasons why you don't hear as many

solution stories is because people don't want to read about it. So if you are listening and you feel we're not covering solutions enough, then demand it. Subscribe to a paper that you believe is doing the right thing on the topic that you are interested in and ask them, email them, tell them they want solutions. And I think that will change how journalism is done. Yeah, I think also that we have let off governments and stuff. A lot of things I've noticed is put on individuals. You need to walk more. You need to do this. And that is good, but it is only going to contribute to a fraction. But I think you've already made the connection between an individual and changing the system, which is vote. People can choose to change the system through voting.

Two things to kind of wrap this amazing conversation up. If you do want to hear more about how climate change affects those in the global south, Media Storm did an episode in our second series called Climate Frontlines, The Truth about Big Oil. So do scroll back and have a listen to that. And the second thing to say is that focusing on. solutions is important because if we don't talk about the solutions, we do a disservice to the people who are at the forefront of these solutions who are working in this fight. People like you. It's been amazing. I'm a big fan of young people. So to have me on here, it's just been

an absolute thrill. And it's been a joy to be part of this conversation. Yeah, thank you. Will you both tell listeners where they can follow you and if they have anything to plug? So today, I will have a podcast conversation on Zero, the podcast I host for Bloomberg Green. with Chris Kidmore, who used to be a minister in the Conservative Party, who was asked by the two-month Prime Minister Liz Trust to do a review of net zero policies. Oh, you've said that word. And he came out and he said,

net zero is good for the economy and we must double down. And because the Conservative Party was backtracking, he quit government. And he's on the podcast talking about why he chose that path and why the case for net zero is stronger whether you look at from the left perspective or the right perspective. And you can follow me on X or LinkedIn. Those are probably the only two social media that I use these days.

Okay, thank you. And Rosamond, tell people where they can follow you and if you have anything you want to say. Yeah, you can follow me on X as well, the Ella Roberta Foundation FDN. And on Instagram, I'm trying to up my Instagram. The more young people I get. I know, I know.

I'm trying to get there. What do I have coming up? Oh, we've got a new here. initiative coming out, I have persuaded Mayor Khan again to put air filtration into 200 schools in London. So there's a lot of work in this space to still do. Mayor can't tune in, listen. This is all the requests. Have you ever thought about running from there? He's got it for four years. Campaign slogan, air filters for all. Thank you. You've got your campaign campaign team here. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot trackside.

So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Presale tickets for future events subject to availability and vary by race. Turns and conditions apply. Learn more at amex.ca slash Yannex. Well, just before we wrap up, we want to talk about one final story. We've always aimed to leave our listeners with something to talk about. So each week, we're going to give you something we've known.

in the weekly news to take home and discuss further. Like a big story that was quickly forgotten in our news media's short attention spans. And today's story is the impact of voter ID. We all got a good laugh the other week when Boris Johnson, the ex-prime minister who introduced mandatory ID for voting, forgot his ID when he went to vote.

I know we don't believe in objectivity at MediaStorm, but that was objectively hilarious. You actually couldn't have written it better. even the most desperately humorless news outlets like Reuters couldn't help but be funny with headlines like UK's Boris Johnson, who introduced voter ID rule, forgets his while voting. Even more hilarious, he tried to use his copy of Prospect magazine to ID himself. Probably great press for Prospect or bad press for Prospect. Yeah, I mean, when Rishi wore those Adidas trainers, Adidas stopped plummeted.

The anti-influencers. Well, now when the rule on voter ID was bought in, there was a lot of backlash, right, with warnings that the policy were disproportionately disenfranchised poorer people, those were disabilities, and generally people more likely to vote against the ruling party. But actual data on its impact has been non-existent or inconsequential, for reasons we'll get into, and the story has disappeared as quickly as it's come up. Yet in the fortnight since, we've seen gradual signs. that there might be more to this story.

You have to be looking closely in the comment section, in the letters written to newspapers, the correspondence. So the question we have is, are we undermining the impacts of the new photo ID scheme on voter turnouts? Well, while the chief executive of the Electoral Commission flippantly said the policy didn't cause any major problems and that most people turned away for the wrong ID would simply go and get it and come back.

back, he justified this conclusion by assuring us he had been outlooking and observing in polling stations. Is this the measure by which we're gathering data on voter ID? Yeah, in reality, there is a record kept by people inside polling stations who turn voters away, but there's no way to record various other deterrent effects, such as those who leave after being told by greeters they need ID, or those who never leave home. And these are the people who are the hard to keep a record of as they're the ones without a paper trail, which makes this issue inherently difficult

to trace. But one thing we can do is listen to lived experience. Speak to people who were at stations on those days and see if they saw something that the data doesn't show. This might be the only way to piece together a picture at this stage. So keep

the conversation alive, ask your friends, share your observations. We did just that and here's what we found out. I was presiding officer. The presiding officer is responsible for running the poll in a single polling station. It's definitely the case that a small minority but not as small as the number that's reported of people are inconvenienced. We had a couple, at least one of them was on a walking frame. I think actually they were both on walking frames. One of them had his voter ID with him, his wife didn't.

And so they went off home and came back half an hour later and that's going to be significant effort to somebody. So I was a poll clerk at this election, which I've done for past five or six elections now. There was occasions at my station where people were checked their ID before they'd reached the table. So, for instance, if they didn't have ID, that is not really recorded anywhere. We might make a tally a loose one at the desk, but it's not recorded on any official forms or submitted to the electoral commission. We had a guy come in who I think had some mental health issues and he was certainly accompanied by a carer and explained slowly and carefully in several times that we needed voter ID

and they said, okay, he'd go and get it and he never came back. If we just had to keep just a simple tally of people that came in and forgot their ID just so we had that information, probably think there was maybe low double digits of that. It's not huge numbers of people, but I issued fewer than 200 ballot papers. So three out of 200 is a bit more than the less than half a percent that the Electoral Commission a test saying when they're interviewed. It just kind of creates this unnecessary conflict in the station for me sometimes. It can get some people's backs up if they don't want to provide ID or whatever it may be.

There's a point of conflict that I just think is totally unnecessary in the polling station. Now if the first thing you do is to say to a voter, have you brought your photo ID with you? Oh hell, I haven't. Before you go back and get it, who are you just so I can make a record? It ain't going to happen. Thank you all for listening. A quick shout out to Jane Moore, a new fan from Australia who emailed us to let us know our Patreon link wasn't working last week. Don't worry, we fixed it.

Speaking of which, another shout out to our Patreon supporters who support Media Storm investigations. And we've got one of those cooking coming to your feed in a couple of weeks. Our investigation into the UK rape trials happening out of the public view. Follow MediaStorm wherever you get your podcast so that you can get access to new. episodes as soon as they drop. If you like what you hear, share this episode with someone and leave us a five-star rating and a review. It really helps more people discover the podcast and our aim is to have as many people as possible hear these voices. MediaStorm is an award-winning podcast produced by Helen Awadier and Matilda Mallin. Katie Grant is the assistant producer and the music is by Samfire.

You can follow us on social media at Matilda Mal at Helen Awadier and follow the show via at MediaStorm pod. Listen and hit follow on Spotify.