“A newsletter for people pissed off about the climate crisis” is the tagline of Emily Atkin’s newsletter, HEATED. She’s one of the foremost climate journalists in the US and the founder of Heated, an independent newsletter with 150k subscribers dedicated to accountability journalism on the climate crisis.
Originally trained in traditional mainstream media outlets like The New Republic, she left to build her own publication in 2019 after growing frustrated with the reluctance to cover climate change as the power and corruption story it really is. She now writes for people who are pissed off about the climate crisis and want to understand the forces blocking action.
This conversation goes deep into why Emily believes climate change should be covered as a corruption story, not an environmental one. We talk about how BP invented the term "carbon footprint" as a marketing campaign to shift attention away from corporate responsibility, why the fossil fuel industry has been allowed to privatise profits while socialising the costs of climate damage onto everyone else, and why that arrangement is profoundly corrupt. Emily explains why she thinks journalism's obsession with objectivity has made outlets wimps and cowards, why anger is her most powerful tool as a journalist, and why she refuses to comfort people with hope when what they really need is information to act.
We also cover why right wing billionaires buying up media outlets is creating an information crisis, why she spent months investigating an anti solar influencer with two million followers, and why she believes media literacy is one of the biggest barriers to climate action. Emily shares what it's like running an independent publication that refuses to paywall climate news, why she thinks individual action matters more than she used to, and why she wishes more people would leak her documents from inside their companies instead of asking her what gives her hope.
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Find Emily's work at Heated: https://heated.world/
Subscribe to the Climate Unf*cked podcast at https://climateunfucked.substack.com/
And connect with me on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-coop/
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Chapters
00:00 Why is climate change a sexy corruption story?
04:30 How BP invented the carbon footprint to shift blame
09:15 Why people feel relief when you reframe climate as a power problem
13:40 What Emily tells people who ask "what can I do?"
18:20 We need to support real journalism
22:50 What the billionaire takeover of media means for climate coverage
28:35 AI’s worst impact isn’t from data centres
34:10 The anti solar influencer with 2m followers
42:25 Why acknowledging downsides makes your argument stronger
48:15 Journalism is about telling the truth, not building bridges
53:40 Why Emily's tagline is "for people who are pissed off"
1:00:20 Compassion without anger becomes pity
1:06:45 How readers respond to emotional, personal climate journalism
1:11:30 Betting platforms are incentivising wildfire arson
1:14:50 Why Emily changed her mind on individual action
1:17:20 The fiction book Emily wants to write about climate absurdity
1:20:35 Why she's tired of being asked what gives her hope
1:23:50 What Emily wishes people would ask her instead
