By all accounts, 2016 was an eventful year for the planet. It was the year when a record amount of coral perished in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, deforestation in the Amazon increased nearly 30%, polar sea ice the size of India disappeared, and of course it got hotter.
In fact, it was the hottest year ever recorded.
But the average American could be forgiven for not knowing about any of this. Because major US TV news networks, fixated on an election that provided the drama and entertainment of reality TV, dedicated almost no time to covering climate change. None of these networks aired a segment about the presidential candidates’ climate-change policies before the US election took place.