"The day started like any other gloomy Monday in the oil market’s worst crisis in a generation. It ended with prices falling below zero, thrusting markets into a parallel universe where traders were willing to pay $40 a barrel just to get somebody to take crude off their hands."
The dramatic drop in demand for oil, driven by the shutdown of world economies by coronavirus, has meant a corresponding fall in prices. And that has profound environmental implications. But it’s a complicated dynamic to assess. Our Issue Backgrounder provides a look under the hood of Big Oil, and explains what it means for environment reporters. Plus, a Reporter’s Toolbox for tracking the data [4].
The Princeton Environmental Activism Coalition's Zoom panel will ask tough questions and feature speakers Stephen Pacala, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology professor, Princeton University and co-director, Carbon Mitigation Initiative; Kian Mintz-Woo, Princeton's University Center for Human Values and the Princeton Environmental Institute; and SEJ president Meera Subramanian, independent journalist and Princeton's Barron Visiting Professor in the Environment and the Humanities.
How do you gain perspective on a widespread public health disaster? Award-winning reporter Apoorva Mandavilli shares valuable lessons on using a small lens to cover a big story — no, not COVID-19, but the deadly 1984 gas leak in Bhopal, India. And as she explains in this Inside Story Q&A, this decades-old story never really went away in the first place.
"Kathryn Foxhall remembers a time when reporters could call up any doctor or researcher at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and ask them questions on the record. A journalist might even get them to open up for a “background” interview, offering candid information on the condition the expert’s name would not be used."
Video: "The Post’s Margaret Sullivan explained March 31 how President Trump’s coronavirus task force briefings can veer away from newsworthiness."
"Miners with black lung struggle during the pandemic with layoffs, benefit cuts and the threat of a virus that would almost certainly kill them".
"Covid-19 and climate change are testing a food system that critics say has lost its resilience."
"The great price collapse of 2020 will topple companies and transform states."
"Plummeting global demand for fish and seafood as a result of the coronavirus crisis is likely to create an effect similar to the halt of commercial fishing during World Wars I and II, when the idling of fleets led to the rebound of fish stocks."
Links
[1] https://www.sej.org/headlines/oil-spirals-below-zero-devastating-day-global-industry
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-20/oil-worth-less-than-nothing-points-to-a-deepening-global-crisis?srnd=premium&sref=5F8Ao01j
[3] https://www.sej.org/publications/backgrounders/turmoil-world-oil-markets-tips-environmental-scales-too
[4] https://www.sej.org/publications/reporters-toolbox/oil-market-data-you-don-t-need-slippery-sources
[5] https://www.sej.org/calendar/climate-change-and-coronavirus-panel
[6] https://www.sej.org/publications/inside-story/when-crisis-was-immense-sej-award-winner-went-narrow
[7] https://www.sej.org/headlines/analysis-trump-administration-muzzling-government-scientists
[8] https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/the-trump-administration-is-muzzling-government-scientists-its-essential-to-let-them-speak-candidly-to-the-press-again/2020/04/17/1d934c0e-80a6-11ea-a3ee-13e1ae0a3571_story.html
[9] https://www.sej.org/headlines/media-bashing-trump-rallies-creeping-coronavirus-briefings
[10] https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/how-media-bashing-from-trump-rallies-is-creeping-into-coronavirus-briefings/2020/04/01/27e74d6a-8211-4654-8821-bfd0b3218b9d_video.html
[11] https://www.sej.org/headlines/sick-coal-miners-covid-19-death-sentence
[12] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/apr/19/ive-already-got-infected-lungs-for-sick-coal-miners-covid-19-is-a-death-sentence
[13] https://www.sej.org/headlines/supply-chain-empty-grocery-shelves-and-rotting-wasted-vegetables
[14] https://insideclimatenews.org/news/17042020/coronavirus-agriculture-supply-chain-grocery-store-farming
[15] https://www.sej.org/headlines/analysis-oil-and-its-dependents-it-s-code-blue
[16] https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2020/04/18/Code-Blue-for-Oil/
[17] https://www.sej.org/headlines/fishing-fleets-tied-marine-life-has-chance-recover
[18] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-17/with-fishing-fleets-tied-up-marine-life-has-a-chance-to-recover
[19] https://www.sej.org/search_results
[20] https://www.sej.org/search_results?page=1786
[21] https://www.sej.org/search_results?page=1783
[22] https://www.sej.org/search_results?page=1784
[23] https://www.sej.org/search_results?page=1785
[24] https://www.sej.org/search_results?page=1788
[25] https://www.sej.org/search_results?page=1789
[26] https://www.sej.org/search_results?page=1790
[27] https://www.sej.org/search_results?page=1791
[28] https://www.sej.org/search_results?page=5054