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The journalistic bandwagon can be a good thing after all.

Or can it?

It's gotten to the point that it's hard to think or write about environmental journalism without coming smack into climate change, AKA global warming.

That, of course, is demonstrably untrue, written for impact and not for factual content. In reality, there's a great deal of outstanding environmental reporting going on across the country. Even in the face of the daunting changes and challenges the "journalism business" is wending its way through. Much of that coverage is purely local or regional in focus, and it takes place far from the attention of the national media spotlight.

Whew. Those points acknowledged, let's move on.

The New York Times's Andrew C. Revkin recently started an overview piece with the lede "Global warming has the feel of breaking news these days."

Indeed it does. Far from the lower 40 to which the climate change issue – and environmental issues overall – long had seemed confined, the issue over the past several months has taken on a life of its own, often being played quite prominently.

It's everywhere, it's everywhere!

You've got The New Yorker's "Climate of Man" blockbuster three-part series by Elizabeth Kolbert in the spring of 2005.

You've got Time magazine's recent famous (or infamous, depending, it appears, on one's political perspective) "Be Worried. Be VERY Worried" cover story, declaring, in effect, that among responsible scientists the scientific debate has quietly ended.

You've got prominent climate change/global warming books issued so far this year, three by journalists and one by an Australian scientist.

You've got the Fox News Channel over the past six months airing two separate, and clearly distinct, one-hour documentaries on climate science, the first one, last November, tilting heavily toward the "big problemo" perspective, this past April's advising "Not to worry, no big schlemiel." Zig-zag journalism at its best, worst?, one might say ... leaving the viewer .... Well, just where exactly isn't quite clear.

Turn on the TV or radio. Pick up a newspaper or newsweekly. Climate change is everywhere. So much so, some suggest, that it's virtually wiped off the news pages all other environmental news, to the pleasure of some and angst of others.

Think of it. Climate charge already had the calving glaciers and adrift polar bears, icons not to be matched in the environmental field since perhaps the 55-gallon drum or endangered eagle. Now it's also got the images and fears of "another Katrina." It's got the recent report that we can expect lots more poison ivy in a CO2-enriched atmosphere. POISON IVY, mind you! Talk about getting the public's attention!

And it's even got the newly nominated Treasury Secretary.

Say what? No sooner was Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Henry M. Paulson tapped by President Bush than news accounts let it be known that he's a danged believer in the serious risks posed by climate change. "Among business executives, Mr. Paulson stands out for a deep commitment to conservation and other environmental causes," The Wall Street Journal front-paged on May 31 in reporting the nomination.

The paper reported that some self-described "free-market" think tanks had criticized Paulson as a potential nominee, "saying that his pro-environment positions conflict with the Bush administration positions on climate change, among other things." (The WSJ editorial page had its own unique take on it all, of course, referring to Bush's first Treasury Secretary, former Alcoa President Paul O'Neill, also a climate change believer, as having had some "daft" priorities unrelated to his financial responsibilities.)

Danged! Now we know we're onto a really hot issue for our bandwagon when even a Bush Treasury nominee brings forth stories on climate change.

And it doesn't stop there. No way. Remember, Al Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth" (a title one wag cartoonist says applies to prospects Gore could re-emerge as a serious presidential candidate) is just hitting the streets (see related stories, this issue).

So hot has the issue become in the nation's news rooms that even the celebrity journalists are onto it (see related story, this issue).

It's a strange position to be in. For years, having shared the concern that responsible science coverage of climate change in the mainstream media was too little (and too late?). And now wondering if the bandwagon phenomenon carries baggage of its own.

Be careful what you ask for lest you get it, the old adage goes.

The remarkably upward tick in the news media's apparent understanding of and willingness to cover serious climate science, and not simply settle for "balance," is for sure a plus. If their audiences as a result become better informed, and perhaps also mobilized to thinking what to do about it, so much the better.

If all that happens in the context of the best and most outstanding fact-based, verifiable journalism, then climate won't emerge the only potential winner. So too will reporters and editors, and the public which continues to depend on them for their understanding of such a momentous and broad scientific/public policy issue.

It's that kind of outcome that can make a bandwagon a good thing.