General
Peter Dykstra, Pioneering CNN Climate Journalist, Dies at 67
A former Greenpeace official, he drew on his command of environmental subjects to persuade his bosses at the cable channel to cover climate issues.
Peter Dykstra, an environmental activist turned journalist who was known for his sardonic wit, once asked Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, Congress’s most aggressive denier of climate science, for an interview, to take place in 2034.
Mr. Dykstra’s idea, as he wrote to the senator’s office in 2019, was that by that year, when Mr. Inhofe would turn 100, there would be no question about “who was right and who was wrong” about global warming.
Mr. Inhofe, through a spokeswoman, replied: “Sure! How is 10 a.m. on Friday, November 17, 2034?”
The interview will not take place. Mr. Inhofe, a Republican who repeatedly called climate science a “hoax,” and Mr. Dykstra, a former Greenpeace activist who became an environmental journalist for CNN, died within weeks of each other this summer: Mr. Inhofe on July 9, at 89, and Mr. Dykstra on July 31, at 67.
But the question of who was right and who was wrong has already been answered. Mr. Dykstra was right. This year is on track to be the hottest ever recorded, with man-made warming contributing to fiercer hurricanes, more intense wildfires, longer droughts and deadly threats to human health.
Mr. Dykstra’s death, in a hospital in Atlanta, was caused by complications of pneumonia that led to respiratory failure, his family said.
He had used a wheelchair since 2017, when he became paralyzed from the waist down after a spinal infection.
