“Every person on Earth today is living in a crime scene.”

That’s the arresting opening line of the article by my friend, environmental journalist Mark Hertsgaard, in today’s Guardian. Mark and I have been talking for some time about how the climate crisis should be covered by the media as a crime story — and now thanks to Mark’s group, Covering Climate Now, a consortium of media companies led by the Guardian, that’s what is finally happening.

You don’t need to tell the people evicted from their homes by the wildfire blazing around Mount Shasta — the latest inferno to ravage California. Or the people suffering in freakish triple-digit weather under the heat dome suffocating the Pacific Northwest. Or the people who lost family members and neighbors in the wintry blast that stormed through Texas. Climate change is a murder story. And it’s an arson story. And it’s a home invasion story. And it’s a vandalism story. It’s a crime against nature. And it’s a crime against humanity.

And there are powerful men who are responsible for these massive crimes — men who should be held criminally accountable. Energy executives — like those at Exxon — who knew the dire environmental truth and covered it up for decades. Politicians and scientific “experts”who took cash from the Koch brothers and became leading climate deniers. Fossil fuel investors who put their profits ahead of the lives of their own children and grandchildren.

Led by the Guardian and other members of the Covering Climate Now consortium, the press is finally treating this global crisis like the epic crime story it is. When enough climate profiteers and propagandists are dragged into courts because of this reporting, maybe they’ll finally get the message. Their day is over.