Q&A: Kiley Bense on Climate Journalism in a New Information Environment

Kiley Bense sees her home state of Pennsylvania as a microcosm of national tensions: a contentious swing state in the presidential election last fall that has felt both the economic pain of lost industries and the devastating impacts of the fossil fuel industry on health and the environment. “We just have such a long history with fossil fuels,” she told me recently, noting that the first oil well in America was drilled in Titusville in 1859. “It’s so important to our economy.” Bense cut her teeth as a political and cultural reporter in New York, then returned to Pennsylvania in 2021 to write for Inside Climate News, where she has been the state reporter for the past year and a half, covering the intersection of climate, health, and politics. During the presidential campaign, she reported on divisions in opinion about Pennsylvania’s fracking operations (the process of extracting natural gas from shale deposits). In many ways, she has been watching her home state wrestle with the existential questions of whether, and how, it can change its trajectory.