Yep it's basically entertainment as news. It's rather perverse as many don't understand that it is entertainment and believe it's absolutely true, other people understand they're being dicked around with and reject the facts along with the exaggerations because it's hard to tell the difference. And you've basically got exactly this situation.

It's very Orwellian in a sense. But it's not an all powerful state controlling it so much as it's an emergent property of human relationships and behaviors coupled with mass media, government and corporate interests. And everyone trying to do what they want to gain more power.

I could run on a moderate platform of "We need to be aware of and concerned about the environment, and that includes making some economic sacrifices now for long term gains later, but we cannot sink the economy to fix all economic impact" but that's a losing platform. The extremists will pop out of the woodwork, they'll get the environmentalists who don't give a damn about the economy in their camp screaming loudly about how humans should destroy society for the sake of the earth presenting a false dichotomy of evil Lorax style corporations that want to outright the destroy society also. So both sides are effectively arguing about a clear crisis but both see their opponents as unreasonably crazy idiots because well, the news isn't going to run some guy sitting there calmly talking about how much money should be invested in a seawall to offset projected level rises vs how much should be spent on relocation and moving towards sustainable power generation like nuclear, when instead you can get two guys that think the world is going to end screaming at the other guy for making the world end.