On April 12, Covering Climate Now and eight of our core partners released a Climate Emergency Statement to launch CCNow’s week of joint coverage ahead of Earth Day. CCNow invites journalists and news outlets everywhere to sign the statement and participate in the week, themed “Living Through the Climate Emergency.”
The statement’s opening lines read, “It’s time for journalism to recognize that the climate emergency is here. This is a statement of science, not politics.” The statement cites the thousands of scientists saying in peer-reviewed journals and public remarks that humanity faces a “climate emergency.”
Why “climate emergency” rather than, say, “climate crisis”? Because, like a heart attack, an emergency requires immediate action. CCNow salutes the leadership of the statement’s initial signatories: CCNow’s two co-founders, the Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation; our lead media partner, The Guardian; and Scientific American; Noticias Telemundo; Al Jazeera English; La Repubblica (of Italy); and The Asahi Shimbun (of Japan).
The Climate Emergency Week coverage offered by the 400-plus news outlets in the CCNow collaborative will feature human-centered stories that explore how people are living through the climate emergency — both how they are experiencing it and how all of us can survive it. A full preview of the stories running from April 12 to 22 can be found here.
Here are a few highlights not to be missed:
- The Nation overturns conventional political thinking by interviewing the 28 year-old Green New Deal champion who won over Trump voters to defeat the GOP Maine senate leader.
- The Guardian ramps up its “Race to Zero” series, plus a paradigm-shifting article on “Our Real Climate Problem”—unstoppable sea level rise.
- At CBS News, “Our Planet in Peril” coverage will include at least a dozen climate stories, including a poll on Americans’ views of Biden’s climate agenda.
- At NBC News, the TODAY Show is “going green,” and NBC News Digital will publish a pathbreaking story on climate change and homelessness.
- Indian Country Today illuminates the excruciating choice facing many Tribal nations: endure worsening climate impacts or abandon lands they’ve cherished forever?
- Teen Vogue asks young people to talk about their first “Oh, no” moment, when they realized climate change would shape the rest of their lives.
- The Asahi Shimbun explores whether the April 16 summit between Japan’s prime minister and the US president will yield “a new climate partnership” between the two big emitters.
- Times of India reports that India won’t meet its clean air goals unless its state-owned companies stop investing in fossil fuels.
- Al Jazeera English launches a new season of its “Earthrise” series, focused on climate solutions.
- Agence France Presse also focuses on solutions via reports on young climate activists in South America, Africa, and Asia.
- WNYC radio explores whether Brooklyn can wean itself from natural gas.
- KQED radio spotlights the other side of the tracks from Silicon Valley, where East Palo Alto civic leaders are fighting to save their community from rising seas.
We invite all journalists to join our efforts and we encourage CCNow partners to share stories with the wider CCNow community, so others can republish or rebroadcast them. Visit our sharing library to submit a story and learn more. We also have social media assets, opportunities for audience engagement and other tools that partners can use to maximize the reach and impact of everyone’s work.
We’re confident that audiences will find great value, even inspiration, in the stories CCNow’s outlets are reporting in this extended week of coverage. Climate change is the defining story of our time, and journalism should cover it like the emergency that science says it is.