Climate on the Ballot: The World’s Climate Elections

Transcript

Mark Hertsgaard: Hello, and welcome back to Covering Climate Now’s ongoing Climate on the Ballot Summit. I’m Mark Hertsgaard and I’m the executive director and co-founder of Covering Climate Now. This is day two of our three-Day event, which is all about helping all of us as journalists figure out how we can elevate the climate story in our coverage of this historic election year of 2024. For those of you who may not know, Covering Climate Now is a global collaboration of more than 600 news outlets. We’re organized by journalists for journalists to help all of us do a better job of covering what we consider the defining story of our time. If you go to our website, coveringclimatenow.org, you can find out all about it, sign up for our newsletters, look at the training programs that we provide for newsrooms, get onto our Slack channel, and more. And all of those services are free of charge for journalists, so please do get in touch.

(01:01): Now, today’s panel, the World’s Climate Elections. This year, in 2024, roughly half the world’s population, about 4 billion people, have been eligible to vote in elections that will have a decisive effect on whether our civilization is able to master the climate challenge. Over the next 50 minutes, we’re going to be hearing from three of our colleagues in countries that are especially critical to the world’s climate outlook, India, Mexico, and the United Kingdom. They’re going to be talking from immediate, recent experience on how they and their colleagues were trying to cover these elections in their countries through a climate lens, the lessons that they’ve learned, and the advice that they may have for others who are still going through this, especially here in the United States where our election is coming up very fast, in about six weeks from now. We’re going to be exploring how reporters everywhere can cover their own elections, and also, if you are an international reporter covering the US election, how you can do that.

(02:08): As I said a moment ago, this event is part of Covering Climate Now’s Climate on the Ballot Summit. We’ve been… For this week, three days this week, journalists only have been invited to have conversations about how we step up to this vital task in 2024 and help our audiences understand that climate is indeed on the ballot. Even if the politicians aren’t talking about it, we need to be talking about it because that’s what science tells us. We think that we, as journalists, have a civic responsibility to inform the voters and the audiences of the stakes, and also to hold the candidates accountable, not for whether they believe in climate change, but what are they going to do about the climate crisis, which is still accelerating much faster than society’s response. So moderating today’s discussion is my esteemed colleague here at Covering Climate Now, Elena González. Elena, I turn it over to you.

Elena González (03:07): Thanks, Mark. I’m Elena González, the local TV engagement manager here at Covering Climate Now. I have worked in investigations for television with Telemundo here in the US, and before that I covered the Middle East and North Africa with different media outlets in Europe. I will introduce the rest of our panel in a moment, but first, at the bottom of your Zoom window, you will see the Q&A button. So please feel free to use it throughout the webinar to submit questions for our panelists. And we ask that only journalists send in questions, and please include your name and outlet. As usual in Covering Climate Now webinars, we’ll address your questions during the second half of these discussions.

(03:55): So joining me today, we are pleased to have Iván Carrillo. He’s a freelance journalist and documentarian in Mexico, as well as an Earth Journalism Network fellow. Iván’s reporting has appeared in a wide variety of broadcast and print outlets, including CNN en Español, TV Azteca and A Más, and National Geographic Magazine. And Iván is also the winner of 2024 Covering Climate Now Journalism Award for his documentary short on melting glaciers, which I recommend you to see.

(04:31): Natalie Hanman is head of Environment at the Guardian, where she recently oversaw efforts to highlight climate change amid the UK’s national elections in July. And Ritwika Mitra is an independent journalist in New Delhi who has previously worked at numerous newspapers, including the Indian Express, the Deccan Herald, and the New Indian Express. She was a finalist in the 2023 Covering Climate Now Journalism Awards as well. So thanks to our panelists for being here, and I am sure everyone listening will join me in giving them a warm virtual welcome.

(05:13): Natalie, I would like to start with you because you and your team did something fairly incredible at the Guardian, which is that you succeeded in getting the Environment Desk fully integrated into the Guardian’s elections planning and coverage right from the start in advance of the UK’s national elections in July. Can you tell us, Natalie, about why and how you pushed for that, and how it shaped the Guardian’s election coverage?

Natalie Hanman (05:44): Sure. So, well, I think the why is probably obvious to everyone. Climate crisis isn’t a fringe issue that only a few voters care about. It’s completely central to all of the decisions that politicians are making right now, and it will affect everyone around the world. It will affect every sector of how we live. So it didn’t feel like an option for our climate coverage to either not be part of the election coverage or to be siloed and separate. So at the Guardian, the Environment news team, we have our own desk in the same way that the National news team or the Foreign news team or the Business news team do. But we all go to the same news meetings each day, and I guess my role is to be very diplomatic and probably a little bit annoying in pushing to make sure that climate isn’t forgotten, that it’s not the last thing that’s read on the list.

(06:44): And so I really push to make sure that all of the elements of our coverage that are considered key. So key takeaways on a politician’s speech. Even if climate wasn’t mentioned, can we include that as one of our key takeaways? “Climate wasn’t mentioned and this is why it matters and this is what should have been said.” We sent reporters all around the country to delve into different constituencies and paint a picture of what voters concerns were. And I made sure that rather than climate being hived off separately from that, it was integrated into that project. So we had environmental experts going out, as well as our lobby journalists, as well as our community affairs correspondents and that kind of thing.

(07:30): So yeah, I think it was a combination of making sure we were part of everything that was core and also that we did our own coverage and we made sure we advocated that that coverage had prominent slots on the front of our website and our newspaper, that it got the tension of the design team and the visuals team so that it looked beautiful and it was impactful alongside all of what maybe is considered more mainstream coverage by a news organization.

Elena González (07:58): Natalie, I think that you chose between quality and quantity and you decided to go for quality. How did the audience respond to that?

Natalie Hanman (08:08): So we had really strong figures for the pieces that we published, I think because we did less, but what we did, we made better. And I’m sure any newsroom recognizes that when there’s a big news event like an election, the temptation is just to cover everything and maybe some of that critical reflection goes out the window. So we really just sat back and thought, “What are the key issues and how do we want to land them?” And not always just doing a straightforward news story, and especially not just being restricted to what the politicians were saying on the campaign trail, because then the terms of the debate a set in often a very narrow frame. So talking to experts as well, talking to people about what their hopes and fears are, and telling sometimes longer stories.

(08:56): So we had one reporter, we sent her along the River Thames, one of the biggest rivers in England, to look at the issue of sewage pollution. And she spent a couple of months doing that, and she wrote thousands of words, and we really tried to tell a longer, bigger, wider political impactful story through this one river. So just thinking of ideas like that that might land with people as a little bit more distinct and different and intriguing.

Elena González (09:22): Any other stories, Natalie, apart from the pollution one? I think that Teresa is posting those on the chat, but I would like you to tell us about more stories that you did that the audience received very well.

Natalie Hanman (09:38): Sure. So one that went down very well, which I think is only going to be of growing interest, is about the just transition. So the Labour government that was eventually elected had pledged to end all new oil and gas licenses in the North Sea, which is a huge pledge, but also… A huge positive pledge for the climate, but one that was disconcerting to voters who had seen what had happened in the ’80s when lots of the coal mines were closed and the workers there were not supported into new industries. And we’re still feeling the fallout of that in neglected towns and people who feel cut off from the new thriving industries.

(10:24): So we spent a lot of time talking to current oil and gas workers, examining the plans for the transition, and I think people are really interested in that because it also touches on another wider political theme of the rise of the far right and how they are capitalizing on people’s fears and about green issues, under the cover of green issues. So I think there’s lots of interest in that. We also did a piece speaking to… Well, there were about 50 scientists who wrote a letter sharing their concern that climate wasn’t coming up much in the election campaign here. So we interviewed a few of them and tried to reframe the Overton window, I guess, on what issues politicians should be focusing on, even though some of them weren’t.

Elena González (11:20): I see. Interesting. Especially when Keir Starmer’s manifesto was pretty long, right?

Natalie Hanman (11:24): Very long, yeah.

Elena González (11:28): Natalie, how do you feel that compared to the rest of the coverage in the rest of the UK’s media?

Natalie Hanman (11:36): So I would say it wasn’t a climate election. There wasn’t a lot of coverage of climate policies in the campaign. The right-wing media, aided by right-wing politicians, really try to push climate solely as a culture war issue and framing net-zero policies as only going to make people colder and poorer, they said. And they were pushing lots of other culture war issues and they tried to make climate part of that. But it didn’t really take off, I think because a lot of polling shows that actually lots of voters are very supportive of lots of these policies if they’re implemented fairly in terms of not hitting the poorest hardest and that sort of thing. So there wasn’t a lot of legs for that side of it.

(12:29): I think as soon as the result came out, some of the climate issues got more coverage, because the Green Party did very well, won four seats, and other independent candidates who stood on a pro-climate ticket did well. And so I feel like, post-election, there was maybe a bit of a recognition that there are voters out there who really care about this and it can be an electoral win for a campaign to focus on it.

Elena González (12:58): Mm-hmm. Thanks, Natalie. I would like not to turn to India. Ritwika, national elections there concluded in June and Narendra Modi was confirmed for a third term, but his party, the conservative BJP, did worse than expected, right? And climate change is having huge impact in India. In many ways, India has been on the front lines of climate disasters, and we have even seeing politicians collapsing on stage and TV anchors panting because of the heat. So did climate play a role in mainstream election’s coverage there in India?

Ritwika Mitra (13:39): Hi, Elena. Thank you. Well, I believe, in terms of the mainstream media, we got very stray kinds of coverage like the ones you just mentioned. When 33 people in one particular state died in a day, or there were police who were deployed on election duty because it was a very long election spanning over 43 days, and of course, with a country of India’s size, different kind of states had different weather conditions, but most states are intense heat waves around that time. And this kind of news does make it to the front page. But I think what we are looking at in terms of climate politics, that connection or connecting the dots is extremely sparse, especially in the mainstream media. It’s absolutely absent if we look at the television media. Also, another reason being that most of the media in India is now controlled by large corporates. So the discourse that is set in the mainstream media is very, very different at the moment.

(14:55): And in terms of the newspapers though, we saw heat waves, floods, and all through the election campaigns, there were other news. I mean, there were other very strong climatic events happening in India. But if we look, we give a disproportionate amount of coverage to what are the political manifesto saying, though we did have the major parties mentioning climate change and sustainability this time. But even then we saw most of the coverage being kind of diverted towards what the politicians are campaigning about, the political numbers. But in terms of making a push for climate change in politics, the connections were really weak.

(15:38): Having said that, the independent media has kind of saved the day. There is a very strong push from the independent media, which have also kind of run series, which have made this connections very strongly through a lot of grassroots stories, and also highlighting that how the Modi government has weakened the laws has diluted a lot of the provisions around very important acts like the Forest Amendment Act, the Biodiversity Act, and pushed for these kind of stories. And the regional media also, in certain cases, have made a case for these stories. But when it comes to the mainstream media, we have barely seen any coverage.

Elena González (16:26): Oh, I see. So you mentioned here, Ritwika, two points regarding how mainstream media behaved in terms of covering climate at the campaign and election and how independent media did. What do you think are the challenges? The mainstream media, for a start.

Ritwika Mitra (16:46): Yeah. I think it’s also… I think we have to look deeper in the sense that it’s a very systemic kind of a miss. I believe it’s a deliberate miss where we are not really being able to focus beyond the immediate agenda. Firstly, because we do not have enough data yet. The Indian government has been postponing the census, the exercise of census, which is our largest kind of exercise in terms of understanding poverty parameters, population parameters, housing crisis, the presence of washrooms in households, and the huge urban-rural divide. So when we have the basic data missing, and the last data that we have been using is 2011. So how do we really show that what the population needs in terms of climate crisis, how gender equity is affected due to climate crisis? So there is a kind of systemic miss there.

(17:46): The second is, of course, that the mainstream media is being disproportionately controlled by large corporates. And when we do talk about land acquisition, when we do talk about coal, when we talk about mining, how do we really report these stories in news media, which are controlled by the corporates, which are controlled… Where you know this corporate house holds stakes over a particular media, and which the government has also been kind of [inaudible 00:18:16] with for chronic capitalism. So even though we saw the biggest farmers protest again this year just ahead of the elections, which was also a deeply climate story, we really saw these events not being covered through the lens of climate story. Then we had the agrarian crisis. We have farmer suicides unfolding across the country for years now. We had low agricultural productivity. We have extremely poor conditions for indoor workers due to climate crisis. People’s schooling have been affected, the health infrastructure has been crumbling. One of the very immediate stories was when people were collapsing due to the heat during elections, the hospitals were not prepared to receive.

(19:08): So these are public infrastructure stories, these are urban housing crisis stories, which could also have been deeply political stories. Having said that, there was the independent media. Also, India saw the largest electoral bonds scam where we saw the flow of money into political parties. So there have been independent sites which have been constantly digging into this, how several companies, which flouted environmental norms, have been donating heavily to political parties. So I would like to believe that there have been very important stories done ahead of elections, but most of these have been done by the independent media.

Elena González (19:52): Any lessons that we can extract? You mentioned public accountability of the government, for example, how to dig into companies. Is there any story, Ritwika, that resonated with you as a good example that could be an example for other journalists in India? From the independent media you mentioned.

Ritwika Mitra (20:14): Right, right. So what was also there was there were very interesting explainers put out by also some of the mainstream media houses, which I’ll share in the link box, and very, very interesting explainers by a lot of the sites and certain… A lot of digging into the electoral bond scams and how these companies which have been flouting norms. And what also resonated with me was very interesting grassroots reporting on the Indigenous communities and how the Indigenous have been losing land in Chhattisgarh, have been losing land in Jharkhand, and how the government has been giving away these lands to the corporates, and these corporates which are investing in the elections. And these are all states which are heavily affected by climate crisis, which have been historically very arid with very low agricultural productivity and a heavy population of Dalits and Indigenous communities. So people coming from very kind… With very high poverty index. So I think those kind of stories are the ones that resonated with me and which I thought made very kind of direct connections between climate and politics. I’ll share the story links in a minute.

Elena González (21:32): Thank you, Ritwika. I could keep asking questions for the whole day, but I would like to go to Iván in Mexico, because the press there had a good reason to focus on climate change during the June presidential election, since Claudia Sheinbaum, the winner, is a former IPCC scientist. So did the press coverage of the campaign actually highlight these climate issues that Mexico is facing?

Iván Carrillo (22:01): Yes. Well, indeed, I would like to make a step before that, because we have a reason to talk about climate change. Because just in the pre-electoral moment in October 2023, we have the impact of Hurricane Otis that practically destroyed the city of Acapulco. In one night, it became from a storm… Overnight, it became from a storm to a hurricane that swept all the city. So that could the main reason just to step on the climate change in the conversation for the election. But surprisingly, it wasn’t. The main conversation were into the economic impact, into the prevention of the… If the government have had the right prevention from the catastrophe, et cetera. And it seemed like nobody talked really deeply about climate change and the reason of this hurricane.

(23:12): Then the conversation… As you know, we have a historical election in Mexico for many reasons. First, it was the biggest elections in the history of Mexico in terms of people who were elected, who was elected, for different positions all over the country. Second, because we elected by first time a woman as a president for Mexico, and as talking about the region, as a first woman president in North America. So that’s a milestone. And third, as you say, because we elect a science, a scientific background woman, part of the IPCC and with a strong background on climate change.

(24:09): But surprisingly, this doesn’t matter for the conversation in the elections. I was thinking that one of the weak points from the media. Election conversation in Mexico, we can summarize in presidents against… President’s voice, Andrés Manuel Obrador, against media. That was the main conversation. And media focus in to attack the energy policies of fossil fuels of Andrés Manuel Obrador, who indeed built a new refinery, [inaudible 00:24:53], and spent billions of dollars in a new refinery. And a other story that was in the media for a long time, it was the impact of the so-called Tren Maya, Maya Train, in the jungle in Southwest, and the impact in the environment and the deforestation that this infrastructure will cause.

(25:22): But for me, it’s really important to highlight how disconnect of all these things was of public policies of climate change. I mean, there was plenty of stories talking about this, but I feel a deep disconnection to link how public policy is going to impact in the future of climate change. And that’s, for me, the big concern about how we cover the stories during the Mexican elections. As you say, Claudia Sheinbaum has a strong background, and indeed as a mayor of Mexico City, she make a lot of actions, activities, especially in electric transportation and reduced pollution and… A lot of actions she has taken. But, it seems that during the campaign she wasn’t confront the… She didn’t like to confront the point of view of president. So she remained in low profile talking about new policies on climate change. She is taking office in a few days. In two weeks, she going to take in charge of office, and we are expecting that once she’s in office, she is going to start to develop the public policies for climate change and environmental topics. Yes.

Elena González (27:16): That’s very interesting, Iván, because I remember that the Mayan Train project had a lot of coverage. I’m surprised that during the campaign and the elections, it was barely mentioned. Is there any story that resonated with you regarding, I don’t know, what Claudia Sheinbaum would do with Pemex, the main state-owned oil firm? And how… Because for context, and please correct me if I’m wrong, Claudia… Much of the popularity of Morena, Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s party, was built on social projects funded by oil and gas profits from Pemex. So I’m surprised that it wasn’t mentioned in the coverage. Or was it?

Iván Carrillo (28:10): It is because Pemex, the oil company, is more than a public company in Mexico. It’s a symbol of nationalism. And Andrés Manuel López Obrador has arised and has retake that nationalism during his narrative. And so it was quite impossible. I mean, it was a strategy. From my point of view, it was a strategy for Claudia, don’t go into that topic because it’s very delicate. Andrés Manuel López Obrador has trying to recover the financial items of Pemex, but at the same time have reinforcement the symbol of this public corporation as a symbol of Mexican independence. So it was very delicate. It was very delicate.

(29:19): So until now, I think we don’t know what is going to happen with Pemex and new policies on that. What we know, and we have some stories on that, is that as well during Manuel López Obrador, they build the largest solar power plant in Latin America. And it’s surprised that they don’t show this… I mean, these outlets, and they don’t show during the campaign. So I think the conversation have some cuts, because it was main focus on security, public security, violence, and economics. So that’s the real… For me, that’s the real reason that the climate change and environmental, it’s second or even third or fourth place in the conversation.

Elena González (30:21): I see. Thanks, Iván. I would like to turn to the US election for a minute. How are you all thinking about covering the importance of this election for all of humanity’s climate future? Either what are you and your outlet doing, or the press in your country doing, or what would you like to see from the press in your country? Natalie, do you want to go first?

Natalie Hanman (30:51): Yeah, sure. So our team in America and globally has been very inspired by a quote from the media professor Jay Rosen, who said that the media coverage of the American election should focus on, “Not the odds but the stakes.” And so we are really conscious of having a few less articles on tiny shifts in polling and more on how people are feeling, and what are their lives, and what is the state of the planet after the previous Trump presidency, after the Biden presidency, and what are the consequences of the policies on offer, not just for America but for the world. So we kicked off a series called The Stakes last week, I think, with a launch piece by Bill McKibben, and he talked about the climate risk of the Trump win, of a Trump win, and saying that, “We may read our mistake in the record a million years hence if he wins the election.”

(31:54): More than half of the audience for that piece was outside of America. So we know that there is huge global interest for this. But I think we’re also conscious that Trump can become such a specter of horror for environmentalists that sometimes then we forget to put a critical spotlight on the other candidate. And Harris has not laid out much detail about her policies. I feel a bit of a mirror to what Iván was saying about Mexico. She has been very positive about Biden’s record, and so we’ve done a lot of reporting… We did a series called The Other Petrostates, just to highlight that America under Biden drilled for more oil and gas than ever in the history of America. It is the world’s biggest fossil fuel petrostate according to some measures, and it can absolutely afford to transition to renewable energy much quicker and much bolder than it is doing.

(32:57): So we really need to also interrogate Harris. However much environmentalists might not want Trump to win, she’s been very pro-fracking in Pennsylvania. She’s obviously walking a delicate line between trying to win over some key states. But yeah, I think you have to do both. That’s what accountability is.

Elena González (33:23): Yeah. Thanks, Natalie. Ritwika, anything from you from India?

Ritwika Mitra (33:30): Yeah. I think it would be interesting to see how the whole debate around climate justice and financing will play out in the context of the US elections, and how kind of an analysis of how US climate’s policies and the kind of shift that will happen in India’s policies, including their bilateral relations. It would also be interesting to look at the economic kind of side of it. What will it mean for India’s renewable energy policies in terms of the US elections? And I think what we should also look at this stage is drawing parallels and understanding how the US policies will affect India’s internal politics in terms of its own vulnerable population, its coastal regulations, and its Indigenous communities. I think those would kind of be standing out for me.

Elena González (34:27): Ritwika, thank you for the segue, because regarding climate justice, I think this is an issue that is also worrying in Mexico, and especially for the Latino population here in the US connected to the Mexican people. Iván, how do you see this election in your country?

Iván Carrillo (34:48): Well, obviously Mexican economy is linked with the American economy and have a lot of implications. I mean, who result elect in the USA will have a lot of implications in Mexico. Especially, I think we have to look as a journalist covering energy fossil… How the new energy or clean energy policies, if they are, will impact in the Mexican economy. How the supply chains can be adapt to this new reality. But also, other thing that I think we are not pointed out in the media, like migration for the future, climate migration, Mexico is going to be the big door for the climate migrants to the U.S. So that’s an important thing.

(36:05): And other topics that came to my head is, for example, water, where the water from nearshoring is going to come. Is there enough water in this thirsty country? This is Mexico, especially in the north part, and we are promoting nearshoring, and so is going to be enough water for that new link with the U.S.A.? So I think there is a lot of implications in this US election. By my own, I have focus in the biodiversity impact of the wall, of the Trump wall, in the biodiversity in Mexico. I made a couple of stories about that. And it’s terrible the situation, and nobody seems to really care about what is happening over there. Plenty of species are dying by thirst, and it’s an invisible impact of the public policies of the Trump era.

Elena González (37:19): Do you mean both sides of the wall, Iván?

Iván Carrillo (37:24): Yes. But the water keep in the US side. So the fauna is dying on the Mexican side. Yeah.

Elena González (37:35): Oh. So there is… And this is a question for all of you. Is there any story that you would like to see US journalists are covering regarding the global consequences given the relative power of the US press? Any stories that you’re missing?

Natalie Hanman (37:55): I would love to see more interrogation of the money that is funding not just the Republican Party, but also that network of think tanks that is giving them their policy agenda, and the links between that funding and those people and outfits that we see in the UK, for example, and the rise of racist far-right parties and anti-migrant policies, and how all these things are connected together that are serving a particular agenda. I think it isn’t just politics. There’s also a lot of money and power behind this, and how certain messages are being used that are replaying in different elections. I think the role of social media is part of that, but I think we can sometimes get a little bit too distracted by that. So yeah, more interrogation and exposing, really good investigative accounting, data reporting, would be brilliant.

Elena González (39:05): Ritwika, anything, any story you would like to see from here?

Ritwika Mitra (39:08): Yeah. I think it would be interesting to see how the South Asian diaspora would be affected by the climate change policies being promised. And what does it mean for immigrants? I think that’s something I would definitely like to see across districts. Yeah.

Elena González (39:31): And I would like to ask you, all of you, this question. Do you have any tips or insights for journalists who typically cover climate change and are interested in exploring the intersection with politics? Or any advice on the other way around, for colleagues focused on political campaigns who could incorporate a climate angle into their stories? Who wants to start?

Iván Carrillo (40:00): I can start. I can go.

Elena González (40:04): Please, Iván.

Iván Carrillo (40:07): Yes. Well, one important thing for me, and what I, in my experience, try to make transversal the topic of climate change. I mean, not to put only one section, or one main section of the newspaper, of the TV news program, but make transactional to all over the covering. Even sports, economics, politics, social, everything can be viewed from the point of view of climate change. So I think that’s one advice.

(40:47): The other one is trying to sell the stories to our first audiences that more… I mean, all the time, it is not the first reader but the leader of the newsroom. So try to sell the story not as a climate story, but as a great story of adaptation, as a great story of innovation, as a great story of resilience. So that’s a way to gain some good spaces for the media.

(41:28): And maybe last tip, try to do collaborative journalists with… I mean, individuals or through the outlets, but try to make collaboration. I have the experience doing this in different countries in Latin America and has been a really great experience, reporting how one phenomena can impact… The same phenomena are impacting in different areas. For example, I would like to see in the US election how climate change is going to impact in the swift states that are already determining the next presidential election. And that could be a work doing by the collaborative journalists.

Elena González (42:26): Ritwika. Any tips?

Ritwika Mitra (42:35): Yeah. I think it’s the basic kind of tip that so many of the stories that we do throughout the year, or throughout the years, barely get any mileage in terms of readership or viewership. And I think when we do some grassroots stories, even the communities say that the only time they get some kind of exposure is when politicians come for campaigning. So I think this is a great time, pre-elections are a great time, for the communities also to be heard. And it would be great to plug urban housing crisis stories, pollution stories, water shortage stories, wherever that exists, of course, in whichever part of the world, health stories, to pitch them as political stories and make it to the front page.

(43:29): Because several times I have been told… I’ve never really covered climate change or politics while I was with newspapers. But many a time we are told to kind of relegate these stories to the back pages. And I think now is the time when we could kind of plug these as political stories, and rightly so. And also I think for independent journalists, a great time to pitch these to the international media and get more exposure in terms of the stories, which will also put the issue for the communities on the map, which is missing at other times. And this can be a fuel story, a cooking gas story, or a labor story, which can be linked to the climate crisis. And I think this is the time we can kind of mount that lens, combine the two lens, and make a great intersectional story.

Elena González (44:22): And Natalie, any lessons learned about what stories are the best for your audience and for global audiences?

Natalie Hanman (44:32): Yeah. So I think remember that politics is about more than the traditional corridors of power. And as everyone here has said, there’s this local communities, local activists, where there’s really fascinating, important things happening, and compelling stories. So get out there and speak to people and foreground that. This is a really exciting time for the left and green social movements and we can learn a lot from them, and I think those stories can really resonate with people. And I think linked to that, don’t just tell everyone what’s going wrong and what’s bad and what’s awful, because we could all do that forever, but show them the things we can do to fix it. And often that comes from local communities who have been working for years, in the absence of political or big business, to come up with solutions, give people some hope. Guarded and caveated and all that, but there is hope, there is agency, and definitely Guardian audiences really love those stories as much as they want to read the big headlines of doom.

(45:41): I think fact checking, as well, can play a really important role in this age of disinformation. And often that’s a way of explaining a topic that maybe, as environmental specialists, we are really used to, but the general reader might not be. Q&A fact checks, ask the question, give the answer in a short paragraph. They often are really well-read and really deeply read, and people find that sometimes an easier way in. And I would echo the point about collaborating. If you are the lobby correspondent, the political correspondent, then invite your environmental specialist along to interview your head of state and get them to ask the question. Look for the independent media that’s doing exciting environment stories and meet them and find a way to collaborate on a project. I think that’s hope for the media.

Elena González (46:32): And Natalie, before you mentioned, you started saying that the way to convince your editors to do more climate stories was a mixture between being annoying and diplomatic. Can you be more specific about these tools you used?

Natalie Hanman (46:49): Well, I guess being diplomatic means recognizing that we’re all in busy newsrooms and we’re all working under conditions that can be very stressful and we’ve got lots of different things coming into us. So just gently reminding, appealing, going over, making someone a cup of tea and saying… Putting your case for your story. Nice tactics. But also there is a time to strategically, in an open conference, say, “I really think it was a big miss yesterday that we didn’t do that,” and get the other people in the room that you know feel that to back you up and put that sort of social pressure on. So, yeah, I think it’s just a mixture of tactics, but be willing to be the person that’s making some people feel a bit uncomfortable because I think that is part of our role.

Elena González (47:42): Well, thank you so much. I could be here the whole day. There is so much to learn from you all, but that’s all the time we have. Thank you so much to our panelists, and back to you, Mark.

Mark Hertsgaard (47:54): Thank you, Elena, and thank you to all of our panelists. This was a really great conversation, and as Elena just said, we could go on and on forever. I think we’ve had a rich conversation and very constructive. The point of these conversations is to really provide concrete ideas about how we, as journalists, can do this job better, and I heard a bunch of them today.

(48:18): One quick thought, just picking up on what Natalie just said about a miss and the importance of remembering positive news to give to the audiences. We like to say at Covering Climate Now that the best climate coverage does three things. It humanizes the climate story, it localizes the climate story, and it solutionizes the climate story. And Iván, you mentioned that you would like to see more coverage in the battleground states. Well, one of the stories that just came out that is available to all of you through the collaboration of Covering Climate Now, you can all run this story, is a story that Grist did looking at Pennsylvania. And of course, fracking in Pennsylvania is a big talking point of all the pundits on television, most of whom could not tell you what fracking is if their life depended on it. All they know is that it’s supposedly a vulnerability for Harris and an advantage for Trump.

(49:12): Well, Grist Magazine went into Pennsylvania and looked and talked to people on the ground there, and guess what? It turns out that there’s far more clean energy jobs in Pennsylvania than there are fracking jobs, and there’s far more public support for clean energy than there is for dirty energy. That’s the kind of reporting that can really not only change people’s minds and change the narrative around this election, but also, to be blunt, bring us more readers, bring us more support, and potentially more revenue. So that’s the kind of thing that we are going to be looking at going forward here.

(49:47): And I want to just again, thank all of our panelists, Natalie, Ritwika, and Iván. You were terrific. We’ve learned a lot. And I want to remind everybody here that we’ll be back again today and just two hours roughly, at 12:00 o’clock noon Eastern Time, US Eastern Time, where we’re going to be hearing from journalists across the United States, Arizona, Florida, Maryland, Texas, about how they’re looking at the local and state elections that are also very, very important here in 2024. And then finally tomorrow, we will close out this summit at 11:00 AM US Eastern Time, and we have the privilege of having an interview with John Podesta. He is President Biden’s top climate advisor, and he will be interviewed by two of our colleagues, Chase Cain at NBC News and Joan Meiners of the Arizona Republic. That will be a news making interview, you won’t want to miss that, and that will be all on the record. You’re invited to file your own stories about that.

(50:46): And of course, you will also be able to submit questions in the Q&A that will be passed on to ask Podesta. We raised a number of those things today. So you can find a link to the RSVP at the chat, but also just go to our website, coveringclimatenow.org, and you can RSVP for that. You might also want to sign up there for our weekly newsletter on the elections called Climate on the Ballot, and of course, our weekly newsletter Climate Beat, which comes out this Thursday. And so with all of that, on behalf of my colleagues here at Covering Climate Now, I’m Mark Hertsgaard, thanking you very much for being with us and wishing you a pleasant day.