The Climate Story in 2026

Transcript

Mark Hertsgaard: Hello and welcome to another Covering Climate Now talking shop press briefing. On our topic today: “Covering the Climate Story in 2026.” Covering Climate Now is a global collaboration of more than 600 news outlets that reach a total audience of billions of people around the world. We’re organized by journalists for journalists to help all of us do better coverage of the defining story of our time. It doesn’t cost anything to join Covering Climate Now. There’s no editorial line you need to follow except respect for science. You can go to our website coveringclimatenow.org you’ll see a list of our partners. You can sign up for our newsletters, you can enter our annual awards program, and of course, you can apply to join Covering Climate Now, either as a newsroom or as an independent journalist. Now to today’s discussion. Climate stories has started off 2026 with a bang, literally, I would say you might not know that from how some news outlets are covering it. Climate has fallen off the agenda, actually, despite its clear connections to stories that are getting wall to wall coverage. I’m referring in particular to the US attempt to take over of Venezuela’s oil business and the mass protests now underway in Iran. Meanwhile, planet warming emissions are climbing and impacts are worsening all over the world, even as solar and wind energy continue surging. 2026 will also bring elections in the United States, in Brazil, in Bangladesh and elsewhere that have major implications for climate action. And after petrostates last Novembeer at the UN Climate Summit blocked that summit from endorsing a roadmap to phasing out fossil fuels, could a separate conference in April snatch victory from the jaws of defeat? In the United States, a growing number of voices in climate circles are arguing that political realism requires talking less about climate change and even abandoning goals such as phasing out fossil fuels. As tomorrow’s Covering Climate Now newsletter, The Climate Beat, will explain, this approach is known as “climate hushing.” It suffers from a fundamental flaw: it focuses on only one form of realism — the political, while ignoring a more fundamental form — scientific realism. Climate hushers may or may not be right about what is politically realistic, either way, though their political prediction have to be weighed against what scientists, increasingly alarmed, are saying for years that human civilization is hurtling towards an irreversible catastrophe, and the only realistic escape is to phase out fossil fuels as rapidly as possible. After all, political realities can be changed by human action. The laws of physics, not so much. So citizens and leaders around the world must somehow find ways to bring their respective political realities into alignment with scientific realities. That means creating the conditions to elect candidates, pass laws and implement the many climate solutions that scientists also say can still prevent unfathomable loss and suffering. And that’s where we in the media come in. It is our job to inform the public about not just the dangers, but also these solutions. And here it’s very useful to bear in mind that an overwhelming majority of the world’s people, 80 to 89% of them, according to peer reviewed studies, actually want their governments to take stronger climate action. That’s the key finding of the 89% Project that Covering Climate Now partners have been reporting throughout the last year. So we’ll be talking about that more today as we discuss how do we as journalists cover these and other important climate stories in 2026 and just as important, how do we get our industry colleagues in our own newsrooms and beyond to recognize that climate change is indeed a defining story of our time and needs to be covered as such. To discuss all this, we have a truly all star panel today. And wherever you are in the world, if you’re covering the climate story, you need to be following the work of these three individuals. I’ll introduce them shortly and question them during the first half hour, and then during the second half hour, questions from you. As always, only journalists may submit questions in these sessions. Please use the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen, and be sure to give your name and the name of the news outlet where your work appears now to the panel. First Mohamed Adow. He’s the director of Power Shift Africa, a nonprofit climate andd development think and do tank based in Nairobi, Kenya. He’s attended numerous UN climate summits, where he’s been quoted in countless news stories, including at COP 30 in Brazil in November. Next Fiona Harvey. Fiona is one of the environment editors at The Guardian. She has reported extensively on climate and environmental issues from all over the world, including covering 19 UN climate summits — 19 again, most recently at COP30. And finally, Bill McKibben is a world renowned journalist, author and activist. He wrote the first mass market book on climate change in 1989 called the End of Nature. He’s contributed to the New Yorker, The Nation and many other publications, and recently won Covering Climate Now’s first Lifetime Achievement Award. Please join me now in giving all three of our panelists a warm, virtual welcome. My thanks to all three of you for making the time to do this. Fiona, I’d like to start with you, please, and with a piece that of yours that the Guardian published on New Year’s Day, and you reported that the European Union has just initiated what amounts to basically a climate tariff. You wrote that from now on, quote, “companies selling steel, concrete and other high carbon goods into the European Union will have to prove that they comply with low carbon regulations, or they will face fines.” End quote. This so called carbon border adjustment mechanism. That’s a mouthful. Carbon border adjustment mechanism goes by the acronym CBAM. So how important a development is CBAM for decarbonization efforts, both in Europe and around the world?

Fiona Harvey: Thank you, Mark. It’s it’s incredibly important, because we have been talking about CBAMs for years, for decades, in fact, and yet, for all this talk, there hasn’t actually really ever been any. And what CBAMs are designed to do is to try and prevent the this phenomenon of carbon leakage, which is a kind of race to the bottom, where, if you impose limits or penalties on carbon output in one area, what companies can do is shift their manufacture of those high carbon goods or services to another area that has more lax regulation, so you don’t actually get any carbon saving, and the area that that is more highly regulated loses economically. You want to stop that happening. So the idea is that you set these tariffs or penalties at the borders, so anything that’s coming into your region where you’ve got strict carbon regulation has to show that it either is lowering its carbon in some way. These companies are actually doing something to reduce their carbon emissions, or they pay fines, they pay you for the extra carbon emissions. It’s a complex idea. It’s complex to do in practice as well. That’s partly why it has taken so long to see any CBAMs in practice. And also, countries don’t want to do this. So although the EU now has its CBAM in place, and that means that if you are exporting your goods on the kinds of goods that you just mentioned, these high carbon goods, into the EU, then you will have to either prove that you’re lowering your carbon or you could be subject to fines. What the European commissioner told me very clearly, is that the best kind of CBAM is one that you never have to use. So what they’re aiming for is that the imports should be compliant. They should be able to show that the companies that are making the goods are reducing their carbon rather than be forced to impose any any fines. So it does have teeth, but what they’re hoping is that they won’t have to use the teeth.

Mark Hertsgaard: And the European Union is, correct me if I’m wrong here, but I think it is the third biggest economy in the world, if you add all the GDPs together behind only the US and China. So companies, therefore all around the world have an incentive to bring their production into line with these low carbon targets, right?

Fiona Harvey: That’s right. Now some countries are very worried about this, because they’re worried that this could be a bit of a blanket regulation that doesn’t take into account the circumstances of individual countries. So, you know, obviously China is the big one, and China really doesn’t have much excuse for exporting goods that aren’t, you know, where you’re not trying to lower the carbon involved in the manufacture. China actually has its own carbon trading system. It’s not, as perhaps, doesn’t have quite the impact of the EU’s carbon trading system, but it is there, and China obviously, is, you know, it’s signed up the Paris Agreement. It’s supposed to be on a path to peaking and then reducing its emissions. So really, there’s no excuse for a big, enormous, wealthy, really, economy like China. But when you’re talking about small, developing countries that don’t have that economic might, then you could start to run into problems. I think the EU is likely to look on those on more of a kind of case by case basis than they would for the big economies. You know, this is still in its early stages. This is the first time you’ve ever really had anything like this. It’s not like everybody is going to be subject to these enormous fines. You know, from day one, there’s, there’s a bit of kind of wiggle room there, while while people adjust.

Mark Hertsgaard: That’s Fiona Harvey with The Guardian. Any of you who are business or economics reporters, wherever you are in the world, that answer just gives you a lot of different leads to for your own reporting, looking at companies in your area that will be wanting to export into the European Union, a very big market there. So let’s go now to Mohamed Adow, he’s again with the NGO think and do tank. I love that phrase, Mohamed, Power Shift Africa. So Mohamed, you’ve been on a lot of these COP meetings, and you are one of the many advocates at COP 30 who criticized the final agreement for many things, but, but I’m going to focus on the fact that it did not endorse a global roadmap for phasing out fossil fuels, even though the majority of the countries there, at least 86 of them, were on the record as demanding that. Now a separate conference scheduled to take place in April in Colombia where governments can try again and this time this this conference in Colombia will take place without the UN rules that required consensus rather decision making. Those were the rules that the petrostates used at COP 30 to block progress. So what is your take on this conference coming up in Colombia? This is another mouthful, it’s the First International Conference on a Just Transition from Fossil Fuels. What did journalists need to know about that conference? 

Mohamed Adow: Thanks Mark. COP30 showed us the limits of the UN process. Many countries wanted a roadmap towards, you know, the fossil fuel phaseout but a small group of petrostates blocked it. It also became quite clear that waiting for consensus among 188 countries is a recipe for climate catastrophe. The consensus model continues to be a major constraint. It allows a small group of countries to weaken or delay outcomes that a majority supports. So Colombia announced — I think what was perhaps the most important announcement coming out of Belem, which is that it will host the first international conference on the phaseout out of fossil fuels in April in Santa Marta co hosted with the Netherlands and backed by the COP30 presidence in Brazil. This conference brings together, you know, the coalition of the willing countries to develop a concrete roadmap outside the UNFCCC process, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change process, working towards a potential fossil fuel non proliferation treaty. The symbolism is powerful here. Santa Marta is a major coal export port in Colombia, and we know that Colombia is the world fifth largest coal producer. So by hosting this summit there, Colombia signals that even fossil fuel dependent nations recognize the imperative to transition, but they need international cooperation and finance to do so and to do so fairly. So this mirrors, you know, successful diplomatic processes of the past, like the ban on landmines, the treaty on the you know, the prohibition of nuclear weapons, which bypassed, you know, gridlock by creating new forums for action where decisions were taken by majority, not consensus. And I think the Columbia conference is different. First it’s explicitly about ending fossil fuel dependence, not reducing emissions. You recall that UNFCCC was largely set up to help reduce, you know, the growth of emissions to help prevent dangerous interference with our climate system. But this conference is about ending fossil fuel dependence. Secondly, it brings together governments willing to move faster, alongside civil society, indigenous groups, labor and climate vulnerable nations. And thirdly, it focuses on implementation, so not aspirational targets. So this is hopefully going to be a game changer, where we can now be able to deal with the elephant that has helped to hold back progress in tackling climate change.

Mark Hertsgaard: It’s interesting as well that the co sponsor of this conference with Colombia is the Netherlands, which is also a major fossil fuel state and economy, British, I’m sorry, Royal Dutch petroleum. So both of those countries are saying, look, we’ve gotten a lot of our past wealth from fossil fuels, and we still understand that today, we’ve got to move beyond that. One follow up question, Mohammed, are you going to be there in Santa Marta, April, 27 and 28 folks, is when this conference is scheduled to take place. Will you be there? And are you hearing that say governments in Africa and across the global south? Are they planning to be there for this conference.

Mohamed Adow: Yes, I’ll definitely be there. And I must say, Santa Marta offered us a rare political opening for fossil fuel transition roadmap. And this enjoys not just, you know, vulnerable country support, but also the President Lula of Brazil. He gets public support in Belem for for this roadmap. And so we also have over 80 countries that are committed in Belem, and we’ve seen a lot of countries, including those in Africa, that have been pushing for climate ambition, committing to actually show up in Belem. So this is going to be a major moment that I hope we will all organize around to be able to actually shine the spotlight on the historic injustice of the process and the opportunity to actually focus on how we will end our dependence on fossil fuels. 

Mark Hertsgaard: Thanks. That’s Mohamed Adow with Power Shift Africa. I’m going to shift now to Bill McKibben, but before I do, please do keep the questions coming in Q and A but I have to remind you, we need to see also not just your name, but the name of your news outlet. We welcome that. Bill, you’ve covered the climate story for longer than, literally, than anybody I know of. Recently, you were writing in The New York Review of Books, and you quoted a co author of the latest IPCC report on climate science, and that co author said, quote, “Things aren’t just getting worse, they’re getting worse faster.” Unquote. So Bill, what is your advice for journalists around the world, really, who are torn between, on the one hand, telling the scientific truth about climate change, and on the other hand, not wanting to turn off their audiences, or, frankly, before that, turn off their editors from having the story assigned in the first place?

Bill McKibben: Well, look, there’s, first of all, what a pleasure to be here and to be with Mohamed and with Fiona, whose work I’ve relied on for a long time, and I’m really grateful to them both. There are science reporters, places who can still cover the climate science story as it unfolds. But I actually think that the biggest part of this story that’s unfolding right now and the one that’s easiest to get past editors and to readers is the thing that underlies the all the stuff that we’re talking about today, which is that there’s finally something happening large enough to shake up the whole story. And the thing that’s happening that’s large enough is the very rapid rise of clean energy around the planet, just really a story of the last 36 months or so. And as Mohamed knows, beginning to transform Africa in fascinating ways, as solar shows up along Chinese trading routes. It’s part of the reason that the EU feels, I think, capable of pushing harder on carbon than they have in the past, and conversely, it’s the thing that’s driving Donald Trump to invade Venezuela and try and take over Greenland. You know, he’s he’s doing his best to slow down this transition and prolong the age of oil. And so that’s the fascinating new wild card in play here. And in my experience, editors are always open to the idea of wild cards in play and new things emerging. For some reason, that I’ve never really completely understood, what editors hate is just if you tell the most important story over and over and over again. In a rational world, I think that the rising temperature of the planet would make its way under the front page of the paper pretty much every day that there was because there’s nothing that human beings have ever done that’s as big or as consequential as raise the temperature of the Earth. But in the real journalistic world in which we operate, we need new ways in all the time and right now, the unsettling thing, the changing thing, the moving piece on the board is this dramatic reduction in the price of clean energy, which is shaking up all of our assumptions. And you can tell that those assumptions are everywhere, because remember, we’ve spent the last 40 years calling sun and wind alternative energy, but now they’re providing 90% of new generating capacity around the world. There’s nothing alternative about them anymore, and one of the stories we need to tell is that we’re breaking into a new paradigm.

Mark Hertsgaard: So Bill, let’s take that a step further and be very practical. Let’s imagine a reporter at let’s, I’m just making this up, public radio station in Los Angeles, or a newspaper in Tokyo, and they’re looking at what’s happening around the world, what where would, what would be a story pitch that they could give to their editors along these lines?

Bill McKibben: There’s 1000 interesting ones in each case. I mean, if I was in Tokyo, I’d be trying to, trying to cover the play, the Japan and, and in many other countries, the sticking point here, in this transition period is how much liquefied natural gas are they going to buy from the rest of the world, and how much is that going to postpone their own transition to energy independence from their own resources, mostly sun and wind. And it’s a story that has economic implications, because continuing to buy a lot of LNG forever is an expensive proposition, and it’s a story with fascinating political implications too. Do you really at this point in human history, would you like your country to be dependent on a country as erratic and unreliable as the United States for your supply of energy, which is a very new consideration for countries to have to deal with, you know. Or would you rather just go up and buy a bunch of Chinese solar panels and then be dependent on the continued operation of the Sun, which has been a pretty good bet for the last, you know, couple of billion years. So, I mean, I think Japan is, you know, a perfect example of a place where it’s a completely fascinating story. If you’re in LA. I mean, there’s, you know, there’s 100 parts of this. Everybody in LA is, of course, writing the story right now of the one year post mortem, of the fires that took out a huge part of the second biggest city in America. But they’re also, you know, big, fascinating stories about deployment of clean energy across California, and why it is that say Gavin Newsom, thinking about running for president, is emerging as a huge enemy of rooftop solar in California. And what does that mean, and what will its implications be? So there are literally endless angles into this for people covering technology, economics, politics, global diplomacy, all the things that and sadly now people covering military and defense. I mean, look, give Trump credit for this, he didn’t even try to pretend that the invasion of Venezuela was somehow related to democracy or human rights. He just said, they have oil and we want it, so we’re coming. And pretty much the same thing with Greenland, you know. So everybody’s got an angle here.

Mark Hertsgaard: Speaking of wildfires in LA, here’s another reason why you really need to be, if you’re a climate reporter, anywhere, you need to be reading The Guardian every day. Yesterday, they had quite a powerful piece that was a lot of graphics and a lot of maps showing that wildfires are just roaring around the world and increasing, I think it’s three times as much in the last two years as the historical average, and that this is directly related to climate. This segues nicely to the next question I want to ask Fiona Harvey of The Guardian, which is, you know, Fiona, The Guardian, really is it stands out consistently in our industry for playing the climate story very big. There’s always at least one important climate story a day, and not just breaking news, but enterprise stories like the one I just mentioned. So for those of us who are working at other news organizations where that’s not the case. Do you have any advice? Can you give us some insights into why is it that The Guardian can do that, and do you have advice for journalists who’d like their newsrooms to do likewise? Is it because of your readership? Is it because of your editors? Is it because you’ve got an endowment that allows you to to to spend what needs to be spent, to do the story, or is it something else that you can enlighten us on?

Fiona Harvey: Yeah, thank you. Well, it’s a lot of those factors, yeah, are very important, and it is, you know, you’re in a fortunate position, and being very independent and being able to choose what we we say, not guided by some billionaire proprietor. But the key things I would say are, you know, are available to anyone really. You need buy in from the very top. You know, it’s got to be the editor, the editor in chief, who really gets behind this and shows the whole of the newsroom that they are behind it. And then that makes everything easier. You know what it’s like as a journalist if you go along to your section editor or news editor or, you know, features editor, whatever, if they know that the person at the top of the organization is behind this agenda, then you’re going to find the doors open to you far more easily. So that’s really crucial. I think people need to understand what’s going on for readers and viewers, and Covering Climate Now has done some tremendous work on this. You know, you we know from the research that Covering Climate Now has done that people really do care about this stuff. People do actually want the planet to survive. People do want their children to have a livable climate, and they’re interested in reading about it, and they’re interested in governments and companies, and you know, other organizations taking climate action. So you can go to your high ups in your organization, and say to them, look, we can see people are behind this agenda. I think a crucial thing to do is to make it clear, that you know and this ties into what Bill has just been telling us, this is not just a doom and gloom story. This is not just a story about, oh, we’re all going to hell in a handcart, and it’s unstoppable and it’s catastrophe. And, you know, always terrible every day. No, we are doing things to change direction. We’re not doing enough, but we are, you know, people are taking action, there are reasons to look at this in a constructive light, and that’s incredibly important, you know, because I think readers do get kind of bombarded all the time with negative stories, and it’s important to be able to show them that There are constructive ways out of the mess, as well as presenting them with the reality of the mess. So I think if you, if you put together some of those things, then hopefully you know that can be successful.

Mark Hertsgaard: Thanks, Fiona. And if you are a journalist who wants to get that message across to your editors in the top of the newsroom Covering Climate Now is here to help you. We have the data showing that most people in most countries want government action, that’s part of our 89% project, and we are always happy free of charge to arrange meetings with you or with your bosses in the newsroom. Let me ask another question now to Mohamed again, picking up from what Fiona just said, this is not just a doom and gloom story. Of course, Africa famously is highly vulnerable to climate risks and threats. I think most people understand that. But having been privileged to spend a lot of time in Africa in my reporting career, I think it’s less known outside of Africa. How many positive things are happening? Bill just mentioned the rollout of solar power in certain parts of Africa. Can you expand on that a little bit? Mohamed, what are two or three key developments that you’d like reporters, whether they’re in Africa or elsewhere, to know about the climate situation across the continent?

Mohamed Adow: Thanks, Mark. I totally agree with you that there is so much positive climate action taking place here. This continent has, in recent years, become one of the world’s most important laboratories for climate solutions. At the second Africa Climate Summit in Ethiopia last year, African leaders advocated for what they referred to as climate positive growth. And I must say that that kind of thinking coming from the highest decision making body of the continent signals, you know, the beginning of a revolutionary era of African led solutions for the continent, 1.4 billion people. You know, for us in this continent, climate change is now an essential issue. Unfortunately, as you know very well, our arguments on moral imperatives and historical responsibilities appear not to have picked the collective conscience of those who have caused the crisis in the first place, and that means African countries have to confront extreme climate impacts with limited budgets, constrained access to climate finance and the legacy of historic injustice that the West has actually refused to address. What is often missed in global discussions, and I must also add media coverage, is the speed at which change is happening, from the wind farms of Kenya to the electric vehicle, you know, revolution in Addis Ababa and the solar farms, you know, further up, you know, north in Morocco. And yes, we agree, progress may not maybe sometimes uneven, as there are a few laggards on the continent, but the direction of travel is unmistakable. Let me give you three important trends that are actually happening. The first one is, our continent is making a huge energy leap. Africa is leapfrogging, you know, forcing heavy development pathways rather than following them. In several countries, renewable energy is no longer a niche or symbolic exercise, but has become, you know, central to national development strategies, solar capacity has expanded rapidly in countries such as South Africa, Morocco, Egypt and Kenya. You know, Morocco’s, you know, solar complex has helped position the country as a regional clean energy leader, while Kenya now generates 95% of our electricity from renewables, particularly geothermal, from Great Rift Valley. Ethiopia power system is already dominated by renewables, largely hydropower, and is expanding into wind, solar and geothermal as part of its industrialization plans. So crucially, and I think also here, importantly, our advocacy engagement, you know, our leaders, our entrepreneurs and consumers on the continent are no longer viewing clean energy just as a climate solution, but also as an economic development story. And I think this is important. So we need to look at this beyond, you know, the carbon dioxide molecule, and look at the prosperity the world, the good health, the quality of life that it provides for a continent that has majority of its population without electricity, that doesn’t have access to clean cooking, this is actually the fastest way to address our energy poverty. And so it provides immediate and real benefit for people in the continent. And this also links to, you know, job creation, energy security, reduced import bills, and you know, industrial competitiveness. If I give you one example, South Africa, you know, renewable energy procurement program has now shown clean energy can mobilize private investment at scale, while easing pressure on the country’s aging coal fleet. Equally important is what is happening beyond mega projects. One of the quiet revolutions in Africa’s energy transition is the growth of community scale mini grids that are also off grid systems. You know, solar mini grids in rural Nigeria, Tanzania and Senegal are bringing reliable electricity to communities that fossil fuel based grids have failed to reach for decades. So off grid, you know, solar companies now power clinics, schools, farms, small businesses in some of the continent’s most remote areas. So the joy of renewables is precisely this flexibility. They go where fossil fuels cannot, and they go faster, and they’re good at lowering long term cost. The second trend I wanted to just highlight is the climate leadership from the continent that is also most affected. Just as African countries are solutions at home, they’re also reshaping global climate debates. If you look at the COPs, you don’t need to look further than the recent cop, for instance, for loss and damage to climate finance to center in fairness, in the fossil fuel phase out, African negotiators and civil society actors have been among the most ambitious and clear eyed voices in the international forums. If you remember, the establishment of the loss and damage fund at COP 27 in Egypt, owed much to sustain pressure from vulnerable countries, but also from African states. And that is also happening on finance, where African leaders are vocal in calling out to the failures of the global financial systems on fossil fuels. You know, our voices have rejected, you know, the very simplistic narratives that you know says, you know, we need to develop using fossil fuels, and we’re now looking also ahead to what is going to be a big moment. You know, where Ethiopia is going to actually host the COP in 2027, COP 32 and that is going to be a major test of whether the global climate governance can finally align ambition, finance and fairness. And I want to add with this third trend, which is the resistance to new fossil fuel locking. There is a growing resistance within Africa to new fossil fuel locking. If you look at public debates around oil and gas projects, they’ve sharpened with increasing recognition that fossil fuel expansion often undermines long term economic stability rather than securing it, in countries such as Uganda, with the East Africa crude oil pipeline, Mozambique, Senegal, you know, large oil and gas projects have sparked serious concern about environmental damage, about debt and government risk, and if you look at Nigeria and Mozambique and other petrostates, you will understand why this trepidation is gaining currency on this continent, because Africa’s experience shows that fossil fuels frequently bring conflict, corruption and volatility, rather than prosperity. So today, across the continent, there is a growing understanding that locking in old fashioned fossil fuel infrastructure risks saddling our countries with stranded assets, rising debt, missed opportunities, and it also diverts political attention, and more importantly, capital away from Africa’s enormous clean energy potential. And this is the irony. You know, the countries that are least responsible for the climate crisis are the ones that are now articulating the clearest vision for solving it.

Mark Hertsgaard: Lot of story ideas right there, folks, a lot of story ideas and as an old TV guy, and that’s a visual story to go out into the villages that the that the old fossil fuel grids could not reach with electricity. And now you can watch a little girl or a little boy doing their home under a solar lamp. That is a beautiful story. Please keep sending your questions to the Q and A will get to as many as possible. Do remember to add your name and your outlet. I’m going to ask one more question to Bill McKibben before we go to those and it’s… talk about the elephant in the room. Unfortunately, we must. Donald Trump, he obviously looms large over the climate story in 2026 and many newsrooms, especially here in the US, have all but abandoned the story in the face of Trump’s hostility to it, whether for ideological reasons, as we’re seeing at CBS News, or simply because of the relentless fire hose of competing news that comes every day, like ICE agents murdering American citizens or the President United States trying to bully the Federal Reserve chief into resigning. So Bill, what can we as journalists do to persuade our editors, in the face of all this that climate change does deserve as much coverage as any other story out there? Do we just pitch that? Do we try to find climate connections to these stories or some other way.

Bill McKibben: Well, first of all, let me say, I mean, I’m very sympathetic to the idea that we’ve got to be right now prioritizing coverage of America’s descent into authoritarianism. You know, Third Act, which I found it takes as its twin mission trying to protect climate and protect our democracy. And they’re inextricably linked, as you can tell. You know, the president is in many ways, operating as a political arm of the oil industry. And, you know, coming to grips with his authoritarian impulse is going to be crucial to ever getting any climate action. So I would not want to discourage anyone for a minute for taking one inch of space away from the execution of American citizens in the streets of Minneapolis by, you know, armed thugs and so on, that’s crucial. I think that the way to talk about climate change right now in the context of all that’s happening is to figure out how it’s impacting all that’s happening. So Greenland is the perfect example. I mean, we’re seriously considering landing troops in Greenland if we can’t pressure Denmark into just turning it over to us. The reasons for that are A, as always oil B, the fact that a melting Arctic as a result of climate is shaking up some of the strategic calculations of things, and see some of the minerals that will be useful in the transition to clean energy. So Greenland is as much or more a climate story… I mean, I wrote a piece the day that we started talking about this last week, just saying, the actual strategic asset in play here is a two mile thick sheet of ice that, if it melts, will change the lives of every person on planet Earth, you know. So I think there’s lots of ways to keep writing about it, and I also think that I’m sadly confident that Mother Nature will continue to give us many, many openings to be bringing home to people exactly what’s happening on the Earth. The planet’s now so hot that it’s driving an endless series of events, and it’s important to constantly be noting what those are. I would add one more thing, which is that I think it’s really important to try and since we’re since we’re in an air political era where affordability is everything, it’s the one political issue that everyone sort of agrees on, that coverage of energy through the lens of electric rates, I think power bills are going to be to American elections this midterm what egg prices were to the last election. And I think that working hard to document the increasing failure, collapse of the planet’s insurance system in the face of climate change, are truly important journalistic tasks. The fact that we can no longer really underwrite. It’s becoming almost impossible for insurers to figure out how much to charge, because that’s a introduction of friction into the economic system of the planet on a level that people haven’t yet completely understood but desperately need to. It’s going to be one of the things that influences everything that happens. So there are endless ways to get this story in and in some ways, the least of them is just straight ahead. It’s another hot year, because, sadly, at the moment, that’s to be taken almost for granted.

Mark Hertsgaard: That’s Bill McKibben, veteran author, journalist and activist. Those of you who are interested in following up on the electricity and the insurance angle, especially here in the United States. Check out Rhode Island Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, he has been the leading voice in particular on both of those issues, especially insurance.  Covering Climate Now did a newsmaker interview with Senator Whitehouse last July that resulted in stories in Bloomberg Green and AFP and NBC News and The Guardian, where Whitehouse talks about, and in The Nation, where I wrote it, where Whitehouse talks about that. And Whitehouse specifically says that he thinks that this will be an election issue in 2026 as Americans see their electricity rates and their insurance rates skyrocketing. All right, quickly now, to some questions. Fiona, I’m going to start with you. There’s three different questions I’m going to combine into one that relate back to the to the EU’s climate tariff, the CBAM. So in order here, what happens to the revenue that’s generated by a CBAM? Has the United States exerted pressure on the European Union to weaken CBAM or do away with it? And then finally, what about the argument that’s made by some developing countries, and in particular by China and India, that this CBAM is a protectionist measure that unfairly discriminates against countries that are not as far down the decarbonisation path as Europe?

Fiona Harvey: Thank you. Yeah, great questions. First of all, revenues from CBAM, there really won’t be, this isn’t going to be significant, not for quite some time, and they should be recycled into, you know, low carbon efforts, actually, the kind of the running costs of the CBAM will probably likely to outweigh any any revenues in the short term. So it’s not really going to be a revenue generator for some time. It’s more about kind of trying to get companies to follow some regulations. With the US, it seems almost to have escaped the attention of the US in the midst of all the amazing tariff headlines that we’ve had in the past year, most of the tariff action has come from Donald Trump himself and retaliation to that. So I think that, yeah, it’s, I don’t think that that is an immediate concern, but I think it will start to be a concern as we move through this year. With the protectionist argument? Yeah, that was argued very strongly at COP 30. But it’s a it’s a bit of a fallacious argument, really, because all of the companies, or countries rather that were complaining about this are actually supposed to be putting measures in place to reduce their carbon dioxide. You know, we’re all covered by the Paris Agreement. You know, everyone was supposed to submit a nationally determined contribution, which is a plan for how you’re going to reduce or curb your your carbon in the future. So, you know, that’s an opportunity, NDCs are an opportunity to kind of escape the CBAM by saying, well, here’s what we’re doing to make ourselves lower carbon, to make our industries lower carbon. So there’s a bit of a kind of contradiction there, if you’re, you know, in favor of, you know, submitting strong NDCs and following the Paris Agreement, then why are you complaining about being asked to show that you’re trying to reduce your carbon? And some of these, the some of the economies that are complaining are actually very powerful. I mean, you know, already talked about China, but India, you know, India is a very powerful economy. So, you know, people aren’t bullying poor little India. India is a very big economic player in the modern world, and only getting bigger. So India needs to take responsibility for its emissions as well. India’s doing fantastic things in terms of the growth of renewable energy and so on. But I think the days in which we could class India, you know, in the same kind of category as companies, countries like, you know, Chad, whatever, has passed, India needs to take more action on carbon.

Mark Hertsgaard: Thanks, Fiona. Here’s a question we haven’t talked about this yet today, it comes from Natalie Donbach. She’s a freelancer based in Barcelona. She writes for Time, Grist and Debex. She says, I want to ask, where does the panel see the story around critical raw materials heading in 2026 especially as both Europe and the United States are apparently looking to shift production and recycling away from China. Anyone have thoughts on that?

Fiona Harvey: I can take some of that, if you like. I think it is really important to shift some of the production away from China, simply because we need all the production we can get of the vital components for renewable energy that these critical minerals represent, and also we need the countries that have this mineral wealth to actually benefit from it. You know, you’ve got African countries who have a lot of these critical raw materials, and yet it’s just being extracted from them, you know, refined elsewhere. The value chain is not in Africa, why? There’s no reason for that to be the case. We should be investing in Africa to be able to refine and produce the kind of end products themselves as well. So I think that diversification of the value chain of critical minerals is actually a good thing for the industry, for the planet, for economies, and also it could be, if it’s done right, it could be a good thing for human rights and for preventing the exploitation, the appalling exploitation that we’ve seen in some of these industries.

Mark Hertsgaard: Thanks, Fiona. Here’s a question. I’m going to exercise the chair’s prerogative here and favor my old university, Johns Hopkins University, is a question from a science writer who’s in the master’s program there. How do you recommend that we environmental journalists cover the subject of geoengineering this year, for instance, she continues as someone who focuses on oceans, I’m particularly familiar with marine CO2 removal, but I’m curious to hear how the panelists suggest we balance portraying geoengineering as a solution versus presenting it as a number one priority, or, I’m sorry, presenting it in light of the number one priority, which, of course, is to reduce fossil fuel dependence. So geoengineering, who wants to dive in on that?

Bill McKibben: It’s going to be an issue of growing importance that people should be monitoring because the logic of where we are right now is going to keep pointing us in this direction. The fossil fuel industry can’t, as you said at the very beginning of this repeal physics. So the temperature is going to keep going up, and the pressure on them, even if it’s not coming from the White House, is going to keep mounting in many ways. And the only even, I mean, there are two sort of putative escape patches here are one carbon removal technology of some kind, which gets harder and harder to sell with each year of, you know, widespread failure of this stuff to actually do very much and two, some kind of geoengineering, probably, you know, the throwing sulfur into the air stuff, and that’s going to get more and more attractive to the American administration, the fossil fuel industry and the handful of tech billionaires who enjoy tranterra forming planets and monkeying and who, by the way, increasingly, have fleets of rocket ships and things that are capable of playing at this stuff. So some point in the next couple of years, this story is going to get some kind of real critical mass. And so far, the international efforts to figure out how to govern it in any way have been pretty limp for pretty good reasons. It’s not like the world’s diplomats don’t have some other things to work on at the moment, you know, but I think the questioner is right to call our attention to it, and I think it’s going to be a story that journalists are going to have to get up to speed on pretty fast.

Mark Hertsgaard: And Covering Climate Now, that’s one of the topics we’re looking at doing a press briefing on later this year. So stay tuned on that geoengineering. Here’s a question for you. Mohamed Adow, it comes from our dear colleagues at the the website in the Amazon SummaUma, longtime partners of Covering Climate Now. And this is from Claudia Antunis. Hi, Claudia, thanks for writing in. She asks, from an African perspective, what is needed for a more unified position on reducing dependency on fossil fuels, and are there divisions between countries that are dependent on exporting fossil fuels and other countries in particular in Africa? I imagine she’s thinking of countries in particular, such as Nigeria.

Mohamed Adow: Yeah, I think from an African perspective, unity on reducing fossil fuel dependence comes down to fairness. Most African countries agree the future must be renewable, but they face different economic realities. The main divide as the question has said, is between fossil fuel exporting countries which rely on oil and gas revenues for public spending and jobs, and countries that import fossil fuels and use their limited foreign exchange to actually import inflation. And these countries actually see renewables as a way to cut cost, reduce inflation and improve energy security. So for some exporters, calls to phase out fossil fuels is harder without clear plans and finance to replace lost income. So what is needed, and this is true for majority of the developing countries, including India, I must say, is a just transition, and I want to put emphasis in the word just. International cooperation by way of sharing international finance and clean technology will help diversify economies and help countries invest in, you know, renewable energy and expand energy access. Africa’s shared interest is in a future powered by renewables. We just need to get to there fairly and that transition, I must say, is no longer a fringe issue, even if the politics have yet to catch up with the science, countries are already pressing forward and wanting to actually deliver just transition what we need to do, and I think this is something we’ve said, we must make sure that the transition is fair, it’s fast, and it’s financed, and it’s also feminist, so that we don’t leave anyone behind.

Mark Hertsgaard: Fair financed. What was the fourth?

Mohamed Adow: Fast, fair, financed and a feminist transition.

Mark Hertsgaard: Love it. That’s great. All right, we have three minutes, so I’m going to ask for very quick answers to this last question. It comes from a good friend and colleague of mine in San Francisco who writes on public health for the San Francisco Chronicle. He says, what about this increasing debate about the possible role of expanding nuclear energy around the world as a response to the climate crisis. Who wants to jump in on that?

Bill McKibben: If you’ve got, if you happen to be in a country with unlimited amounts of money, then it’s, you know, then it’s a workable idea. But I think Fiona could probably provide the latest update for what the latest figures for the UK’s nuclear power plant there on the coast is going to be, and perhaps even then divide it by the number of wind turbines and solar panels that that would build.

Fiona Harvey: Yeah, it is, as Bill says, it’s very expensive. I’m not sure what the latest estimate is, because it goes up all the time. It’s 10s of billions. And that doesn’t include the fact that, you know, the government effectively underwrites the production of energy from it. It underwrites the the cleanup at the end, the storage of the nuclear waste and so on. So, yeah, it is. It’s, it’s very expensive. It’s as just as as we see renewables getting cheaper all the time, we say we see nuclear continuing to get more expensive. Does that mean you should rule it out? I’m just not sure that we have the luxury of ruling out anything at this stage of the climate crisis. So you know, if there are countries that are going for it, are we to say stop?

Mark Hertsgaard: I’m afraid we have to leave it there. We’re at the top of the hour. I want to thank very, very fondly, our three colleagues today on this panel, truly an all star panel, Muhamad Adow with Power Shift Africa, Fiona Harvey with The Guardian, Bill McKibben, the first winner of the Covering Climate Now Lifetime Achievement Award in journalism. Those of you who are watching, please do sign up for the newsletters here at Covering Climate Now get in touch with us at editors at covering climate now with your questions, your suggestions. If you haven’t joined us, please do join us. It really matters that journalists on the climate beat have a sense of community. That’s a lot of what we try to do here at covering climate now to help all of us continue to do the best possible coverage of the defining story of our time. And with that, on behalf of Covering Climate Now, I’m Mark Hertsgaard, wishing you all a pleasant day.