With COP30 set to begin next week, UN Secretary-General António Guterres says countries have collectively failed to meet their goal, agreed upon one decade ago in Paris, to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. In an exclusive pre-COP interview with Jonathan Watts of The Guardian and Wajã Xipai of the Amazon-based outlet SUMAÚMA, Guterres says humanity is all but certain to surpass that threshold in the coming years — with dire consequences on the horizon, especially for the world’s most vulnerable communities. (The experience of Jamaica and other Caribbean nations this week amid Hurricane Melissa — which Spanish newspaper El País called “a textbook hurricane in times of climate crisis” — offers a grim preview, with the planet currently at about 1.3 degrees C of heating. The Category 5 storm was made four times more likely by climate change, according to an analysis by Imperial College’s Grantham Institute.)
The coming UN climate talks, hosted this year in Belém, Brazil, are a can’t-miss opportunity to change course, Guterres says.
Whether world leaders are up to the task, however, remains to be seen. Under Donald Trump, for example, the US, which is the world’s largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases, is not sending an official delegation to Belém at all. American climate activists attending in the government’s stead say they will nevertheless press for action the world badly needs. “This is a really important moment to illustrate that Trump does not represent the entirety, or even anywhere near a majority, of us,” one activist told The Guardian’s Dharna Noor. Indeed, Noor writes:
“The conference will take place amid growing awareness that the vast majority of the world’s population — as much as 89%, according to a recent study — want more to be done about the climate crisis but mistakenly assume their peers do not. In the US … three-quarters of those surveyed said their government should do more. But Donald Trump has pushed the country in the opposite direction.”
Noor’s piece is part of the ongoing second phase of Covering Climate Now’s 89 Percent Project, which aims to elevate news of the global supermajority that wants governments to do more to fight climate change. We kicked off earlier this week, with coverage from The New Republic, The Hindustan Times, and an impressive collaboration of student journalists across the US called the Youth Environmental Press Team. Here’s more of the latest 89% coverage:
- “Personal Tipping Points: Four People Share Their Climate Journeys,” by Kadiatou Sakho, Julie Chabanas, Issam Ahmed, and Sara Hussein for Agence France-Presse…
- “Forget Planes. Meet the Man Who Will Only Travel by Train,” by Jonas Mayer for Deutsche Welle…
- Outdoorspeople in Wisconsin Have Mixed Views on the Need for Climate Action, by Susan Bence for WUWM News in Milwaukee…
- The Green Heroes of Munster High School, by Anjali Pai of Park Tudor School in Indianapolis, Ind., for the Youth Environmental Press Team…
- “Climate Change Is Wreaking Havoc on World Cultural Heritage Sites, Study Finds,” by Shradha Triveni for Mongabay…
Keep your eyes out for coverage still to come from Brazil’s Agência Pública, Japan’s Asahi Shimbun, Spain’s El País, the UK’s Channel 4 News, The Nation, Drilled, and more.
Head to 89percent.org for more on how your newsroom can get involved. And help us promote 89 Percent Project stories over the coming weeks! On social media, we’re using the hashtag #The89Percent.
From Us
Prep Your COP30 Coverage webinar series. Join us next week for three webinars on the upcoming UN climate summit, which will run November 10 to 21 in Belém, Brazil. We’ll share practical tips for following the negotiations and finding fresh angles and experts. RSVP.
Radar Clima es el nuevo boletín de CCNow en español, diseñado para ayudarte a profundizar en temas climáticos en todas las áreas de la redacción. Cada dos semanas te propondremos un tema con ideas para cubrirlo, recursos y contactos de expertos. En números anteriores, hemos hablado de cómo cubrir huracanes y tormentas tropicales, cómo cubrir la COP30 o los créditos de carbono. Suscríbete aquí.
Free COP30 newsfeed. More than 15 Brazilian newsrooms, including some based in the Amazon, will be covering COP30 in real time — and their newsfeed will be available to newsrooms everywhere. Recently, CCNow hosted a webinar detailing the project. The effort, organized by CCNow partner InfoAmazonia, will deliver in-depth and comprehensive reporting from across the conference, including negotiations in the Blue Zone, debates and activities in the Green Zone, and civil society programming.
- Stories will be available in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. Learn more and register.
COP30 press briefing, with Christiana Figueres. CCNow’s Mark Hertsgaard will host a press briefing with Christiana Figueres, the Costa Rican diplomat who was the architect of 2015’s Paris Agreement, on Tuesday, November 11, at 10am in Belém (9am US Eastern Time & 1pm UTC). Figueres, who today is a founding partner of the NGO Global Optimism, will take questions from reporters, both in person in Belém and online, about how and why the climate fight can still be won.
Stay tuned for more information on this opportunity. Journalists in Belém are invited to join us at the Socio Environmental Journalism House at COP30 (Rua Arcipreste Manoel Teodoro 864, Batista Campos, Belém, 66015-040).
Quote of the Week
“Not only are wealthy countries retreating from fighting climate change, they’re not listening to us.”
— Michai Robertson, a senior adviser to the Alliance of Small Island States, who is from the Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda, as quoted in The New York Times
Noteworthy Stories
The road to COP. In a wide-ranging interview, COP30 president André Aranha Corrêa do Lago talks about the main issues in the upcoming negotiations, including energy transition progress, financing, adaptation, and his hope that it will be remembered as the “adaptation COP.” By Tais Gadea Lara for InfoAmazonia…
Need for speed. World leaders pledged to cut carbon emissions 60% by 2035 from 1990 levels when they signed the Paris Agreement a decade ago. A new UN report finds that they are not close to meeting that goal, and that greenhouse gas emissions will fall only 10% by 2035. By Laura Millan and John Ainger for Bloomberg Green…
Greenwashing ag. Agriculture drives about one-third of greenhouse gas emissions around the world and Brazil has made it a priority at next month’s COP30. This increased pressure has put livestock producer nations on the defensive, and is fueling disinformation and greenwashing about possible solutions. Here are eight terms to watch out for during the negotiations. By Rachel Sherrington and Hazel Healy for DeSmog…
Avoidable deaths. The 2025 Report of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, which is out this week, finds that millions of people are needlessly dying every year from exposure to extreme heat, wildfire smoke, and the faster spread of diseases like dengue fever, driven by the continuing use of fossil fuels. By Keerti Gopal for Inside Climate News…
- Heat-related deaths worldwide have risen 23% since the 1990s, according to the same report, with “rising global heat… now killing one person a minute around the world.” By Damian Carrington for The Guardian…
‘Tough love for the LA Times.’ Longtime climate columnist and CCNow award winner Sammy Roth has left the newspaper and launched a new Substack. This week, he takes a hard look at the LA Times’s coverage of the Eaton and Palisades fires, finding that only 13% of the newspaper’s stories mentioned climate change in January and February 2025. By Sammy Roth at Climate-Colored Goggles…
Resources & Events
Climate + health webinar. Join CCNow partner The Xylom and researchers from the George Mason Center for Climate Change Communication and the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication on November 5, at 1pm US Eastern Time, to discuss their new article, “Advancing and integrating climate and health policy in the United States: Insights from national policy stakeholders,” published in The Journal of Climate Change and Health. RSVP.
The US Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters database, formerly maintained by NOAA, has a new home at Climate Central, with the latest available data through June 2025. Explore the data.
Jobs, Etc.
Mongabay is hiring for several positions: contributing editor, ocean desk; engagement editor; Asia wire reporter (remote in Asia) and investigations editor. Bloomberg News is hiring a climate reporter (New Delhi). Scientific American is hiring a news intern (hybrid, New York, N.Y.). Nature is looking for two associate or senior editors, communications earth & environment (hybrid; New York, New Jersey, Shanghai, or Beijing).
WaterBear, the platform known for award-winning climate and nature documentaries, is now expanding to include articles, essays, and creator-led content from leading journalists and storytellers. They are partnering with Covering Climate Now to spotlight the most impactful reporting on the planet’s defining stories ranging from climate justice, nature, and biodiversity to food, energy, and culture. Learn more.
Migration Fellowship. Journalists with a minimum of five years of media work experience can apply for the CERC Migration and Bridging Divides Journalism Fellowship. This journalism fellowship invites experienced journalists to apply for a prestigious one-month residency at Toronto Metropolitan University. Apply by November 1.
The Solutions Journalism Africa Summit 2025, with the theme “Reframing Africa’s Narratives Through Solutions-Focused Storytelling,“ will be held in Abuja November 14 and 15, 2025. Apply here.
