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Every Monday, in Climate on the Ballot, we pass along a topic to help you integrate climate into your newsroom’s campaign reporting. Share this newsletter with your colleagues on the politics beat. Vea la versión en español de “El clima en la boleta.”
This Week: Climate Activism
In 2019, climate activism was surging. That year, youth activists, inspired by Greta Thunberg, staged school strikes and other actions, culminating in the single biggest day in climate protest history — Sept. 20, 2019 — with more than 4 million people taking part around the world.
And then the pandemic hit, and climate activism went digital, fading from the streets. The movement has struggled to regain its momentum, and new laws have made it harder.
The press, which has helped shape the public’s view of climate activists, often casts them as hysterical or even as terrorists, a perception with roots in mis- and disinformation campaigns by fossil fuel interests. In Europe, this framing has helped set the stage for governments to pass draconian laws intended to silence climate activists. In the US, 21 states have passed laws restricting protest. The Consequences for Climate Vandals Act bill co-sponsored by Republican vice presidential candidate Senator J.D. Vance, would double the maximum sentence for vandalism to art and other exhibits to 10 years in prison.
A 2023 Pew Research Center poll about climate activism in the US found that the majority of Americans are skeptical about activism’s impact. Views on activism differed significantly between Democrats and Republicans; the more liberal the respondent, the more likely they were to believe that activism increases support for climate action.
Journalists have an obligation to broaden the lens when reporting on activism, from focusing largely on activists’ tactics to a more thoughtful and critical look at the messages they’re trying to communicate. Activists are important players in the climate story, and need to be covered as such.
Reporting Ideas
- Talk with climate and environmental activism groups about the role they intend to play in the 2024 election. More than 350 climate leaders have endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president, including seven environmental groups that had not previously endorsed Biden. Some young climate activists believe “she will be stronger on environmental issues than Biden,” but not all environmental groups have endorsed her, including several in her home state of California.
- Talk with local climate activist groups in your city, state, or region about their priorities and upcoming actions. Climate change may be a global issue, but its effects are felt locally. What climate impacts are they experiencing, and are those motivating more people to join the movement? What solutions do these local groups support, and how are they pressuring local officials and candidates?
- “Communities are at the heart of solutions,” says Gloria Walton of The Solutions Project. She and other activists are focused on making sure that frontline activists are consulted during the implementation of the Biden administration’s Justice40 Initiative. Talk to community groups in your region about their work. Are government officials reaching out? Are they working in partnership with government officials? What solutions are they working on?
- Drill down on local activist organizations’ strategic targets. While activists in 2019 were more focused on raising climate awareness among the general public, the landscape has since shifted; some activists are more focused on concrete solutions and accountability for fossil fuel corporations.
- Report on lawsuits against fossil fuel interests being brought in your state or region. “Climate activists have had extraordinary success in keeping their lawsuits against fossil fuels companies in state court,” notes Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern. Since 2017, more than 30 cities, counties, and states, including Minnesota, have filed lawsuits seeking financial damages for losses due to fossil fuel emissions and climate change. At the same time, SLAPP lawsuits have proliferated in recent years, with Big Oil suing activists to suppress dissent by dragging defendants through costly and lengthy legal proceedings.
Take Inspiration
- Inside Climate News’s Keerti Gopal talks with protesters at a recent Sunrise Movement action on Capitol Hill calling out GOP vice presidential candidate Vance’s Big Oil ties. The activists rallied in front of the Democratic National Committee office to call on Harris to prioritize climate and economic justice in her campaign platform.
- In The Conversation, Shannon Gibson, associate professor of international relations and environmental studies at the University of Southern California, looks at “radical forms of civil disobedience” and how they have the effect of making “less aggressive tactics seem more acceptable.”
- Asheville Citizen Times’s city government reporter, Sarah Honosky, interviewed local activists from the North Carolina chapter of Third Act, which “brought New York City’s Wall Street Summer of Heat” to Pritchard Park last month.
- Watch CCNow’s recent webinar with journalists Bill McKibben and Keerti Gopal for tips on how journalists can sharpen their coverage of climate activism. Tip: Activists are useful sources of information, and cultivating them as sources is likely to bring fresh angles into your reporting. Be sure to treat activists’ claims with the same journalistic rigor you would politicians.
Spotlight Piece
In 2019, fueled by the climate movement’s growing momentum calling for bold climate action, Green parties rode a wave of public enthusiasm for climate action into a strong position in the European Parliament. This June, the Greens suffered big losses in the EU parliamentary elections, and Politico’s Karl Mathiesen looks at why that might have happened. The youth climate movement, which “was once unified around a single, simple call for older generations not to steal their future, is now riven with internal divisions — over campaign tactics, interpersonal disputes and the new global political emergency of the Gaza war.”
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