“I remember hearing on the [police] scanner that there’s a child in the water.” Every parent’s nightmare was about to strike Tera Sisco, a medical worker in Nova Scotia, Canada. Torrential rains were dumping almost a foot of water in 24 hours on her rural community. The resulting flash floods swept her six-year-old son, Colton, out of his father’s arms into eternity. “It was like doomsday,” Sisco said.
“This Is Climate Breakdown” is the title of a series of testimonials by climate disaster victims from around the world that’s appearing in the Guardian during the COP29 climate negotiations. Sean Holman, a professor of journalism at the University of Victoria, wrote Sisco’s story after conducting hours of interviews with her for the Climate Disaster Project, an international teaching newsroom whose journalists are trained in trauma-informed interview skills.
“Over the past two years, the Climate Disaster Project has talked to more than 300 people who have experienced unimaginable losses because of climate change,” Holman told Covering Climate Now. Calling these survivors “messengers from the future,” Holman said they “have wisdom about how all of us can survive climate change, together.” His hope for COP29, he added, is that all of us “listen to what climate disaster survivors have to say, and then act accordingly.”
Sisco’s heartbreaking story and the other seven testimonials in the series exemplify what CCNow calls the three elements of excellent climate reporting: They humanize, localize, and “solutionize” the climate story by spotlighting the real-world consequences of continuing to burn fossil fuels.
Our work as journalists exposes us to so many stories of death and destruction that we can unconsciously become inured to the terrible suffering involved. The floods that claimed Sisco’s son, for example, killed “only” four people, according to news reports. Telling the story of a six-year-old boy named Colton who idolized Spider-Man and whose memorial service featured “Thunder” by Imagine Dragons because it was his favorite song — and telling it through the bottomless sorrow of his bereft mother — brings us back to our humanity and reminds us that behind the sterile statistics are individual lives, and every life matters.
The Guardian is not alone in taking this approach; The New York Times and, separately, NPR have also recently published moving stories about individual climate disaster victims. This kind of coverage is a powerful complement to the (still necessary) stories about global heat-trapping emissions hitting a new high in 2024 and the latest machinations of COP29 negotiators. Indeed, highlighting the human costs of such developments — speaking to people’s hearts, not just their heads — may be a way for journalists to get more of the public to connect with our climate reporting instead of turning away.
The Climate Disaster Project, with the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions, is hosting a webinar about this work, on November 20, at 12pm Pacific Standard Time (8pm UTC). Three reporters on the project and the Guardian’s assistant environment editor, Bibi van der Zee, will discuss covering climate on the frontlines of disasters and telling survivors’ stories with empathy, solidarity, and impact. Register.
From Us
COP29 Reporting Guide & cheatsheet. Whether you’re on the ground in Baku or reporting on the summit from afar, CCNow’s COP29 Reporting Guide concisely acquaints you with the issues and context you need to give your audience accurate and engaging coverage. We’ve also got a cheatsheet that provides info on key negotiating groups, need-to-know acronyms, journalistic resources, and more.
CCNow Basics. Watch a recording of our first-ever CCNow Basics training webinar, “The Three Pillars,” in which we helped fellow journalists brush up on how to humanize, localize, and “solutionize” the climate story for audiences. Keep an eye out for another iteration of this training early next year.
Noteworthy Stories
COP29 | Finance in the spotlight. Economists have told summit attendees that developing countries will need more than $1 trillion annually by the end of the decade to boost clean energy and mitigate climate impacts. The standing pledge of $100 billion annually expires in 2025, which developed countries have only just begun to meet and which has proven insufficient as climate change has worsened. This week, shifting global politics, including Donald Trump’s election in the US, have dampened optimism that a deal will be reached. By Kate Abnett, Olesya Astakhova, and Virginia Furness for Reuters…
COP29 | Money problems. Leaders struggle to agree on what exactly “climate finance” means — and, as a practical matter, it’s long been vexed by poor accounting and transparency, with money going towards projects that in fact worsen climate change (examples can be as on the nose as fossil fuel development). Read why experts call the world of climate finance “a Wild West.” From Carbon Brief…
COP29 | Host country crackdown. Azerbaijan’s human rights record is abysmal, with the country receiving among the worst ratings from the nonprofit Freedom House. Advocacy groups say matters grew worse in the leadup to COP29, as the regime targeted climate activists and journalists, in particular; the Associated Press introduces readers to five such leaders. By Emma Burrows, with illustrations from Peter Hamlin, for the AP…
Another year, another record. 2024 is already the hottest year in recorded history, according to the EU’s climate agency; it’s the first year that global average temperatures have exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming above pre-industrial levels, the threshold that UN scientists said is imperative to limit the worst effects of climate change. The previous hottest year on record was 2023. By Sachi Kitajima Mulkey for Grist…
Fossil fuels, unabated. Carbon emissions from oil, gas, and coal will hit an all-time high in 2024, and their peak seems nowhere in sight, according to the scientific watchdog outfit Climate Action Tracker. Clean energy investments have soared in recent years, but continued fossil fuel use and subsidies have negated any gains for the climate, leaving Earth on a perilous path to 2.7 degrees C of warming. By Stuart Braun for Deutsche Welle…
Pricey rollbacks. Should Trump go ahead with promised repeals of US climate and clean energy policies, it could cost the US its emerging global role as a clean energy superpower. An analysis by the Net Zero Industrial Policy Lab at Johns Hopkins University estimates Trump’s cuts will cost the US some $80 billion in investments that will go instead to other countries, including especially China, and $50 billion in lost US exports. By Oliver Milman for the Guardian…
A plan to survive. Leah Stokes and Adrian Deveny, experts instrumental in crafting the US’s Inflation Reduction Act, have a plan to keep climate action alive during Trump’s second term. It includes pushing through funding and regulations in President Joe Biden’s remaining days in office, emphasizing the potential role for state and local governments, and preparing to cope with many climate losses. By Jeff St. John for Canary Media…
Via Social
Journalists on the ground in Baku are sharing their COP29 tips with the CCNow community. The Guardian’s Fiona Harvey and Agence France-Presse’s Sara Hussein contributed the first videos. Follow @CoveringClimate on Instagram to get the latest dispatches.
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Resources & Events
COP29 schedule. Check out the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change’s official summit schedule. Revised schedules are published daily.
COP29 negotiations tracker. Carbon Brief has an excellent interactive tool for keeping up with negotiations and corresponding texts, which tend to be hashed out away from the press, behind closed doors and in late night meetings.
If you’re in Baku. On Tuesday, November 19, at 4:30pm local time, the COP29 Climate Change Media Partnership is hosting a side event, “Shining a Light on the Path to Net Zero: Boosting Journalism on the Energy Transition.” The event will be located in the SDG7 Global South Pavilion (#G12a), Blue Zone, and it will be followed by a networking reception.
Jobs, Etc.
Jobs. The Houston Chronicle is hiring an energy reporter. The Connecticut Mirror is hiring an environment and energy reporter. The AP is hiring an early-career oceans and climate reporter.
Extended fellowship deadline. The Metcalf Institute at the University of Rhode Island is accepting applications, now through November 20, from newsrooms in southern New England for its Climate and Environment Science Fellowship for Local Journalism, “a new initiative designed to support local newsrooms in their efforts to report on the science of climate and environmental change.”