Most of the big climate elections of 2024 have come and gone — Indonesia, India, the EU, the UK, Mexico — but the most consequential is fast approaching. As history’s top carbon polluter and biggest economy, the US has always wielded unmatched influence over humanity’s climate future. That makes the November 5 elections a huge climate story that journalists everywhere need to help audiences understand.
How can journalists meet this challenge? That’s the question hundreds of us explored at CCNow’s three-day virtual Climate on the Ballot Summit this week. Reporters and editors who have made the climate connection in their elections coverage — at the Guardian, the Miami Herald, The New York Times, CBS, NBC, and more — shared practical insights about what’s worked, and what stories most need doing in the seven weeks before Election Day.
“Almost anything that’s in the news, you can find a climate connection if you look hard enough,” said NBC News’s national climate reporter Chase Cain, citing inflation, immigration, and extreme weather as examples.
Such “everyday issues [are] really what motivate people … and are materialized into [their] political choices,” emphasized Aman Azhar, Inside Climate News’s Maryland reporter.
Being both “very diplomatic and probably a little bit annoying” can convince newsroom colleagues to run such stories, said Natalie Hanman, the Guardian’s head of environment. “Making someone a cup of tea” before presenting your case is one option, and so is telling the morning story meeting, “I really think it was a big miss yesterday” if such a story was overlooked.
Most media in countries with elections this year have paid scant attention to the climate angle. In India, news outlets did cover the ferocious heat people endured while waiting in line to vote, said Ritwika Mitra, an independent journalist in India. But coverage connecting extreme weather to climate politics was “extremely sparse, especially in the mainstream media.”
Support from the top of the newsroom helps. Earlier this year, climate reporter Lisa Friedman’s editors at The New York Times assigned her to cover the 2024 elections as a climate story. Now, she and her politics desk colleagues are “talking to each other all the time,” she said, including about upcoming coverage of energy issues in Pennsylvania, a crucial swing state.
Asked in a live online interview about the proliferation of climate misinformation, John Podesta, President Joe Biden’s senior climate adviser, said, “You [journalists] play the most important role in pushing back on that.” But, he added, government officials also need to “speak truthfully and take seriously the protections of the First Amendment.”
US voters face radically different climate choices in 2024 – from “drill, baby, drill” to the biggest clean energy program in history. Journalists need to make those stakes clear and hold power to account so voters can make informed decisions about an election whose effects will be felt for generations.
From Us
Positive tipping points webinar. In this one-hour CCNow press briefing, “How Positive Tipping Points Change the Climate Story,” on Monday, September 23, panelists Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and Professor Tim Lenton, chair in Climate Change and Earth System Science at the University of Exeter, will discuss positive tipping points that, if reached, could ensure rapid and exponential change in clean energy uptake and fossil fuel phase-out.
CCNow newsmaker interview with Jane Fonda! CCNow partners CBS, the Guardian, and Rolling Stone magazine have interviewed activist and actor Jane Fonda. Assets from the interview will be available to partner outlets via the CCNow Sharing Library. Interested in taking advantage of CCNow newsmaker interviews but your news outlet isn’t a partner? Get in touch with us via partners@coveringclimatenow.org or apply here.
Via Social
“Get out there and speak to people. Don’t just tell everyone what’s going wrong and what’s bad and what’s awful,” said the Guardian UK’s head of environment Natalie Hanman during this week’s Climate on the Ballot Summit. “There is hope, there is agency, and definitely Guardian audiences really love those stories as much as they want to read big headlines of doom.”
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Noteworthy Stories
$500 billion annually. That’s how much 98 developing countries need to respond to climate change, according to a new UN report that will shape the upcoming UN climate summit in November, in Azerbaijan. Rich countries have already failed to honor an agreement to pay $100 billion annually to developing nations starting in 2020. By John Ainger for Bloomberg…
“Chaos multiplier.” While climate change is acting as a “chaos multiplier” and worsening nearly all challenges facing Somalia and its people, the country’s climate advisor, Abdihakim Ainte, sees hope. Justin Rowlatt reports examples of climate projects that people around the country are taking on, including building a lower renewable power station, for the BBC…
“Firehose.” A narrow region of North Carolina was hit by a “firehose” downpour, with as much as 20 inches of rain in some places, and resulting in a 1,000-year flood. “Data shows one of the strongest relationships between climate change and precipitation is that as the atmosphere warms, the capacity to hold water increases,” said Columbia Climate School senior researcher Andrew Kruczkiewicz. By Jeffrey Collins and Isabella O’Malley for the Associated Press…
SciAm’s endorsement. For only the second time in the magazine’s 179-year history, the editors are endorsing a candidate for president: Vice President Kamala Harris. “She treats the climate crisis as the emergency it is and seeks to mitigate its catastrophic storms, fires and droughts,” write the editors for Scientific American…
Climate Quote of the Week
UK foreign secretary David Lammy is looking to position Britain at the center of the global fight against climate change. Bloomberg News’s Senior Reporter, Akshat Rathi, noted how rarely political leaders speak with this kind of urgency about climate change.
Refreshing to hear this framing from a political leader in 2024:
“The threat of climate change may not feel as urgent as a terrorist or an autocrat. But it is more fundamental. It is systemic, pervasive and accelerating towards us.” https://t.co/UaDyMLi1fC
— Akshat Rathi (@AkshatRathi) September 16, 2024
Resources & Events
Climate Central has released a new report, “Disenfranchised by Climate Change,” which digs into how climate-fueled disasters make it harder for people to register to vote and cast their ballots. “In just the past five years, extreme weather struck in over a dozen countries around election time,” according to the International Institute for Democracy and Election Assistance.
The UCLA Emmett Institute on Climate Change & the Environment has released a new report, “Foul Ball: How oil and gas sponsorships pollute major league sports,” exploring how Big Oil sponsors professional American sports teams to buy influence with audiences.
Coverage opportunity: The youth climate march and rally Youth Climate Strike: Tear Down the Pillars of Fossil Fuels will convene in New York City on September 20, to demand that world leaders gathered for the UN General Assembly end fossil fuel use globally.
Climate Week is next week, from September 22–29! Check out the calendar of in-person, hybrid, and virtual events.
The Uproot Project, in partnership with Solutions Journalism Network, is hosting “Climate Solutions Journalism Training,” on September 24, 3pm US Eastern Time.
The Walkley Foundation is hosting a webinar, “Refresh your climate coverage!,” and CCNow’s deputy director, Andrew McCormick, will be speaking. September 25, 10–11am AEST.
The UCLA Emmett Institute is hosting a webinar, “Climate Policy After the 2024 Election,” on September 30, at 12pm US Pacific Time.
The Investigative Reporters & Editors is holding an in-person workshop, “Watchdog Workshop: Climate, Environment & Policies,” on October 25 in New York City.
Jobs, Etc.
Jobs. The Washington Post is hiring a Power and Politics Editor, Climate & Environment and an Accountability Reporter, Climate & Environment (Washington, D.C.). Bloomberg News is recruiting a Climate Tech Editor (San Francisco, Calif.). Canary Media is seeking a Senior Editor (Boulder, Colo.). ProPublica is hiring a Research Reporter (remote); apply by October 1.
Fellowship. The Solutions Journalism Network and the European Journalism Centre are accepting applications for a 10-month fellowship for media leaders focused on climate solutions. Deadline is October 6.