“Good climate news this week.” That’s the lede of a regular social media post that points to an important shift in tone of climate coverage. Whether you’re a journalist who is new to the beat or an old hand, it’s a gold mine of story ideas about potential climate solutions.
Every week, Assaad Razzouk, a Lebanese-British clean energy entrepreneur, posts a concise, factually solid list of climate-friendly developments around the world. On December 8, the third item on Razzouk’s list read, in its entirety, “South Africa’s high court says no to new coal.” Item seven reported that “Barbados completes $125m debt swap for climate resilience.”
Assignment editors, TV and radio show bookers, beat reporters, and freelancers alike will find these lists useful in at least two ways. On a practical level, the lists suggest possible stories to pursue and guests to book. On a conceptual level, they remind us that the climate story is by no means all bleak: There’s lots of good news out there, too.
That’s important because global surveys reveal that most of the public is keen to learn more about climate change, especially its solutions. Donald Trump’s return to the White House could bring a resurgence of climate denial in the US and beyond and tempt some newsrooms to scale back climate coverage. Stories that explore potential solutions could keep climate change in the news — and attract audiences that might otherwise be tempted to bail.
Razzouk is a cheerleader for progress but not a propagandist. Most of the events he highlights have been the subject of at least one story by a bona fide news outlet. The value of his list is curatorial. In an information-saturated world where it’s easy to miss important news, he separates the wheat from the chaff, focusing attention on truly important developments.
Item four on this week’s list — “Italy plans mandatory insurance for climate risks” — provides fresh insight into the massive, emerging story of climate change and insurance. Globally, climate change accounted for more than one-third of total insured weather losses over the past 20 years, according to a new report by Insure Our Future. In the US, insurance companies including State Farm, Allstate, and AAA have stopped renewing policies or entirely pulled out of California and Florida, where climate-driven fires and hurricanes are costing tens of billions.
Italy’s new law, which requires all businesses to buy insurance for climate-driven weather extremes, is a possible climate solutions story. “Possible” because no one knows yet how well the law will work. That’s a question follow-up reporting can answer. Meanwhile, journalists far from Italy can ask their own government and business officials if such a policy makes sense in their jurisdiction.
As always, good solutions reporting does not sugar-coat the facts or blindly endorse a given solution: It interrogates whether that “solution” actually works. For additional support learning to cover climate solutions, check out CCNow and Solutions Journalism Network’s Climate Reporting Solutions Guide. At this fraught hour in the climate emergency, it’s the kind of reporting we need more of.
From Us
Talking Shop: What Happened at COP29? Yesterday, we spoke with the Guardian’s Fiona Harvey, Dialogue Earth’s Fermin Koop, and Climate Tracker’s Biena Magbitang about key outcomes and takeaways from the UN’s climate summit. Watch the recording.
CCNow on BlueSky. Check out our curated list on Bluesky of journalists covering climate. Follow us and drop us a note to be added to the list.
Noteworthy Stories
Across the Atlantic. In warmer seas, fish populations are changing, challenging fishermen from South Carolina to Senegal. Charleston’s Post and Courier crosses the ocean for a story about how economic hardship is driving West African fisherman to undertake highly dangerous journeys — to the Canary Islands, 1,000 miles from their home, or even further, to Europe or North America. By Borso Tall for South Carolina’s Post and Courier…
Nothin’ but blues skies… Heat waves baked many parts of the world in 2023, with temperature spikes far exceeding expectations and baffling many scientists. Now, scientists think they’ve found an explanation: markedly fewer low-altitude clouds, which leaves Earth more exposed than normal to solar energy. The kicker? Climate change might be to blame for newly cloudless skies, creating a vicious cycle. By Adam Vaughan for The Times of London…
Mortgages schmortgages. Amid more and more climate-fueled disasters, US homes in at-risk areas are losing value, threatening increasing disparities between their actual value and the value of the mortgages held on them, many of which are backed by the US federal government through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Despite major risk to taxpayers and the nation’s financial system, so far regulators have done little. By Lydia DePhillips for The New York Times…
On the docket. The US Supreme Court will hear arguments for a case in which a lower court blocked the construction of an oil-linked railway in northeast Utah, which could threaten provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act, a landmark law that has been in effect, requiring such projects to anticipate and publicize potential environmental harm, since 1970. By Nina Lakhani for the Guardian…
Doctor’s orders. A novel pilot effort in Massachusetts is tackling the challenge of patients who are unable to afford home electricity to keep their breathing machines powered and wheelchairs charged. About 500 rooftop solar panels not only power Boston Medical Center but produce an excess of electricity that kicks back to patients in the form of monthly power bill credits. By Martha Bebinger for NPR, via Boston’s WBUR…
Now that’s a tax break. Companies operating liquid natural gas facilities in Louisiana are set to receive more than $21 billion in state and local tax exemptions, amounting in effect to a $6.7 million subsidy per job created by those companies, according to a new report. All that public money is especially noteworthy given that Louisiana ranks near-last in the nation on many quality-of-life metrics, including health and education. By Pam Radtke for Floodlight…
Vulnerable islands. Rising seas have long meant that island countries, in the Pacific, Caribbean, and elsewhere, are at the forefront of the climate emergency. And with global action and financial support perpetually behind the curve, those countries have resorted to drastic and creative measures to stave off devastation, from dredging up new land to selling citizenship as a source of revenue. By Jocelyn Timperley for BBC News…
Book Review
What If We Get It Right? by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
“The frames you use to write your journalism matter almost more than the facts,” veteran climate journalist Kendra Pierre-Louis says in this book. Lots of stories are framed around how individuals can reduce their carbon footprint, she adds, but not so many around taking collective action such as, “how to get a bike lane in my neighborhood.”
Activists may be the main audience for author Ayana Johnson’s What If We Get It Right?, but journalists can benefit as well. Six of the eight sections begin with a brisk listing of 10 problems and 10 possibilities, each of which could be the seed of a climate solutions story.
Donald Trump’s impending return to power may tempt newsrooms to double-down on the traditional framing of climate change as bad news. But surveys show that what audiences most want to know is how to tackle the problem. With fresh insights on subjects from AI to regenerative ocean farming to clean-energy finance, this book can help journalists produce the rigorous climate solutions reporting that’s especially needed these days.
Events & Resources
A new round of “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs) — progressively more ambitious plans to reduce emissions that the Paris Agreement requires countries to produce every five years — are due in early 2025. Climate Watch is out with a great new tracker, to keep up with countries’ pledges, or lack thereof. So far, only two of 197 countries, Brazil and the United Arab Emirates, have followed through, amounting to roughly 4% of needed reductions.
Carbon Tracker is out with a new analysis of corporate emissions targets for the world’s largest oil and gas companies, which are not aligned with Paris Agreement goals, especially when it comes to methane emissions. The report makes special note of the risk it could pose to these companies and their investors to remain behind pace of the clean energy transition. Carbon Tracker will hold a launch webinar diving into the report on Tuesday, December 17, at 3pm GMT (10am US Eastern Time).
Project Drawdown is hosting a webinar to discuss driving climate solutions forward in a future where federal powers will likely be hostile to climate action, on Wednesday, December 18, at 12pm US Eastern Time (5pm GMT).
The World Resources Institute is hosting a webinar called “Continuing Clean Energy Progress Under the Trump Administration” on Wednesday, December 18, at 1pm US Eastern Time (6pm GMT).
Jobs
The Washington Post is hiring a climate visual enterprise editor (Washington, D.C.). The Dallas Morning News is hiring an energy and natural resources reporter (Dallas, Texas). The Minnesota Star Tribune is hiring a climate and weather reporter (Minneapolis, Minn.). Mongabay is hiring a staff writer to cover biodiversity in California (remote, but must live in California). Southeast Alaska’s Chilkat Valley News is hiring a reporter to cover climate change and much more (Haines, Alaska). Northwest Montana’s Daily Inter Lake is hiring a political and outdoors reporter (Kalispell, Mont.). The Lever, an investigative outlet holding money and power to account, is hiring a political newsletter reporter (remote). Politico’s E&E News is hiring a climate finance reporter and an energy and public lands reporter (Arlington, Va.).
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