Dear colleague,
We’re so grateful to all the journalists and newsrooms who supported Covering Climate Now’s effort this week to spotlight the huge majority of the world’s public that wants governments to do more to fight climate change. Our Joint Coverage Week doesn’t formally conclude until this Monday, April 28, but before the weekend, we want to say THANK YOU to folks who published or republished 89 Percent stories, the outlets that covered our initiative, and to everyone who joined the #The89Percent conversation on social media.
Our community showed up in a major way this week, and, together, we think we made a splash!
CCNow started The 89 Percent Project because it’s been for far too long that institutions, including the press, have treated climate change as a niche concern. We’ve always known that conventional wisdom underestimates the public’s alarm about climate change, but even we were struck by research finding that between 80% and 89% of the global public expects more from their governments. Especially at a time of rising tensions and fraught political divisions worldwide, we were amazed that such a large number of people could agree on anything! Yet study after study showed the same, and so we became convicted that journalists have a responsibility to help audiences understand the fact of this silent climate majority — which CCNow co-founders Mark Hertsgaard and Kyle Pope called a prospective “superpower in the fight against global heating” in a Guardian op-ed earlier this week.
The message was loud and clear this week, in coverage from every continent and in outlets both big and small. Thanks especially to our partners at The Guardian, Agence France-Presse, Deutsche Welle, TIME, NBC News, Telemundo, The Nation, Crooked Media, Canada’s National Observer, Japan’s Asahi Shimbun, Italy’s Corriere della Sera, and Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism, without whom this Joint Coverage Week would not have been possible.
If you value work like The 89 Percent Project, donate to support Covering Climate Now in our mission to improve climate change storytelling worldwide.
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE: The 89 Percent Project doesn’t stop here. As we said at the outset, this is a yearlong initiative, and in the coming weeks and months we’ll continue to work with partners to lift the shroud on the world’s enormous climate consensus. Expect events (like “The Future of Climate Activism” webinar we help this Tuesday), training sessions, newsmaker interviews, and more, as well as a second 89 Percent Joint Coverage Week in October, in the leadup to COP30 in Brazil. You can keep up with the project at our web home, 89percent.org, and by following CCNow on social media, on BlueSky, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Threads. If you have questions about The 89 Percent Project, as always, you can reach us at editors@coveringclimatenow.org.
Thanks for reading and, as always, thank you for your commitment to the climate story.
Onward!
The CCNow Team