Every journalist covering the climate story can learn a thing or two from Post and Courier journalist Tony Bartelme. His new book, Rising Waters, entertainingly explores the title theme from his hometown, Charleston, S.C., whose low-lying coastal landscape makes it one of the most climate-threatened cities in the US. But his work is equally valuable to someone reporting in land-locked Arkansas or mountainous Mongolia.
That’s because Bartelme knows how to tell a story. That’s a helpful skill, especially these days when editors besieged by shrinking budgets often have to be convinced that a planet on fire is a story worth covering. Good storytelling has attracted audiences since humans’ earliest days around evening campfires, and bigger audiences please newsroom managers.
A four-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, Bartelme has a light touch that lets him write about heavy stuff — every inch of sea-level rise, he notes, means that 6 million additional people around the world get flooded — without sounding heavy. Favoring short, declarative sentences, he addresses the reader in a voice like a favorite uncle’s: friendly, informed but never arch, with dashes of dry humor.
“Imagine you’re walking down a path” on a beautiful day, the book begins, when suddenly, by your feet, you spot a poisonous snake. “In that moment, what are you not going to do? Deny its existence? Check your Instagram? No, I guarantee you that your frontal cortex will light up … and tell you to get the bleep away from that snake.”
The problem, he continues, is that climate change is “an invisible snake.” Carbon dioxide can’t be seen by the naked eye, and many climate impacts — melting glaciers, rising seas, dying corals — happen far away. So our brains “remain on standby.”
Bartelme’s goal is to make the invisible snakes of climate change visible and “wake up … our noggins” before we get bitten. To convey why overheating the ocean is so dangerous, he writes that half of the oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere “comes from ocean plankton — every other breath” that humans take. To explain why king tides now flood downtown Charleston 70 or more times a year, rather than once or twice as they did 40 years ago, he travels to Greenland, where his reporting won a 2022 Covering Climate Now Journalism Award. Greenland’s fast melting ice, he writes, “cracks like ice cubes dropped in a warm drink, except these cracks sound like thunderclaps and shake your ribs.”
Warning that “apathy and cynicism are [climate] denial’s twin cousins,” he concludes the book with good news: “the solutions aren’t invisible snakes…. No more coal and gas. More electric cars and trucks….” To readers asking what they can do, he says “replace your oil-burning furnace with a heat pump; eat less meat; vote for leaders who have the courage and honesty to collectively make these things happen.” And, not least, remember the beauty of this still magnificent planet: “Beauty is a reminder that action is worth the effort.”
From Us
Newsmaker interview with Jon Batiste. Oscar and multiple Grammy Award–winning musical superstar Jon Batiste will be CCNow’s next newsmaker interview, pegged to the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina on August 29. Launching the next phase of CCNow’s 89 Percent Project, the interview will be recorded in New York on August 26, with journalists from The Guardian, Agence France-Presse, and NBC News. During the interview, Batiste, who evacuated from New Orleans during Katrina, will perform a song he wrote about climate change for his new album, “Big Money.”
- CCNow partner outlets can either co-publish an embargoed story by The Guardian, AFP, or NBC News, or do their own story by watching a recording of the interview soon after it concludes. Stay tuned for more details or send inquiries to partners@coveringclimatenow.org.
Prep your fall coverage. Don’t wait until extreme weather strikes to learn how climate change is fueling changes to our weather systems. Join CCNow and Climate Central on Wednesday, September 3, at 12pm US Eastern, for a webinar highlighting emerging climate attribution research as the peak of the Atlantic hurricane activity approaches. RSVP.
89 Percent Project. The project’s next phase explores the people behind the numbers: Who are they, why do they care, are they surprised to learn they’re the overwhelming majority? At this Talking Shop, swap ideas with journalists from The Guardian and other CCNow partners about ways to gather candid, revealing answers from your audiences and the general public to present a vivid, factually grounded portrait of the global climate majority in all its diversity. Join us on Thursday, September 4th at 12pm US Eastern. RSVP.
CCNow Academy. Want to get better at covering climate change? Over 12 weekly sessions (September to December), we’ll cover everything from climate attribution to misinformation, from diplomacy to health, and from climate justice to social media. All in a small group. All in live, practical sessions. The application deadline is September 8th. More info and apply here.
Quote of the Week
“A lot of people participating in these marches are brand new to political action. It’s an invitation for everyday people to get involved in the fight against climate inaction, fascism and other forms of oppression.”
– Tamika Middleton, chief political and strategy officer at the Women’s March, told Inside Climate News, talking about the Make Billionaires Pay march planned for September 20 in New York City
Noteworthy Stories
Retreating glaciers. Europe is warming faster than any other continent and some of its mightiest glaciers are melting at an alarming rate. “There is no saving the glaciers without saving the climate,” says glaciologist Andrea Fischer. By Molly Hunter for NBC News…
Sargassum biofuels. Every summer for the past 15 years, Gulf Coast beach communities in Mexico have been invaded by sargassum, a brownish-colored seaweed. Engineers are proposing turning it into biofuels and construction materials. By Edith González Cruz for Wired…
Climate pact. After weeks of extreme heat that sparked wildfires across the country, Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, called for a “climate pact” to improve government coordination and enhance the country’s “mitigation and adaptation to the climate emergency.” By Carlos Caminada for Bloomberg Green…
Foreclosure threats. Two years after the wildfires in Lāhainā, Hawai‘i, residents who lost their homes are struggling to remain local despite alternative housing rental costs, mortgage limbo, and investors looking to gentrify the neighborhood. By Anita Hofschneider for Grist…
‘Old lady with a laptop.’ Oregon liberals opposed to nuclear plants in the 1970s crafted complex regulations to slow new energy projects. Today, a 76-year-old grandmother is using them to stall wind and solar in the state. By Tony Schick for Propublica and Oregon Public Broadcasting…
Room for improvement. New analysis finds that while French media outlets “have made real progress” in covering the dangers of extreme heat and its connection to climate change, “coverage remains insufficient, particularly due to an increase in misinformation.” By Aude Dassonville for LeMonde…
Resources
Digging for truth. A new guide from the Global Investigative Journalism Network offers tips to investigate climate change impacts in an era of science denialism.
India survey. The latest edition of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication’s Climate Change in the Indian Mind finds that 83% of Indians say they follow environmental issues in the news and 81% say they discuss environmental issues with their family and friends, but only 38% say they hear about global warming in the media at least once a week.
Jobs & Fellowships
Canary Media is looking for a copy editor (remote). Grist is looking for an Upper Great Lakes reporter to cover the impacts of climate change near Grand Traverse Bay (Michigan). Michigan Public Radio is hiring a senior environment reporter (Ann Arbor, Mich.) The Guardian is looking for a senior investigative science reporter (Washington, D.C.). The Conversation’s UK edition is looking for a commissioning editor to join its environment desk (London, U.K.). The Environmental Reporting Collective is seeking a managing editor to lead future investigations and support partner newsrooms (Southeast Asia).
The Magma Environmental Reporting Fellowship is accepting applications from early career journalists in southern Europe. Apply by August 31. Learn more.
The Pulitzer Center is offering numerous grants for reporting on rainforests, oceans, climate and labor, and corruption, transparency, and governance issues.
