Dear colleague,
“For years — and especially at this fraught political moment — most coverage of the climate crisis has been defensive,” Covering Climate Now co-founders Mark Hertsgaard and Kyle Pope write in a new op-ed, out today in The Guardian. The public has been told by so many powerful government and corporate leaders, and much of the press has followed suit, that if you care about climate change you belong to a small minority.
Not so, according to the research behind The 89 Percent Project, CCNow’s effort to spotlight the fact that an overwhelming majority of people globally support climate action — in partnership with news outlets including The Guardian, Agence France-Presse, Deutsche Welle, TIME, NBC News, Noticias Telemundo, The Nation, Crooked Media, Canada’s National Observer, Japan’s Asahi Shimbun, Italy’s Corriere della Sera, Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism, and more.
That research shows that between 80% and 89% of people specifically want their governments to do more to fight climate change. It’s such a huge, and perhaps surprising, number that these people constitute a veritable “superpower in the fight against global heating,” Hertsgaard and Pope write. That is, if this “silent majority” can be alerted to the clear fact that they’re not alone. On this front, journalists play a critical role, including during CCNow’s ongoing 89 Percent Joint Coverage Week. “The first step to answering such questions is to give the silent climate majority a voice. That will happen, finally, this week in news coverage around the world.”
To CCNow partners: This op-ed by Herstgaard and Pope is available for your outlet to republish, as are many other stories that are part of The 89 Percent Project. Check out the CCNow Sharing Library for a complete listing of work available from our community!
DONATE: If you value work like The 89 Percent Project, contributions to Covering Climate Now support our mission of improving climate change storytelling worldwide.
Here are just a few of the latest 89 Percent Project stories:
- American outlier. In the US, 74% of the public wants more climate action — which is high, but markedly lower than in most other countries. Experts point to sharp partisanship, meager news coverage, and powerful fossil fuel interests. “The climate debate in the US was always very specific in international comparison,” in the words of one researcher. “It was always more partisan, the media landscape is structured differently than in many European countries, and many [climate misinformation campaigns] also originated in the US.” By Danielle Renwick for The Guardian…
- Hoosiers for climate action. In Indiana, wide majorities of the public support a broad range of actions to fight climate change and mitigate its effects. That includes using tax dollars to boost public transportation access and install clean energy at home, community resilience efforts like planting trees, and (with 82% of state residents in favor) taxing high-polluting companies. “Whenever we start having those conversations, it moves us step-by-step slowly toward actualizing some of those ideas in our community,” said the researcher responsible for these findings. By Rebecca Thiele for Indiana Public Broadcasting…
- Overcoming our exhaustion. “This is the million-dollar question: why don’t more people take to the streets?” asks a Portuguese Researcher with the climate group Scientists Rebellion, which is composed of roughly 1,000 scientists from more than 30 countries who are distressed about climate inaction. The researcher worries that the structure and stresses of modern life preclude activism for many people who would otherwise — but the data (89% want more action) is unignorable, and there must be ways, such as employing an intergenerational approach, to mobilize popular consensus. By Andreia Azevedo Soares for Portugal’s Público…
- ‘We need to change.’ Last year, Typhoon Yagi brought destructive winds and rains to swaths of Southeast Asia. In Vietnam, the storm killed more than 300 people, with 67 dead in northern Lang Nu alone, where many homes were also washed away by flooding. Authorities relocated many of the town’s survivors, to safer ground a new community that’s complete with infrastructure to hopefully avert future disasters as well as climate-safe building materials. By Tran Thi Minh Ha and Lam Nguyen for Agence France-Presse… (More 89 Percent Project stories from AFP here and here.)
- Where there’s smoke. An incendiary combination of climate change and housing development expansion into landscapes that are prone to wildfires has left more people than ever breathing in dangerous smoke. With wildfires seemingly ever more on the rise, now, health and forest experts are teaming up to them. By Savannah D’Evelyn and Kaitlin Sullivan for Yale Climate Connections…
Thanks to everyone who’s helping us spread the word about The 89 Percent Project. We’re especially grateful for recent coverage of this effort by outlets including Noticias Telemundo, The Times of India, Common Dreams, and The Energy Mix, among many others. And, as a reminder, on social media, we’re using the hashtag #The89Percent. Join the conversation!
From AFP global editor Ivan Couronne:
You may have heard of @coveringclimatenow.org 89 Percent Project 89percent.org. Between 80 and 89% of the world’s people want their governments to be doing more to address climate change. @afpnews.bsky.social decided to show what we mean by climate action in 4 different locations, on 3 continents
— Ivan Couronne (@ivancouronne.bsky.social) April 23, 2025 at 9:18 AM
From The Daily Yonder’s Rural Reporter’s Notebook podcast:
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Thanks for reading! We’ll be back in your inbox tomorrow with more stories from The 89 Percent Project. As always, if you’re writing your own 89 Percent stories, be sure to send them our way at editors@coveringclimatenow.org.
Onward,
The CCNow Team