Tyee Joins Global Network for Better Reporting on Climate Crisis

The Tyee has signed on with more than 60 media outlets to be part of Covering Climate Now, an international journalism initiative co-founded by The Nation and Columbia Journalism Review.

The project aims to show what’s possible when the threat posed by greenhouse gas emissions is covered with the urgency and context it deserves. After all, just the fate of human civilization may be stake.

That’s a call Sean Holman made here in May, with his open letter to Canada’s big media organizations laying out a “five-point plan for mainstream media to cover fewer royal babies and more of our unfolding catastrophe.”

Holman’s piece garnered wide attention.

It also was applauded by two of the journalists driving the Covering Climate Now initiative, Mark Hertsgaard, The Nation’s environmental correspondent, and Columbia Journalism Review editor and publisher Kyle Pope.

Hertsgaard and Pope have written, “We see Covering Climate Now as a fulfilment of journalism’s most sacred responsibilities, which are to inform people and foster constructive debate about common challenges and opportunities.”

As a member of Covering Climate Now, The Tyee joins TV networks including CBS News and major newspapers ranging from the Seattle Times and Philadelphia Inquirer to the biggest in Japan and Italy, Asahi Shimbun and La Repubblica. Other members include Nature, Scientific American, InsideClimate News, Harvard Business Review, HuffPost, Vox, the Intercept, Slate and the Texas Observer. In Canada, The Tyee is joined by Maclean’s magazine.

The Tyee has made climate change a priority since we launched in 2003. Tyee team members who’ve given it ongoing, committed focus include Geoff Dembicki (author of Are We Screwed?), Andrew Nikiforuk (author of Tar Sands and The Energy of Slaves) and Mitchell Anderson, who touched off a national debate when we sent him to Norway to explore why that country used its oil windfall to make green investments and wealthy citizens while Alberta did not.

In joining Covering Climate Now we have agreed to run “one week of focused climate coverage, to begin Sept. 16 and culminate Sept. 23, the day of the landmark international Climate Action Summit hosted by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres in New York.”

Hertsgaard and Pope are clear.

“We’re not here to tell people what to write or broadcast. All that’s required is for each outlet to make a good faith effort to increase the amount and the visibility of its climate coverage — to make it clear to their audiences that climate change is not just one more story but the overriding story of our time.”

That’s a no-brainer for many of our readers. When we asked you to name your reporting priorities for the October federal election, you ranked the climate crisis top of the list.

We’re delivering. In the time since you told us — less than two months ago — we’ve published:

The Vancouver Sun’s Op-ed Denying a Climate Crisis a Symbol of Wider Journalistic Malpractice

We Have to Stop Meeting Like This: The Climate Cost of Conferences

Yes, Planting Trees Can Fight Climate Change — If We Do It Right

Using Language to Make the World of Fossil Fuels Strange and Ugly

Youth Taking Action: Rallies across Canada Seek CBC Leaders’ Debate on Climate

Despair Is Contagious. But We Need Hope to Fuel Our Fight for Change

Changing Climate, Vanishing Old Growth Bring Increased Fire Risk for Coastal Forests

Why Not an NDP-Green-Liberal Coalition to Battle the Climate Crisis?

Andrew Scheer’s Real Bad Climate Plan

With the World Burning, Will the Canadian Diaspora Come Home?

Urban British Columbia No Longer Safe from Wildfire Threat

We Asked Two Experts to Evaluate Each Party’s Climate Plan

Svend Robinson: ‘Our Last Chance to Turn Things Around’

How Climate Change Divisions Threaten the BC Liberals

Trudeau’s Climate Change Policy Is Strategically Inadequate

Eight Hard Questions for the PM of Pipelines and Climate Emergency

Ralliers Decry Canada’s Pipeline ‘Blind Spot’ on Eve of Trans Mountain Decision

Inside the Race to Unify Progressives Behind a Canadian Green New Deal

All these stories can be found in The Tyee’s Environment topic section.

However, we have a new idea, thanks to Covering Climate Now and Sean Holman. We will be creating a new topic page solely devoted to the Climate Crisis — which is appropriate for “the overriding story of our time.”