What Do Climate Journalists Owe The Public As We Approach 1.5°C?

With the world experiencing a fresh, fossil-fueled disaster every few days, perhaps no coverage is more important now than climate journalism. The public hungers for it, and our stories shape street-level discussions about climate change.

Most discussions today focus on the oft-quoted number, 1.5 degrees Celsius. When the Paris Agreement was signed in 2016, 175 nations agreed to take efforts to limit global warming to 1.5°C above the pre-industrial average. While this is far from a safe level of warming, avoiding it would “significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change.”  

As we approach the 1.5°C target, the recurring debate in the climate movement has reached a fever pitch. How should climate journalists, activists, and public figures talk about the likelihood of falling short of this goal?

Some journalists and spokespeople emphasize the life-or-death importance of hope and positivity. On the other side of the spectrum sits a despondent minority that advocates for admitting defeat on avoiding 1.5°C, and irreversible, runaway climate change.

Take this WBUR story by climate correspondent Barbara Moran. Moran is critical of scientists and journalists who she felt minimized the findings of a March UN report on our proximity to 1.5°C degrees because, as Pascal Lamy of the Climate Overshoot Commission put it, admitting defeat could risk “demotivation.” She described feeling “gaslit” by “paternalistic” scientists “telling us a story to protect us from despair.”

“1.5 C has moved from ‘ambitious goal’ to ‘magical thinking,’” she writes. “I’m here to tell climate scientists — and my fellow climate journalists — to knock it off.”

Somewhere between paternalism and defeatism stand realists, who argue that we must look hard-eyed at what’s between us and progress, and prioritize solutions that offer legitimate reasons for hope.

This is where I sit. While the shadows cast over our future by governments’ unenforced, insufficient commitments and the fossil industry’s resistance to change fill me with dread, I see glimmers of light in the work of activists increasingly willing to experiment with radical civil disobedience.

Before I logged my first byline, I was an activist. In activism, it’s understood that losing helps you figure out how to win. This logic makes me certain that climate journalists need to report honestly on our sloth-like progress and champion the strategies that can make a difference.

Reporting on climate goals can be a challenge when good news and bad news tend to follow each other. For instance, in September, the International Energy Agency released a report that concluded 1.5°C is still in reach, thanks to the increasing deployment of clean energy technology. Covering the report, some reporters seized on the good news, emphasizing the “hope” and “brightened” prospects offered by the report. Outlets that highlighted uneven progress—the fact that regardless of expansions in renewables, energy sector emissions hit record levels in 2022—were better positioned a few days later, when September 2023 was recorded as the most anomalously hot month to date, with a temperature 1.8°C above pre-industrial levels.

This year is slated to be even hotter than 2023 (the hottest year in over 100 millennia) and, likely, mark the first year to surpass 1.5°C of average warming. Another communications challenge around the figure for journalists is that scientists typically use three decades-worth of data to calculate an average global temperature annually. So, scientists, in their characteristic caution, likely won’t declare 1.5°C dead and gone for another decade or two yet.

“Virtually everyone agrees that a single year passing 1.5 degrees does not mean we’ve passed the Paris Agreement target,” Zeke Hausfather, a scientist with the research group Berkeley Earth, told Vox.

Regardless of when the climate science community declares a time-of-death for 1.5°C, journalists must learn to navigate between the contradicting messages readers have received: that the figure is a line we cannot cross and the fact that it isn’t the end-all-be-all after all. 

“All too often, 1.5°C has been presented as a ‘magic threshold,’” Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist, told me. “One that, if we succeed in remaining below it, even at 1.4999, means that all is well; but if we exceed it by even a fraction, it means we are going to hell in a hand basket; it’s all over and we should just give up.” 

An all-or-nothing approach is senseless, when you consider that even with 1.5°C yet to be surpassed, the climate crisis has already cost trillions and, on the low end, killed millions. But every decimal degree of warming avoided limits future harm. Holding all the facts together at once takes work. While it’s important to avoid focusing on apocalyptic scenarios, those in the Global North must remember each decimal point poses grave dangers to the most vulnerable, like those in developing nations, especially those with island climates.

So, as journalists, what message should we present to our audiences?

Solution-oriented journalism can help keep global climate goals alive when things feel dark, and offers a third option to reporter besides drowning in despair or overflowing with optimism. Environmental journalist Mark Hertsgaard believes that the best climate coverage will highlight actions everyday people are taking, and that it’s our job to give our readers tools and knowledge they need to fight for their future. 

Independent journalists like Amy Westervelt, Rachel Donald, and Emily Atkin have been doing great work in this area: turning information into ammunition for activism. They’ve reported on greenwashing, challenged efforts to criminalize climate activism, and uncovered which politicians are in bed with the fossil fuel industry. This journalism helps people pick targets, work strategically, and learn from losses and wins.

“As more people become not just worried but frustrated, discouraged, and disempowered,” says Hayhoe. “It’s more important than ever that they know that our actions do matter and they do make a difference.”

However, which solutions and successes we highlight matters. Journalists shouldn’t uncritically endorse all climate “innovations.” Some research suggests that “green growth,” or the idea that the economy can grow while emissions decline, is an oxymoron. Yet covering financial and tech-focused climate strategies seems to be the raison d’etre of newsrooms like Canary Media and Bloomberg Green. Given the labor abuses and environmental impact of the industry that produces the minerals used for batteries and other renewable technologies, and the fact that current mining rates could exhaust all the lithium on Earth in 50 years, journalists need to be scrupulous when reporting on climate solutions, not regurgitate start-up press releases. 

Many outlets are ignoring or dismissing the work going on around the world to advance degrowth, the idea that national governments should abandon economic growth as a goal and focus instead on the wellbeing of people and the planet. Though it was once a fringe idea, it has become increasingly popular among climate activists and economists in cities like Amsterdam and Copenhagen, which have taken steps towards degrowth, experimenting with Oxford economist Kate Raworth’s doughnut economics framework.

As journalists, we can’t applaud the powerful when they manage to do the least. We should treat countries and companies that have something to gain, whether from stalling climate solutions or being a part of them, with skepticism. Instead, we must consider ourselves allies and informants to the people taking meaningful action to make our future viable.