BY CCNOW STAFF

The Guardian has been Covering Climate Now’s lead media partner since our founding in April 2019. That October, Katharine Viner, the Guardian’s editor-in-chief, announced a climate pledge that would further strengthen the paper’s already strong commitment to the story. “The climate crisis is the most urgent issue of our times,” Viner wrote, and it required “immediate action to avoid a catastrophe for humanity and for the natural world.” The Guardian would do its part by “delivering powerful reporting on the climate emergency,” among other measures.

This week, the Guardian updated that climate pledge, and its new statement deserves consideration by every journalist and every newsroom that wants to be a leader in climate journalism. Here, we highlight four aspects:

First, the Guardian will continue “to relentlessly report on the crisis each day,” the statement declared, citing 4,000 pieces of climate journalism produced over the past year that were “projected highly visibly on our website, our apps, and our newspapers” and reached 65 million readers. Playing the story big like this — producing lots of coverage and presenting that coverage prominently so readers understand that this is the most urgent story of our time — is a hallmark of strong climate journalism.

Second, the Guardian will “publish up-to-date indicators that point to the urgency of the situation.”  In 2019, the Guardian was the first major news organization to regularly employ the term “climate emergency” and the first CCNow partner to sign our subsequent statement declaring that “journalism should reflect what the science says: the climate emergency is here.” Some journalists have challenged using the term “climate emergency,” calling it “activist-y.” But scientists, not activists, chose that term — some 14,000 of them, in fact. An open letter in the peer-reviewed journal BioScience explains that “emergency” is the correct word because action is needed immediately to prevent irreparable harm to the climate. Following the science is another hallmark of strong climate coverage.

Third, the pledge says, the Guardian will report the words and actions not only of the powerful — the government and corporate officials spotlighted in most news coverage — but also of those people “whose homes have been devoured by wildfire, or obliterated by flash flooding. Those whose harvests have failed, whose livelihoods have dissolved. Those who have lost everything apart from their ability to speak of their loss.” Centering the profound injustice and inequalities at the heart of this crisis is a hallmark of strong climate coverage.

Fourth, the Guardian pledges to walk the walk — to “eliminate two-thirds of [its heat-trapping] emissions by 2030” and “decouple” its finances from fossil fuel companies. The paper said in 2019 that it would no longer accept advertising from fossil fuel companies. Now, it has also eliminated them from its pension fund investments.

Not mentioned in the pledge, but a final bonus: The Guardian’s climate coverage is driving audience engagement, because readers say it’s what they want.