Covering Climate Now and climate emergency

The lack of more media coverage on climate change and global warming that our planet has been suffering for decades is an irrefutable fact.

This is the origin of Covering Climate Now, an international project that was launched in September 2019 with the main objective of providing real journalistic coverage of climate change at a global level. At Place to Plug we don't want to stay on the sidelines and we want to tell you all the details of this great initiative.

Thus, Covering Climate Now (#CCNow) is a global collaborative project that arises with the sole (and great) purpose of increasing and strengthening media coverage of the climate crisis and global warming, as well as aligning the international press to achieve this goal.

We are talking about an initiative co-founded by the American magazine Columbia Journalism Review, the American weekly The Nation and the British newspaper The Guardian. It started with an ambitious list of 60 partners made up of media and independent journalists, and today it has a large list of collaborators that is growing by leaps and bounds.

In fact, it already has more than 350 media partners in the United States and around the world, including agencies, magazines, newspapers, television channels, radio broadcasts and institutions, such as Reuters, NBC News, The Guardian, Bloomberg, TV3 and Catalunya Ràdio, The Daily Mirror, El País, La Razón, 20 Minutes, Rolling Stone...

The first Covering Climate Now action

The aim of Covering Climate Now is "to share ways of telling the climate story that draw in viewers and readers and empower them to take action. We’re as much about solutions to the problem as we are about detailing the problem itself. Above all, we want to break the climate silence that still pervades too much of the news media”, as co-founders Mark Hertsgaard and Kyle Pope write in the initiative's introductory text.

A few months after launching #CCNow, their promised firm commitment began with joint coverage during the Climate Action Summit held on 23 September 2019 in New York, where governments presented their greenhouse gas reduction plans to comply with the Paris Agreement.

This first major media initiative succeeded in strengthening the coverage of the event and has since managed to break the silence of many media regarding the climate crisis.

The clock is ticking, let's break the silence!

Just over a year after the birth of Covering Climate Now, in December 2020, the UN declared a climate emergency due to global warming.

The UN Secretary General assured that “Humanity is waging war on nature. This is suicidal. Nature always strikes back and it is already doing so with growing force and fury”. He continued by adding “Oceans are overfished and choking with plastic waste. The carbon dioxide they absorb is acidifying the seas. Air and water pollution are killing 9 million people annually, more than six times the current toll of the pandemic. And with people and livestock encroaching further into animal habitats and disrupting wild spaces, we could see more viruses and other disease-causing agents jump from animals to humans."

So yes, time is ticking and climate crisis is palpable. For a couple of years now, scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have been warning that we only have 12 years to curb the rise in global temperature before it is too late and we face a catastrophic global scenario with irreversible environmental consequences. In fact, according to the UN, we are facing the "Decade of Action": 10 decisive years to mitigate the climate change we may suffer for the rest of the century.

And yes, global warming and the climate emergency we are experiencing is real, and its most severe consequences have already begun to be experienced all over the world: floods, fires, a VERY worrying melting of glaciers, plastic pollution, rising sea levels, torrential rains, devastating hurricanes, and the proliferation of diseases and pandemics due to the destruction of nature and biodiversity.

Governments get down to work

Yes, governments seem to be reacting and incorporating climate change into their political agendas. Yes, the European Climate Law is very ambitious and seems to be serious. And yes, the United States (at last) seems to have ambitious climate goals thanks to President Biden's push. But don't be fooled, human history tells us and has shown us that big changes have ALWAYS been powered by society.

It's not only governments, big corporations and the upper echelons that need to take responsibility and take action for the planet and sustainability, you have a big say too!

As it is said, the mills of God grind slowly… so any small action you can take in your daily life will be much more valuable, as individual action can contribute to society as a whole and become a butterfly effect; driving changes for the benefit of all.

UN "Act Now" campaign for individual action

A small change in habits, coupled with new decisions and your simple everyday actions, can contribute to building a more sustainable society and fighting the climate emergency.

How? By following a zero waste lifestyle, which goes far beyond recycling and reusing, and by following the UN’s “Act Now” campaign.

We are not aware that in our lives, and even in our daily lives, we make countless small decisions that may seem insignificant to us, but unfortunately have a huge impact on our Earth: aggravating climate change.

Decisions such as taking the car to go to the supermarket instead of walking to the nearest one, going to the fruit and vegetable shop and taking each piece of fruit and vegetable with a different plastic bag instead of carrying our own cloth bags, buying meat packaged in plastic instead of buying it at the butcher's and having it wrapped in paper, consuming meat products every day instead of reducing consumption to three times a week... These may seem silly and insignificant decisions, but there is nothing innocent about them, because they are DIRECTLY damaging our planet.

Stop, reflect and act

We have an overwhelming need to use and throw away, to spend and spend and spend. Hey... is it really necessary? It's about changing our mentality, being more aware of everything around us, understanding the impact of our routine and the way we live and trying to incorporate the Sustainable Development Goals as our own personal goals.

Be warned: Zero Waste is addictive. Whoever starts it... can't stop! Forewarned is forearmed, right? ;)

Thus, the reason that drives Covering Climate Now and all these media groups is not only to communicate effectively to their audiences about the climate problem we are experiencing today, but to do so in an evidence-based way in order to raise awareness in society about the real consequences of the global warming that we are ALREADY suffering and to influence people to take individual action.