We’re about to supercharge climate cover

This year is on track to be Earth’s second or third hottest. In New Zealand, preliminary calculations have us sitting on the thirdwarmest year on record. That would be a fittingly troubling finish to the decade that already includes the hottest year ever – 2016 – and the next five.

When we look back on this decade, we’ll rue opportunities lost for dealing meaningfully with climate change sooner. But 10 years from now, when we reminisce about 2019, we may see it as a turning point: the year the climate crisis went mainstream.

Now we have the opportunity to make 2020 a year to be proud of.

One year ago today, Stuff launched Quick! Save the Planet – a project intended to puncture Kiwis’ complacency by making the realities of climate change feel tangible and urgent. We hoped that by making serious climate coverage a central component of New Zealand’s largest website, we could change the country’s conversation.

The previous month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had released a landmark report on what global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius would mean. Humanity had only 12 years – until 2030 – to limit such an increase, and it would require ‘‘rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society’’.

That presaged a ghastly cavalcade of expert reports and extreme weather events through which the climate crisis thundered that it would not be ignored.

Concerned Kiwis also showed they would not be ignored, marching in the streets in massive climate strikes and submitting in heartening numbers as the Zero Carbon Bill made its way through Parliament.

Quick! Save the Planet’s journalism helped inform that justifiable sense of concern. We showed the risk to coastal communities when insurers start to retreat. We catalogued the quintessentially Kiwi creatures (such as tuatara, kea and pa¯ ua) threatened by climate change. We identified the large companies responsible for the majority of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions. We broke key stories on the Government’s climate policies, helped hold local lawmakers to account, and amplified the voices of the climate strikers calling for a new deal for the nation’s youth.

Quick! Save the Planet has drawn on the nationwide strength of Stuff, drafting in journalists from our news, business, politics, lifestyle and special projects teams.

But it’s time for our climate crisis coverage to evolve. Now, we’re enshrining our ongoing commitment by establishing a permanent climate desk with dedicated full-time staffing, to bolster the ongoing work from our current team.

We’re hiring a climate editor and specialist reporting staff. Together, they will provide the spine underpinning continued coverage from journalists from all of Stuff’s newsrooms.

Our new climate editor will co-ordinate coverage of this epoch-defining story for Stuff and across our newspapers, including The Dominion Post, Sunday Star-Times, The Press, and the Waikato Times. At a pivotal time, this is an influential role within New Zealand’s biggest and best news website.

The editor and their reporting staff will require deep understanding of the science, politics and economics of climate change. They’ll fulfil our audience’s request for climate change coverage that offers hope, not just doom and gloom, and helps articulate solutions.

As we supercharge our climate crisis coverage, we will also soon launch the first in a series of special print and online publications taking the pulse of the planet and delving deeply into key climate issues.

Ahead of 2020’s general election, accountability must be a major theme of our climate coverage. We will scrutinise the politicians, the policymakers and the powerful – training our lens on the words and actions of those who can make the greatest difference to how New Zealand reduces emissions, transforms the economy, and charts a credible future.

And given some climate changes are already baked in, regardless of efforts to reduce emissions, we need to devote more energy to constructive reporting on how communities adapt to pressures from sea level rises to species loss, to more common extreme weather events.

As 2020 dawns, we have just one decade to meet our Paris Agreement target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 30 per cent below 2005 levels. That remains an intimidating challenge, but it pales into insignificance against the global goal of holding temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2030.

As grappling with the threat of climate change grows ever more grave and urgent, so will Stuff’s coverage. – Patrick Crewdson, Stuff editor in chief

Ten years from now ... we may see 2019 as a turning point: the year the climate crisis went mainstream.