We know about the politics of climate change. We also know the economic story, the technology story, and the industry story,
Nathaniel Rich, writer-at-large for
The New York Times Magazine told a Yale audience this month.
“Those are all critical to understanding how we got here,” Rich said. “But what about the human story?”
On Aug. 5, the magazine
published a special issue dedicated exclusively to climate change. Through a combination of striking photography and historical reporting, the issue, “Losing Earth,” aimed to spark a new conversation about climate change that will reach more audiences and have longer impact than the usual journalism project in which something published today is replaced by another issue tomorrow.
On Sept. 10, the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (YPCCC) and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
hosted a discussion between three key contributors to the issue: Rich, photographer
George Steinmetz, and
Jon Sawyer, founding director of the Pulitzer Center.
Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the YPCCC, moderated the event.
The overall message of the evening was the importance of writing about the subject of climate change in a new way that will more broadly reach the public at large.