Efficiency employees reportedly told to avoid ‘climate change’ and similar terms in their work in latest clampdown
The US Department of Energy has told employees in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) to avoid using the words “climate change” in what seems to be the latest incident in a crackdown on discussing the climate crisis in the US government.
“Please ensure that every member of your team is aware that this is the latest list of words to avoid – and continue to be conscientious about avoiding any terminology that you know to be misaligned with the Administration’s perspectives and priorities,” says an email from an agency acting director seen by the Guardian.
The common denominator among all three: Google Discover, the increasingly important boom-or-bust driver of audience to news outlets. In response to the traffic surges, VTDigger “rolled out a traffic-spike playbook that includes integrating in Discover best practices and an in-article newsletter pop-up that has already added over 2,500 new subscribers since launch,” she said.
The Texas Tribune only saw a 5% traffic jump, but that was enough to move it up from No. 4 to No. 2, thanks to drops from ProPublica and the Salt Lake Tribune. (Remember these are all estimates, based on Similarweb data, and the numbers are quite close: 3.387 million, 3.374 million, and 3.202 million. In other words, think of these rankings the way you might the AP’s weekly college football poll. They’re generally representative of reality — but not so precise that you’d want to bet $1 million that No. 12 is definitely better than No. 13.)
The top ranking goes again to The Conversation, which as I explained last time, will probably be No. 1 every month because of how I’m defining the universe of eligible outlets. Some people have asked me to revise that definition; if you’re interested in why I don’t plan to, keep reading below the chart for far more detail than you require. (Also, check out our July traffic rankings for local newspapers.)
But the underlying confusion was understandable. Before the internet, the title of “journalist” was given to those who had access to an audience. That typically meant writing for a newspaper or magazine, or talking on a radio or TV station. When the web gave everyone access to an audience, it became more difficult to know where that line should be drawn. It was a boom time for academicswriting about “boundary work in journalism.”
Something similar is true about “nonprofit news organizations.” Is every .org website that publishes original articles a nonprofit news organization?1 That’s certainly an argument one could make. But the edge cases start to jump out at you quickly.
Each of those outlets employs journalists in some capacity, and each writes about matters of public import. Any one could make a reasonable case for inclusion. But I don’t think a ranking system that includes them all would be particularly useful. Not to get all Potter Stewart, but there’s an element of “I know it when I see it” here. When I say “nonprofit news organization,” I mean specifically those whose purpose is to do some of the core news-gathering work traditionally done by newspapers. More specifically, the work at what Alex S. Jones called the “iron core” of journalism: “the total mass of each day’s serious reported news, the iron core of information that is at the center of a functioning democracy.”
A few of the outlets focused on the iron core date back decades, but most were born in a very specific span of time — roughly 2007 to 2017, say — when the internet’s impact on newspapers was becoming clear. In 2009, representatives of many gathered in upstate New York to issue what they called the Pocantico Declaration, a rallying cry “to hold those in power accountable, at the local, national and international levels,” “in order to achieve a more sustainable journalism,” which was “so crucial to a functioning democracy.” Some outlets aim to cover topical slices of the iron core — criminal justice, or education, or politics. Some focus on a particular style of reporting, like investigative or data journalism. Many cover specific locations, whether local, regional, or darn near global. But they generally have what the Pocantico Declaration called “collective sensibilities” and “basic shared goals and news values.”
That declaration was the founding of the Investigative News Network, since renamed the Institute for Nonprofit News. LION Publishers was born to represent smaller and more local outlets, including some less focused on investigative reporting. That’s why I used membership in those groups — they share around 1,000 — as the eligibility bar for our rankings. I don’t think including all nonprofits that publish original content would be useful for anyone. But I also don’t want to be responsible for making hundreds of thin-sliced judgment calls on which sites I consider sufficiently “iron core” or “newspaper-like” or “civic-minded” or “mission-oriented” to qualify. Nonprofit is a tax status, not a business model — or an editorial strategy.
So I think INN/LION membership remains the best heuristic we have. If you really care about your site being included in these rankings, I’d suggest (a) reevaluating your priorities, and/or (b) consideringjoiningeitherone.
Photo of the Vermont state line via Adobe Stock.
And yes, I’m aware that being nonprofit is not a requirement to have a .org website.
In the Vortex of Great Power Competition: Climate, Trade, and Geostrategic ...
Geopolitical tensions increasingly threaten global climate cooperation. Great power competition between the United States, the European Union, and China complicates effective climate action by embedding it within broader geopolitical conflicts. International cooperation between these actors has been pivotal for past successes, such as U.S.-China coordination preceding adoption of the 2015 Paris Agreement. Current geopolitical tensions reveal how economic pressures, stakeholder interests, and electoral politics at the national level can overshadow climate diplomacy, preventing a global solution to a quintessential collective action problem. Nowhere are these tensions more evident than at the nexus of climate and trade policy.
Accordingly, recent climate policies of the U.S., EU, and China reflect divergent strategies shaped by domestic politics and economic priorities. Climate policy in the U.S. has oscillated dramatically across administrations, evidencing deeply partisan views and the influence of incumbent interests in what is now the world’s largest oil and gas producer. Europe demonstrates policy continuity with ambitious decarbonization targets, yet faces growing headwinds from domestic electoral shifts, regional security risks, and persistent concerns about economic competitiveness. As the world’s largest emitter, China embodies a paradox, simultaneously increasing fossil fuel consumption while expanding its dominant lead in low-carbon technology manufacturing, deployment, and innovation.
Figure 1. Installed Low-Carbon Technology Manufacturing Capacity by Country/Region, in % (2023). Note: RoW = Rest of World. Source: IEA (2023).
More recently, climate and trade policies have becoming increasingly intertwined with geopolitical strategy. Countries routinely deploy trade-related climate measures to secure competitive advantages and influence geopolitical dynamics. Concurrently, supply chains for low-carbon technologies and critical raw materials have emerged as strategic battlegrounds, highlighting security concerns and prompting efforts to reduce dependency on rivals, notably China’s market leadership achieved through targeted state support, vertically integrated production, and economies of scale and agglomeration. Trade interventions can provoke retaliatory action, however, and interfere with efficient resource allocation in line with comparative advantage, threatening to increase the cost and timeline of decarbonization.
Scenario analysis offers useful insights into how geopolitical dynamics can shape future climate action. In a context of significant uncertainty, scenario analysis provides a structured approach for assessing multiple plausible trajectories and how strategic choices can shape future outcomes. As such, it can help explore alternative strategic equilibria, where tipping points in political or economic conditions may propel actors towards different responses. Employing a two-level game framework, which emphasizes the interplay between domestic politics and international cooperation, a new Working Paper examines three scenarios that illuminate how economic interests, political constraints, and strategic rivalries align or conflict with global climate objectives and international coordination.
The first scenario, competitive cooperation, envisions intensified competition that delays, but does not altogether derail, global climate action. While sectoral priorities diverge, great powers vie for technological leadership, stimulating innovation, cost declines, and market-driven deployment. U.S. subnational and private sector momentum, sustained EU policy ambition, and continued Chinese industrial strategy all contribute to emission reductions despite diplomatic tensions and fragmented markets. Cooperation on less sensitive issues, such as emissions reporting standards or non-CO2 gases, allows limited but productive engagement at the international level, while efforts to expand spheres of influence and cooperate bilaterally accelerate decarbonization in the developing world.
In the second scenario, geopolitical fragmentation severely undermines climate action. Heightened nationalism, economic protectionism, and strategic hostilities dominate, with each power prioritizing domestic economic and political objectives over collaborative climate goals. The U.S. embraces its fossil fuel interests and joins forces with other petrostates to obstruct global climate progress; the EU is paralyzed by internal divisions and fraying security alliances; and China doubles down on economic and political nationalism, further alienating its trade partners around the world. Formerly integrated markets splinter into competing trade blocs, resources are diverted to a new global arms race, and emissions rise unchecked as climate action stagnates, leading to a vicious cycle.
A third scenario envisages a dramatic reversal of traditional climate leadership roles, with China assuming global leadership. Driven by economic self-interest, public pressure, and geostrategic ambitions, China substantially accelerates its decarbonization efforts at home and – through vehicles such as the Belt and Road Initiative – abroad. As domestic reforms and international investments bolster China’s global status, the U.S. cedes influence in a world that has moved beyond peak fossil fuel demand. Striving to lower its traditional dependence on the U.S. for military security and increasingly for energy, Europe cautiously turns to China as a pragmatic partner in building renewed support for multilateral cooperation. A new world order emerges.
As the foregoing scenarios demonstrate, navigating the evolving geopolitical landscape requires a delicate balancing act to create space for climate action. The fraught interplay of competition and cooperation between the U.S., the EU, and China presents significant challenges, but also harbors new opportunities for decarbonization. Despite the risks posed by current economic and political trends, confidence building measures and policy alignment remain possible. Rebuilding bilateral and multilateral communication channels, insulating climate cooperation from broader geopolitical disputes, and enhancing domestic policy continuity can all be constructive ways forward, but in the end climate goals need to align with national interests for decisive and sustained progress.
Join Dr. Denis Phares, CEO of Dragonfly Energy, and myself for a fascinating conversation around dry electrode battery manufacturing, Tesla’s dry electrode battery manufacturing vs. Dragonfly Energy’s, dye-sensitized solar cells, nanotechnology, solid-state batteries, and more. As a teaser, here are some highlights on Dragonfly’s dry electrode manufacturing process: Efficiency and ... [continued]
That’s how Jason Koebler, cofounder of independent technology news site 404 Media, describes the situation that drove 404 to require readers to give their email addresses before reading articles.
It was January 2024, “I was walking my dog and I basically had a panic attack,” Koebler told Nieman Lab’s Hanaa’ Tameez last week in a panel at the iMEdD International Journalism Forum in Athens, Greece. (You can watch the full panel here.)
404 had just published cofounder Sam Cole’s major investigation into how large language models were sucking up child sexual abuse material. That story took eight months to report. Soon after it came out, a site called Nation World News ran it through an AI content spinner, changing quotes and facts while retaining Cole’s byline. The AI version of the story showed up on Google News. 404’s original story did not.
It kept happening with 404’s stories. “I started thinking this is a major problem,” Koebler recalled. “The days of us being able to walk on [to social media], tweet something, walk away, and get people to come to our website are over…We said, if we don’t aggressively move people from social media platforms that we don’t control to platforms that we do control, this business isn’t going to work and we aren’t going to have jobs anymore.”
On January 26, 2024, 404 published a 2,800-word reported piece, “We need your email address,” about what was happening to its stories. From then on, the founders explained, readers would need to enter their email addresses before reading stories. They also started putting older stories behind paywalls.
“It completely changed our business almost literally overnight,” Koebler said. 404 had around 3,000 paid subscribers by the end of March 2024 and today has more than 11,000. The work that went into the big explainer piece paid off. Koebler had expected a backlash: “I hate paywalls, I don’t like logging into things. But by explaining why we’re doing it, we’ve had people evangelize for us.” When social media users complain about the email or paywall, 404 readers will “share the explanation of why we did it.”
Anna Bucks, executive producer of video at The Economist, and Mari Luz Peinado, head of digital strategy at Spain’s El País, joined Koebler to discuss the new ways they’re bringing readers directly to their publications. Here’s some of what they’re seeing and some lessons they’ve learned.
Older readers tiptoe into vertical video. The Economist launched a vertical video carousel on its homepage in May 2024. The carousel features a handful of short videos with titles like “Why Trump is bailing out Argentina’s Milei” and “Why do leeches have 32 brains?”
The Economist’s paying — generally older — subscribers may not be familiar with watching short vertical videos at all, and encounter them on The Economist’s site for the first time. “We had to make sure it was intuitive for people who already consume short-form videos on their phone,” but they also had to “make sense to somebody who doesn’t use TikTok.”
Seventeen months in, The Economist has found that the folks who watch its videos — and other types of non-text reporting, like podcasts — are more likely to retain their subscriptions. “The subscribers who constantly come back to us,” Bucks said, are those who “are most engaged across topics but also across formats…we see video as very much bolstering the package.”
Mind the traffic drop. When 404 added its email wall and paywall, there was a surge in subscriptions but also a downside: “Our traffic plummeted,” Koebler said, with people “bouncing off immediately” after hitting the wall. So 404 started experimenting with where readers encounter the wall in a piece. Articles are “free and clear for a little while and we add the wall deeper,” Koebler said. “I think we’re losing some signups there, but probably catching a wider audience by using that strategy.”
A new format engages “sleepy” subscribers. El País launchedEl País Exprés in May 2024. It briefs readers on a handful of the day’s most important news stories and is designed to be read in 5 to 7 minutes.
El País Exprés has “been very useful to wake up our sleepy subscribers,” Peinado said — people “who pay for the subscription but don’t use it, and maybe one day they are going to abandon us.”
Today, she said, “around 20% of our sleepy subscribers have read El País Exprés during the past month. We think that’s good news.”
You still need to be on social. Only paid Economist subscribers can view the videos on The Economist’s site — but anybody can watch them free on the publication’s YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram pages.
That’s a feature and not a bug, Bucks said. The Economist sees the social video as helping “future-proof the brand,” giving young audiences a taste of the publication’s reporting. “They may say, ‘I’m going to subscribe when I have enough money to pay for it,'” she explained.
TikTok recently started allowing users to add links to the bottom of videos, and in some cases, Bucks said, The Economist has seen a lot of traffic from these.
“At first, we were very precious about not sharing stuff from behind the wall on social media,” Koebler said, not wanting to give away the best tidbits to people who aren’t paying. But “we eventually realized this didn’t really matter” and doesn’t seem to disincentivize people from subscribing. People who find 404’s articles from social media may subscribe first to the free list, and convert to paid eventually.
“We thought people would come to us and decide [either to pay or not],” Koebler added. “We learned that’s really not the case…Growing the free list has really helped with our paid subscriber list.”
Introduce reporters to readers. Since The Economist’s stories don’t have bylines and are written with “Economist voice,” the publication sees video discussions as a way to introduce readers to its journalists. “We’re not necessarily creating personalities, but we want to show who the journalists are, who the editors are,” Bucks said.
There are lots of ways to build journalists’ connections with readers and publications don’t have to jump straight to short vertical videos.
“In our culture…sometimes journalists are not so open to be on camera,” Peinado said. So El País is experimenting with newsletters where journalists can show some personality: “They feel more free if they can write something.”
Keep thinking about the platforms you own. As great as email newsletters have been for 404, Koebler stressed the importance of still having a backup.
“The thing that keeps me up at night is the idea that newsletters might get moved to a different inbox, or the AI-ification of email,” he said — in other words, tools like Gmail creating little email newsletter summaries so readers stop opening them.
“It’s starting to happen but hasn’t been an apocalypse yet,” he said. “Email’s an important platform, but we’ve tried to lean into RSS,” launching a full-text RSS feed that gives paid subscribers articles directly.
The MotorCity Boat Werks YouTube Channel posted a video about traveling in Norway by electric cabin cruiser or “trawler,” depending on your point of view. A company named Canal Boats Telemark in Norway rents fully electric boats for touring the waters in and around Norway. Fully electric means only electric ... [continued]
There’s one day left to get an electric vehicle in the US and get a big tax credit for buying it! I was writing the other day about my surprise that Tesla isn’t sold out yet. After writing that, I started wondering, “Which automaker is going to see the biggest ... [continued]
Researchers are unraveling the complex symbiotic relationship between fungi and the saguaro cactus, which is increasingly at risk from climate change.
By Kiley Price
With sizzling temperatures and a parched climate, it can be hard to survive in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona. But some species have evolved to thrive in this extreme environment, including the iconic saguaro cactus. Part of the reason for this prickly plant’s success is its intimate relationship with a smaller—but similarly mighty—desert player: fungi.
If you’ve been working on a story involving data, the temptation can be to throw all the figures you’ve found into the resulting report — but the same rules of good writing apply to numbers too. Here are some tips to make sure you’re putting the story first.
Rule 1: Don’t write about numbers
The first rule of writing about numbers is not to write about numbers — if you can help it.
As a general principle, just as you should never include an unnecessary word in a piece of journalism, if you can leave a number out of a story and the story will still work, you should probably leave that number out.
This can be difficult if you’ve invested a lot of time and effort in getting to those numbers — but even those numbers are only a means to an end. They might lead you to case studies, or give you the questions to ask of those in power. Your story therefore might focus more on those.
Where you do mention numbers in the story, less is more: readers will only be able to take in so many numbers, so try not to use more than one or two numbers in each paragraph (start a new one if you have to), and make an editorial decision about which numbers are most important, and which ones can be cut.
If you have a lot of numbers you want to include, you can always put them in a chart, map or table, for readers to explore if they wish.
It is also important to remember that numbers represent people, whether directly (the number of people affected) or indirectly (an amount of money that could be spent on helping people), so try to keep people at the heart of the story, and not the numbers that represent them.
Rule 2: Don’t write about decimal places (unless they are significant)
In most situations decimal places aren’t important, so only use them if they matter.
When do decimal places matter? If the difference between two figures only exists at that level, or if decimal places represent a meaningful change (between small numbers, for example).
So, in the sentence “42.5% of their goals have been scored via set-pieces” there is no reason for the reader to do extra mental work processing that half a per cent — the textual equivalent of having 3D on a pie chart. “43%” is just as meaningful and much clearer.
Only in a sentence like “3.5% of children, up from 3.2% last year” are the decimal places important enough to be included, firstly because it is at that level that differences exist but also because rounding the numbers (to 4% and 3%) would risk misrepresenting the scale of the change.
If you do include decimals, be consistent: if one figure was exactly three in the example above you’d write “3.5% of children, up from 3.0% last year” to make it as easy as possible to compare the two figures.
Rule 3: Don’t write about the hundreds and thousands
Equally, if your number is in the millions, don’t sweat the small stuff.
A sentence like “Schools spending £5m on agency staff” communicates the scale of an issue cleanly and succinctly. “Schools spending £5,325,000 on agency staff” might provide more detail, but it doesn’t change the story: in both cases you are really trying to say ‘a lot of money’, and the first option is more efficient at doing that.
The same principle applies when talking about figures in the hundreds or tens of thousands: “Hospitals making £528,000 per year from parking fines” is just as effective as “Hospitals making £528,320“.
As with decimals, if the story is about differences that are only seen in the more detailed numbers, then the small stuff does become meaningful enough to include. “School agency staff spend has risen from £5.1m to £5.3m“, for example (which could also be written as “School agency spend rises by £200,000“).
You could probably sum up the two above rules another way: don’t use seven figures when one will do.
Rule 4: Don’t write about percentages (write about ratios)
If your figure happens to be a nice round 20%, then congratulations! You don’t have to write that number. Instead, you can write a ratio. So, a sentence like “police arrested 20% of those that they stopped” can be better written as “police arrested one in five people that they stopped“.
Ratios are easier to understand because they get straight to what a number means in practice, rather than the reader having to work that out.
For example, “50%” really just means “half”, but we understand the latter more quickly. “Half of pupils entitled to free school meals” allows us to remove the number from “50% of pupils entitled to free school meals“, and present that information in the type of language people would normally use.
You can use a ratio calculator to find out what ratio a percentage can be expressed as.
If your percentage relates to change, remember that an increase of 100% basically means something has “doubled” and an increase of 200% would be “tripled”.
Be careful, however: if you are comparing different numbers don’t compare a ratio with a percentage. A phrase like “Dropped from 65% to half” requires the audience to do more work than they should. Keep both numbers as ratios if you can, but if you can’t (only some percentages can be expressed as meaningful ratios), it is better to express both as percentages.
Rule 5: Don’t write about exact numbers
These stories lead on ‘almost’ or ‘more than’ round figures, rather than bogging the story down in irrelevant detail
Another way of reducing the digits you are using is to add an ‘almost’ or ‘over’ into your description where percentages are close to a particular ratio or round figure.
So, for example, the sentence “49% of pupils entitled to free school meals” could be rewritten more clearly as “Almost half of pupils entitled to free school meals“. And the sentence “Police arrested 21% of those stopped” rewritten as “Police arrested more than one in five of the people that they stopped“.
Equally, “Schools spending £5,325,000 on agency staff” can be rewritten as “Schools spending over £5m on agency staff“, and “Hospitals making £395,000 per year from parking fines” might be more simply expressed as “Hospitals making almost £400,000 per year“.
As always, only do this where the exact numbers are not significant. An election poll that puts one party on 47%, for example, would not be reported as “almost half” because it is likely that figures were only slightly different before, making small changes significant.
Rule 6: Don’t write about meaningless numbers
Wherever possible, try to make numbers meaningful. Large numbers out of context can not only be boring, they can also be dehumanising and misleading.
For example the sentence “Schools spending more than £5m on agency staff” doesn’t make it clear whether that is a large amount. There are a range of ways we can make that number more meaningful:
Historical context: is that number larger or smaller than in previous years? Is it better to report the change than the scale? “Schools agency staff spend up from £5.1m to £5.3m” would be an example of that.
Per person: if you know, or can find out, the overall population involved (that might be employees, patients, or service users) then consider dividing the total by that to make it more meaningful. For example: “Schools spending over £6,000 per pupil on agency staff”
As a proportion of the budget/population: what sounds like a large amount often isn’t quite so large as it seems, when put into the context of the bigger picture — or it might sound like just another number without context. An example of this context would be: “Schools spending a quarter of budget on temporary staff” or “Parking fines make up less than 1% of hospital income“.
What would it pay for: your story might be telling us what is being spent on something, but why does that matter? Typically, it matters because it could be spent on something else, so many stories will focus on that: “Agency staff spend would pay for a new teacher for every school“, for example, or “Schools spending more on agency staff than special educational needs“.
Smaller timescale: what is that figure per day, week or month? Often a smaller but more imaginable figure can have a greater impact, e.g. “Schools spending £96,000 per week on agency staff”
These techniques can be combined, too: for example comparing historical amounts per person.
Rule 7: Don’t write numbers when the style guide says to use words
The Guardian Style Guide section on numbers
Most news organisation style guides specify that numbers below 10 should be written as words (i.e. “seven”, “eight”) with digits used from 10 upwards.
“e.g. “9, 10, and 11,” NOT “nine, 10, and 11”; the same applies to ranges of numbers, e.g., “We are expecting eight to ten people” or “We are expecting 8 to 10 people” (both OK!).“
Numbers below 10 are just one element of style to consider. What about ordinal numbers like “seventh”? What about percentage signs versus the word “percent” — or is it “per cent”? (In the UK it’s two words) Do you spell out “million” or just use the letter m? Are you writing about percentages or percentage points?
These are all questions a good style guide should answer.
Spell out from one to nine; numerals from 10 to 999,999; thereafter use m, bn or tn for sums of money, quantities or inanimate objects in copy, eg 5m tonnes of coal, 30bn doses of vaccine, £50tn; but million or billion for people or animals, eg 1 million people, 25 million rabbits, the world population is 7 billion, etc; in headlines always use m, bn or tn. Numbers from one to nine should also usually be written as figures when they come alongside a unit of measurement, for example 5 miles, 3kg, but not time measurements such as five minutes, four hours, two years. Also, use your discretion if a figure would look oddly precise, for example in a phrase such as: “He drank one pint and left.”
BuzzFeed, the BBC, the Bristol Cable, Canadian Press Stylebook and the Australian Broadcasting Company are just some of the organisations that advise never to start a sentence with a numeral (unless it is a year). And there’s no apostrophe when talking about a decade like the 1960s.
When it comes to percentages the use of the word ‘per cent’ (British English) or ‘percent’ (US English) has changed over the years, with more style guides (including AP) advising using the percentage symbol, but not all.
Changes between percentages should be described as “percentage points” increases, “Any sentence saying “such and such rose or fell by X%” should be considered and checked carefully“, The Guardian notes.
Facing weakened pollution targets and threats of federal inaction, Maryland and Virginia may have to become the agreement’s enforcers.
By Aman Azhar
The management board of the Chesapeake Bay Program will meet this week to hammer out the next iteration of the agreement that has governed the restoration of the watershed for more than four decades. But this year, they face dual challenges of getting states to sign off on a robust, accountability-driven pact while anticipating a hands-off approach from an Environmental Protection Agency that is already pushing for less ambitious goals.
In the name of ‘pragmatism’, green measures are being ditched, net zero derided. Be very clear: without slashing emissions we are in deep, deep trouble
The hope that followed the signing of the Paris climate agreement in 2016 has long gone as the global community has failed utterly to rein in emissions, which – barring a small pandemic-induced blip in 2020 – have headed remorselessly upwards ever since. And there is little sign of this changing anytime soon. Indeed, as global heating has accelerated over the past few years, instead of trying harder, the world is turning its back on measures to tackle the climate crisis.
In the UK, Labour is considering the approval of two major new oilfields in the North Sea – Rosebank and Jackdaw – with both Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves reported to be backing the proposals, which would lock in reliance on fossil fuels at the expense of renewables. Alongside this, instead of the government introducing measures to reduce aviation emissions, such as a frequent-flyer levy and the taxing of aviation fuels, a Heathrow expansion has been greenlit and, just last week, a second runway at Gatwick.
The big electric vehicle (EV) story at the moment, in the US at least, is the expiring US EV tax credit, which provides up to $7,500 for buyers of new electric vehicles. After September 30, the tax credit is gone. But … maybe just sort of gone for some automakers ... [continued]
Hidden door handles were almost nonexistent until Tesla made them the only option in all of the EV company’s cars. But they have become the norm among new electric vehicles since then, in China as well as in the US and Europe. It makes some sense, too, because aside from ... [continued]
The billionaire’s last three cases are part of a growing global list from fossil fuel companies against government decisions to reduce carbon emissions
Despite the Australian billionaire Clive Palmer’s self-proclaimed patriotism through the Trumpet of Patriots party, he has registered his mining company, Zeph Investments, in Singapore and claimed to be a Singaporean investor. He then used foreign investor rights in two trade agreements with Singapore to sue the Australian government for a total of about $420bn in four separate cases before an international investment tribunal.
Capitals from London to Tokyo need urgent action to protect people from deadly high temperatures, analysts say
The world’s biggest capital cities are now sweltering under 25% more extremely hot days each year than in the 1990s, an analysis has found. Without urgent action to protect millions of people from high temperatures, more and more will suffer in the dangerous conditions, analysts said.
From Washington DC and Madrid to Tokyo and Beijing, the analysis shows a marked rise in hot days as the climate crisis intensifies. Overall, the assessment by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), found the number of days above 35C in 43 of the world’s most populous capital cities rose from an average of 1,062 a year from 1994-2003 to 1,335 from 2015-2024.
Pilot agreement between Kia and Red Sea Global (RSG) centered around Kia’s Platform Beyond Vehicle (PBV) models and mobility ecosystem Kia to supply a PV5 Passenger model for testing across RSG sites, supported by inspections, training, and distributor expertise Future collaboration includes evaluation of the upcoming PV7 and expanded use cases for luxury resort logistics and operations Kia ... [continued]
The administration is opening millions of additional acres of public land to mining while slashing royalty rates and environmental regulations for coal. Environmentalists warn of skyrocketing costs and threats to land, water and air.
By Jake Bolster
The U.S. announced its intention to compete for a 21st-century technology using 19th-century energy on Monday when the Trump administration revealed a slew of deregulatory actions and new investments in the dirtiest, most greenhouse-gas-intensive fossil fuels.
We sat down with Arka Energy at RE+ in Las Vegas and were eager to see their solar awnings and carports. They have been hard at work scaling their core solution to new applications and were eager to show off their new standalone Power Gazebo alongside a new suite of digital ... [continued]
Efraín Fueres was gunned down Sunday while marching in protest against high costs of living and government crackdowns that include freezing the bank accounts of activists and suspending a media organization.
By Katie Surma
An Indigenous land defender was shot and killed on Sunday in Cotacachi, Ecuador, where he was marching in protest of high costs of living and government crackdowns on Indigenous and environmental activists.
People at the Times described the new newsletter — The World, launched on Monday — as a “sister,” “child,” and “cousin” to The Morning. Whatever the relation, Jodi Rudoren, editorial director of newsletters at the Times, said The World will function as a new and improved version of the Times’ flagship newsletter for international readers.
“You know how [people say] if you have kids a few years apart, you do better with the second one? The World is also benefiting from some of the lessons learned with The Morning,” Rudoren said. “It’s more visual. It’s shorter. It has more video in it. It has a quiz every day instead of a quiz once a week. And it’s much more responsive to the sense of overwhelm that a lot of people are feeling.”
The Berlin-based Katrin Bennhold, a senior writer on the international desk and a 2013 Nieman fellow, will lead The World as “host.”
The tagline for The World is “a guide to understanding the news without feeling overwhelmed.” With both news fatigue and short-form video consumption on the rise, the Times is increasingly experimenting with news delivery beyond the article format.
Bennhold, a former Berlin bureau chief who has reported from more than a dozen countries for the Times, said there’s “a real public service mission” behind the video-heavy format of The World. (Here’s Bennhold interviewing fellow reporter Julie Turkewitz about the reaction inside Venezuela following U.S. military action on boats in the Caribbean Sea.)
“If we want to empower young people with information, we need to be where they are — and they are on platforms showing short videos. I know this firsthand, because I have two teenage daughters,” Bennhold said in a Times interview. “News fatigue and reading fatigue are real. Video is a very efficient way of understanding a story. You can learn a lot from a smart correspondent in three minutes.”
Rudoren also emphasized the curation function of the newsletter.
“Sometimes on a big story, we have 17 articles and 17 takes, and the thing you really need the next morning is something connecting them,” Rudoren said. “The role of the host and the editors of these newsletters is to put themselves in the minds of that person waking up in the morning — often looking at their phone while in bed or on the subway — and curating and distilling and explaining [the news] in a human way.”
“The way I like to think about it is you really want to make sure that the person who’s reading it will not feel stupid at any time of the day,” Rudoren continued. “They won’t have to say to someone, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’ And you want to give them something to add to the conversations around them — a little nugget of analysis or a new fact or a little surprise. That’s where these products go beyond some of the briefings that are out there from other news organizations. It’s not just that you won’t feel like you missed anything. It’s also that you will have something valuable to add to the conversation.”
Going global
The New York Times has nearly 12 million subscribers, including more than 2 million who live outside the United States. But the Times’ email newsletters reach an audience “far broader” than its current paid subscriber base. More than three-quarters of The Morning’s subscribers are not paid subscribers to The Times, a Times spokesperson said.
The Morning newsletter — which will get a new host in Sam Sifton later this fall — had more than 17 million subscribers last year. It now reaches “almost 16 million,” according to the Times.
In the past, the Times has described The Morning as having “nearly double the audience of the top three cable news shows.” More recently, folks at the Times have taken to saying The Morning has “more subscribers than the top 10 most popular Substacks combined.”
There’s a powerful pipeline behind the success of The Morning: U.S. and Canada-based readers who create Times accounts are automatically signed up to receive The Morning newsletter. (A Times spokesperson noted the news org “only sends newsletters to people who have explicitly authorized us to send them emails.”) The Times will give The World a similar boost: New registered users will get The World or The Morning, depending on where they live. The Times will also send The World in place of the Morning Briefing newsletters for Europe and Asia.
The Times has about 200 million email addresses and about 50 million have signed up to receive a newsletter, Rudoren said. She sees registered users — not yet paying for the Times but not exactly “top of the funnel” material — as critical to the Times achieving its ambitious subscriber goals.
“These are not passersby,” Rudoren noted. “I think this is the place to focus right now. Engaging the engageable is really the place to do the work, because that’s where the journalism can win over people.”
The new effort, which includes opening 13.1 million acres of federal land for mining and eliminating pollution limits, aims to save an industry that has been declining for decades.
One in five Americans say they regularly get news on TikTok, a dramatic uptick from just 3% in 2020, according to a Pew Research Center analysis published last week. “During that span, no social media platform we’ve studied has experienced faster growth in news consumption,” Pew researchers noted.
TikTok’s growing prevalence as a source of news isn’t limited to young people. Older adults are also turning to it more frequently for news. In Pew’s survey, 43% of adults under 30 said they regularly get news on TikTok, up from 9% five years ago, while a quarter of adults between the ages of 30 and 49 also get news there regularly, compared to just 2% in 2020. (“It’s not just younger people making the shift,” Reuters’ first social video reporter, Tristan Werkmeister, told Nieman Lab this month.)
When the researchers focused only on adult TikTok users, they found that a greater proportion of the platform’s users turn to it regularly for news. “TikTok is now on par with several other social media sites — including X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and Truth Social — in the share of its adult users who regularly get news there,” researchers wrote.
This analysis is based on Pew’s survey of 5,153 U.S. adults between August 18 and 24.
Radar Clima es el boletín en español de Covering Climate Now. Cada dos semanas repasamos un tema clave para periodistas -especialistas o generalistas- desde la conexión climática y la lente de los tres pilares del periodismo climático: Humanizar, Localizar y Solucionar.
Si has recibido este email de un o una colega y quieres suscribirte, o si quieres ver nuestros boletines en inglés, haz clic aquí.
LO QUE TIENES QUE SABER
Los créditos de carbono son una herramienta creada para compensar las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero. Se parecen al pago por servicios ambientales, porque quienes protegen o restauran ecosistemas reciben un beneficio económico, pero no son lo mismo: los créditos de carbono se pueden medir, certificar y comerciar en mercados de carbono, ya sea de cumplimiento (regulados por gobiernos) o voluntarios (empresas o individuos que buscan compensar sus emisiones), mientras que el pago por servicios ambientales es un incentivo directo que no siempre implica generar créditos. Un mecanismo muy extendido en los proyectos de créditos de carbono es REDD+, que busca reducir emisiones derivadas de la deforestación y degradación de bosques. Otros proyectos que generan créditos incluyen la energía hidroeléctrica, la plantación de árboles y la energía eólica, entre otros.
Un ejemplo sencillo: plantar árboles puede compensar emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero porque los árboles absorben y almacenan dióxido de carbono (CO2). Esa captura puede medirse y convertirse en un crédito de carbono: lo venden quienes realizan el proyecto (comunidades, empresas o gobiernos) y lo compran empresas o países que quieren compensar sus emisiones, ya sea para cumplir con regulaciones o para mejorar su imagen ambiental. Cada crédito equivale a una tonelada de CO2 evitada o eliminada. Si se trata de otro gas, como el metano, se calcula su equivalente en CO2 según su impacto en el calentamiento global.
Los créditos de carbono, como otros mecanismos mercantiles de control de emisiones, son muy controvertidos. En muchas ocasiones, investigaciones periodísticas han revelado abusos, injusticias y contradicciones en los proyectos que los generaban.
HUMANIZAR
Los créditos de carbono tienen un impacto real en la vida de las personas. Humanizar estas historias significa contar quién gana, quién pierde, o cómo cambian las dinámicas dentro de una comunidad cuando llega un proyecto de compensación de carbono.
Ángulos clave
¿Cómo se involucran las comunidades locales en un proyecto de compensación en su territorio? ¿Se les consultó, participaron en el diseño? ¿Se han cumplido las promesas hechas por los promotores del proyecto, como beneficios económicos, servicios ambientales, empleo, o infraestructuras?
¿Qué historias positivas o negativas hay detrás de un proyecto REDD+ o de reforestación? ¿Hay personas que hayan perdido el acceso al agua, a sus tierras, o que han sido desplazadas?
¿Qué ocurre con los imprevistos como incendios forestales, plagas o fenómenos meteorológicos extremos que amenazan la permanencia del proyecto?
Aunque los créditos de carbono nacieron a finales de los años 80 como un mecanismo global, y el Protocolo de Kioto (1997) abrió la puerta al comercio de emisiones a nivel internacional, hoy permiten explorar impactos locales, y ofrecen posibilidades de colaboración periodística entre el norte y el sur global.
Ángulos clave
¿Qué proyectos de compensación existen ya en tu región o país? Investiga los registros locales y las certificaciones (Gold Standard, Climate Action Reserve) para ver si la documentación que ofrecen es transparente. ¿Quiénes son los promotores locales del proyecto? ¿Son ONGs, comunidades, empresas privadas? ¿Cómo se relacionan con los gobiernos locales?
¿Qué impactos locales y sociales concretos ha tenido ese proyecto en tu localidad? Puedes investigar qué uso del suelo se ha hecho, cómo afecta a la biodiversidad, a la calidad del agua, o a los derechos de propiedad
¿Cómo se regula localmente la emisión de créditos de carbono? ¿Hay leyes nacionales o regionales que obliguen a la participación ciudadana o a hacer auditorías?
Los créditos de carbono se presentan como una solución climática, pero generan polémica: muchos expertos dudan de su efectividad, y los ven como un alivio aparente. Tanto en sus promesas como en sus limitaciones, son un terreno con muchas posibilidades para la investigación.
Ángulos clave
¿Qué modelos de proyectos han mostrado buenas prácticas en términos de transparencia y justicia social? ¿Qué regulaciones públicas, estándares, monitoreo o sanciones pueden exigirse para que los mercados funcionen de forma responsable?
¿Cuáles son sus limitaciones como solución climática? ¿Cuánto depende del comprador y cuántas emisiones propias está reduciendo realmente la entidad compradora?
¿Cómo se pueden combinar créditos de carbono con otras estrategias como la adaptación, o la reducción directa, para no depender sólo de las compensaciones?
The Carbon Con, una investigación conjunta de Source Material con Die Zeit y The Guardian que cuestiona la publicidad de neutralidad climática y critica las declaraciones exageradas de ahorro de emisiones.
Horacio Almanza Alcalde es antropólogo social del Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia en México. Ha dirigido investigaciones sobre la defensa del territorio indígena y el desarrollo de mecanismos de compensación de carbono en estas comunidades
María José Sanz Sánchez es una científica especializada en ciclos de carbono y uso del suelo REDD+. Es directora del Basque Centre for Climate Change
Barbara Haya, directora del Berkeley Carbon Trading Project, estudia los resultados del comercio de carbono y su efectividad
Carbon Market Watch es una ONG dedicada al monitoreo de los mercados de carbono
RECURSOS
Si este tema es nuevo para ti y te resulta abrumador, este vídeo-explainer de CNN con conceptos básicos es un buen punto de partida.
El Atlas de Justicia Ambiental es una base de datos sobre conflictos ambientales en todo el mundo. La mayoría de los informes sobre compensaciones de carbono con impactos negativos se localizaron en América Latina.
En dos semanas Radar Clima vuelve para explorar otro tema de interés para periodistas. En esta ocasión, la minería de litio. Si has publicado artículos sobre el tema y le gustaría que considerásemos su inclusión en el boletín, por favor, envíelos a editors@coveringclimatgenow.org
The US has an energy storage problem, and it’s a big one: energy storage might not even exist! The Interior Secretary, for example, doubts that it exists. The Energy Secretary has raised similar existential concerns, and the EPA Administrator reminds everyone that even if they do exist, batteries cost money. ... [continued]
