Public-power your climate coverage
Here’s what’s possible if you invite big and small questions about climate change
Published in
3 min readSep 11, 2019
When people are scared or confused, they have a lot of questions. And research shows that a lot of people are scared and/or confused about climate change.
A majority of Americans see climate change affecting their communities. According to Pew Research Center last month, “The share of Americans calling global climate change a major threat to the well-being of the United States has grown from 40% in 2013 to 57% this year.”
So, why not serve your audience by listening and responding to their questions, fears, and ideas?
Check out these recent efforts to see what’s possible:
- Advice column: Grist has relaunched its Ask Umbra advice column to take questions on “life during climate change.” Eve Andrews has addressed questions from readers in dozens of stories, including in a recent column which tackled a question from a teacher about how to teach climate change to middle school students.
- Ahead of a special event or panel: During the Fridays for Future student demonstrations earlier this year, Stimme knew they would be focusing an upcoming conversation on climate change. They invited their audience’s questions about the area’s actions for climate protection, and brought eight of those questions to the experts.
- Regional impact questions: DCist recently began inviting readers to tell them what they want to know about the ways that global warming is affecting the District.
- A time-limited series: “Curious Climate” is a project by the Australian Broadcasting Company’s Radio Hobart, in partnership with local government and science organizations. The call for questions made it clear when the deadline to submit questions was, and when they’ll be broadcasting answers and holding events. One of our favorite stories from this series is when the newsroom took the audience’s skeptical questions about climate change and brought them to a panel of scientists.
- Voting for a climate question: 1A will be devoting an entire week of shows to the climate crisis, and ahead of that, they invited listener questions. Now, they are inviting listeners to vote for which question they should be sure to cover during the week:
A few of our favorite pieces addressing audience questions about climate change:
- The TV meteorologist’s dilemma: when to talk about climate change?
- How is climate change affecting Vermont right now?
- How can we address the effects of climate change on communities of color?
- Let’s say I wanted to escape climate change. Where should I go?
- #CuriousGoat: Will climate change help ticks and mosquitoes spread disease?
- Will climate change be devastating for Kakadu National Park?
- You Asked, We Answered: Are Chatham officials planning to meet the demands of a changing climate, and if so, how?
- Q&A: Climate change — your questions answered
Hearken’s engagement strategists are standing by, ready to listen to you and work with you to plan or adjust your team’s work to meet your engagement goals. Let us help.
