By Isabela Messias and Kathy Zhang
Wondering what’s going on in Paris? And why you should care? A team of young people working on climate issues from many perspectives—policy, science, media, activism—have created Climate Countdown, a video web series that follows the people who are crafting paths toward a meaningful climate agreement at the Paris climate summit. At the heart of it, Climate Countdown is director Kaia Rose’s personal journey to find out what people are actually doing to tackle the climate crisis and how we, as ordinary citizens, can push for solutions.
Over the course of 2015, the Climate Countdown team set out to make the acronym-laden process of climate change negotiations digestible, conversational and shareable. The episodes range from 8-12 minutes long and cover such topics as COP21 (the 21st Conference of the Parties, as the UN talks are known), the INDCs (the “Intended Nationally Determined Contributions”—what countries are proposing to do), implementation, carbon pricing, and China.
To further understand the challenges and opportunities in climate communications, the Sustainability Media Lab with the Sustainable Development Solutions Network Youth Initiative organized the first film screening of Climate Countdown at Columbia on Nov. 15, featuring two panel discussions on the web series and climate media at large.
The event’s first panel focused on the Paris negotiations and the making of the Climate Countdown series. “It feels like Paris is going to be turning the corner,” said Rose. Panelists discussed reasons for optimism, including the bottom-up approach of countries submitting their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions and the recent China-U.S. joint announcement on climate change. The panelists underscored the importance of public awareness and an active civil society in pushing politicians and holding them accountable to the carbon reduction pledges they present in Paris.
The event also featured a panel on “The state of climate change and COP21 media.” Climate communications professionals highlighted the importance of modifying the vocabulary, framing, and messenger to fit the context. Panelists discussed the extreme politicization of climate change in the U.S. and strategies to divorce climate action from political preference. You can listen to that conversation here, on YouTube.
Climate Countdown aims to equip the public with the knowledge, vocabulary, and tools to have a voice in building political will to avoid a global climate crisis. If you would like to join this endeavor, contact the team at climatecountdownmedia@gmail.com.
Isabela Messias is a graduate student at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs and the NY focal point for SDSN Youth, an initiative of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network working to engage youth globally in the Sustainable Development Goals.
Kathy Zhang is the communications associate at the Sustainable Development Solutions Network and the founder of the Sustainability Media Lab, a Columbia student initiative working to make sustainable development more accessible, relevant, and compelling across all media.
