Welcome to the second season of “The Climate Bridge Podcast”, adelphi’s and Polis180’s podcast series. This podcast, like the Transatlantic Climate Bridge initiative behind it, focuses on climate change and climate policy in Germany, the United States and Canada. A key goal of both the initiative and this podcast is to improve climate cooperation between the three countries. In pursuit of this goal, Season 2 welcomes great guests and insightful topics on, among others, the upcoming COP28 or the transatlantic implications of US Inflation Reduction Act.

About this episode

This episode looks into the role climate journalism plays in fighting climate change, and climate inaction, both in Germany and across the Atlantic. To be an effective tool in achieving this goal, climate journalism depends on greater awareness on climate change as a cross-cutting theme, more factual knowledge and stronger international collaboration in the media.

While our past episodes mostly featured policy experts, we now had the chance to get insights from journalists on climate and energy-related issues. With the support of Toby Bernstein – adelphi –, Cornelius Haritz – Polis180 – spoke with Sara Schurmann (freelance journalist, author, and co-founder of Netzwerk Klimajournalismus Deutschland) and Sven Egenter (Editor in Chief of Clean Energy Wire).

Key points which were discussed include:

• Climate journalism plays an important role in fighting climate change and sharing urgency, action-based information, and best-practices with the public. Journalists should moderate public debates and approach people – also across the Atlantic.

• Knowledge about climate change as a cross-cutting theme and planetary crisis should be integrated into basic university education, beyond specific climate journalism programs.

• Journalists should consider practices and learnings from other international newspapers (integrating climate change as a cross-cutting issue), to create knowledge-sharing with other journalism networks.

Guest: Sara Schurmann & Sven Egenter

Hosts: Cornelius Haritz

Producers: Cornelius Haritz, Toby Bernstein, Melisa Özcelik

Mixing and post-production: Franz Classe

Music: Maximilian Below