What I've Learned and Unlearned in 40 Years of Climate Reporting

This new talk is the latest iteration of what I’ve learned and unlearned through 40 years of reporting and conversation wrangling around the intertwined challenges of building a safer human relationship with the climate system and with energy.

My focus, echoing my goals in these dispatches, was conveying how to get beyond amorphous labels like sustainability and climate emergency by asking productive questions, starting with “Sustain what?”

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I gave the talk for the Jay Heritage Center, a nonprofit group on a historic estate once owned by John Jay, one of America’s Founding Fathers and its first Supreme Court Chief Justice. The estate is a refuge for people and wildlife tucked between the busy 1-95 corridor through Westchester County, N.Y., and Long Island Sound. The center is working to make the park into what it calls an “educational campus, hosting innovative and inclusive programs about American history, historic preservation, social justice, and environmental stewardship.”

In a story for the Rye Record, reporter Jacqui Wilmot nicely summarized my core point:

While early climate reporting focused on the science and data, he said, he came to recognize the need to go beyond the numbers and engage communities in dialogue. He seeks out conversations that transcend political divides, looking to find common ground and practical ways forward on climate change….

“How do you manage a complexity monster like climate change?” Revkin asked. “You break it into parts. Shouting ‘climate emergency’ is vague for most people, unless you can break it down into actionable steps. Moving beyond traditional storytelling means encouraging productive conversations and empowering communities to act, adapt, and build resilience together.”

Please watch and weigh in - and share this post of course to grow our community and help others learn how to tame, if not defeat, the climate “complexity monster.”

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