The Atlantic launched Planet, a vertical and newsletter dedicated to climate journalism, calling the issue an “everything story.”
“Planet” will act as a guide to living through climate change, helping readers make decisions about what to pay attention to.
The new initiative will be a newsroom-wide effort that brings in writers across disciplines and sections. Lead climate writer Robinson Meyer, said:
“At the center of the pandemic story, it’s not science alone. Science is very important, but it’s not only science because knowing how the virus works isn’t enough. It clearly has a core, but it to cover it well, and to understand it, you have to be thinking about all if it. I think the pandemic, to some degree, has trained us to think in this much broader way.”
As Meyer writes in his introduction, “Planet” will highlight the fact that climate change cannot be avoided and how it is affecting our politics and economy, and material lives:
“We’ve made [Planet] because we recognize—as you might too—that climate change is the backdrop of our lives and one of the moral crises of the century, a globe-spanning force reshaping how we work, how we play, how we shop, and how we vote … We will cover climate change in the present tense—not as a distant threat, but as a force that is already reconfiguring business, culture, society, and life on Earth. This outlook doesn’t reflect our prediction about where the world is heading; we think a detached assessment of the facts allows for no other conclusion.”
A newsletter, The Weekly Planet, written by Meyer will also be available, due to launch on Oct. 20.
