Our journalism sparked a call from the White House

Today, I am excited to share with you that we are launching our annual spring subscription drive to raise $100,000 to support our vital journalism covering climate in Canada.

I could get into the dozens of reasons why our journalism is worth supporting (trust me, I have a list) — but I would rather tell you a story about what I mean when we say our reporting is vital. Let me tell you how a Canada’s National Observer story sparked a call from the White House.

When our Ottawa-based climate reporter, John Woodside, interviewed Canada’s Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault last year, he discovered something surprising. In the interview, the minister revealed he was interested in discussing a loss and damage fund at the coming United Nations climate change conference that would see wealthy countries compensate poorer nations for damages caused by climate change. This was a remarkable update. It would make him the first minister of a wealthy country to signal interest in a loss and damage fund, which all of his international counterparts had previously turned down.

Other countries quickly took notice. What might seem like a subtle comment to the untrained eye was in fact a huge deal in the world of diplomacy. It was important enough that the White House rang the minister asking him to explain his shift in position.

John’s piece was a key turning point in the international conversation on loss and damage. Over the next six months, other wealthy countries climbed on board, including the European Union and the U.S., who were originally against the fund. At the UN climate change conference, COP27, countries officially committed to a loss and damage fund.

I love this story. It reminds me that our journalism plays an essential role in the fight against climate change, even when the path it takes from news desk to policy change isn’t straightforward. Over the next few weeks of our spring subscription drive, we will share more stories with you about the impact of our journalism and how your subscriptions fuel our reporting.

Climate change is the most urgent issue of our time, but the work to cover it as a media organization has never been harder.

One of the things I find most frustrating is that our governments already know what actions need to be taken to mitigate the worst of climate change. Yet, it is still not done. The recent UN report on climate change states that emissions must peak by 2025 if we are to have any chance of limiting warming to the target 1.5 C and avoiding the worst of climate disaster.

But even with these facts right in front of us, climate action remains obstructed by an information environment that has never been more polluted, prone to manipulation and vulnerable due to a weakened press.

Journalism suffers from broken funding models, a challenge compounded by extractive tech giants, which have led to mass layoffs across our industry at Postmedia, Global News, The Washington Post, NPR, Vox Media, Buzzfeed News and more. That’s why, despite our existential challenges, we must rely on and ask for direct support from our readers to sustain our journalistic operations. Especially when the need for clarity in our messy information environment has never been more necessary to drive climate action forward.

We are committed to producing excellent journalism that keeps the climate crisis at the forefront of conversations both in the halls of power and at dinner tables across Canada. I am so proud of our more than a decade of award-winning investigative journalism. We continue to have an impact by untangling climate disinformation that hides the real issues, highlighting climate solutions that give us hope and holding institutions and people in power accountable to our climate targets.

But we can’t do it without you.

Subscribers are the very backbone of our journalism. Without reader support, it is not an exaggeration to say that our journalism will not exist. Subscribers are indispensable for sustaining our impactful work all year. We put every single dollar we receive into our journalism and pride ourselves on making our funding have many times the impact. Our national publication punches far above our weight for an operation of only 18 people.

When you subscribe to Canada’s National Observer, you are supporting independent journalism that our country urgently needs to face the climate crisis. We fearlessly cover stories that corporate media outlets overlook to elevate climate reporting in our national conversation. Will you join our coalition of subscribers to sustain our journalism? Get 50% off an annual subscription and get dozens of original articles weekly.

Thank you for your support and consideration.