Our Vision for a Climate Responsible Media Corporation

 

  1. Corporate Commitment
    At a corporate governance level (Board and editorial management teams) the media company would formally recognise that the current science indicates that society needs to urgently halt all carbon emissions and start the process of reducing current CO2 levels from 410 ppm to below 350 ppm, in order to avoid nature and humanity facing the globally disastrous consequences of run-away climate change.

 

  1. Active Advocate
    The media company would formally embrace its responsibility as a prominent member of the global Fourth Estate, to do all in its power to advocate for the four pillars of society to take the necessary urgent action to create a carbon negative economy (i.e. by civil society, business, government and the Fourth Estate itself).

 

  1. Implementation
    An implementation plan for the above decisions would need to be drawn up for its practical implementation in all departments, including all editorial departments.

Such a plan could include:

  1. Management Policies
    A policy paper would need to be prepared and submitted to the senior management and editorial teams to debate and agree what policies and practices would be required to implement such a decision in practical terms for the newspaper’s editorial line and processes.
  2. Editorial Staff Training
    As well as creating specific dedicated climate action columns/sections/programming, climate awareness training/debate/ brain-storming would be required for all editorial departments to ensure consistency in editorial guidance /practice for reporters, sub-editors and editors, whether they are in the news, finance, travel, energy departments etc
  3. Social Permission for Low Carbon Lifestyles
    A commitment to editorially create positive social permission for ultra-low carbon lifestyles as the new expected norm in society, rather than the predominant current messaging that high-carbon lifestyles are normal.
  4. Ending Social Permission for Consumerism
    This would include an editorial culture that celebrates the reduction of unnecessary consumerism in all its forms, whether in goods, food, transport, water or energy etcetera and would actively remove social permission for wasteful consumerism.
  5. Advertising Divestment
    The Media company would seek innovative ways to wean itself off advertising revenues that market high-carbon lifestyles, e.g. from aviation, motoring, fossil-fuel companies or financial institutions who fund fossil-fuel exploration.
  6. Leading by Example
    The Media company would set an early deadline for itself to become zero carbon and decide how to take that to a 350ppm carbon negative status.
  7. Creating the Fourth Estate Media Pillar of the Climate Movement
    The Media company would seek to take this media leadership advocacy for a carbon negative society, out into the wider media networks and world in which it operates. The company could play an exciting role in urging the national and global media to build the fourth pillar of the climate movement. This media pillar would collectively advocate for the unprecedented economically-transformative action necessary to create the global carbon negative world with the urgency that the science now dictates.

We fully recognize the scale of the challenge that this poses for any media corporation in a society that is currently almost totally built on a fossil-fuel powered economy and appreciate the depth of change required from media companies.

However, we also recognise that only the media corporations in the UK and internationally can provide the necessary inspirational leadership to urge society to undertake the historic effort needed to immediately move to a carbon-negative economy, that would enable humanity to address the existential threat in time and avoid the extinction that runaway climate warming would result in by destroying the very habitability of the planet for us.

 

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