'Find a new way to tell the story' - how the Guardian launched its climate change campaign

Climate change is the biggest threat to humanity. Yet journalism has struggled for two decades to tell a story that doesn’t leave the public feeling disheartened and disengaged.

This podcast series lets you behind the scenes as the Guardian’s editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger, and team set out to find a new narrative. Recording as we go, you’ll hear what works, as well as our mistakes. Is there a new way to make the world care?

In this first episode, Rusbridger calls the team to arms and challenges them to find a new way to report on climate change. “What can you do that lifts this beyond something that people are bored about? What can you do that will force them to sit up?”

He outlines why this is the most important story in the world and why most of the fossil fuels we already know about need to be kept in the ground. Given six months, can they succeed to engage the public in a new way?

Here are some highlights from episode one, which features several of the paper’s top reporters, columnists and editors, and campaigner Bill McKibben, who outlined his case for climate change action in the Guardian on Monday.

James Randerson, assistant national news editor

This is not about polar bears. This is about real effects on human beings, we’re talking about food scarcity, water scarcity.

John Vidal, environment editor

This is the first time in my experience that any editor of any national paper anywhere in the world has taken climate change really seriously, as a major issue and understood it to be an existential problem.

Felicity Lawrence, special correspondent

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If the weight of the Guardian, which is a really formidable exciting organisation, could swing behind this, we might actually manage to change the political climate.

Alan Rusbridger, editor-in-chief

The problem with this story is… it’s so big, and it doesn’t change much from day to day. Journalism is brilliant at capturing momentum, or changes, or things that are unusual. If it’s basically the same every day, every week, every year, I think journalists lose heart.

George Monbiot, columnist

We’ve been really bad at changing the story where climate change is concerned. We carry on flogging a load of dead horses, in exactly the same way, with exactly the same whip. We have to constantly be reinventing our storytelling capacity.

Larry Elliott, economics editor

I can’t think of a better campaign to go out on. It is the story.

• Find out more about how why the Guardian is embarking on a major new climate change series