Abstract
The year 2023 saw a heat wave ravaging various parts of the world. The World Meteorological Organization, WMO, reported that the global mean near-surface temperature of 2023 was 1.45 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial baseline. This suggests that the target of the international treaty Paris Agreement to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius will be surpassed very soon.
The damage and impacts of extreme weather have extended across sectors, including food issues and infectious disease. Some fear that we may cross the tipping point—the point at which the Earth's climate system will never return to normal again—if nothing is done.
To address this grave climate crisis, there is a growing movement of implementing an approach called Solutions Journalism, whose efforts include the exploration of solutions to various social issues through the collaborations between the mass media and citizens, to seek effective countermeasures against climate change, a common threat to humanity. This trend is an endeavor of the mass media to build partnerships for sharing information on what measures are feasible now to stop climate change and what types of measures can have sustainable effects by collaborating beyond media types such as newspapers, magazines, and broadcasting, and by working together with people, NGOs, corporations, and academics.
This paper presents the latest activities of mass media reporters covering countermeasures against climate change as well as international organizations and NGOs that have been playing an important role in facilitating inter-media cooperation and conveys their motivations and significance embodied in their actions. The sense of crises felt by those in the front line is stronger than ever.
