Welcome to Green: A Letter From Bloomberg’s Editor in Chief

(Bloomberg) -- Why Green?

Nine months ago, I was struck by an intriguing anomaly. Media usually reflects society. If you look back at the history of journalism, big geopolitical shifts or cultural changes tend to throw up one or two media properties that epitomize that moment in time. Many would argue that climate change—and the transformation it is prompting in politics, business, technology and human behavior around the world—is the biggest shift of our time. And yet there is no media brand that has become a symbol of that revolution.

The more I looked last spring, the more intriguing this gap seemed. I found plenty of great individual pieces of journalism, in many different forms all across the globe (for example, more than 350 news outlets have taken part in the “Covering Climate Now” initiative organized by the Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation). But I was also struck by how much of the coverage of this global subject was inevitably national (very few news organizations have a presence in 120 countries, as we do) or focused on some parts of the story (normally politics, ecology or science). The more I discussed this with colleagues and friends, the greater the opportunity to look at climate change in the round seemed, especially given its interlinked complexity (this really is a subject where what happens in the Arctic can ripple through to both the politics of the Maghreb and venture capital in Silicon Valley), and the common thirst for understanding—not just for news but for facts and data.

Early last summer, I handed over the challenge of this project to one of our senior executive editors, John Fraher, who then chose Aaron Rutkoff as the editor; Aaron had been running Hyperdrive, the part of our website that looks at the revolution in the car industry, sparked by greenery and driverless technology.

John and Aaron pointed to another thirst—for solutions. So much of what has been written and broadcast about our changing climate over the past few decades has been a catalog of woe. In many ways, rightly so: it is hard to think of any scientific number that has improved over that period. But spelling out the scale of the problem is no longer the whole story; climate change has also launched a wave of activity among technologists, businesspeople, politicians and consumers. A new green economy is being created, from carbon-neutral bonds to wind power and battery storage. Our colleagues in BloombergNEF (BNEF), one of the pioneers in researching the impact of climate change, reckon that $10 trillion will be invested in renewable energy between now and 2050.

At Bloomberg, where we like to see ourselves as “the chronicle of capitalism,” we have been tracking these changes for a long time for our terminal customers—not just through BloombergNEF but also Bloomberg Intelligence and a fast-growing ESG team within Bloomberg News. We have nearly 200 people writing about the energy industry and the same dedicated to politics: climate change is an everyday part of our reporting. But we have not produced anything for the wider consumer audience.

Until now.

We are not claiming Bloomberg Green is the definitive product. But our ambition is clear: We want Bloomberg Green to be the indispensable guide to anyone who wants to understand this great transition—investors, politicians, chief executives and scientists to be sure, but also clever readers everywhere. Our hope is that it will bring clarity and data where there is currently fog and fear—just as Bloomberg has brought light to other once opaque subjects. And we will try to do so in a way that is realistic but not pessimistic. At Bloomberg Green, you will find all the unpleasant scientific numbers about what the human race is doing to our planet, and we will critically audit companies’ claims to have produced green products and services (as well as the green plans of aspiring politicians and the green habits of consumers). But we will also look for answers, write about changes in consumer behavior and chronicle the explosion of investment in green technology.

Bloomberg Green will include a plethora of products across our many different platforms—from daily newsletters to broadcast TV and radio programs and live events. We will unveil a magazine around Earth Day in April; it will be fully recyclable—and people will have the chance to receive it digitally.

The Green Data Dashboard, which appears alongside every story, is at the center of our project. It is a scorecard for humanity’s progress in dealing with the climate crisis, including some depressingly familiar metrics, such as the carbon clock. But we will also chart the progress that renewable power is making. We have combined public climate numbers with other data sets, and we have tried to redraw the data in novel and immediate ways: every second a soccer pitch of trees is destroyed; the atmospheric CO2 count right now; the exact mix of emission-free energy inside Germany’s power grid today.  

Our first set of stories includes a guide to 30 pioneers and trends pointing the way towards climate progress in the year ahead; a data-driven assessment of China’s attempt to meet its emissions targets; and a chronicle of a major winemaker’s 50-year bet on surviving in a warmer world. Later this week, Bloomberg Green will look at the entrepreneurs who are making fortunes from climate solutions, examine the numbers behind plastic waste, and focus on some innovations that can have an immediate effect on emissions.

Now you know the story of how Bloomberg Green came into being—and our ambitions for it. But in the end, the real test of whether we have begun to correct the anomaly that we spotted last March lies with you—the reader, the viewer, the listener. Tell us what you think.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Fraher at jfraher@bloomberg.net, Aaron Rutkoff

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