FINANCING DISASTER
Illustration by Ata Ojani / Canada’s National Observer
In the age of climate breakdown, Canada’s major banks aren’t just keeping fossil fuel companies in business — they're helping the industry most responsible for climate change get even bigger.
I was the lead editor on this year-long project, which explored what financial institutions are — and aren't — doing to take on the main culprit of the climate crisis. The series included regular news hits, well-researched explainers, deeply reported features and an investigation that revealed roughly one in five of directors at Canada’s biggest banks also serves on the board of a fossil fuel company.
Financing Disaster began with a mission to fulfil three main audience needs:
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How does fossil fuel expansion affect climate change?
How do Canadian banks contribute to that expansion?
What financial risks are created by funding fossil fuel expansion?
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What are banks doing (or not doing) to address these issues?
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How can I make informed decisions about my investments?
We produced a total of 28 stories. Two-thirds were news articles that primarily sought to update audiences on relevant issues, such as a wave of climate-related shareholder resolutions cropping up at Canada’s five biggest banks, one of which was inspired by previous reporting from Canada’s National Observer.
Apart from daily news, we also produced two main explainers to help audiences understand the links between fossil fuels, finance and climate change, as well as service journalism pieces that gave readers the tools to learn whether their own investments include fossil fuels.
#Financing Disaster
On social media, we also shared Financing Disaster stories with our Facebook and Twitter audiences using the hashtag #FinancingDisaster. These stories were shared by several environmental groups and prominent figures, including Greenpeace Canada, Stand.earth, West Coast Environmental Law and climate activist Bill McKibben.
Financing Disaster stories regularly appeared in Canada’s National Observer’s daily newsletters and were featured twice in The Weekly newsletter, providing subscribers with deeper insight into our reporting.
Overall, the series received positive feedback from our audience. Our initial reporting helped to raise awareness around the financial sector’s relationship to climate change and prompted several readers to share their own experiences and insights. Canada’s National Observer continues to cover the intersection of banking and climate change to this day.
Audience members also reached out with questions about fossil fuels and the financial system, which we used to help guide our future reporting, particularly service journalism pieces.
Our main goal with Financing Disaster was to reach and inform as many Canadians as possible about the intersection of fossil fuels, finance and climate change.
In that respect, it was a success: the series drew attention to the intersection of climate and finance in a way almost no other national news organization was covering at the time. In our small newsroom, Financing Disaster has also outperformed all other series produced by Canada’s National Observer over the last three years, both in terms of overall pageviews and the average time readers spent on each story.
The series also identified areas for improvement in our development, storytelling and distribution strategies, including more robust engagement with audiences through our newsletters and social media platforms as well as the creation of more platform-specific content.