Organization:Klima vor acht

Klima vor acht
Climate before eight

Founded	2019
Type	eingetragener Verein
Focus	Education on climate change
Location	Singen-Hohentwiel, Germany
Chairman (Vorsitzender)	Michael Flammer
Website	www.klimavoracht.de

Klima vor acht e. V. (English Climate before eight) is a German association, that advocates for regular, scientifically sound climate reporting on Germany public broadcasting programs. The initiative is based on the assumption that viewers recognize the necessity of climate protection through their own insight and thus change their actions.

Economic issues get a lot of attention and the best broadcasting slots, according to the association. The main public broadcaster ARD set "Börse vor Acht" ("Stock exchange before eight") close to the main news program. Klima vor acht argued, that it is now time to explain the existential climate crisis that affects everyone. A short and "high quality" broadcast format on the subject is urgently needed, they claim.

The initiative was formed in 2020 and in 2021 went on to produce six episodes of "Klima vor Acht" on itself. The association has been cooperating with the private broadcaster RTL Television (RTL Group) for one of its formats since mid-2021. The chairman of the association is Michael Flammer.

History

In 2019, for the first time, activists asked ARD to add a series of "Climate before eight" to their weekly program "Knowledge before eight". In 2019, people active in the climate movement started a petition for a program called "Climate before eight".

Over 20,000 people signed the letter to Tom Buhrow (as of November 2021), vice secretary of ARD. Among them are the scientists Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker, Stefan Rahmstorf, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Sabine Gabrysch, Maja Göpel, Özden Terli, Markus Quante. It signed inter alia the activists Annemarie Botzki, Harald Welzer and Luisa Neubauer, as well as the musicians and actors Carolin Kebekus, Max Mutzke, Wolfgang Niedecken and Katrin Bauerfeind, the organizations WWF Germany, Climate-Alliance Germany, Deutsche Umwelthilfe and Care Germany.

The petition and a later official complain on ARD did not have the desired effect.

In June 2020, climate activists from Extinction Rebellion protested in Hamburg at Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) and in front of the Spiegel publishing house for better covering of the climate crisis.

Because of thatm than a dozen people got together in mid-2020 to produce the program themselves. To finance the project, they launched a crowdfunding campaign on Startnext with the goal of 20,000 euros. The goal was achieved in less than four hours and by the end of the crowdfunding the requestet amount had almost doubled. Then the registered association (Verein) was founded, which also applied for non-profit status. By 2021, the production team had grown to around 30 people, including television, radio and print journalists, biologists, meteorologists, psychologists and energy technicians as well as IT specialists.

ARD explained that the topic of climate change is already featured in many formats, including in “Börse vor Acht”, for example in reportings about the relationship between economy and ecology, or in the program “Wissen vor Acht”. "We are convinced that by dealing with the topic in these established formats right before the "Tagesschau" we can reach the largest possible number of people," said Agnes Toellner 2020 from the program directorate of ARD.

Programs

Climate before eight published six pilots of a TV-program in April 2021. Half of the 15 minutes programs addressing recent climate change developments and the other half aims at backgrounds and general knowledge about climate change.

Programs:

• Our swamps – the better forests
• Well meant or well done? The Renewable Energy Sources Act. (Gut gemeint oder gut gemacht? Das Erneuerbare-Energien-Gesetz)
• On the brink: why it could be too late for the Greenland Ice Sheet (Auf der Kippe: Warum es für das Grönlandeis zu spät sein könnte)
• CO₂ makes the world greener: myth or fact? (CO₂ macht die Welt grüner: Mythos oder Fakt?)
• The new scrapping bonus: From politics and vice (Die neue Abwrackprämie: Von Politik und Lastern)
• Twin Worlds and Climate Action: Attribution Research (Von Zwillingswelten und Klimaklagen: Die Attributionsforschung)

Cooperation with RTL

Since April 2021 the association has been advising the TV broadcaster RTL on the creation of its own climate format “Climate Update”. The two-minute format reports twice a week after the main news prgramm "rtl aktuell" on the latest information about the climate crisis. It is seen by an average of 2.5 million viewers. It was first broadcast on July 8, 2021.

Reception

Christoph von Eichhorn wrote in the Süddeutsche Zeitung in 2019 that "putting issues like the stock market back on track", as the petition calls for, would be the wrong approach. Economic and climate reports should be merged and reports should be given primarily on sustainable investments. "Instead of the winners in the DAX, it would have to be about ethical and social investments, or about" divestment ", the move away from companies that burn fossil fuels." There is a real need here. Five minutes before the daily news for climate reporting is far too short to report sufficiently on the effects of the climate crisis, species extinction, pole melting and extreme weather. These topics deserved a lot more time and attention - but after eight, then at prime time, von eichhorn mentioned.

In 2021, Johannes Schneider from Die Zeit pointed out that the broadcast in the year of the federal election in Germany could also be viewed as "campaign support for the Greens".

Christian Buß showed in Der Spiegel in July 2021 his incomprehension for the attitude of the ARD, because this would make it the private TV stations at the moment "to stage itself as a new guarantor of quality, while the ARD seems to groan after the demands of the time. So RTL can now without much effort put itslelf in the spotlight as a "climate saver". It would be easy to make the new private competition look pale. The RTL update sometimes looks like a somewhat obscure meteorological program for older Baltic Sea vacationers. ... Why is ARD not taking it seriously with their proclaimed hunt for the "U-40" audience - and presents a clever, modern climate format right in front of the »Tagesschau«? You could hardly build a larger lighthouse in the linear program to attract a young, climate-minded audience."