Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.

“Open your eyes. We have failed. The climate crisis is now.”

So begins the video introduction to “Postcards From a World on Fire,” an ambitious multimedia project reported and developed by more than 40 writers, photographers, editors and designers on the Opinion desk at The Times. The project, which appears in today’s issue and was published online last month, documents how climate change has altered life in 193 countries.

“We need to change the conversation around climate change,” Kathleen Kingsbury, the Opinion editor, said in an interview. “We talk about it like it’s in the future, but it’s already changing the way we live.”

In July, inspired by the then-upcoming United Nations climate change conference in Glasgow, Ms. Kingsbury started a deskwide initiative that would immerse readers in the disastrous consequences of a warming world — not as an abstract, apocalyptic future threat, but as a present and personal one. The package would present the facts but also advocate prioritizing an issue that has had irreversible effects on the planet, which qualified “Postcards” as an Opinion project.

She enlisted Meeta Agrawal, the Special Projects editor for Opinion, and Kate Elazegui, the Opinion design director, to form teams that would compile dossiers on the most pressing climate issues in 193 countries — and then figure out how to illustrate one issue per nation in a streamlined format.

After the groups concluded their research, the design team came up with several display ideas. The team decided on a mobile-friendly experience similar to the TikTok app, in which readers could easily “swipe” through digital cards that would each feature a carousel of photos, a video or audio clip, a chart or an illustration that illustrated climate change in a country.

The cards show a variety of global issues. A team of staff and freelance photographers, audio specialists and videographers around the world documented or collected existing recordings that showed changes, like the sounds of healthy (sizzling and popping) and dying (silent) coral reefs in Fiji, captured a skater crashing through the ice in the Netherlands, and recorded the deep boom of a calving glacier in Greenland. There are floods sweeping Austria; wildfires scorching Tanzania. There are elephants and cargo ships and cricketers.

The project also includes testimonials from people in different …….

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/02/insider/tracking-climate-change-in-193-countries.html