Editor's note: This story is part of Southwest Michigan Second Wave's On the Ground Calhoun County series.

The world is heating up and not in a good way.

That was the message I got during a Climate Changes Everything: Creating a Blueprint for Media Transformation conference in New York City last week. Although the conference was for freelance writers, reporters with large and small news organizations — newspapers and television — and documentary filmmakers and photographers, the information presented was a wake-up call for every human being who calls planet Earth home.

The opening remarks spared no one from the harsh truth that our planet will continue to warm. But, there also were glimmers of hope if all of us stop denying it and start working together at all levels to do something about it.

Ali Zaidi, White House National Climate Advisor, answers questions posed by participants at the Climate Now conference.Those who provide accurate information about the news and events that shape our world through the written word or visual images have an obligation to focus on the scale of the climate emergency and ask ourselves, “Are we doing enough,” said Kyle Pope, Editor and Publisher of the Columbia Journalism Review in his opening remarks.

Those who are already practicing climate-informed journalism are making connections between climate change and every other story that they do and putting a lens on the people affected. Many of them who are doing this work in other countries have had their lives threatened or have been detained because those in power don’t want Climate Change talked about.

“Many of you are in Africa and Asia and you’re working to cover climate issues in very difficult circumstances,” said Mark Hertsgaard, Executive Director of Covering Climate Now. “Historical moments call us all to do what we need to do. With that comes responsibility.” 

For journalists in Puerto Rico that responsibility surpasses the challenges that they continue to face in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.

“We live with the emergency every day. We have power outages almost every other day,” said Omaya Sosa Pascual, Co-Founder and Special Projects Editor for Puerto Rico’s Center for Investigative Journalism. “We live every day in adaption mode. As journalists, we have to work and adapt. We have to prepare for this changed newsroom dynamics and the way we work. We have to prepare for our survival and also inform our public.”

Audrey Cerdan, Weather & Climate Editor with France Telelvisions, presents examples of how the weather teams at her television network integrate visually appealing ways to climate change into their daily weather coverage.There is widespread agreement among those who elevate the Climate Change story that the dots need to be connected so that people can easily understand how it is impacting life as we know it.

“The real grunt work,” Pope says, “is being done at the state level and we need to be covering policymakers in such a way that what we get is not just a comment, but that we’re holding them accountable.”

What’s lacking is the political will to put aside vested interests and work to change it.

As one journalist put it, covering Climate Change is not advocacy, it’s telling the whole story through a solutions lens which includes a focus on justice because there is no climate solution without justice.

A commonly shared opinion among those who are already putting the spotlight on people throughout the world who have been displaced because of floods and hurricanes, famine and disease, is that the poorest among us will be the most impacted and the least likely to find their way to safer and more liveable environments. Why? Money of course.

The State of Climate Journalism: Issuing a Call to Action is discussed among from left to right: Ben Tracy, CBS News Senior national and Environmental Correspondent; Omaya Sosa Pascual, Co-founder and Special Projects Editor with Puerto Rico's CenterThey simply won’t have the financial means unlike the wealthy and comfortably well-off who will have access to more hospitable locales and climates.

This rich vs. poor scenario falls under the Climate Justice umbrella, something that the Weather Channel is taking very seriously and talking about, said Stephanie Abrams, On-Camera Meteorologist with the Weather Channel.

Conversations and stories about Climate Change on a broader scale will help people understand that the planet is on fire, why it’s on fire, and how all of us together can fix it, Hertsgaard says.

“That fire can be put out,” he said. “Unless we help the public awaken to that knowledge, there simply won’t be enough pressure to do what science demands. That’s really what this is about.”

For us at Southwest Michigan Second Wave, it’s also about breaking the silence and making sure that we connect the dots for you in Calhoun and Kalamazoo counties about how Climate Change is impacting different areas of your life.