Andrew Freedman, senior climate reporter for Axios and an author of the daily Axios Generate newsletter, is an award-winning journalist who has been covering extreme weather and climate science for over 15 years—long enough to see climate change discussions shift from a “theoretical future problem” to an immediate and pressing challenge. A former editor for the Washington Post, Freedman has an M.A. in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School at Tufts and an M.A. in Climate and Society from Columbia.

On Tuesday, April 8, Freedman will return to the Columbia Climate School to give the Signature Speaker Series lecture, “Going to Extremes: Life on the Front Lines of Climate Journalism.” State of the Planet spoke with Freedman ahead of his upcoming talk about his work as a climate reporter, the challenges and opportunities in the field and what keeps him motivated.

How did you get started as a journalist and climate reporter?

I was a weather geek growing up. I was also interested in journalism and politics. It wasn’t until college that I discovered climate change as a political issue and realized that it combined all the things I was interested in.

After undergrad, I came to D.C. and worked for NOAA for a little while, and then transitioned to being a journalist covering Capitol Hill, focusing more and more on climate change. With a few detours here and there, and with two grad school programs, I went back into journalism and have now been covering climate change off and on since 2003.

After about two decades in this field, what are some of the biggest changes you’ve noticed in terms of public response to climate change reporting?

I think climate change has gone from a theoretical future problem to a very much present-day problem. When I started out, the science was much more contested. You had to balance your story out in this false equivalence way, where you had to quote a scientist and then quote a ‘skeptic.’ Now there’s just an incredibly abundant and diverse ecosystem of climate reporting. We’re no longer talking about 2100 and just using computer models. We’re talking about climate disasters and ramifications today.

The political situation obviously has changed. Right now, we’re not in a particularly well-suited spot to get big things done on climate, which is the most understated thing I can say. We were just in an administration that was firing on all cylinders on climate change, whether you agreed with their approach or not.

The information landscape is also changing. In some cases, we have billionaires in charge of media outlets and their coverage. How do you think that’s affecting the way news is delivered and how we need to think about reporting?

My job is to report, to my best ability, what’s really happening—whether it’s a climate science research study, or political action that causes a lot of people to be laid off, or even more significant actions that are likely to come at NASA and NOAA. We’re seeing seismic changes in how science is funded and done at the federal government level, with fundamental questions being asked about whether we’re really going be continuing to forecast weather as accurately as we have been or freely share data on climate science.

I’ve been fortunate to be in a place where we’re quite dedicated to reporting the truth. We’re not one of those publications that I think has done a rebalancing based on the current administration. It is a real thing that’s going on, and I think every journalist is having to think about things we didn’t have to think about before.

Who do you think about as your audience when you’re reporting? How does that affect your writing?

I co-write a daily newsletter. I think of our audience as everyone from oil and gas industry executives to lobbyists, to people on Capitol Hill, to just people who are interested in climate and the industry that’s cropped up around it. So, those who might be interested in clean tech or how the energy industry is changing. Our audience on the website is different; it’s much broader. I think of everyday people when I think of the web audience.

The Axios mantra is very audience-first. The way you see us present stories and the length of stories is driven by this desire not to waste anybody’s time and to really cut to the chase of why something is important and why you need to know about it. It’s actually the hardest type of writing I’ve ever had to do.

You have a very unique bullet-point format at Axios. Does it ever feel constraining or do you think it helps you get to the point?

It definitely makes you think, before you write, about what’s really important. I wouldn’t say it’s constraining, but it can be very difficult to write climate science stories in that style, especially if you’re covering a complex study from a science journal, for example. At the same time, getting at the main idea in a study at the top really does help. If I’m interviewing somebody or reading a report, I’m always doing so with the mindset of what would I tell somebody who I’m only interacting with for 30 seconds in an elevator? Because I know that that’s how long people are looking at something on their phone or on their computer screen at work.

I’ve gotten feedback, even from top-level scientists in the international arena who brief policymakers frequently about climate science, that our style really helps them go in and give a short and to-the-point briefing to prevent the prime minister or minister from walking out of the room and leaving their chief of staff behind to listen to a 30-slide presentation.

You have an M.A. in Climate and Society from Columbia. Did this experience change or help your approach to your work in any way?

I exist at the intersection of extreme weather and climate change; that’s where I’ve really focused a lot of my work. I don’t think I would have been able to do that to the extent that I can without having gone through the program. The degree at Columbia was instrumental in helping me cover climate science and everything from El Niño to tipping points in the climate system. I took classes on climate law, disasters, Earth science and journalism. I think [the M.A.] was a huge help in giving us the knowledge base to have a better source list, read studies with more skepticism and understand how to report on scientific studies better.

Can you tell me a little about your upcoming talk at the Climate School?

Well, I’m a reporter on deadline…so it might be partially written the night before, but I want to talk about my experiences in climate journalism. I want talk about how Columbia changed what I do. I think oftentimes people either assume things about how the media works or just don’t quite understand it. I want to pull back the curtain a little bit and talk about the things that go through my head when I’m approaching a story, some stories that I’ve written that I’m particularly proud of and some trends that I have been a part of that I am not so proud of. It won’t be a long PowerPoint presentation—that I can tell you right now. I want to have a dialogue with the audience.

You’re reporting on pretty difficult topics—extreme weather and climate change are not exactly uplifting. How do you stay motivated and not let the issues get to you? What do you do to unwind?

Very good question. So that’ll be in the talk because one of the stories I did involves an exploration of climate anxiety. But I don’t know how I do it. I think I have to emotionally detach from things a lot of the time. I was heavily involved in improv and guest comedy for more than a decade and trained in New York, D.C. and Chicago. I talk to other climate reporters about what it’s like to cover this issue and they help keep me sane. My family grounds me, and I think I just try to focus on some more ordinary things as best as I can.

We all have a role to play in [climate change], if you choose to. I have to remember that it’s not this huge burden on my shoulders to tell every climate story. There are so many good reporters out there doing great stuff. When it gets a little overwhelming, you’ve got to pull back a bit. It’s a constant battle between detachment and letting certain things sink in, especially when you have a child—the climate projections mean different things now than they used to.