This week’s covers | Nov 25th 2023 Edition

THIS WEEK we published two covers—both of them drawing on COP28, the climate talks due to start in Dubai on November 30th. In most of the world we used the COP as a chance to take stock of the climate crisis. In the Middle East and Africa we focused on the United Arab Emirates, the conference’s host, as an example of how some countries can thrive in a fragmenting world.

Climate covers are some of the hardest to get right. The message is often both depressing and familiar—a reader-repelling combination. The message can easily be muffled under a blanket of jargon and contested scientific complexity. The fact that climate change is as important as anything we write about only increases the risk that readers see our coverage as a duty rather than a pleasure. 

We have two ways to counter those perceptions: humour and the suggestion that we bear good news as well as bad.