“A lot of times, people are not drawn in when climate is the top line,” Stone told me. “So I like to start with [a question like] ‘O.K., what’s affecting your daily life?’”
That question led her to write a story about bus stops that lacked shade structures, which meant people who relied on public transit would have to wait for extended periods of time in direct sunlight, which is a dangerous proposition during heat waves. That was a story that began at a very local level — people in a community were advocating for more shelters at bus stops — but allowed Stone to draw the connection to the larger, planet-spanning problem of climate change.