What it's all about
The idea for this web series grew out of Climate City’s ambition to help raise awareness of urban climate change issues.
It is the flagship product of our Climate People programme aimed at government agencies and authorities, city policymakers and economic stakeholders, and above all citizens around the world looking to play their part in developing climate-change coping strategies. This programme is integral to an urban climate education and outreach approach geared towards crafting a better vision for tomorrow’s world.
The pilot for Citizen Klimate was filmed in French and English in February in Quebec. The four episodes of Season 1 are set to be filmed in March. Climate City chose the talented team of the studio 5600 °K, based in Trois Rivières. The actors Adamo Ionata and Claudine Picory were auditioned by 5600 °K and selected by Climate City to embody the journalists Adam Wenston and Meryl Perovskia.
To discover the work of Martin Saulnier and Justin Antippa, partners and directors of 5600 °K, click below.
Learn about 5600 °K
The Climate City team imagined the story of Meryl Perovskia and Adam Wenston, two journalists passionate about preserving the environment, to show the widest possible audience what urban climate change is all about and the challenges it poses for populations and our future.
This is their story: Adam Wenston and Meryl Perovskia met in Afghanistan 10 years ago as war reporters. They were accompanying crack troops in the mountains when the Jeep Adam was riding in hit a mine.
Meryl, who was riding in another vehicle a few hundred metres from the explosion, helped to evacuate the wounded and took care of Adam for several days as his life hung by a thread on the trip back to Kabul.
This tragic event sealed a firm friendship that gets stronger by the day, sealed by a shared vision of the world—a generous, peaceful and ecological vision—and by a burning need to observe, understand, inform and act.
Adam and Meryl are still working today as reporters for Citizen World Journal. However, since his accident Adam can no longer travel the globe, so the two friends decided to share the workload.
The feisty Perovskia continues to roam the world while the meticulous Wenston organizes missions, investigates, pulls together information and prepares the articles that he always co-writes with Meryl.
For the last two years, this duo of dedicated reporters have been working side by side in Citizen World’s news room in Montreal, investigating in Africa, Asia, South America and all corners of the Earth to expose the dire threat that climate change poses to humankind.
As the parents of six children between them, it is a threat they take very seriously, and even if their respective marriages have not survived the pressures a roving reporter has to endure, Wenston and Perovskia have become real experts in the field of climate change…
Starting on 1 June, two episodes of CITIZEN KLIMATE will be coming out every two months. They will be made available exclusively to the series’ partners the month they are released, then aired via a dedicated YouTube channel and through social media and specific operations in partnership with the world’s major climate organizations and cities. The series thus aims to raise awareness among citizens and economic, scientific and political stakeholders about the challenges for cities of coping with climate change. It will also raise the profile of CITIZEN KLIMATE’s partners and more broadly those of the Climate City global operator.