Joel Bach

Joel Bach is an American journalist, television producer and environmentalist known for foundin
The YEARS Project
a digital media organization focused on climate change, and his work on '' 60 Minutes'' with CBS News, where he won two Emmy Awards. He is the creator and director of the climate change TV serie
YEARS OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY
winner of a Primetime Emmy Award and an Environmental Media Award. A
60 MINUTES
he worked alongside David Gelber. and produced pieces for correspondents Ed Bradley, Lesley Stahl, Steve Kroft and Scott Pelley.

Bach and Gelber successfully recruited film director James Cameron, the late Jerry Weintraub and Arnold Schwarzenegger to serve as executive producers o
YEARS OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY
and enlisted an ensemble cast of A-list celebrities and journalists to star in the project, including Harrison Ford, Jessica Alba, Matt Damon, David Letterman, Cecily Strong, Ian Somerhalder, Lesley Stahl, Thomas L. Friedman and Jack Black.

A
The YEARS Project
Bach serves at executive director and creative director and oversees a team of media professionals producing digital content to raise awareness and inspire action on climate change
The YEARS Project
videos have garnered more than one billion views on social media, making the organization the leading digital media entity reporting on the climate crisis.

Bach is also the creator and director o
INSIDE THE MOVEMENT
the first-ever action toolkit and weekly newsletter for the climate movement. Each week
ITM.EARTH
features the latest campaigns, actions, ideas and shareable content of the broader climate movement.

Early life and education

Bach spent his early life in Colorado. He was raised near the Roaring Fork River in Colorado, which would later inspire the name for his joint production company with Gelber. Bach studied video and film production at Brown University. Bach fostered his early interests in the environment and combined these motivations with his burgeoning film skills at Brown. He created the short film, ''Brown Is Green'', intended to educate first year students at Brown on why they should recycle. The piece also served as his honors thesis. Bach graduated from Brown University in 1991.

Journalism career

ABC and NBC

Before landing a
60 MINUTES
with CBS News, Bach worked at American Broadcasting Company (ABC) and National Broadcasting Company (NBC). In addition, he gained filmmaking experience in San Francisco and Los Angeles through directing and producing public service announcements, short films, and music videos.

''60 Minutes''

Bach and Gelber had previously worked together o
60 MINUTES
with CBS News, prior to co-foundin
YEARS OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY
Bach joined ''60 Minutes'' in 2004. He spent seven years as a producer and journalist with ''60 Minutes''. While working at ''60 Minutes'', Bach earned two Emmy Awards for his investigative journalism and production efforts with CBS News. During his time at CBS News, Bach primarily worked with ''60 Minutes'' journalists including Ed Bradley, Lesley Stahl, Steve Kroft, and Scott Pelley.

During their lunch breaks together at ''60 Minutes'', Bach and Gelber shared their mutual wishes to subsequently work on a project dedicated to educating people about the environment. After Bach and Gelber had collaborated on two separate stories related to climate change for ''60 Minutes'', they realized it was the most crucial news topic worthy of additional stories. They both felt they had not seen enough coverage of the topic at ''60 Minutes''. They knew they wanted to focus more on the topic, but were cognizant of the fact that they could not simply inform their supervisors at ''60 Minutes'' that they would intend to only focus on one solitary news issue of climate change.

Bach began to attempt to produce as many news pieces related to climate change for ''60 Minutes'' as he could. He and Gelber discussed the topic of global warming and agreed it was not getting enough significant attention from the media. Bach and Gelber both left ''60 Minutes'' together in order to devote more time and energy to their climate change project. Together in 2011 they founded the company to focus these efforts, Roaring Fork Films — in the process Bach described they both left, "the best job in TV, ''60 Minutes''."

''Years of Living Dangerously''

In 2011, Bach and Gelber received their first funding source fo
YEARS OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY
with a check for US$750,000 from investor Jeremy Grantham. Microsoft co-founder, Paul Allen, used his company Vulcan Inc. to allocate $1.8 million towards education and marketing related to the project. In total, Bach and Gelber were able to raise $15 million in funds for the project. They initially wanted the ''Years of Living Dangerously'' project to be a feature film. Fellow film and television executive Jerry Weintraub convinced Bach and Gelber to instead make the production into a television series. Their idea for the project was motivated further by Bach and Gelber's experience watching the 2012 United States presidential debates, and he noticed there were no questions on climate change.

After Bach and Gelber successfully enlisted Weintraub and film director James Cameron as executive producers of the television documentary project, multiple celebrities joined soon thereafter — including Harrison Ford, Jessica Alba, Matt Damon, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. They were joined by news reporters Lesley Stahl and Chris Hayes. David Nevins, president of entertainment at Showtime Networks, explained why they decided to move forward with the project in 2012. Nevins stated it presented Showtime with a rare chance to utilize both celebrity star talent and filmmmakers such as James Cameron, "with the hard-hitting, intimate journalism of ''60 Minutes'' veterans Joel Bach and David Gelber."

Season one of the series debuted on Showtime in 2014 and received rave reviews. ''Columbia Journalism Review'' noted the show "drew praise", while ''The Guardian'' observed, "the series has very high standards of accuracy." Bach and Gelber's work garnered ''Years of Living Dangerously'' the 2014 Emmy Award, for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series. He and Gelber also won the 2014 Environmental Media Award in the category, Outstanding Achievement for Environmental Content.

Season two of ''Years of Living Dangerously'' was subsequently picked up by the National Geographic channel. For season two, Bach reached out to David Letterman after discovering he showed specific attention to climate change issues on his CBS program '' Late Show with David Letterman''. Bach explained how he landed Letterman for ''Years of Living Dangerously'', "He seemed to perk up when this issue came across his lap. We reached out to him to see if he’d want to be part of this, and he said, ‘Absolutely.’ He said hat climate change issomething he does think about a lot." Bach and Gelber sent David Letterman to India for the second season, to interview the country's prime minister Narendra Modi about energy issues.

For their second season, Bach and Gelber continued to use celebrity star power to bring attention to climate change, and additionally provided more examples of solutions and direct methods on how interested parties can address the issue. Their work on the second season of ''Years of Living Dangerously'' was again recognized by the Environmental Media Awards, with another nomination for Outstanding Achievement for Environmental Content.

Filmography

Awards and honors

See also

* Avoided Deforestation Partners
* List of awards and nominations received by James Cameron
*Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series

References

External links

*
The Years Project
Joel Bach and David Gelber, (co-founders)
Joel Bach is bringing climate action to the masses
''Climate & Capital Media''

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bach, Joel
American male journalists
CBS News people
Journalists from Colorado
Brown University alumni
20th-century American journalists
21st-century American journalists
60 Minutes producers
1970 births
Living people