Climate Awareness
Develop Your Knowledge
Do you know how the climate crisis is impacting and will impact your area and the world? Solid knowledge about climate change can help you make choices that will have an impact. For example, climate change knowledge puts you in a better position to vote for candidates who will take action to address climate change issues. Below, you’ll find curated and trusted resources to learn about your area, links to movies, books, newsletters and podcasts explaining where we are with the climate crisis. Here are resources and suggestions that you can use to raise your and your friend’s awareness.
- Talk about it with family, friends, and co-workers. The extreme weather events happening now are one way to start.
- Request that the media, politicians, and political leaders talk about it.
- Assess your climate change understanding and start gathering basic information about your area:
- Visit and explore our Global Warming Wiki.
- State Climate Summaries from NOAA updated annually.
- The Effects of Climate Change from NASA
The potential future effects of global climate change include more frequent wildfires, longer periods of drought in some regions and an increase in the number, duration and intensity of tropical storms. NASA provides information on evidence, causes, effects, and vital signs for climate change.
- Climate Science Center
Facebook has gathered many useful resources that can help you assess your knowledge and learn about climate change predictions and solutions. Scroll down to Average Temperature by Year to find how the Average temperature is changing in your state.
4. Watch educational movies for understanding and hope . Here are just a few examples:
Breaking Boundaries: The Science of Our Planet (Netflix)
Breaking Boundaries tells the story of the most important scientific discovery of our time – that humanity has pushed Earth beyond the boundaries that have kept it stable for 10,000 years, since the dawn of civilization. This 75-minute film takes the audience on a journey of discovery of planetary thresholds we must not exceed, not just for the stability of our planet, but for the future of humanity. It describes the solutions we can and must put in place now if we are to protect Earth’s life support systems.
Kiss the Ground (Netflix)
Science experts and celebrity activists unpack the ways in which the earth’s soil may be the key to combating climate change and preserving the planet.
Brave Blue World (Netflix)
From reuse to energy generation, this documentary explores new innovations across five continents for building a future with sustainable water.
Mission Blue (Netflix)
This documentary follows oceanographer Sylvia Earle’s campaign to save the world’s oceans from threats such as overfishing and toxic waste.
Can We Cool the Planet (PBS|Nova)
As global temperatures continue to rise, scientists are wondering if we need solutions that go beyond reducing emissions. From sucking carbon straight out of the air, to geoengineering our atmosphere to physically block out sunlight, to planting more than a trillion trees, the options may seem futuristic or tough to implement. But as time runs out on conventional solutions to climate change, scientists are asking the hard questions: Can new, sometimes controversial, solutions really work? And at what cost?
5. Watch videos for historical context. Here are a couple of examples:
- Carl Sagan Congressional Testimony 1985 (YouTube)
Excerpt of Carl Sagan testifying before Congress in 1985 about the greenhouse effect on global climate.
- Explained: The End of Oil (Netflix)
In The End of Oil episode of the Explained series, the narrator and the expert guests discuss how something that has helped in the world’s development is now playing a role in harming our civilization. When oil was discovered, no one would have thought that it would play such a vital role in everyone’s day-to-day lives.
For a deeper dive see our wiki Video Archive suggestions.
6. Read newsletters. For example:
- Pulitzer Prize winning newsletter, Inside Climate News, is nonpartisan reporting on the biggest crisis facing our planet.
- XR Global Newsletter, The Action Network, has reports on actions from across the globe, exclusive rebel interviews, book reviews, curated articles and photos, news on upcoming events, and more.
7. Read or listen to books. For example:
- Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World, by Katherine Hayhoe. “An optimistic view on why collective action is still possible – and how it can be realized.” (The New York Times)
- Free eBook: The Good Guide to Effective Climate Action in the 21st Century
- The Sixth Mass Extinction, by Elizabeth Kolbert, a highly respected climate journalist.
- Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World, by Daniel Sherrell. Perspective from a youth climate activist.
- The Uninhabitable Earth, by David Wallace Wells. A good overview and introduction to technologies and strategies that might help solve the problem.
- The Future We Choose: A Stubborn Optimist’s Guide to the Climate Crisis, by Christine Figueres, a UN Executive Secretary on Climate. This book outlines what needs to be done and what individuals can do.
- All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis, edited by Ayana Johnson and Katharine Wilkinson. Essays by women climate activists from around the world.
8. Listen to Podcasts. For example:
- The Snap Forward
The Snap Forward podcast is all about the planetary crisis, climate and sustainability, preparing for discontinuity and seeing opportunities in change, foresight and strategy for a fast-changing world, new ideas, powerful stories and success in hard times.
- The Climate Question, by BBC News
Stories about why we find it so hard to save our own planet and how we might change that.
