I was in Grand Rapids last week, speaking to the Council of Michigan Foundations. Out for a morning walk, I saw something so unusual, I stopped to take a picture of it (see above!). Later that day, on a field trip, I learned the story behind it: a 15-year collaborative effort to remove century-old industrial dams, built to float logs to the furniture industry, and restore the rapids to the Grand River.

The dams had been there so long that few imagined anything different. What changed that? An art installation and two voices! In 2009, an artist collaboration installed a Loch Ness Monster in the river. Two kayakers had so much fun paddling around it that they wondered: why couldn’t we kayak the whole river?

That idea grew into a vision for reconnecting the entire community with the water through trails, pedestrian bridges, cultural spaces, and local businesses. From there, it expanded into the Grand River Greenway, an 85-mile train system linking communities along the river all the way from Grand Rapids to Lake Michigan. And the benefits go well beyond recreation.

Spending time in nature, in green spaces and blue, supports our physical and mental health and makes us more likely to care for each other and the planet. So I love how it was an art installation and a conversation over beer after kayaking that helped spark a project that is improving millions of lives. That’s the power of our voices to catalyse change, and why local action and imagining a better future is so important.

In Texas’s top pumpkin-growing region, this year’s pumpkin harvest is down 30 to 40 percent because of extreme drought. “Normally, you go into a growing season, you’ve got some subsoil moisture, and then you irrigate, and you can have a decent crop. But we went into the growing season with no subsoil moisture,” said Mark Carroll, an AgriLife Extension agent for Floyd County. Conditions were the driest this year that they’ve been on record.

In the UK this year, British farmers sweated through more than 40 days above 30°C (86°F). As a result of this unusual heat, UK pumpkins were about half their usual size, with skins so thick they’re hard to carve. “In the heat, the pumpkins just gave up and stopped growing early, even when there was moisture available. With the lack of water and heat, it was a double whammy,” says pumpkin farmer David Coulter.

Meanwhile, in Canada, heavy rains have let some pumpkins rot on the vine. In a warmer world, the atmosphere holds more water vapour, leading to heavier rainfall. And when it’s dry, the heat pulls moisture out of the soil faster.

The pumpkin challenge exemplifies how, around the world, farmers are finding it too dry one year and too wet the next, no matter what crop they grow. Rather than relying on historical patterns, they’re having to search for ways to adapt in a world that is more frequently swinging from one extreme to another thanks to climate change.

If you’re in Australia, there’s still time to join the Challenge for Climate, run by Climate for Change. For more than ten years, this nonprofit has been turning kitchen-table conversations into collective action, training more than 460 volunteers to help everyday Australians find their voice on climate. The idea for this challenge is simple: for ten days, through October 24, you choose ten climate actions that matter to you, from switching to green power to starting a conversation to writing to your elected representative.

This year’s theme is one I love: “un-silencing the majority.” Most people around the world already care about climate change. What we’re missing is hearing each other say so – and when people don’t talk about it, we think others don’t care. That’s exactly why we created the Talking Climate Collective – and if you’re looking for ways to get the convo started, we have you covered with our handy “Start Talking” tool right here!

If you’re in Canada, Canadian Geographic is hosting the Live Net Zero Household Challenge to hear from people what climate actions they’re taking in their households. To enter, write in with up to three short blurbs about climate actions you’re taking in your life, from installing a heat pump to opting for more plant-based meals to buying second-hand items. There’s a $5,000 grand prize along with several smaller prizes.

Final entries are due by February 28, 2027, but entries submitted by the end of October will be eligible for a $500 Spotlight prize. Best of all, the organizers will share what they learn from those who write in with Canadian policymakers and businesses!

In this Tea with Katharine, I look at three blockbuster movies that show us what’s at stake but leave out two essential messages: other people care, and there are solutions that work. We can have the whole world …

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This week, I am delighted to hand the newsletter over to Merritt Turetsky. Merritt, aka the Queen of Peat, is an ecologist, professor, mom of three daughters, and author of a new book called Bogland: The hidden world of Earth’s most extraordinary ecosystems that I can’t wait to read. I also think its UK cover (see below) is so beautiful, it should be turned into a puzzle!

For three decades, Merritt has explored the hidden worlds of peatlands, permafrost, fire, and carbon, working across the Canadian and Arctic north to understand how these extraordinary systems shape our changing planet.

A passionate science communicator, Merritt believes bogs are wild, beautiful, creative places that hold stories, biodiversity, and clues to our future. Through her science, writing, and enthusiastic advocacy for all things peat, she is building a global community of bog champions.

Take it away, Merritt!

For a long time we saw “wet” as “bad” – but many are beginning to imagine a different and much more positive relationship with wet land. Take paludiculture, the practice of farming with water instead of fighting it. Rather than draining peatlands, paludiculture keeps the peat wet and the carbon it contains in the ground, while helping local communities make a living from what grows there.

In Germany, projects are exploring crops including cattails for insulation, reeds for fibreboard, and Sphagnum moss for a variety of uses; in the U.K., large-scale projects are testing crops, farming techniques, and new markets for wetter agricultural landscapes. And in Indonesia, communities have developed livelihoods around plants such as sago for food and purun that’s used for mats, baskets, and furniture.

I find this hopeful because it marks a profound shift in how we think about peatlands: not as a problem that needs to be engineered away, but as landscapes whose ecological functions, including storing carbon, can become part of the livelihood they provide.

In some ways, this is not a new idea. One of the discoveries I made while writing Bogland was that people have used peatlands for thousands of years: for grazing livestock, gathering plants, preserving food, and as places of ritual significance. Our ancestors lived with their wetness, sometimes depended upon it, and sometimes treated it as sacred. Peatlands were working landscapes and cultural landscapes at the same time.

In this sense, paludiculture asks us to look forward by looking back; remembering that there have always been ways of living with wetlands. If we can embrace boglands rather than turn our backs on them, we will discover that wetness is not an obstacle to human flourishing but rather part of what makes these landscapes valuable in the first place.

A recent story about a peatland in North Carolina caught my attention. Roughly the size of Manhattan, NY, this ecosystem in the Inner Banks was drained decades ago for agriculture and as a result it now releases around 130,000 tons of CO₂ each year. This is like burning 392,000 pounds of coal every single day of the year. (👋 KH here – this is exactly why protecting and re-wetting North Carolina’s unique peatlands is a major focus of The Nature Conservancy’s work in that state. Learn more about it here!)

This points to a larger danger: when peatlands lose their water, they can stop storing carbon, and at the same time can become much more vulnerable to fire. This summer, drought fueled a severe fire season in Indonesia. There and elsewhere, dried peat soils can smolder underground, sometimes for months, releasing carbon accumulated over many centuries. In June, two unusually early wildfires burned in Greenland’s tundra. Fires are still rare there, but scientists are concerned that warmer, drier conditions are making these landscapes more flammable. Even a relatively small fire can reach carbon that has been stored for a very long time.

What connects these stories is water. Peatlands store carbon because waterlogged conditions slow the decay of carbon-rich organic material and help keep fire at bay. Drain a peatland for agriculture, dry it during drought, or—in the far north—warm and disturb previously frozen ground or permafrost that helps hold water in place, and some of that protection disappears.

A peatland can spend thousands of years building its carbon store. Once that store is exposed to oxygen and fire, the ancient carbon can be lost very quickly. Increasingly, the fate of that carbon is tied to how well we protect the water that keeps it there.

We cannot achieve a more secure climate without deep reconnection with the natural world. The more we know and love the places around us, the more we recognize what is at stake, and the more willing we are to act to protect them in a changing climate. For me, that has meant seeing peatlands not as empty, soggy landscapes, but as living ecosystems that store carbon, hold water, support biodiversity, and preserve stories of past worlds.

This week, I invite you to become a bog champion. Chances are, there’s a wetland near where you live. Visit it, learn its plants and wildlife, and share what makes it special. Ask your local garden store to stop selling peat-based compost and soil products. And support organizations working to conserve and restore peatlands.

These actions may seem small, but action for climate and nature often begins with caring about a place enough to speak up for it. We can’t protect what we don’t notice.

I offer many more ways to become a bog champion, from changing everyday gardening practices to supporting peatland conservation efforts in my new book, Bogland. And if you need inspiration for your next adventure, the book includes a bog bucket list of extraordinary peatlands around the world that are worth visiting—and worth protecting.

Thank you, Merritt, for helping us see these extraordinary places with fresh eyes! I love your reminder that action begins with noticing and caring.

I look at bogs differently thanks to what I’ve learned from Merritt. While I’ve already visited many wetlands, from North Carolina’s Great Dismal Swamp (me at 13, pictured below) to the beaver pond wetlands of my native Ontario, a trip to an Arctic bog with Merritt is now on my bucket list.

For more, follow Merritt on Bluesky, Instagram, X, and LinkedIn. To see the beauty of bogs through her eyes, explore her photography and videography portfolio.

Tues Oct 20 at 7pm ET - A Sustainable Future, in conversation with Margaret Atwood (YES really!) - in person at the Isabel Bader Theatre at the University of Toronto - Victoria University; tickets $40 CDN to benefit Vic’s sustainability fund.

Mon Nov 2 at 7pm PT - Climate Action & Conversation Across Divides with WorldOregon - in person at Alberta Rose Theatre in Portland, OR; tickets $31.25

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Over the course of the week, I had a discussion with Senegalese Chef Pierre Thiam, who champions “forgotten foods” like fonio, a drought-tolerant ancient “miracle grain” that also happens to be delicious and nutritious – and just the type of resilient crop we’ll need more of on a warmer planet. I hosted a lunch with climate leaders including David Suzuki, who continues to inspire at age 90 and assured me he is still working on climate resilience with local communities.

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I gave a keynote to the United Nations Global Compact about why climate action is key to economic sustainability. I met with British journalist Maeve Campbell, who produced a climate messaging campaign featuring OnlyFans models (hear me out). Their web series “Headline Newds” aims to reach young adult men, a demographic that’s proven stubbornly resistant to climate messaging.

I hosted a panel at the The New York Academy of Medicine with public health experts on how nature can be used to deliver climate solutions, and heard from emergency medicine physician Renee N. Salas, MD, MPH, MS about an amazing community health initiative called The Cooperative that she’s starting at Mass General Hospital in Boston to address the environmental factors driving health risks before people end up in the hospital, rather than after. Many of the best solutions are so obvious – yet we aren’t doing them!

I saw corporate sustainability teams, tables of filmmakers, roomfuls of medical doctors, and more people who care about climate change than I could count. All told, I managed to fit 25 talks, panels, meetings, and other events into my three days there. Here are some of the highlights.

My week kicked off with a morning tea with George Marshall, who wrote one of the very first books on effective climate communication, Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change, back in 2014. George also co-founded Climate Outreach, the UK climate communication organization whose Talking Climate handbook is required reading in all my classes.

This was the perfect beginning to a week where I felt something big was finally starting to shift: more people than ever are realizing that the first step to climate action is TALKING ABOUT IT!

For so long, climate communication has been treated as an afterthought. We tell ourselves the facts are self-evident, that people will act once they understand the stakes. We assume the benefits of action are obvious—but they aren’t if no one’s heard them.

This year, for the first time at Climate Week, there were more events on climate communication than I could possibly attend — from a Sesame Street event featuring Elmo to a masterclass on climate storytelling. (The Great NY Climate Week Guide counted 48 in all!) And I’m not even counting the launch of our new organization, the Talking Climate Collaborative (if you missed that news, check out our newsletter on the launch here!).

Even in the more traditional events on scaling clean technology or shaping climate policy, people kept bringing up the same worry: that the narrative has been lost. I’d actually disagree, as I don’t think there ever was one, TBH. But the instinct underneath the worry is correct: we need one now, and building it starts with talking.

As Sara Peach of Yale Climate Connections puts it, “‘Talk’ is the fertile field in which cultural change begins; in its absence, it’s impossible for a group of people to solve a problem.” That’s why talking about climate change isn’t optional. It’s essential.

Research shows that what people think — even about science-based issues — is shaped less by facts and much more by what people they trust say, including thought leaders or other elites. And all too often, the information they’re getting isn’t right.

Social media has made this worse by basically weaponising the spread of misinformation. Eight years ago, one study showed that false information on Twitter already travelled six times faster than the truth. The pandemic made it even worse: another study found that a single person — the president of the United States — drove a full 38% of the online misinformation about covid.

So you can see why it’s so concerning that the same president, speaking to the UN during this year’s Climate Week, repeated previous false claims he’d made about climate change, including that the planet is cooling (when this year has a 93% chance of being the warmest on record), no one has died from climate change (it’s responsible for 37% of extreme heat-related deaths alone), and scientists said “we’ll all be dead in 12 years” (we didn’t, and I debunked that myth seven years ago here).

This is why communication matters so much: the loudest voice in the room often shapes what people believe, whether or not it tells the truth. And this is why my latest publication makes the argument for how important it is that cultural influencers speak out on climate.

What I love most about Climate Week is it shows us so clearly how you do not have to be a scientist, an environmentalist or an activist to care about climate change. You just have to be a human living on planet earth – and aren’t we all that?

One of my favourite meetings was in a Whole Foods cafe with a group of Dickinson College students & alums (where I did a residency in 2024) including Genesis Whitlock, Claire Raesly, and Madison Turnbaugh who were making their inaugural trip to Climate Week. We talked about how to bring everything they’d heard and learned (including the climate comedy night they attended!) back to their community.

You might not be part of a college or university or school – but you’re part of some group. Where ever you work, live, recreate, or worship: you are a trusted messenger to everyone who knows you there.

So this week, I want you to try this yourself. Identify a community you’re part of. Then, share something you’ve learned about why climate change matters & what your kind of community can do about it (such as the example from last week about how we can encourage cafeterias to change the food they serve).

Be brave! Try having that conversation with someone who has never heard you bring it up before. You are welcome to let me know how it goes ☺️

This next month I’ll be presenting at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America on Sun Oct 11 in Denver, CO (and very honoured to be receiving the President’s Medal there as well). I’ll also be giving the opening keynote address at CANVAS 2026, the annual meeting of the Alliance of Crop, Soil and Environmental Science Societies (ACSESS) on Sun Nov 1 in Portland, OR. If you are attending either conference, I’d love to see you there!

I also have two more public events coming up in Toronto and Portland:

Tues Oct 20 at 7pm ET - A Sustainable Future, in conversation with Margaret Atwood (YES really!) - in person at the Isabel Bader Theatre at the University of Toronto - Victoria University; tickets $40 CDN to benefit Vic’s sustainability fund.

Mon Nov 2 at 7pm PT - Climate Action & Conversation Across Divides with WorldOregon - in person at Alberta Rose Theatre in Portland, OR; tickets $31.25

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I don’t know about you, but my experience of hospital food (in both Canada and the U.S.) has been disappointing, to say the least. So that’s why I was so surprised by a new study describing how a team at Vancouver General Hospital decided to rethink what it served patients, testing whether a more healthy and delicious menu could be better for the planet, too.

Together, celebrity chef Ned Bell, dietitians, doctors, and food service staff created, taste-tested, and added 18 new recipes to the hospital menu. Their new “Planetary Health” menu contained less animal protein and more plants, including coconut chickpea curry with cauliflower and cashews, a Korean gochujang bowl, turkey bolognese pasta, and steelhead trout with tomato miso dressing. Yum!

The payoff: food-related emissions fell by 39%, and patients liked it. Eighty-four percent rated the new dishes satisfying, and the menu delivered more fiber, calcium, and folate than before.

The approach has now spread to more than 20 hospitals in British Columbia, according to Jiaying Zhao, one of the study’s authors and a professor of psychology and sustainability at the University of British Columbia. Jiaying also happens to be the co-author of the next book on my reading pile, “Leave the Lights On - How Joyful Decisions Can Save our Species”.

Seafood and marine algae are important sources of omega-3s. These essential fats contribute healthy eyes, brains, and hearts, and they help with many other issues from skin conditions to chronic inflammation. Fish is also the lowest-carbon source of animal protein. But a new review finds that, as our oceans warm, marine life may contain less omega-3s and more omega-6s, which we already typically get enough of.

How? It starts at the bottom of the food web. Marine algae are among the only organisms that can make these fats at all—everything else, from crabs to tuna to us, gets them second or third-hand. In warmer water, algae cells have to work harder to hold their shape, so they trade flexible omega-3s for stiffer saturated fats. As the oceans warm, omega-3s in algae fell by 8 to 34% and saturated fats rose by 10 to 22%, with the steepest changes at the highest temperatures.

And because every creature in the ocean is ultimately eating what algae produce, that shortfall doesn’t stay at the bottom. It travels up through the plankton, the shellfish, and the fish. Across every group the researchers looked at, the ratio of omega-3s to omega-6s fell as ocean waters warmed.

We eat plenty of meals we had no hand in planning—at school, at work, at church and more. Those kitchens serve more food in a week than any of us will cook in a year. This makes them one of the best places to change what ends up on the plate.

The hospitals above were open to adopting a plant-rich menu that cut emissions dramatically while improving nutrition and keeping patients happy. How? Because someone asked!

So this week, find out who plans the menu where your kids go to school, where you work, or where you worship, and ask them whether they’ve looked at adding more plant-rich and lower-carbon options. Sarah Dosanjh did just this when she was a senior at Milpitas High in California, helping convince her school district to add plant-based entrées the following year. She’s written up how she did it, and you can hear her tell the story here.

These examples show that you don’t need a plan, a budget, or a title to get things started. You just need to be the person who asks. And you don’t have to do it alone, either: organizations like Greener by Default and Coolfood already exist to help institutions make this shift.

In my latest catch-up with former Talking Climate guest editors, Adam Met and I discuss climate hushing, infighting over words and framing, and how a constant focus on what’s going wrong can distract us from the solutions already moving forward.

Click here to watch the highlights, and become a paid subscriber to watch the full video and support more conversations like this one.

Thurs., Oct 1 at 3pm ET— “Who’s really talking about climate change?” with the Talking Climate Collaborative—virtual; free; registration required

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This week, I’m joined by past Talking Climate guest editor , who you may know as the bassist for the band AJR. But you might not know that he is also a climate activist, researcher, professor, and founder and Executive…

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TCC is a new organization that exists to connect, resource, and support people doing climate communication. This mission is deeply personal to me. I’ve spent so many years talking about climate change, often feeling like I was fumbling through the mist to figure out the tools, messages, and connections I needed along the way.

I know firsthand how isolating this work can feel—and how much more powerful it could be if climate communicators had better access to one another, to evidence about what works, and to the support they need to keep going.

I also knew I couldn’t build that kind of community alone. So I teamed up with an amazing group of women who also felt the same, including my friend and fellow climate communicator (pictured above), an Emmy Award-winning meteorologist, who now serves as TCC’s very first executive director.

This week, I’ve asked Bernadette to write this newsletter with me, to share why we created this organization—and what our new Climate Communication Landscape Assessment, the largest survey of climate communicators across the U.S. and Canada, revealed about who is doing this work, who they’re reaching, how they’re connected, and what they need.

Read on!

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Here’s something we wish more people knew: most people already care about climate change. More than six in ten Americans and 71% of Canadians say they’re worried about it, and around the world, large majorities in every country say they want stronger climate action.

That matters because what we think others believe shapes what we’re willing to say ourselves. When we know the people around us care, we’re much more likely to speak up too. Those conversations build knowledge, strengthen community, and create the momentum that drives culture change. They also offer a way to share good news about solutions and build efficacy – the understanding that if we do something, it will make a difference. In fact, that’s why this newsletter, Talking Climate, exists – to give you climate news to talk about every week!

Plenty of people are already making those conversations happen. Our first priority at TCC was to do a Landscape Assessment, where we surveyed over a thousand active climate communicators across the U.S. and Canada. Of the 210 who responded, nearly eight in ten communicate about climate at least weekly, and their top goals include informing people about climate action and science and helping others talk about it themselves.

In other words, the foundation is already there: people care, and trusted messengers are working to break the silence and inspire action. We just need more!

Here’s the problem: not nearly enough of us are having those conversations. Around the world, most people don’t hear about climate change on a regular basis and as a result, in every country surveyed, people consistently underestimate how much others care… So climate action never becomes a priority.

For example, about two in ten Americans discuss global warming with family and friends a few times a month or more, and six in ten underestimate how many of their fellow citizens are worried. In every country around the world, people underestimate their fellow citizens’ willingness to support climate action. In Canada, 42% of people think about tackling climate change more than once a week, but assume only 26% of their neighbors do the same.

That creates what researchers call a spiral of silence: if nobody around us talks about climate change, we assume no one cares. Then we’re less likely to bring it up ourselves, which makes the silence even stronger.

Our landscape assessment found a similar disconnect among climate communicators themselves. They rarely collaborate or share information with one another, and when they do connect, it’s usually with organizations much like their own. And while nearly eight in ten produce climate content at least weekly, only 41% had received funding specifically for climate communication in the previous five years.

(👋 KH here - I identify with that result strongly. I don’t receive any institutional support or grants for my communication work, either. This newsletter, which reaches nearly 190,000 people in 150 countries every single week, is supported 100% by you the readers—in fact, to be specific, it’s supported by just 410 of you on Substack and 46 on Patreon. So if you are one of those 456 people, thank you!)

When we asked communicators what would help, the answer was clear. After funding, communicators most wanted help finding peers and collaborators and regular updates on what actually works. That’s exactly the gap we created the Talking Climate Collaborative to fill.

TCC is your home for climate communication. We connect the science of effective climate communication to the trusted voices best placed to use it, turning research into practical tools, training, and ready-to-use resources for health professionals, faith voices, athletes, educators, creators, and many more.

Want help starting a conversation? Try TCC’s new Start Talking tool. Need a reliable fact or source? Visit our resource library. Want to find others doing this work or build your skills? Explore our directory and learning and training resources. You can even find your next book to read. And follow TCC on LinkedIn and Bluesky, and subscribe to the TCC newsletter here on Substack to keep up with what we’re learning and building.

Finally, read our new Landscape Assessment and tell us what you think. Communication is a powerful climate solution, but the people doing that work need connection and support, too.

The more we talk, the more visible climate concern becomes, and the easier it is for others to join in.

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Thurs., Oct 1 at 3pm ET— “Who’s really talking about climate change?” with the Talking Climate Collaborative —virtual; free; registration required

In recognition of her work on and advocacy for climate solutions, Leah has been named to the TIME100 Next list and as one of Business Insider’s top 30 global climate leaders.

When not talking climate policy on CNN, Leah likes to garden, go on canoe trips (very Canadian), crochet, chase her twins, and spoil her cat.

Take it away, Leah!

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Pundits keep insisting that talking about climate change is a losing strategy for candidates in the U.S. As I recently explained, though, data show the opposite is true.

My colleagues at UC Santa Barbara ran a national survey asking Americans to choose between two hypothetical political candidates. When one talked about climate change, voters were more likely to pick them. And candidates who made climate a top priority got a 4.5-point bump, bigger still among committed Democrats.

Voters are not forcing a choice between climate and affordability, healthcare, or childcare. Politicians shouldn’t force one either. Talk about all of it! Talking climate wins votes.

(👋 KH here – if this is true even in the U.S., where climate change has topped the list of the most polarized topics for over two decades, imagine how much more this could be the case in other countries!)

I live in California where, just a few weeks ago, Governor Gavin Newsom killed a program called CalSHAPE. This program helps California schools electrify with heat pumps, putting air conditioning in classrooms because kids need a safe place to learn. Heat pumps cool classrooms, clean the air, and cut pollution for the whole neighborhood.

I worked for years to save this program. The fund had almost $200 million sitting in the bank, money the state sat on and then let slip away. This happened while El Niño is already hammering Southern California, increasing the risk of autumn heatwaves, and in the same week that half a million kids in Southern California had their school days shortened or even taken online by extreme heat.

Failing to extend this program puts our kids at risk. I’m hopeful our state’s next governor will pick this back up and finally electrify California’s schools.

I often wrestle with the question of “what can we do to solve this problem?” So, I built a tool to answer it: the Carbon Wave Calculator. This interactive tool shows how everyday people can change the fossil fuel system through clean electricity and electrification.

As I write here, “This isn’t about your carbon footprint. Carbon pollution doesn’t fall because individuals perfect their ‘lifestyles.’ It falls when people create waves of change that transform our energy system away from dirty fossil fuels towards clean electricity and electrification. A footprint is what one person leaves behind, and the tide erases it. A wave is what people make together.”

Change starts at home: a heat pump, an electric vehicle, even an electric bike. Then it scales up — to your community, your city, your state, even federal policy.

That leap from your garage to the government can feel abstract. The calculator makes it concrete, and helps you find your next step. (👋 KH here – I love Leah’s new calculator. Check it out, and encourage others to do so as well!)

Thank you, Leah, for creating this helpful tool that encourages us all to act—and for reminding us that climate progress doesn’t just happen on its own. It takes all of us, working together, to keep pushing for change. That’s how we make it happen.

Leah will be taking her book across Canada and the east and west coasts of the United States this year! To find a tour date near you, read her book, or just check out her Carbon Wave Calculator tool, click here. You can also subscribe to her free Substack newsletter, listen to her podcast A Matter of Degrees, and follow her on Instagram, Bluesky, and X.

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Europe endured a succession of scorching heat waves this summer, spiking electricity demand across the grid. So how did the grid hold up? Well, thanks to solar production and battery storage!

Nuclear, coal, and gas-fired plants are all very vulnerable to heat and drought because they require cooling water. Lack of adequate cooling forced shutdowns like those at the Beznau nuclear plant in Switzerland. But solar over-performed in these same conditions, closing the gap and providing 25 percent of power generation across the EU in June and July. Battery systems stored that energy and delivered it to the grid after sundown, when demand was still high. “Battery storage is one of the clearest ways to make Europe’s power system more resilient in hotter summers,” said Dr. Chris Rosslowe, a senior energy analyst at Ember.

No single kind of renewable energy can carry a grid through a summer like this one. They all perform differently under different conditions, which is why we need a mix of sources and storage. And increasingly, we have them.

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A few weeks ago I wrote about how the number of heat stress days on this planet is growing. Now, another new study has found that nearly half the children under ten on this planet are now living through at least twenty days a year of dangerous heat attributable to climate change. The countries with the youngest populations are in south Asia, southeast Asia, and west Africa, where humid heat is already at its worst.

Why does this matter? Children’s bodies heat up faster than ours, they sweat less efficiently, and they depend on adults for many of their needs. “Poverty, inadequate housing, limited access to cooling, and overstretched healthcare systems leave many children with few ways to protect themselves from the heat,” said Rosa Pietroiusti, the study’s lead author.

As I’ve written before, when people across the world are asked why they care about climate change, the number one answer is love for the next generation. This new study offers even more reason to care, and act.

With more children facing dangerous heat, we need to do things differently on the fields and courts where kids play sports.

My friend and Talking Climate Collaborative founding teammate Laura Schifter helped launch Play It Cool after seeing heat illness affect young athletes firsthand—including her own children and players she coached. She realized that, despite all the safety training coaches receive, many parents and coaches still don’t know how to recognize or respond to heat illness.

Play It Cool is trying to change that with three simple actions:

• Speak Up: Teach kids to tell an adult if they feel sick, notice symptoms in a teammate, or think the heat is becoming unsafe.

• Sit Out: Taking a break is a sign of strength.

• Cool Down: Get somewhere cooler, remove extra equipment, and start cooling down immediately if someone shows signs of heat illness.

Laura’s hope is that “Speak Up, Sit Out, Cool Down” becomes as familiar to this generation as “Stop, Drop, and Roll” is to ours. So this week, memorize those three steps and share them with a parent, coach, teacher, or young athlete in your life.

For more, check out the Play It Cool playlist on YouTube.

What happens when a climate scientist reads the comments? I take on some of the internet’s favorite myths about extreme heat.

Watch the preview or upgrade your subscription here on Substack to unlock the full video.

So I did what any climate scientist with a Facebook page and a healthy block button would do: read the comments.

In this preview of Cold Facts, Hot Takes, I take on two favorites: “It’s just summer” and “It’s been hotter before.”

Spoiler: summer has always been hot. What’s changing is that heat waves are becoming longer, stronger, and more dangerous.

Become a paid subscriber to watch the full episode, where I tackle even more myths about extreme heat, climate change, weather, and air conditioning.

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In this episode of Cold Facts, Hot Takes, I’m taking on some of the comments I received after posting about extreme heat forcing the cancellation of major outdoor events. “It’s just summer.” “It’…

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Researchers at Queen Mary University of London found that both the size and health of London children’s lungs improved following the introduction of the ULEZ in the city: proof that climate action is also a health solution.

Read on for this week’s good news, very bad news, and what you can do.

This week’s good news came to me through a particularly reliable source: my dad! He’s a science educator who served as the science coordinator for Canada’s biggest school board in Toronto (TDSB) for many years. There, in addition to championing science education, he also invested in climate education including co-authoring the Grade 10 climate unit with me.

There’s been a lot more action since he retired, and he recently got an update from a former colleague, TDSB technology consultant Geoff Day, about the district’s rapidly expanding Solar Schools program. Since it began investing in rooftop solar in 2010, TDSB has installed solar on 358 buildings, with nearly 148,000 panels and about 38 megawatts of capacity across the district.

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It turns out that Kipling Collegiate Institute—my old high school—is one of them. Last year alone, its rooftop panels generated 243,946 kWh of clean electricity. Altogether, the TDSB’s solar arrays offset about 8,000 tonnes of CO₂ each year—and they’re making this climate action visible, too. Students at participating schools can look up how much energy their own school generates, calculate its carbon impact, and even customize a “We Are a Solar School” poster to share with their community.

Sometimes climate action looks like a shiny new technology. And sometimes, you discover it’s been quietly generating clean energy on the roof of your old high school all along.

We often talk about the clean-energy transition as something we need to build. But stories like this are a nice reminder that, in many communities, it’s already underway.

A horrific flash flood in the Himalayas has left more than 1,000 dead and thousands more missing in Nepal and China – and it appears to have begun with collapsing ice. A huge chunk of glacier on the north face of Langtang Lirung sheared off and slid down the mountain, triggering a gigantic landslide of rock and ice that ultimately registered as a 5.2 magnitude earthquake when it reached the valley floor.

“When a glacier of that scale collapses, it generates a lot of water, and then there’s a cascading sequence of events… where the water and the sediment combine and bulks up and creates the flood,” explained Andrew Mackintosh, a glaciologist at Monash University.

The resulting flood wave traveled down a nearby river valley, washing away a border crossing between Nepal and China, wiping out bridges, sweeping away homes and people, and caking the landscape with mud.

We know that climate change made this event more likely. Himalayan glaciers and, indeed, all over the world — are rapidly retreating. As Dr. Ashim Sattar DRR DRM , an assistant professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar who studies Himalayan glaciers, said: “there’s a very straight link between climate change and these types of disasters.” And once again, those who contribute least to the climate crisis -- per person carbon emissions in Nepal are less than 20 times those of a typical North American -- are most affected.

If you would like to help, please donate to the Nepali government’s Disaster Relief Fund.

The news from the Nepal flood is horrifying and tragic, with many families still desperately searching for their loved ones. It’s hard to imagine a worse nightmare. For me, news like this is when it’s most tempting to give up. But giving in to despair won’t help the people suffering today—and it only makes it harder to prevent more warming and more tragedy in the future.

Looking for signs of progress—like I do every week in this newsletter—isn’t about pretending everything is okay. It’s about reminding ourselves that this story is still being written, and that there are people everywhere working to change its course.

This week gave me a small example of that. I only just learned about the solar progress at my old school, proof that this kind of work is often happening quietly, without much notice. There’s probably more climate action happening around you than you realize too. So here’s your challenge this week: go climate solution sleuthing where you live.

Start by looking around your workplace, neighborhood, or community. Do you see solar panels on public buildings, electric buses, or new bike lanes? Or maybe you notice heat pumps, tree-planting projects, better stormwater systems. Then check the website of the place where you live to see what climate or clean-energy work is already underway.

When you find something, talk about it. Tell a neighbor, a coworker, a friend, or post it online. Seeing what other communities and organizations are already doing can create a little positive peer pressure: if they can do it, why can’t we?

It’s easy to find the terrible climate news. But there are so many solutions underway too; sometimes we just have to look for them. And the more visible they become, the more momentum they build—more funding, more political will, more neighbors asking “why not here?”

What do exploding watermelons, gardening myths, and a plant on your windowsill have in common? I caught up with plant scientist and former Talking Climate guest editor —aka The Plant Prof—to talk climate change, our changing food system, reconnecting with nature, and why small actions matter. Watch here.

Become a paid subscriber to unlock the full video and help keep this work going. Your support helps me and my small team continue sharing even more science, stories, and solutions.

In this episode of What’s the Latest?, I catch up with plant scientist and former Talking Climate guest editor —better known online as The Plant Prof—to talk about the surprising ways climate change is…

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Two years ago, I wrote about how Xcel Energy was building a 710-megawatt solar farm to replace Minnesota’s largest-emitting coal power plant, re-using the same infrastructure that the coal plant used to connect to the grid.

Well, thanks to a tip from “Bad Astronomer” Philip Plait, I’m happy to report that this solar farm, which boasts 1.7 million panels, is now up and running! A proposed fourth phase of the project could increase the generating capacity to 910 megawatts, enough electricity to power around 190,000 homes.

I’ve warned before about gas stoves and the health risks they pose (even when they’re not in use!). If you have asthma or you know someone who does, the first thing to check is whether they have a gas stove... because replacing it with an electric option could make a huge difference for their health.

A new study from Ohio that found when people with poorly controlled asthma swapped out their gas stoves for electric ones, hospital admissions and missed work or school days dropped by 70 percent. “Improvements were about twice as much as you typically see with medical treatment of asthma,” said the project’s leader, Professor Ash Sehgal of Case Western Reserve University.

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This isn’t all good news, though. The study was supposed to run for three years and pay to replace gas stoves with electric induction ones in 1,200 homes. But the US government terminated the grant in May 2025, five months after the study began, and rolled back Biden-era rebates for those hoping to switch out their appliances for greener options.

As economist Gernot Wagner mentioned when he guest-edited Talking Climate, you can buy an induction cooktop for under $60 at IKEA, so this isn’t a deal-breaker. But full stove + oven induction units cost at least ten times more than that, which is why rebates matter!

The number of heat stress days people are experiencing is climbing rapidly and a new study has factored in humidity, wind, and solar radiation alongside temperature to measure heat the way people experience it.

Compared with the 1970s, an additional one billion people now experience at least one day of extreme heat stress each year (defined by the study as a “feels-like” temperature of at least 46°C, or 114.8°F). “Extreme ‘feels-like’ temperatures have become more frequent on every continent, and the spatial footprint of hazardous heat has expanded, exposing previously unaffected regions,” the study found.

Our bodies need nighttime to recover from this heat, but the study found that nights are actually warming faster (0.32°C per decade) than days (0.27°C). When it stays hot at night after a dangerous day, our bodies get no relief.

And there’s more bad news: the dataset the scientists used in this study doesn’t capture microclimates, including the effects of urban heat islands, which means the study’s estimates likely underestimate the risks that city dwellers face.

Talking Climate reader Uli Nagel wrote to me this month with big number: 300,000. That’s how many free children’s books her program has now sent to elementary students across the United States.

Uli is the co-founder and director of the Cooler Communities Climate Education Program. In 2023, they launched Energy Detectives to get books and lesson plans into elementary classrooms at no cost to teachers. In the coal state of West Virginia, close to one in five elementary students has now received one.

The series, written by Madelyn Rosenberg and illustrated by Paul Meisel, teaches kids where their energy comes from, how to waste less of it, and what those panels on the neighbor’s roof are actually doing. These books give kids a story that helps them understand our energy future, and their own power to shape it.

Uli and everyone else behind the program did not wait for permission or a policy change or the perfect moment — they just started, and kept going, and that’s exactly the kind of climate work that gives me hope.

Thank you for this, Uli, and keep up the good work!

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If you’re a regular Talking Climate reader, you know I often talk about how doomerism is not an effective strategy to catalyze action. Although negative news may get more clicks, the social science is clear: focusing exclusively on negative news makes us think there’s nothing we can do. We check out, or even give up.

This is why I always sandwich the “not so good” news between the good news and what you can do, in this newsletter. But a new study shows there is more we can do!

Researchers Tyler Shores, Rachel O’Boyle, and Sander van der Linden from the University of Cambridge showed people a short “prebunking” video before they scrolled through negative climate headlines. Those who watched it became better at spotting climate doom—news that either implies or outright claims there’s nothing we can do about climate change—and were more likely to flag it, dislike it, and share it less.

The takeaway is encouraging: people can learn to recognize messages that falsely suggest nothing can be done, without becoming more skeptical of accurate climate news (which is, honestly, quite bad enough). At a moment when hopelessness can spread as quickly as misinformation, this new study offers a powerful way to keep people informed, engaged, and ready to act.

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As the summer of extremes continues (record-breaking wildfires in Belgium and Greece, this week), I often think about the fact that nearly 40% of the area burned by wildfires across western North America between 1986 and 2021 can be traced to just 88 companies’ emissions. Another attribution study found that emissions from major fossil fuel companies contributed to “about half of the increase in intensity of heatwaves since preindustrial times, and that this contribution is rising.”

So as growing heat and wildfire damage our health and our livelihoods and cause hundreds of billions of dollars in damage every year, what are those companies doing? Burning more fossil fuels, of course! And making an absolute ton of money doing so.

A new study from Oxfam projects that BP, Chevron, Eni, ExxonMobil, Shell, and TotalEnergies will earn a combined $45 billion in the second quarter of 2026—nearly twice the previous quarter. And they aren’t ramping back, either. They collectively plan to increase production by 14% by 2030.

There is a staggeringly obvious solution to this massive inequity, where the richest companies make more money while the communities least responsible bear the brunt of the impacts (apart from the most obvious, of course: transitioning away from fossil fuels entirely). Why not tax these record profits and use the money to help communities prepare for extreme heat and recover from climate disasters and transition to clean energy so they don’t need to use fossil fuels?

It is only fair and just that the companies fueling the crisis should help pay for the damage they are creating—not the families suffering its worst effects. But making polluters pay isn’t easy. It will take sustained public pressure. Thankfully, the next section shows where to start.

Use your voice. Talk about the unfairness at the heart of this story: a handful of companies earning billions, while ordinary families pay for those profits through higher bills, damaged homes, lost work, and worsening health. Most people have never heard that connection made out loud, and that silence is exactly what lets it continue.

You don’t have to be a scientist or a policy expert to say something. You just have to be willing to say that this isn’t right—to your friends, your family, your elected officials, anyone who’ll listen. That’s how a private frustration becomes public pressure. As Jim’s newsletter showed last week, public pressure really can make a difference.

Governments have the power to shift the cost back onto polluters. As citizens, it’s our responsibility to make it politically impossible for them to ignore. Show them that their constituents care – not only by voting, but also by calling, writing, and emailing them. I even partnered with artist Lauren James to make free mail-able coloring book pages that offer a creative way to get kids involved.

We can’t do this alone—but I’m convinced we can do it together, and using our voice is an action every one of us can take.

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I hear some version of that all the time. And when I ask what those conversations actually sounded like, I often find the same pattern: they focused almost entirely on how bad climate change is.

That makes intuitive sense. We see worsenin…

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Earlier this year, a non-profit education group invited me to join a small delegation of faith leaders traveling to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. I was not able to participate, so I asked Jim if he might attend instead. He said an immediate YES — to five days camping above the Arctic Circle, far from roads or electricity. There, the group was able to see the midnight sun circle the horizon without setting, drink from a stream fed by melting snow, observe the tundra’s miniature world of flowers and lichens, and even watch a grizzly bear root around on a hillside.

In this week’s newsletter, I’ve asked Jim to share some of what he witnessed on this extraordinary trip, what this unique place teaches us about our shared future, and how we can stand alongside the many already working to protect it. And for more, check out his Substack, where he wrote extensively about his trip to ANWR.

Take it away, Jim!

In June, nearly 690,000 acres of the U.S. Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s coastal plain were offered for oil and gas leasing. But only 5 of the 58 available tracts received bids. And just two bidders participated, neither of them a major oil company, and the winning bids totaled just $3.7 million.

That is encouraging because the sale was supposed to demonstrate strong commercial demand for drilling in the Refuge. Instead, it showed that major companies recognize the enormous financial, logistical, and reputational risks of industrializing one of America’s wildest places.

This is not a complete victory. Five leases covering roughly 70,000 acres were sold, and even preliminary exploration could damage fragile tundra and disrupt wildlife. But the lack of serious industry interest tells us something important: decades of public advocacy have made a difference. Companies know that people are watching, and that drilling in the Arctic Refuge carries a cost well beyond the price of equipment and infrastructure.

The Refuge is home to polar bears, migratory birds, and the calving grounds of the Porcupine caribou herd. Protecting it is not an abstract environmental cause. It means protecting a place loved by generations of people, especially the Gwich’in communities whose lives and culture remain closely connected to the caribou.

The sale’s poor response is evidence that public outcry can change what companies consider possible.

From a mountain above our campsite, I could see a narrow white line on the northern horizon: the frozen Arctic Ocean, about twenty miles away. It looked immense and permanent.

It isn’t.

@NOAA’s latest Arctic Report Card found that Arctic temperatures from October 2024 through September 2025 were the highest recorded since at least 1900. The maximum winter sea-ice coverage was the lowest in the 47-year satellite record. Compared with 2005, the Arctic’s end-of-summer sea ice was 28 percent smaller, while nearly all of its thickest, oldest ice has disappeared since the 1980s.

These are not just numbers about a distant sheet of ice. Sea ice is habitat. It helps protect Arctic coastlines and shapes the food webs on which animals and human communities depend. Snow and ice also reflect sunlight; when they disappear, darker land and water absorb more heat, accelerating the changes already underway.

The Arctic is warning us that later really can be too late. Carbon pollution from burning coal, oil, and gas is changing a place that has sustained wildlife and Indigenous communities for generations.

What happens in the Arctic will not remain in the Arctic (👋 KH here - for more, check out this Global Weirding episode about how changes in the Arctic affect us globally). But even if it did, that should be reason enough to protect it. A place does not have to be in our backyard to be part of the world we love and hope to pass along.

Listen to the stories of those on the front lines, and stand with them.

On our trip, we got to meet and talk with several representatives of the Gwich’in people, who for thousands of years have depended on the Porcupine caribou herd for food, culture, community, and spiritual life. They call the herd’s calving grounds on the coastal plain Iizhik Gwats’an Gwandaii Goodlit—“The Sacred Place Where Life Begins.” When that land and the caribou are threatened, the Gwich’in way of life is threatened too.

Here are three actions you can take this week in support:

• Watch and listen. Begin with the two-minute film The Gwich’in and Vadzaih: Protecting Our Way of Life, in which Gwich’in people explain in their own voices why the caribou and their habitat matter.

• Stay informed. Sign up for updates from the Gwich’in Steering Committee. They share news about threats to the Refuge and opportunities for public action. You can also donate to Gwich’in-led advocacy.

• If you live in the U.S., make your voice heard. Contact your senators and representative and tell them you want the Arctic Refuge protected from oil and gas development. You’re in the majority – according to the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, 68 percent of Americans support this (and you can find the exact numbers for your state and congressional district here!)

Care begins by paying attention. It becomes solidarity when we act alongside the people already leading the work.

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Thank you, Jim, for sharing your experience with us! If you’d like to learn more about Jim’s work, he hosts BioLogos’s podcast, Language of God, and is the author of several books, including The Sacred Chain: How Understanding Evolution Leads to Deeper Faith.

If you are a Christian, or you know someone who is, I also recommend checking out the BioLogos Conversations for Creation page for steps and resources for having fact-based, values-led conversations about creation (and about other scientific issues, such as vaccines and evolution).

You can also follow BioLogos on Instagram, Facebook, and now TikTok!

Listen to this edition here

I’m very grateful to Sydney Laws for producing the podcast over the past year, to Bradley Myer for generously creating its original music, and to the amazing voice actor Anne Cloud from Voice Over for the Planet, who has been donating her time to this effort since spring 2025. Their work brought the podcast to life and gave us the foundation to keep growing.

I am now excited to welcome Anne’s colleague, producer John Crowley of Loudmouth Studio, who is also generously offering his time to help us develop the podcast’s next chapter. John has created new music and a new format that is now live.

Listen on your favorite podcasting platform (it’s on Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, and more) and let me know what you think! And while you’re there, don’t forget to subscribe so you’ll get the next episode automatically.

There’s so much unused space that could be repurposed to generate clean electricity – parking lots, highway shoulders, rooftops, even balconies. And now, a Swiss startup has found one more: the empty strip of ground between railroad tracks.

In 2025, the company Sun-Ways laid 48 solar panels across a 100-meter stretch of active track in the village of Buttes, in the canton of Neuchâtel. In one year, the panels on the world’s first “solar railway” generated 16,000 kWh of electricity.

The trial was originally planned for three years, but the results were so positive after one that the company decided to make the installation permanent. Scale that up, and the numbers get interesting: if solar panels were placed on all of Switzerland’s 5,317 kilometres of track, they could generate 2 percent of Swiss yearly energy use.

Thinking globally, there are more than 1 million kilometres of railroad track, and Sun-Ways estimates that half of that track could be suitable for railway solar. The company now plans to expand this effort with projects in Italy and South Korea, and is in negotiations with Dutch, Chinese, Indian, and Singaporean partners to try the same approach in those countries.

This is exactly the kind of solution I love sharing in this newsletter: infrastructure we’ve already built, performing a new “second job” we never thought to ask it to do before.

The summer of wildfire continues, with more than 300,000 people forced from their homes as massive wildfires spread across France and Spain last week.

A wet winter followed by a hot, dry summer created “weather whiplash” that helped fuel the fires. Near Bordeaux, one fire burned an area four times the size of Paris and destroyed at least 240 homes. The heat there has been so extraordinary that 2026 alone has already brought more days above 40°C than the entire 105-year period from 1920 through 2025.

My colleague Stefan Rahmstorf from the PIK - Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany is an expert on how climate change affects ocean circulation; he was there at the time, and shared this apocalyptic picture (also pictured above) and this timelapse video he took on his phone of the Gironde fire. Stefan and I, and many others, have studied climate risks like these for decades: but it’s one thing to see it on your computer screen, and something completely different and so much more horrifying to see in real life.

As I explained a couple of weeks ago, climate change doesn’t start fires—but it creates hotter, drier conditions that help fires spread faster and burn more intensely. The damage also reaches far beyond the flames, through smoke, displacement, lost homes and disrupted livelihoods, costing billions of dollars every year and with devastating impacts on human lives and livelihoods.

What if the inspiration you need to act on climate is already living and working in your own community?

Meet Erin O’Kelley Muck, a communications specialist, former climate organization leader, and the creator of the Climate Joy Project—a local initiative celebrating everyday people who are helping build a better future in Ashland, Oregon.

Erin is inspiring in her own right, but her project is the inspiration that keeps on giving. Each interview introduces someone new who is putting climate solutions into practice, whether through clean energy, local food, transportation, community organizing, or simply finding a meaningful way to contribute.

She’s shared stories from people ages 18 to 80 years old who come from all walks of life. She said, “We are all unified by our love of this town, our community, this beautiful planet, and hope for the future.”

Together, these stories are a powerful reminder that climate action does not have to look the same for everyone. Inspiration can be found in every person Erin interviews—and each person’s example can help someone else see where they fit into the bigger picture.

Check it out here, and share one of the stories today!

Did you enjoy last week’s guest edition with pro soccer players and EcoAthletes Champions Imani and Jasmyne? Then you’ll love this conversation I had with Lew Blaustein, founder of Ecoathletes and past Talking Climate guest editor!

Enjoy the preview above and subscribe to my Substack or Patreon for the full interview.

Lew shares encouraging news: even as many organizations have grown quieter about climate change, EcoAth…

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Two summers ago, Lew Blaustein, the founder of EcoAthletes, guest-edited a Talking Climate edition on green sports. Lew built EcoAthletes around a simple idea: athletes are among the most trusted voices we have, and the climate fight needs them on the field.

This week, I’m passing the mic to two people who are living out that mission: former professional soccer (football) player Imani Dorsey Kunzweiler and current pro Jasmyne Spencer, both EcoAthletes Champions.

Imani spent eight seasons as a forward and defender in the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) after graduating from Duke University in 2018 with a degree in environmental science. She was named the 2018 NWSL Rookie of the Year and helped lead Gotham FC to the 2023 NWSL Championship. Imani was instrumental in negotiating the first collective bargaining agreement for the NWSL, and is as a founding board member of the Black Women's Player Collective where she serves as the current Executive Director. After retiring from professional soccer, she returned to her alma mater last December as Duke Athletics' Climate and Sustainability Coordinator, where she's weaving the university's Climate Commitment into every part of the athletic program.

Jasmyne has played professional soccer since the NWSL's founding season in 2013, currently playing for Canada's new Northern Super League, where she helped Vancouver Rise FC capture the league's first-ever championship last year. Her impact also extends well beyond the pitch: she founded her own sustainable apparel company, sits on the executive board of the Black Women's Player Collective, and was one of EcoAthletes' original Champions. She is also the co-founder of The Green Horizons Collective, a nonprofit that aims to teach kids about environmental stewardship.

Together, Imani and Jasmyne represent EcoAthletes at its best: professional athletes who've turned their platforms toward building a more sustainable future for sport and for all of us. Take it away, Imani and Jasmyne!

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IMANI:

My time as a professional athlete left me constantly evaluating the impact I was having, not just on the field, but on my teammates, my community, and the sport itself. The good news is, I’m not alone.

Athletes around the world are increasingly standing up and speaking out on climate change, and people are listening. The work of inspiring Duke student-athletes through the student-led Duke Sustainable Athletics Group eventually led me back to my alma mater, where I now work in sustainability for Duke Athletics. In alignment with the university’s Climate Commitment, we’re embedding sustainability across our athletics department through operations, fan engagement, and student-athlete leadership and development.

Last year, we launched the Athletics Climate Team, a cross-functional group of coaches, staff, and student-athletes working together to advance sustainability initiatives across Duke Athletics. Every day, I see the opportunity sports have not only to inspire people, but also to help build a more sustainable future.

JASMYNE:

Organizations at the intersection of sport and sustainability are teaming up to strategize, develop and implement solutions to mitigate the impact of the climate crisis on the future of sports. This past weekend Football For Future, a non-profit organization with a mission to drive global climate action through football culture, published The Playable Future Blueprint in collaboration with Columbia University, CO2 Foundation, and Jupiter Intelligence.

This first-of-its-kind report outlines an operational framework for climate-proofing community football infrastructure. Its goal is to give football’s governing bodies a repeatable, end-to-end model for building climate-risk safeguards into every stage of grassroots football development. With the release of this report, the football community – including fans, athletes, leagues, and governing bodies alike – will now have a game plan for building climate-resilient infrastructure to protect the future of the world’s number one sport! That is certainly something to celebrate!

IMANI:

Despite the growing number of athletes speaking up, and sustainability commitments from universities, teams, and leagues, climate change is still too often viewed as separate from sports. The reality is that it’s already affecting how we train, compete, and recover.

I have felt the impacts myself. In 2021, I suffered heat exhaustion during a match played in extreme temperatures in the Seattle area. I had taken all precautions athletes are taught to take — hydrating, replenishing electrolytes, and using every cooling opportunity available — yet I still found myself dangerously overheated. It wasn’t until I nearly collapsed after the game that my trainers and I realized something was seriously wrong. That experience challenged a lesson many athletes are taught early on: push through discomfort.

As extreme heat, poor air quality, and severe weather become more common due to a changing climate, more athletes will face these challenges.

Sports have long been a platform for leadership and social change. Athletes don’t need to be climate experts to contribute to the conversation. Our experiences can help people connect climate change to something deeply personal: their health, their communities, and the future of the sports they love.

JASMYNE:

Climate change is no longer an issue to worry about in the future. It is here and it is disrupting life now, and it’s impacting the things we love most: our ability to play and engage with sports. The climate crisis is supercharging extreme weather, making it an increasingly disruptive force in the games we watch and play. In the past two months alone, several major sporting events have been bedeviled by extreme weather.

The Ironman 70.3 triathlon race in Nice, France, was cancelled due to a heatwave. Weeks later, Gotham FC’s record-setting game at Citi Field was overshadowed by questions and concerns of player and fan health and safety after the game proceeded despite the unhealthy air quality due to the spread of smoke from Canadian wildfires. And the next day, Target USA Cup, which draws thousands of youth soccer players from dozens of countries each summer, was suspended in Minnesota after the same wave of wildfire smoke pushed air quality to hazardous levels.

The 2026 FIFA World Cup was the hottest World Cup since the competition began in 1930. A Guardian analysis found that close to 20 percent of matches were played under heat and humidity conditions that FIFPRO, the players’ union, has flagged as dangerous enough to warrant delaying or postponing play. Some 20 games were played at wet bulb globe temperatures that hit or exceeded 28 degrees Celsius (82 Fahrenheit).

Time is of the essence to start investing in climate-resilient strategies to preserve the future of sport.

IMANI & JASMYNE:

You don’t need to be a climate scientist, or a professional athlete, to make a difference. One of Katharine’s central messages is that the most powerful thing any of us can do is to use our voice.

For athletes, that might mean sharing your own experiences with extreme heat, poor air quality, or the places in nature that matter most to you. For fans, it might mean supporting teams and organizations embracing sustainability, showing up for green sporting events, or simply starting conversations about how climate affects your daily life.

Across the sports world, sustainability efforts are gaining momentum, from professional leagues and venues to college campuses and local communities. The more we engage with and support these efforts, the faster they can grow.

Sports teach us that meaningful progress doesn’t happen because of one star player. It happens when everyone understands their role and works toward a common goal.

Climate action is no different. The solutions exist. The momentum is growing. Now the challenge, and the opportunity, is scaling that progress together.

As athletes, fans, parents, coaches, and community members, we all have a role to play in building a future where both people and the planet can thrive.

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