Over the past two months, I’ve participated in the Oxford School of Climate Change. This is an eight week programme of lectures and group discussions on core issues related to climate change. The School is non-credit, and is run by the student-led Oxford Climate Society. For the second year, this course has run virtually and there were over 1500 participants from across the globe! Moreover, I’ve had the privilege of being able to work with a small project group with a couple of guys in France and Spain discussing the regulation of nature-based CCS in aquatic settings. I’ve also had the opportunity to engage with some great resources! This post shares five innovative climate change resources that I think are worthy of attention, and can help you learn about or teach climate change in an interactive way.
For more climate change resources see:
Oxford Climate Society YouTube Channel
I’ll begin by sharing the society’s YouTube Channel. This resource is innovative because, traditionally, academic talks aren’t publicly available. For years, I’ve had the privilege of attending in-person seminars and talks at Oxford and other universities, which reach a very limited audience. However, recently live broadcasts and publicly-hosted recordings have become a regular occurrence. For a student-run society, the OCS is innovative for having the drive to host an impressive range of speakers, and last year they co-hosted the Net Zero Home School.
Carbon Brief
This is an organization and website devoted to climate news and research. It’s a great resource generally for staying up-do-date on climate science and policy developments globally. More specifically, I find their interactive maps exceptionally useful and innovative. In the map below, you can see how climate change affects extreme weather events around the world. It’s an interactive tool which presents over 300 peer reviewed studies in an accessible and informative way. Take a look!
Attributing Extreme Weather to Climate Change
On another interactive page, Carbon Brief explains the impacts of climate change at 1.5°C, 2°C and beyond.
Global Carbon Atlas
Global Carbon Atlas is another fantastic resource, which is an interactive map of C02 emissions. The map can be filtered by fossil fuel type, region, and rank.
Understanding Climate Change in Scripted Media
The YouTube channel Our Changing Climate recently collaborated with the US National Center for Science Education on this really cool project. The project looks at the ways in which climate change has been approached in scripted media over the decades. It’s crowd sourced, and you can participate by sharing examples of TV shows depicting climate change.
I’ve written about Charlie’s work at Our Changing Climate here: Resources for Climate Activism and Winter Favourites 2020-21.
Intersectional Environmentalist
This is a web platform for resources on connected environmental topics of justice, and protection of people and the planet. They’ve got lots of topics to explore including waste, energy, fashion, and agriculture. Each topic includes a list of resources to read, watch, and listen, social media accounts to follow, and organizations to support. This resource is innovative because it’s a new network of individuals working together to advocate for under-represented people, communities, and environments.
For more information on intersectional environmentalism see: Environmentalism, Intersectionality, and Racism
Innovation is crucial for mitigating emissions and managing the affects of climate change. Equally, tools and resources such as these five above are important for educating ourselves and others on the problems and solutions of climate change.
