#9 Get Informed
With our Top 10 Tips we’ve been sharing lots of ideas about what you can do to help tackle climate change. The best action is always underpinned by factual information. Before we can put things right we need to know what’s happening and what’s causing it. How can we find out what the facts are?
We also need to be aware of the serious campaigns to deny, stall and greenwash. All of us here at Flourish get frustrated at some of the misinformation and disinformation that’s out there! And we’re always looking for good, reliable information to base our mahi on and to share with you.
Whenever we come across information about climate change we assess it. There’s some good information about how to do this at Mindtools or Fact Check. Some of the things they say to look for in forwarded information: “an anonymous author; excessive exclamation points, capital letters and misspellings; entreaties that “This is NOT a hoax!”; and links to sourcing that does not support or completely contradicts the claims being made.” Good information does not use innuendo, it’s direct and doesn’t imply things. Nor does it play on emotions of fear and uncertainty. It’s also helpful to cross-check it on Google or some other search engine. Do others support the information or has it been widely discredited?
Here’s a list of resources that we and other colleagues have found useful:
Documentaries listed on our Climate Resources page - 15 Netflix documentaries for adults and families
Websites with useful information, facts and news:
Climate Change on Stuff - Forever Project
Canterbury’s joint local govt - It's Time Canterbury
Climate Science and latest Data – NIWA & Ministry for the Environment & Genless
Our Climate Resources Page
Skeptical Science lists commonly heard arguments denying or minimising climate change and gives the facts.
The Climate Change Knowledge Cooperative is a selection of leading climate research is explained in plain language by professional science writers.
Recommended Reading
Non- Fiction Books
Climate Aotearoa: What's happening & what we can do about it. Ed. Helen Clark
Climate Aotearoa outlines the climate situation as it is now, and as it will be in the years to come. It describes the likely impact on the environment and on our day-to-day living situation.
It suggests the changes you can make for maximum impact, what we should be asking of our government and what we should be asking of our business community. In doing so, this is a hopeful book - actions can make a difference.
Project Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming. Paul Hawken
Drawdown has become a seminal text on climate solutions, drawing on humanity’s collective wisdom about the practices and technologies that can begin to reverse the buildup of atmospheric carbon by mid-century. 100 solutions which we hav referenced in many of our Top 10 Tips. https://drawdown.org/
Great list of solutions, recommended by Michelle, Flourish Team.
The Uninhabitable Earth. David Wallace-Wells
The Uninhabitable Earth is both a travelogue of the near future and a meditation on how that future will look to those living through it—the ways that warming promises to transform global politics, the meaning of technology and nature in the modern world, the sustainability of capitalism and the trajectory of human progress.
The Uninhabitable Earth is also an impassioned call to action. For just as the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime, the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generation—today’s.
Saving Us. Katherine Hayhoe
Called "one of the nation's most effective communicators on climate change". Over the past fifteen years Hayhoe has found that the most important thing we can do to address climate change is talk about it-and she wants to teach you how.
In Saving Us, Hayhoe argues that when it comes to changing hearts and minds, facts are only one part of the equation. We need to find shared values in order to connect our unique identities to collective action. This is not another doomsday narrative about a planet on fire. It is a multilayered look at science, faith, and human psychology, from an icon in her field
Less is More. Jason Hickel
A powerfully disruptive book for disrupted times. Jason Hickel takes all we've been told about growth and development and turns it inside out, offering instead a radically possible vision of a post-growth future. If you’re looking for transformative ideas, this book is for you.
Eaarth. Bill McKibben
In Eaarth, McKibben surveys the changes already taking place and considers what they will mean for our future. Our survival depends, McKibben argues, on scaling back, concentrating on essentials and creating the kinds of communities that will allow us to weather trouble on an unprecedented scale. Change - fundamental change - will be our best hope on a planet suddenly and violently out of balance.
McKibben is also the leader behind the 350.org global movement.
Rider on the Storm: The Climate Crises and the Survival of Being. Alistair McIntosh
In this succinct and passionate new book, Alastair McIntosh examines both the science and the drivers in the human psyche that have allowed unfettered consumerism to threaten the planet. He argues for a radical shift in our consciousness at this stage in our evolution in order to build the capacity for resilience and regeneration that can make us riders on the storm.
Recommended by Mark, Flourish Team.
Living with the Climate Crises. Bridget Williams
Bridget Williams Books (BWB) is a series of 22 short books on big subjects by great New Zealand writers. This book brings together Mātauranga Maori and Pasifika perspectives, voices from academia, activism, journalism and economics to bear witness to these troubled times.
Big World Small Planet: Abundance Within Planetary Boundaries. Johan Rockstrom and Mattias Klum
A profoundly original vision of an attainable future that ensures human prosperity by safeguarding our threatened planet. From Rockstrom, director of the Stockholm Resilience Center and Klum, whose stunning photographs of ecosystem disruptions reinforce the urgency of the moment.
Climate Justice. Mary Robinson
Former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson's mission to bring together the fight against climate change and the global struggle for human rights has taken her all over the world. It also brought her to a heartening revelation: that that an irrepressible driving force in the battle for climate justice could be found at the grassroots level, mainly among women, many of them mothers and grandmothers like herself. In Climate Justice, she shares their stories, and many more.
Good for Teens (and adults)
We are all Greta. Lucia Esther Maruzzelli
We Are All Greta sets out the basic ideas required to understand climate change, explained in a scientific and accessible way and drawn from the most authoritative sources. With a chapter on key words and sites to help you understand the climate challenge and a list of websites to visit for further information, this is a book for young people, for parents, for grandparents and anyone having to answer direct and urgent questions about what must be done to protect our world.
Ministry for the Future. Kim Stanley Robinson
The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, postapocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us. Chosen by Barack Obama as one of his favorite books of the year, this extraordinary novel from visionary science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson will change the way you think about the climate crisis.
Eco-love
Aroha. Hinemoa Elder
The timeless wisdom of Maori proverbs - 52 traditional Maori sayings explained by respected Maori psychiatrist Dr Hinemoa Elder, showing us how we can live better lives, in harmony with the planet.
Ki te kotahi te kakaho ka whati, ki te kapuia, e kore e whati
When we stand alone we are vulnerable but together we are unbreakable
Beautifully written, highly recommended by Mark, Flourish Team.
Braiding Sweetgrass. Robyn Wall Kimmerer
A graceful, illuminating study of the wisdom of the natural world, from a world-renowned indigenous scientist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise.
Beautifully written, highly recommended by Michelle, Flourish Team.
Flight Behaviour. Barbara Kingsolver
On the Appalachian Mountains above her home, a young mother discovers a beautiful and terrible marvel of nature. As the world around her is suddenly transformed by a seeming miracle, can the old certainties they have lived by for centuries remain unchallenged? Flight Behaviour is a captivating, topical and deeply human story touching on class, poverty and climate change. It is Barbara Kingsolver's most accessible novel yet, and explores the truths we live by, and the complexities that lie behind them.
Beautifully written, highly recommended by Michelle & Mark, Flourish Team.
Last Child in the Woods. Richard Louv
"Last Child in the Woods" shows how our children have become increasingly alienated and distant from nature, why this matters, and what we can do to make a difference. It is unsentimental, rigorous and utterly original.
This urgent book, which has inspired the influential international movement Leave No Child Inside, has not only highlighted the problem and provoked debate; it also offers practical advice on how to help children to enjoy the natural world - starting in our parks and gardens, homes and schools. This is a clarion call, brilliantly written, compelling and irresistibly persuasive - a book that will change minds and lives.
Note: All descriptions above are from the book publishers not us.
If we have missed anything, good websites, documentaries, books etc please let us know and we can add them here for more people to learn about.