Climate Literacy

What is Climate Literacy?

Climate literacy is an understanding of your influence on the climate and climate's influence on you and society.

A climate-literate person

• understands the essential principles of Earth's climate system,
  
• know how to assess scientifically credible information about climate,
  
• communicates about climate and climate change in a meaningful way, and
  
• is able to make informed and responsible decisions with regard to actions that may affect climate.

The Climate Literacy Network has been responsible for the development of the Climate Science Literacy Essential Principles which summarize the most important principles and concepts of climate science. The principles were originally developed in 2007 using a community-wide consensus building process and were revised in March 2009.

The Climate Literacy Framework can be downloaded as a high resolution PDF file (11MB) or as a low resolution PDF file (2.4MB). The Adobe Reader software is available here.

Join the Climate Literacy Network

The Climate Literacy Network includes individuals, projects, and organizations working to promote climate literacy. To join the CLN, please contact Dr. Tamara Ledley of TERC, Cambridge, Mass. (tamara_ledley at terc dot edu) to join the Network.

Members of the Climate Literacy Network can:

Participate in the Weekly Teleconferences: Each Tuesday at 1:00pm Eastern Time (12pm Mountain, 11am Central, 10am Pacific) members meet on a teleconference call to update each other about their climate literacy projects, upcoming events, and funding opportunities and to support the sharing of information, identification of best practices and key teaching and learning resources, and the development of collaborative activities. Often these teleconferences include special topical presentations by members and guests.
Teleconference Schedule

Engage in Discussions of Climate Literacy Issues: Members of the CLN care passionately about climate literacy and bring a wide variety of expertise to their work. Join our discussion forum to learn more about the challenges and opportunities inherent in building a climate literate public.
Discussion Board

Receive Updates and Announcements: For the fastest source of information on happenings in climate literacy join our listserv where members share information about what is going on.