We were disappointed but not particularly surprised to read the news last year that Australian news reporting has regularly and substantially failed to report on climate change responsibly, if not essentially given up on doing so. It's a bit more complex however, with data showing that even climate-engaged readers are rarely clicking on climate related stories.

It makes sense – the climate crisis can be a lot to face, but it's also critically important. In hope of making it a bit easier and accessible, we're collecting some beautifully written and essential perspectives on our changing world. The articles below are a brief dip into the pool of climate journalism, and can serve as a reading list or a jumping off point to dive in further.

A beautiful place to start, Elizabeth Kolbert’s Climate Change from A to Z guides us through a wide range of topics, moments in time, and questions, providing a big picture view of the modern world and its climate. The subjects of the alphabet are broad in scope, from concepts to companies, people to places, but all weave together into a web-like story that keeps your focus the entire time.

Claire Collie writes “where once we relied on history to feed us proverbs, parables and allegories as signposts for how to move into the future, now we must come up with new precepts for surviving this mercurial, ruinous world”, in Ten dispatches from the Anthropocene for Overland, and lists a few of the many writers wrestling with the subject (some of whom are listed here also). It seems difficult to put to words both what is happening and how we feel about it, and yet so many try and do.

I also find myself returning to Anna Badkhen’s Souvenirs of Climate Catastrophe, which muses on the markers and jotsam that climate uncovers and creates, and the ways we relate to or ignore them. While visiting fossil fields in Etheopia, she asks “what did that earth remember,” and I find myself taking this question into my daily life and environment.

Closer to home, I’ve not been able to get Sophie Cunningham’s 2020 piece If You Choose to Stay, We May Not Be Able to Save You out of my head, an essay “intended to be about the bushfires” that expands flame-like to burn at questions about what underpins how we got here and what broken systems underpin these disasters.

There are articles that still haunt me, like another Kolbert piece When the Arctic melts and The Invisible Extinction by Jane Rawson; but there are also those that warm me – not comforted into inaction, but glad to know others feel the same and are pushing back against the notion that it’s too late.

I highly recommend Stuff’s interactive piece about the rewilding of Aotearoa’s braided rivers, and can’t leave this article without linking Rebecca Solnit’s Ten ways to confront climate crisis without losing hope.

Some other gems that might take your fancy include Speak for the Trees by Ben Walter, Lacy M. Johnson’s How to Mourn a Glacier, James Hassett’s excellent piece on how we go about cooling ourselves in a warming world, and a personal favourite, Wild Clocks by David Farrier

If you’re interested in more reading material, check out our other posts about books and articles we’ve been reading, and if you've come across any climate-related writing or journalism you've enjoyed or been challenged by, get in touch!

Featured