Climate Connections NPR and National Geographic are taking a yearlong global voyage, exploring how the Earth's climate shapes people — and how people are shaping the Earth's climate.

Special Series

Climate Connections

A yearlong exploration of how climate shapes people and people shape climate.

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Environment

Signs

April 6, 2008 • Shifting ice floes and buckling roads in Alaska. Deserts creeping up mountainsides in the American Southwest. Corals dying off Australia. These are the symptoms of global warming. NPR reports on the evidence communities and scientists are seeing around the world.

A Ukrainian Pop Star's Would-Be Revolution

April 7, 2008 • Ruslana, Ukraine's biggest pop star, switches between two roles on stage: a limp, pale, synthetic woman chained to a machine for energy and a vibrant warrior whose energy comes from clean, renewable resources. But in post-Soviet Ukraine, her fans are more interested in capitalist consumption than conservation.

A Ukrainian Pop Star's Would-Be Revolution

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Environment

Solutions

August 22, 2008 • Scientists in New Zealand are trying to remove a methane-producing microbe in cows and sheep. Iowa farmers are looking to bury carbon in soil. In Niger, trees may be the solution to unpredictable cycles of drought. NPR reports on experiments under way around the globe.

In Highland Peru, a Culture Confronts Blight

March 3, 2008 • Nothing is more important than the potato in the highland villages of Peru. But Peru's potato culture faces its biggest threat yet: Global warming has opened the door to the disease that caused the Irish potato famine.

In Highland Peru, a Culture Confronts Blight

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Environment

Causes

January 21, 2008 • Our everyday activities from switching on a light bulb or driving a car, to clearing forests or planting crops are adding vast quantities of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere, raising global temperatures.

In a Strategic Reversal, Dutch Embrace Floods

January 22, 2008 • The Dutch have historically gone to great lengths to keep the water out of their low-lying country. But anticipated sea-level rise from global warming is causing them to take a dramatically different approach: Let the water go where it wants.

In a Strategic Reversal, Dutch Embrace Floods

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Environment

Adaptation

April 21, 2008 • Adapt, flee or die. That's how humans have responded to climate change over the eons. NPR explores the fate of past civilizations facing climate change, and adaptation and survival strategies currently at work.

Environment

Profiles

October 2, 2011 • A former environmentalist who now advises one of the world's largest mining companies. An ambassador, funded by an accidental Internet fortune, takes his sinking island's plight to the U.N. NPR profiles people making a difference.

Environment

What to Do

April 15, 2008 • Aside from going off the grid, can individuals make a dent in this global problem? A look at whether low-flow showerheads and an energy-efficient refrigerator can help, and whether these daily efforts can be wiped out by one international flight.