TELEVISION

DOCUMENTARIES

In 2005 Matt Damon narrated Journey to Planet Earth on PBS. A year later Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth was released theatrically, opening the door to numerous climate change documentaries, the bulk of which were viewed on television, releasing and often being produced by Discovery, Showtime, National Geographic, Thirteen and Netflix. There is now even the world’s first broadcaster, Climate Change TV, dedicated entirely to climate change issues. Focused on interviewing influential voices in the field, it is produced by Climate Home.

Years of Living Dangerously (2014-2016) aired for two seasons with each episode featuring celebrity “correspondents” - including Sigourney Weaver, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Harrison Ford - interviewing experts and community members on climate impacts in their communities. The show examines global climate impacts from severe droughts in Southwestern U.S. and firefighting in Western U.S., to slash and burn deforestation driven by palm oil consumption in Indonesia and melting ice in Greenland. It also highlights solutions and climate activism groups like Greenpeace and the Beyond Coal campaign. The show has produced an associated educational website for students and teachers, featuring interactive lessons aimed at middle school, high school, and college students, lesson plans for teachers, watch kits for each episode, case studies and career resources. 

Released by Netflix in the Fall of 2020, is David Attenborough’s stunning A Life On Our Planet. Called a “majestic documentary” by the New York Times, it travels through the life of the planet as it travels through the decades of Attenborough’s own life as a famed naturalist. Now, in his 90’s, he calls it his “witness statement.” Interweaving footage of his own explorations into the wilderness, footage of the planet being eroded and charts memorializing the rising temperatures, the population growth, and the destruction of our forests, he curiously remains upbeat about the possibilities for regrowth. Also narrated by David Attenborough is BBC’s award-winning Frozen Planet. Airing for one season in 2011, the show documents Arctic and Antarctic landscape and wildlife amidst rapidly changing conditions from melting glaciers, ice shelves and sea ice. The seventh and final episode which focused the most explicitly on anthropogenic climate change was the most controversial, with ten networks in the U.S. dropping out until it was ultimately aired by Discovery Channel. A decade later Frozen Planet II was announced, also narrated by David Attenborough, featuring a more expansive set of locations across the cryosphere and an even greater emphasis on the existential threat of climate change. 

CLI-FI TV 

An increasing number of science fiction television shows are exploring the impacts of climate change. Perhaps more difficult to get right than a documentary series, science fiction TV can easily lean into oversimplifications and tropes, or at its worst, fail to emphasize the reality of the imminent climate crisis. HBO’s hit series The Last of Us, with its second season releasing in April 2025, hints that a zombie-like fungus was able to take over due to rising temperatures, and Black Mirror features a few episodes with a climate change spin. In the spring of 2023, AppleTV released Extrapolations with a great ensemble cast, including Meryl Streep. It opened to mixed reviews. NYT television critic James Poniewozik and Manuela Andreoni talked about the challenges it encountered and so much of what they said speaks to the difficulty of solving climate change altogether – its abstractness. An even less successful attempt was Netflix’s Incorporated, produced by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Set in Milwaukee in 2074, the show follows a climate refugee undercover in a world controlled by mega corporations following climate collapse. The show was cancelled after one season with reviews calling it too predictable and derivative, showing the risks of climate fiction television that lean too heavily on dystopian tropes without critical engagement. 

And, watch for an HBO Max produced series by VICE creator Adam McKay, called The Uninhabitable Earth, based on the book by David Wallace-Wells. Green lit in January 2020, there is an interesting interview with him by Vanity Fair’s Nick Bilton here.

LOCAL NEWS 

Local television remains an essential resource for climate change reporting. Most Americans get their news from local TV stations, and “in surveys on national media trust, local television consistently outranks the national press, making it a critical part of the media solution to the climate story” (The Nation). From Covering Climate Now, The Climate Station Project offers free training for reporting on climate stories across every beat, aiming to strengthen climate coverage on local stations across the country. The initiative encourages reporters to consider crucial questions: “are you telling the story of the climate as it affects your community? Are you focusing on the people most affected? Are you looking for government agencies, business and community leaders offering solutions?”