Collected Substacks

There’s a tidal wave of climate content on Substack - and it’s increasingly where some of the world’s sharpest thinkers, scientists, journalists, and practitioners are publishing fresh ideas, deep dives, and debates on climate change every day.

But with at least a thousand climate-relevant Substacks (and most behind paywalls), keeping up or finding the best ones is next to impossible - especially when you can’t subscribe to them all, and there’s no way to see everything in one place.

Our Climate Substacks Knowledgebase is trying to overcome the challenge - although we can’t subscribe to them all either! That’s why it’s a work-in-progress:

• We’re curating and updating a list of standout climate-related Substacks—drawing on what we can access and recommend.
• We’re actively exploring the best way to organize, summarize, and connect Substack content for Toolbox readers, much like our LinkedIn and Podcast Knowledgebases—but we know the landscape is vast, changing, and sometimes paywalled.
• For now, think of this as your launchpad: explore highlights and suggested reading, and help us build a resource that’s valuable, not overwhelming.

We’ll never have full access to every great Substack, but by surfacing what we can, we aim to offer “fair-use” introductions, summaries, and links—while supporting both readers and content creators. Your feedback will help us strengthen this section for everyone.

Have a must-read climate Substack to add? Or ideas for making this resource more useful? Please let us know as we evolve this Knowledgebase together!

Substack has become “the place to be” for content creators. As of today the number of active Substack publications is 50,000 - 60,000, with more than 5 million paid and more than 35 million total subscriptions. There is no count available with respect to climate-relevant Substack publications, but it’s probably at least 1,000.

We’ve listed below some of the more popular and well known climate-relevant substacks. You can explore them through their hyperlinks, but we’re still figuring out how to build a knowledge management strategy around Substack pages. It may well end up being analogous in form to our Collections: CLIMATE ON LINKEDIN and Collections: Climate Podcasts, where we organize and use AI tools to work with small slices of the total available content.

~50 Climate Substacks

This list will change over time as we dig deeper into Substack’s climate-related pages. Note that a substantial fraction of Substack content is behind paywalls. The Climatographers subscribe to a number of Substacks, but by no means all. That means that there’s quite a bit of content we won’t see and can’t recommend to you. Subscribe to Your Climate Toolbox to help us point you to more great Substack content. In the interests of transparency, we can’t provide full access to paywalled content. What we can provide is “fair-use” access that advances readers’ as well as content owners’ interests.

Note that as is the case with other parts of Your Climate Toolbox, including the Collections: CLIMATE ON LINKEDIN and the Collections: Climate Podcasts, the Climate Substacks Knowledgebase is most productively navigated by first downloading the Toolbox to your own computer. TheBrain’s desktop software’s “hover” feature allows for the fastest navigation of the kinds of content organized in these Knowledgebases. This video demonstrates the “hover” feature (coming soon!).

All Around Content

1. Volts (David Roberts): Focuses on the technology, politics, and policy of decarbonization. Features deep dives, interviews, and analysis on clean energy, electrification, and climate policy debates.

2. The Crucial Years (Bill McKibben): Written by the prominent environmental activist and author, it covers the urgency of the climate crisis, political action, fossil fuel resistance, and movement building.

3. HEATED (Emily Atkin): Independent investigative journalism focused on the climate crisis, particularly corporate accountability, fossil fuel industry influence, climate policy, and the intersection of climate change with justice issues. Known for its passionate, accountability-driven tone.

4. Sustainability by Numbers (Hannah Ritchie): Uses data and research to explore sustainability challenges, including climate change, energy, food systems, and biodiversity, aiming for evidence-based understanding.

5. Talking Climate (Katharine Hayhoe): From a leading climate scientist and communicator, this newsletter focuses on making climate science accessible, sharing solutions, fostering constructive dialogue, and addressing climate anxiety with hope.

6. The Climate Brink (Andrew Dessler): Authored by a climate scientist, offering clear explanations of climate science, analysis of current events, and discussion of policy implications.

7. Noahpinion (Noah Smith): While broadly covering economics and technology, frequently features insightful posts on climate solutions, energy policy, economic impacts of climate change, and technological innovation.

8. Most Vibrant Planet (Sarah Lazarovic): Offers accessible, often illustrated, advice and perspectives on climate action, sustainable living, and navigating climate anxiety.

Climate Tech, Energy & Finance:

1. Sustainable Investing (Cary Krosinsky) Where the whole ESG, impact, and sustainable investing thing is going now.

2. Intercalation Station: Focuses specifically on battery technology news, research, and market developments – crucial for electrification and renewables.

3. Climate Tech Cocktails: Features interviews with founders and leaders in the climate tech space, discussing innovation, entrepreneurship, and scaling solutions.

4. the MCJ Newsletter (MCJ Collective): A community-focused newsletter with deep dives into climate solutions, technology, industry transition, and investment perspectives.

5. Entrepreneurs for Impact (EFI) (Chris Wedding): Offers concise insights and advice for climate tech founders, CEOs, and investors, based on extensive coaching experience.

6. Survivaltech.club (Pauliina Meskanen): Concentrates on deeptech and hardware innovations addressing climate change, often highlighting European startups.

7. Down to Zero (Florian Dahlhausen): Shares playbooks and insights from VCs and entrepreneurs on building successful climate tech companies globally.

8. Build in Climate (Matt Yao): Explores the process and challenges of building companies and solutions to improve the planet.

9. The Cooler Narratives that inspire our approach to climate communications

10. Exponential View While broad, frequently covers the intersection of exponential technologies (like AI) with the energy transition and climate solutions.

11. Energy Flux (Seb Kennedy): Provides analysis of global natural gas markets, LNG, and their role in the energy transition, often with a European focus.

12. The Texas Energy and Power Newsletter (Doug Lewin): Offers specialized, independent analysis of the Texas electric grid, energy policy, and renewables, with lessons applicable elsewhere.

13. Carbon Removal Updates (Andrew Lockley): A curated weekly summary of news, scientific papers, jobs, and media related to Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR).

14. Impact Supporters (August Solliv): Features deep-dives, reflections, and interviews relevant to impact venture capitalists, including those in climate.

15. CleanTechnica: Delivers news and analysis on electric vehicles, solar, wind, energy storage, and other clean technologies (often via Substack).

Policy, Politics & Accountability:

1. ExxonKnews: Focuses specifically on exposing the fossil fuel industry's role (particularly ExxonMobil) in driving the climate crisis and the movement for accountability.

2. The Honest Broker (Roger Pielke Jr.): Analyzes the intersection of science, policy, and politics, including climate, energy, extreme weather, and science integrity, often offering critical or alternative perspectives.

3. Distilled (Michael Thomas): Features deeply researched stories and analysis related to climate change policy, impacts, and solutions.

4. Popular Information (Judd Legum): While covering broader political accountability, frequently investigates corporate influence on climate policy and greenwashing.

Science, Impacts & Environment:

1. Climate Lab Book (Ed Hawkins): By the climate scientist known for the "warming stripes," sharing data visualizations, climate science insights, and historical climate data work.

2. Gen Dread (Britt Wray): Explores the psychological dimensions of the climate crisis, including eco-anxiety, grief, mental health impacts, and emotional resilience strategies.

3. Bend the Curve (Maddie Stone): Features reporting and storytelling on climate impacts, environmental science, weird weather phenomena, and the natural world.

4. Currently: A weather service that explicitly connects daily local weather forecasts to the broader climate crisis context, offered for various cities via Substack.

5. The Hotshot Wake Up: Focuses on news, policy, and technology related to wildfires, written by a former wildland firefighter.

6. Planet: Critical (Rachel Donald): Investigates the systemic roots of interconnected global crises, including climate, often featuring interviews and critical analysis.

7. The Land Desk (Jonathan P. Thompson): Reports on environmental issues, public lands, energy development, and community impacts in the American West.

8. Climate Dog (David Stookey): Aims to uncover and explain less obvious or "unseen" threats and cascading consequences related to climate change.

9. The Weekly Anthropocene (Sam Matey): Offers reflections and dispatches on humanity's impact on the planet during the Anthropocene epoch.

Solutions, Action & Lifestyle:

1. Hothouse (Cadence Bambenek & Michael Coren): Explores climate solutions, actions individuals and communities can take, often featuring Q&As, guides, and positive stories.

2. We Can Fix It (Prof. Kimberly Nicholas): Focuses on effective, science-based climate actions and solutions, written by an environmental scientist.

3. Climate Town (Matt Nelsen): Uses researched comedy videos and a newsletter to communicate climate issues in an engaging and informative way.

4. Climate Influence (Andrea Learned): Focuses on leadership, communication, and personal influence in driving climate action, particularly for professionals.

5. Food & Climate (Marc Cortez / Formerly Menu Change): Explores the critical intersection of food systems, agriculture, diet, and climate change, highlighting problems and solutions.

6. Sentient Media: Focuses on the environmental impacts of animal agriculture and its connection to climate change, advocating for food system change.

7. The Snap Forward (Alex Steffen): A futurist's perspective on navigating the planetary crisis, offering strategies, big-picture thinking, and insights for adaptation and transformation.

8. Parenting In A Climate Crisis (Bridget Shirvell): Addresses the unique challenges and questions faced by parents raising children amidst the climate crisis.