At the Center for Climate Literacy, our definition of climate literacy involves an understanding of the climate emergency that centers on developing values, attitudes, and behavioral change aligned with living well with one another in a climate changing world. Climate literacy requires harmonizing multiple ways of knowing—explicit/objective and tacit/subjective—into a lived, emotionally charged, and personally felt understanding of the mess we are in. Climate literacy demands embracing our responsibility, both individual and collective, to stand up for everyone’s biospheric inheritance: for all of Earth’s systems that sustain life and are currently reeling under multi-pronged assault from anthropogenic climate change. 

In the early 2000s, climate literacy was defined as a climate science literacy—that to be considered climate literate, you understand the science of climate change: greenhouse gas effects, C0₂ PPM, carbon emissions, etc. Of course, climate science literacy is important. But the common understanding of climate literacy as a climate science literacy has not been enough. We need more than data to move people to action, and we will need more than data to ensure that the transition to a green society is also a just transition. In 2024, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently revised their handbook on climate literacy to reflect a similarly inclusive understanding of the term to include "local and Indigenous Knowledges, social and cultural contexts, the social  sciences, climate solutions, and climate justice concepts." You can read the revised handbook here.