Let’s be real. When you type “climate change” into Google, you get about 4 billion results. Which is… not helpful. Between the catastrophist headlines, the overly technical reports, and the outright denial sites, it’s genuinely hard to know where to land. And frankly, that confusion is a problem in itself.

So where do people who actually care – but don’t have a PhD in ecology – go to find something solid ? There are a handful of places worth knowing, and one that surprised me personally is https://nature-culture.fr, which sits at the intersection of environmental issues and cultural heritage in a way most news sites don’t bother with.

The problem isn’t a lack of information. It’s the opposite.

There’s too much. Way too much. And a lot of it is either surface-level panic or dry institutional language that takes three paragraphs to say something you could say in one sentence. I find that exhausting, personally.

What most people are actually looking for is something in between : honest, clear, not dumbed down, but also not requiring a dictionary to decode. That’s rarer than you’d think.

A few sources that actually hold up

For climate science, IPCC reports are the gold standard – but they’re dense. The summary documents (called SPM, or Summary for Policymakers) are more accessible, and they’re publicly available at ipcc.ch. Not exactly light reading, but at least you know the data is peer-reviewed and solid.

For biodiversity specifically, IPBES – the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services – publishes assessments that are genuinely alarming when you sit with them. Their 2019 global report estimated that around 1 million species are currently threatened with extinction. That’s a number that should stop you mid-scroll.

For cultural and natural heritage, UNESCO remains the reference point. Their World Heritage List covers sites under threat from both climate change and human development – some of them are places you’d recognize immediately, others are unknown gems that are quietly disappearing.

What about everyday reading ?

Honestly ? The trap is relying on a single source. What works better is building a small, curated set of outlets you trust – and cross-referencing when something seems off.

The Guardian‘s environment section is genuinely good and frequently cited by researchers. Carbon Brief is excellent for detailed climate data explained in plain English. And for anyone who wants less news ticker and more depth, those two alone will take you pretty far.

Red flags to watch for

You’ve probably learned to spot some of these already, but it’s worth naming them anyway.

Unnamed sources. “Scientists say” without any indication of which scientists, which study, which institution – that’s a bad sign. Single-study headlines. One study doesn’t prove a trend. Missing dates. Environmental data from 2009 is not the same as data from 2024. The field moves fast.

And maybe the biggest one : sites that only confirm what you already believe. That’s not information, that’s reassurance. There’s a difference.

The heritage angle – often forgotten

Climate change and biodiversity loss get a lot of airtime. But cultural heritage destruction ? Less so. And yet it’s deeply connected. When a coastal village in Louisiana disappears because of rising sea levels, it’s not just land. It’s history, language, memory, architecture. Same with coral reef systems – they’re ecosystems, yes, but also part of living cultures across the Pacific and Indian oceans.

Maybe the question isn’t just “where to find reliable information” – but also : what counts as worth protecting, and who decides ?

That framing shifts things.

What to actually do with this

Start small. Pick two or three outlets and read them consistently rather than doomscrolling across fifteen. Learn to distinguish between a press release, a summary of a study, and an actual peer-reviewed article. And when something genuinely surprises you – a statistic, a claim, a map – take thirty seconds to check the source.

It sounds obvious. But most people don’t do it. Including, sometimes, me.

The information is out there. The challenge is building the habit of finding the good stuff – and knowing what to do with it once you have it.