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In this article, the author distinguishes between understanding and knowing climate change, the former referring to how students can learn about the functioning of the global climate system and the latter referring to how students can metabolize that information in their own terms. The article introduces key concepts for teaching climate science and then discusses climate justice as a framework for helping students know about others' experiences of climate change. Then, the author discusses climate storytelling as a method of teaching that allows students to develop their own knowledge of climate change, blending both understanding and knowing climate change.

This review highlights the potential of a political ecology that approaches socionatures more experimentally and speculatively. We first consider theoretical frameworks which can help elucidate a conceptual and methodological pathway for more experimental and speculative political ecology scholarship. Next, we bring together and systematize multiple threads of political ecology scholarship that already lean into experimentation and speculation. We highlight what we see as their potential, particularly focusing on ongoing struggles for climate and environmental justice. First, we conclude that experimental and speculative approaches are critical for laying the foundations of a future-oriented and reparative mode of critique that illuminates emerging possibilities for alternative worlds. Second, these approaches can generate new registers of consciousness that make room for hope, possibility, creativity, and action. Third, experimental and speculative approaches reconfigure political ecological praxis by fostering a more proactive role for the researcher in addressing socioecological challenges as they emerge. It is our hope that this intervention inspires others to do work that is intentionally more experimental or speculative, creating conditions that could potentially lead to a more equitable society in the present with ramifications for a more just future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a time of multiple, competing, and nested crises, the draw to storytelling is intuitive. Stories help us make sense of the world around us. People are drawn to stories because of their emphasis on community, and the way they create possibilities when it feels like there are none. This paper builds upon geographic research on storytelling, articulating how stories are critical for creating meaning in light of crises. Based on 14 months of fieldwork with storytellers in Appalachia and Alaska, two regions facing profound social, climatic, and economic change and with culturally rich storytelling traditions, research for this paper discusses the practice of storytelling, as told by storytellers, and how different approaches to storytelling help address the climate crisis specifically with notes for crises more broadly. Further, considering calls to use storytelling to address climate change, this paper examines and critiques the stories that are currently being told and valued. Finally, this paper outlines the kinds of stories that could be told to address crises, noting specifically how stories are sites of cultural and political struggle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Millions of students in the United States are saddled with trillions of dollars in debt. The debt crisis is a behemoth, though, importantly, it is not monolithic. Experiences of student debt are unequal and uneven, and it is critical to study them as such to address them. There are many organizations bringing attention to the student debt crisis; however, there are surprisingly few institutions dedicated to studying it. Further, there are few studies that link the student debt crisis to other competing, nested crises of the present (e.g., climate change). Using theories of debt and indebtedness to contextualize the student debt crisis, this paper utilizes autoethnographic accounts of student debt - as a student debtor and faculty member - and 'gray literature' (reports, policies, and statistics) to highlight and analyze the uneven geographies of student debt in the US. The aim of this paper is to argue that a geographic perspective is generative for studying student debt because it allows for a more nuanced understanding of where and why student debt exists and persists with the intention of complementing ongoing activism to abolish student debt. This paper concludes with four potential pathways for future geographic research on student debt and a call for action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An awareness of positionality, an attention to accountability, and a commitment to reflexivity are increasingly key elements to conducting geographical fieldwork. As such, the 'field' is not only a place where we go to conduct research. The 'field' is a place where people live, where histories are present, and where our actions are never objective. This short article discusses my experiences as an early career researcher as I came to terms with these realities during preliminary dissertation research in Nepal. As a result of several formative moments - including surviving a landslide - I slowly began to realize that issues of reflexivity and positionality are not only critical for more ethical research, but also these concepts result in more generative projects. Here, I discuss why I came to these conclusions and explain how my experiences led me to the work I am doing today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China is positioning itself as a global leader in both renewable energy research, development, and deployment, and fossil fuel investment, exploration, and consumption. The newly merged mega-company, China Energy Investment Corp., has agreed to invest an unprecedented $83.7 billion into shale gas, power, and chemical projects in West Virginia. This decision comes after a visit to China by the United States' President Trump, during which he secured professed commitments for over $250 billion in energy investments across the United States. While investment and dispossession in Appalachia have long been international in scope, the scale of this investment, as well as its particular political-historical context, makes this case unique. This paper analyzes two key processes central to this conjuncture in West Virginia's recent history. First, building on recent scholarship, it argues that the ways in which the social and environmental costs of meeting China's energy needs are increasingly being externalized into global "sacrifice zones" at global scales, even as China is making massive domestic investments in renewable energy, may constitute a sort of regional "socioecological fix" to the environmental effects of capitalist development. Second, via a consideration of Gaventa's classic and more recent analyses of power and powerlessness in an Appalachian coal community, it explores why and how political assent to such development—which seems to reprise so many historical patterns that local critics decry—is secured in West Virginia. In doing so, it pays particular attention to the ways in which these familiar processes are playing out in a distinctive contemporary context, one characterized by a combination of populist and authoritarian politics that, in the United States, have touted false promises to "bring back coal" and rejuvenate a struggling local economy, and in China have led an authoritarian state to maintain economic growth for the nation at all costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have seen many calls for climate scientists to become better storytellers. Storytelling has intuitive appeal: In a world made increasingly nonsensical by climate change, storytelling helps make sense of the world, as it always has. Yet, despite calls for climate scientists to be better storytellers, there is no consensus about what counts as a story or about how scientists should tell stories. This article responds to calls for climate scientists to become better storytellers. Specifically, it relates three lessons drawn from extensive interviews and fieldwork with storytellers in Appalachia and Alaska, in which they responded to questions regarding what advice they would give to scientists struggling to communicate their research. The three lessons center on the importance of context and connection, the utility of ambiguity, and the importance of listening, as well as speaking, to intended audiences. Key Words: applied geography, climate change communication, public outreach, science communication, storytelling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]