Scientists and kids work hard so we can survive climate change

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Climate change has lasting effects on how we get our food, how much water is available to us and how we go about our day to day lives. It's a lot to navigate, but scientists from the University of Minnesota are here to help. During a live show this past April, MPR chief meteorologist Paul Huttner spoke with the Director of the Institute on the Environment at the U of M, Jessica Hellmann, about what they're doing to help people adapt while making things better for the environment.

Here's your rundown for this week's show:

The role of scientists in communicating about climate change: Jessica Hellmann of the U of M says that adaptation while living with climate change is just as crucial to our collective future as stopping greenhouse gas emissions. The Institute on the Environment was created to bring environmental scholars of all specializations together, making a collaborative force against climate change.

"So our job is to aggregate those scholars and then put them to work on real-world problems, like food and ag, and land sustainability and biodiversity and climate change," Hellmann said.

Olya Wright, 12, founder of the Nordic Nature Group: Wright created the Nordic Nature Group, a group of seven girls, because she wanted her friends to be able to help nature while learning more about it. What started as a few outdoor excursions became missions to tackle climate change at a local level.

"It's the youth that are going to inherit the planet and we need to clean it up so we still have our planet the way it's supposed to be for future generations," Wright said. "The environment is amazing and we can't recreate it if we destroy it so it's just really important to save it."

To listen to the full episode, click the audio player above.