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		Climate Change Climate Change and Global Warming What's New The Impacts of Climate Change Climate Change and Biodiversity: An Interactive Map What You Can Do:   Carbon Footprint Calculator Offset Your Emissions   Contribute Now   Contribute Monthly   Climate-Saving Tips   Get the Facts   Take a Quiz   Get our e-Newsletter   Donate now What We Do:   Stop Deforestation   Adapt to Impacts   Support Policy Where We Work on Climate Change Contact Us Press Releases Tell us what you think about climate change

With your help, we can reduce the impacts of climate change on our lives, on our environment and on future generations.

What's New Adapting to Climate Change. People and nature can actually adapt to the impacts of climate change. Find out how the Conservancy is developing strategies to do so. Working Globally to Reduce Deforestation. Deforestation accounts for more carbon emissions than all the planes, trains and cars on Earth. See what we're doing to curb it. Protect Forests to Fight Climate Change and Poverty The Conservancy joined others to call for policies that make forest protection a key tool in fighting climate change and global poverty. See a data graph showing levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. We Want to Hear from You Tell us what you think about our climate change work. What do you think are the biggest impacts of climate change?

Climate change is already affecting our lives and the places we live, and has the potential to dramatically impact the lives of future generations.

The Nature Conservancy is joining with policy makers, community members, businesses, scientists, industry leaders and others to slow the pace of climate change. We work to reduce the accumulation of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere and help natural areas adjust to the impacts of climate change.

If we don’t act now, we will leave a much larger problem to our children. The good news is that, if we all join in to stop climate change, we can reduce its impact on our lives, on our environment and on future generations.

What You Can Do To Help

You can make a difference! There are many simple things that you can do today to help stop climate change:

• Get the facts about climate change
• Discover helpful tips for reducing your personal carbon emissions
• Test your knowledge with our climate change quiz

What The Nature Conservancy is Doing

The Nature Conservancy is addressing climate change by:

• Reducing emissions from deforestation
• Helping natural areas adapt to the impacts of climate change
• Supporting policies to reduce emissions

What is Climate Change? How Does It Differ from Global Warming?

Climate change is caused by the emission of heat-trapping gases – mostly carbon dioxide (CO₂) – from vehicles, industry, power plants and deforestation. As these gases build up, they act like a thick blanket, overheating the planet, changing our climate, and threatening our health, economy and natural environment.

The terms global warming and climate change are often used interchangeably, but the two phenomena are different. Global warming is the rise in global temperatures due to an increase of heat-trapping carbon emissions in the atmosphere.

Climate change, on the other hand, is a more general term that refers to changes in many climatic factors (such as temperature and precipitation) around the world. These changes are happening at different rates and in different ways.

For example, the United States has become wetter over the 20th century, while the Sahel region of central Africa has become drier.

Climate change picture credits (top to bottom, left to right): Photo © Corbis 2002 (melting ice); Photo © Mark Godfrey/TNC (smokestack); Graph © Patrick Gonzalez/TNC (atmospheric data); Photo © Mark Godfrey/TNC (deforestation).