Actor Rainn Wilson on Making Climate Messaging Relatable
Actor Rainn Wilson has long been a climate activist.
He hosted a travel series called An Idiot's Guide to Climate Change and camped with climate scientists at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in 2020, and in 2021, he shipped an iceberg to the COP26 conference in Glasgow so that the delegates attending would see it melting as they entered the grounds.
'I was just another actor living in suburban Los Angeles and sending out an occasional angry tweet about climate change,' the honoree said at the 2025 TIME Earth Awards in Manhattan on April 23. 'I was tired of yelling into the giant wind turbine of climate denialism, and I thought, I have to do something.'
In 2022, Wilson co-founded Climate Basecamp with Gail Whiteman, a professor of sustainability at the University of Exeter Business School, with the goal of raising awareness about climate change and climate science through a pop culture lens.
'I realized that one of the most broken aspects of climate work was climate communication—it was either very well-meaning, lovely documentaries of butterflies and rainforests already preaching to the choir, or else, it was kind of angry shouting at science deniers,' Wilson said.
Wilson realized there is a large young audience that is confused about climate change. 'We call this the movable middle,' he said. 'Their uncle is a climate change denier, but then they look on TikTok and they see science and they don't know what to think.'
'What we decided to do was undertake climate communications in a fresh, out of the box way,' Wilson said. To 'craft a message that's hopeful, courageous, and, dare I say, funny, to try and open people's hearts.'
Climate Basecamp launched Arctic Risk Name Changer, an app that generated a name reflecting a climate risk to raise awareness on social media. Wilson's for example was 'Rainfall Heat Wave Rising Sea Levels Wilson.' The nonprofit also launched Save the Flavors, a campaign raising awareness about how common favorite foods are endangered by climate change—things like coffee, avocados, and chocolate. 'People may not relate to climate change science,' Wilson said, but they may relate to seeing the things they may eventually lose to climate change.
In November, the climate crisis arrived in Wilson's own backyard. On Nov. 6, the day after the 2024 election, his home caught on fire while he was at a rehearsal as a mountain fire swept through Ventura County, Calif. While his wife and animals—pigs, dogs, and a peahen—made it out relatively unscathed, their house suffered severe damage, and several of their neighbors lost their homes completely.
'The message was clear: it doesn't matter who you are, this crisis affects all of us, from climate activists to climate deniers, and everyone in between,' TIME CEO Jessica Sibley said in presenting the award to Wilson.
Wilson concluded his speech with a spiritual appeal: 'Spend more time in nature, and when you're there, let it move your heart, let it touch your heart and affect you toward action.'
'This is not simply a matter of legislation. This isn't a matter of carbon capture or limiting carbon and methane and planting more trees,' he said. 'All of those things are very important. But there's an underlying disease underneath climate change, which simply is a spiritual disease, where we are disconnected from our hearts and from beautiful, all-important Mother Earth that has fed our ancestors and hopefully will feed our descendants.'
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