| By Olivia Rudgard Ben Block's family does all the things a climate-conscious brood can. They try to minimize driving, switched to an electric oven, and are constantly gut-checking purchases. When Block's five-year-old son asked for a new toy truck earlier this year, the 37-year-old calibrated his response carefully: Cheap plastic toys are fun, he conceded, but they tend to get thrown out quickly. How about a long-lasting Lego set instead? Still, Block worries. He worries about raising kids in a world beset by environmental crises and what that world will look like. He worries about his children's children. Block worries about global warming so much that in 2018 he co-founded a group called Climate Dads. The group had little trouble recruiting: Within two years, 800 fathers across 20 US cities were running meetups at nature reserves and affixing "This Place Will Be Water" stickers in neighborhoods hit by sea-level rise. Dozens of the dads penned public testimonials. "Bringing you into this world was my greatest achievement," Block wrote in a letter to his son. "Now I need to make sure you can navigate the difficulties that lie ahead."  A gathering of the Philadelphia Climate Dads in 2018. Photo courtesy of Ben Block These days, climate dads are everywhere. Like sports dads, grill dads and car dads before them, climate dads are a bit nerdy, a bit obsessive and, sometimes, a bit embarrassing. They care deeply about the ailing planet, and process that passion by pushing their families to make behavioral changes, geeking out on decarbonization and coordinating with fellow obsessives. They aren't fatalists — no doomer dads allowed — but function more like mavens, a Malcolm Gladwell term for people adept at gathering information and excellent at sharing it. "It taps into something which I think is quite profound," says Peter Olivier, a 38-year-old self-described climate dad, "which is how to be a hopeful masculine figure in the modern era." Olivier, who lives in New York and is father to a six-year-old, works for a carbon dioxide removal company. He characterizes a climate dad as "all my friends I went to college with." Many of those friends also work in renewable energy, and Olivier admits his circle is a bit of a bubble. Still, when he wrote a paean to climate dads on Twitter in March, dozens of people responded with some version of, "That sounds like me." Like gearhead dads, some climate dads get sucked in by technology. In 2023, obsessively telling your family which time of day the app says is best for running the washing machine based on the kilowatt-hours generated by the rooftop solar panels is the new reminder to turn down the thermostat. One survey in May by US outlet Heatmap News found that fathers were more likely than mothers or childless men to be in favor of wind turbines and geothermal energy in their communities. "We're all like, 'Oh yeah, I was able to insulate the basement,' or 'I was able to put in a heat pump,' or, 'We're thinking about getting rooftop solar, how did that go for you?'" Olivier says. When he got solar panels last June, "it was like the only thing I talked about for three months." Other guys simply gravitate toward the climate-dad lifestyle. The same Heatmap poll found fathers more likely to be keen on electric cars, e-bikes and walking instead of driving. "If you're walking down the street with your children and you see huge cars and think, 'It isn't safe here,' it's understandable that you would go out and buy a huge car, too," says Sam Balto, 37, who started a "bike bus" last year to shepherd elementary-school cyclists in Portland, Oregon. "But that's not what a climate dad does."  Sam Balto's "bike bus" in action. Photographer: Thomas Teal/Bloomberg Being a climate dad isn't always easy. Leo Murray, a 46-year-old activist in London, has at times struggled with blending fatherhood and advocacy. In 2009, he turned down an invite to protest at COP15 in Copenhagen, citing a baby on the way. Around the same time, Murray stopped going to activist meetings entirely, his first pullback since falling down the "climate rabbit hole" and co-founding Plane Stupid, a direct-action group focused on blocking airport expansions, five years earlier. "I couldn't hold these two enormous things together at the same time," Murray says. "I couldn't keep staring into the void." Murray's son was born in 2010, and a daughter two years later. Since then, he's found his way back to the climate fight. In early 2019, his family launched a successful campaign for a bicycle lane in west London, which they now use daily. This April, the Murray clan even attended London's Extinction Rebellion Big One march. "What you don't want to do is inculcate a sense of despair in your children about their future," Murray says. "What I'm trying to do is build a sense in them of their own agency and their own ability to change the world." Read and share a full version of this story on Bloomberg.com. For unlimited access to climate and energy news, please subscribe. When it comes to the tech that climate dads crave, e-bikes, electric cars and solar panels tend to top the list. But what about stories to tell at bedtime? We asked our climate dads which books they recommend. -
The Rescue of Ravenwood, by Natasha Farrant. Set in northern England, Farrant's story follows three children in their fight to save a beloved ancient tree. Spoiler: They succeed! (Ages 8+) -
Walking in the City with Jane, by Susan Hughes, with illustrations by Valérie Boivin. The book tells the story of Jane Jacobs, a US journalist and urban planning activist known for her campaigns against car-centric cities. (Ages 6+) -
Melt, by Ele Fountain. This thriller cleverly combines the stories of two children affected by the climate crisis: Yutu, a boy living in the Arctic Circle, and Bea, whose father works for an oil company. (Ages 9-12) -
How to Talk to Your Kids About Climate Change, by Harriet Shugarman. Shugarman is founder and executive director of the US campaign group ClimateMama. "Our children are watching us; their present and future is truly in our hands," she writes in the book's introduction. "Let's begin by telling our children the truth." -
We have no idea if EVs are igniting ships. Since Fremantle Highway caught fire off the Netherlands coast, many have suggested batteries were to blame. In reality, the cause isn't clear. -
GOP attacks on ESG aren't working. A Cowen Inc. analyst points out that Republican attempts to squash US corporate disclosure requirements haven't led to actual legislation. -
China's "sponge cities" just can't keep up. Sponge cities use permeable pavement and other features to soak up precipitation, but recent flooding highlights their limitations. -
Tesla wants to build a truck charging route. The company is seeking nearly $100 million from the US to build nine electric semi-truck charging stations between Texas and California. -
Miami has a sewage problem. No other major US city depends so heavily on septic tanks, which often overflow when it rains, releasing fecal bacteria and other contaminants. -
Japan is making gadgets to beat the heat. Tokyo's Extreme Heat Countermeasures Exhibition featured fan-cooled baby carriers, cold-pack vests for pets and wearables that warn of impending heatstroke.  A fan-equipped baby carrier by Kuchofuku. Photographer: Akio Kon/Bloomberg A beach in South Korea has become an unlikely flashpoint for concerns about the country's addiction to coal. The stretch of sand at Maengbang — the site of a photo shoot for the sleeve of K-pop band BTS's hit song "Butter" — is today a pilgrimage site for the band's devotees. But just six miles away, a coal-fired power plant could be fired up as soon as October.  Photographer: SeongJoon Cho Tackling climate change means knowing how to tell its story — and the story of humanity's efforts to beat it. That's familiar territory for Kim Stanley Robinson, whose 2020 novel, The Ministry for the Future, reads like an anthology of a near-future in climate crisis. On this week's Zero (the first of three episodes about climate storytelling), Robinson talks to Akshat Rathi about crafting a hopeful narrative out of dire circumstances. Does travel insurance cover extreme heat?
It depends! Travel insurance policies vary tremendously, and heat affects travelers in different ways, from the inconvenient (flight delays) to the downright dangerous (heatstroke). Some policies will cover certain risks, but not others — and all must be secured before departure. What you can look out for are cancel-for-any-reason (CFAR) policies, which will let you nix a trip for, well, any reason. Expect to pay more, though: Standard travel insurance policies are typically priced at 5% to 10% of your total trip cost; CFAR policies can cost roughly 50% more. Climate questions? Send them our way. | 
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