What’s in a name? A lot.

The Yale Forum launched in October 2007 as an online publication and forum to foster dialogue on climate change among scientists, journalists, and policymakers, with the public as a secondary audience. That focus will continue, but now the public will join the conversation as an equal voice. Yale Climate Connections is reorganizing to help all of us — citizens and institutions — understand how climate change is already affecting our lives and what diverse people and organizations are doing to reduce the risks.

The concept of “connections” is key. Through articles, radio stories, videos, and webinars we will “connect the dots” between climate change and energy, extreme weather, public health, food and water, jobs and the economy, national security, the creative arts, and religious and moral values, among other themes. Many stories will include the voice of individuals affected by or helping to solve the problem: the voice of a farmer or rancher describing the impacts of the Great Plains drought on their livelihood; a homeowner describing the benefits of rooftop solar; or a rabbi explaining how the concept of tikkun olam (“repairing the world”) applies to climate change. Consistent with the scientific evidence, each of these and many other voices will help translate climate change from an abstract and psychologically distant problem into a concrete story about how climate change is affecting our lives here and now.

We are, in the end, all in this together. Great challenges and great opportunities lie ahead. There will be stories of bold exploration, new insights, gathering clouds, exciting breakthroughs, and the steady work of creating a better world for ourselves and our children to come. We can’t wait to share them and engage you and your story in this vital, history-making effort to address the challenges posed, and seize the opportunities presented, by our changing climate.