Browse poems engaging with the climate crisis, including poems about climate change, global warming, nature, and the environment.

“The science of climate change is unequivocal. Its negative social and financial consequences are clear, dire, and exponential.... And yet we have been unable to effect change at the necessary scale. We have failed, somehow, to humanize this issue.... A good poem reminds us of our shared humanity. A good poem will string words together like pearls and connect us, shock us out of our usual tropes. A good poem reminds us of everything we share and everything we put at risk.” —Treehouse Investments, in a Q&A about the Treehouse Climate Action Poem Prize

Popular Poems about Climate Change

I Don’t Know What Will Kill Us First: The Race War or What We've Done to the Earth” by Fatimah Asghar
so I count my hopes: the bumblebees…

As a Portent” by David Baker
At least there was a…

Ice Would Suffice” by Risa Denenberg
How swift, how far…

Characteristics of Life” by Camille T. Dungy
Ask me if I speak for the snail and I will tell you…

Speaking Tree” by Joy Harjo
Some things on this earth are unspeakable…

The Poem Grace Interrupted” by Mikko Harvey
There was once a planet who was both…

Let Them Not Say” by Jane Hirshfield­
Let them not say:     we did not see it…

Song for the Turtles in the Gulf” by Linda Hogan
We had been together so very long…

Romance #1” by Eunsong Kim
like some 14 year old girl waiting…

Evening” by Dorianne Laux
Moonlight pours down…

Letter to Someone Living Fifty Years from Now” by Matthew Olzmann
Most likely, you will think we hated the elephant…

Some Effects of Global Warming in Lackawanna County” by Jay Parini
The maples sweat now, out of season…

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Glacier (after Wallace Stevens)” by Craig Santos Perez
Among starving polar bears…

High Dangerous” by Catherine Pierce
is what my sons call the flowers…

Advice to a Prophet” by Richard Wilbur
When you come, as you soon must…

Earth from space

More Poems about the Environment

Last Night We Saw South Pacific” by James Applewhite
I wake to see a cardinal in our white…

Endangered Species” by Dan Beachy-Quick
Even this / brief thought is endless…

Kid, this is the first rain” by Jeffrey Bean
of November. It strips off the rest…

Neptune.4” by CAConrad
no one knows where I am in the morning…

Talking About New Orleans” by Jayne Cortez
Talking about New Orleans…

Third Rock from the Sun” by Dorianne Laux
That streetlight looks like the slicked backbone…

Everglades” by Anne Marie Macari
river with a valley so shallow it is measured…

Why Whales Are Back in New York City” by Rajiv Mohabir
After a century, humpbacks migrate... 

Notes on a Mass Stranding” by Kamilah Aisha Moon
Huge dashes in the sand, two or three…

I Want to Save This Whale” by Lisa Olstein
The one right in front of me…

Planet” by Catherine Pierce
This morning this planet is covered by winds and blue…
 
Art Project: Earth” by Karen Skolfield
Balloon, then papier maché…

Natural History” by Brian Simoneau
Toeing the metal marker drilled in granite…

Watershed” by Tracy K. Smith
200 cows     more than 600 hilly acres…

Mother Earth: Her Whales” by Gary Snyder
An owl winks in the shadows…

Earth Day on the Bay” by Gary Soto
Curled like a genie’s lamp…

Doppler Effect” by Arthur Sze
Stopped in cars, we are waiting to accelerate…

Devotee” by Anne Waldman
what to call wild use…