The University of Kentucky and the Kentucky Climate Consortium, a statewide research network, are joining forces to document climate change, but not in the way you might think.

Instead of analyzing scientific data, they're recording oral histories to take a more intimate look at climate change and its impact.

In Kentucky.

Oral history is a really powerful form of documenting the historical record.

Really, the goal is to put individual stories on that historical record.

Individual experiences, the lives of people who whose lives aren't necessarily documented in traditional ways.

Oral history is also one of the most personal ways of documenting history.

So the idea of documenting an event or documenting an institution, but doing it from the perspective of an individual's personal life story, their personal experience, their eyewitness experience is very powerful.

So the narrators that we're talking to for the oral history projects are really widely varied.

And one of the ways that we managed to get so much variety is by having a large team of interviewers.

So rather than just me or me and just one or two other people doing interviews, I actually recruited a team of 12 interviewers.

And so we all tapped into our various networks and these interviewers are spread across the state.

So we have interviews that are geographically diverse, but also diverse across sort of backgrounds.

It includes everything from professors who have researched climate in Kentucky to Kentuckians who've dedicated their lives to climate activism in order to mitigate climate change and adapt to the impacts that we're already seeing.

So we're really interested in why people are motivated to do climate work, what their work has to do with Kentucky in particular, what they think some of their successes have been, because we think that these stories can be motivation and inspiration for other people to do work as well.

Some of the ways that they're doing work around climate in Kentucky, of course, relate to renewable energy solutions.

So solar is a huge villain, but also wind.

Additionally, though, we have folks who are just trying to get people to be thinking and talking more about climate.

There isn't any other project that I can think of that really directly is documenting climate change and the people who work with climate change.

And so when we talk about this project, the Climate Project.

Yeah, we're getting amazing information about climate, but we're also getting amazing information in the form of stories about the people who are working on climate and with climate and engaging on this topic.

And those life stories are just as important as the work that they're conducting, that they're describing in the interviews.

This project provides a counter-narrative to the stereotype that Kentuckians aren't environmentally engaged, don't care about local environment, don't care about issues like climate.

It really put the lie to the idea that these issues are purely partizan.

You know, who knows a lot about their environment?

An Appalachian who is the fifth generation to live on the exact same land?

The Appalachian who is trying to figure out where to site their family graveyard because they know that flooding risks are increasing.

Western Kentucky in who's trying to figure out whether to rebuild or not because we don't know if tornado Alley is shifting.

These are people who know intimately about their local environment and care about making it better, not just preserving, but actually improving the environment.

And those are stories that we don't hear about Kentucky.

I mean, just the scope of these interviews really, really demonstrates not just how many Kentuckians, but in how many ways Kentuckians are showing care for the environment and showing up for the environment and each other.

The climate project is funded by the Kentucky Oral History Commission out of the Kentucky Historical Society.