Reducing and removing CH4 and CO2 emissions demands methods that are scalable, permanent, and financeable, and a number of “climate repair” options are currently being explored. The CO2 Foundation enthusiastically engaged with production of The Climate Restorers, a four-documentary-film survey of the fast-developing field of atmospheric carbon removal as a critical strategy in the triumvirate of climate solutions (i.e. mitigation, adaptation, restoration). 

This survey of an evolving and sometimes tricky field features key characters – visionaries and activists, scientists, technologists, and innovators, policymakers and political leaders, economists and financiers, land stewards, artists and teachers – who illustrate the need for a civilization shift. These changemakers illustrate the critical tightrope between urgency and precaution, exploring the nature of peer-reviewed science in society and expressing the fundamental justice of hearing all voices at the table: understanding and valuing different people’s roles in rapid social change, especially women, Indigenous people, and young professionals. In doing so, they inspire viewers to reclaim their own agency at this critical crossroads in history. 

The series explores how the highest-risk problems might be addressed via nature-based and technical solutions, as well as the more fundamental systemic and individual changes that we must make globally, at scale and at speed.  The episodes are:

• Part 1 – Methane 
  • Defining climate restoration, exploring how it is being developed around the world, and the most serious and urgent issue: methane, the most potent greenhouse gas. 
• Part 2 – Human settlements 
  • Carbon-negative and -neutral buildings, settlements, artificial limestone, organic plant- and algae-based technologies. 
• Part 3 – Blue carbon 
  • Ocean solutions: seaweed permaculture and management, ocean fertilization, and coastal livelihoods.
• Part 4 – Ecosystem restoration and social change
• • Regenerative land use/farming, soils and biochar, vast-scale ecosystem restoration, societal changes to avert a risky future.

The team behind this project is led by experienced big-issue film and talk-show producer and multimedia expert John Bowey and veteran research, policy strategist and civilizational-shift scientist Phoebe Barnard. This project fits squarely at the focal center of their project Transmediavision and as well for partner Earth Overshoot: transformative, well-documented storytelling to shift society to a more engaged, sustainable trajectory. Transmediavision’s films on environmental and social justice and Earth Overshoot’s film 8 Billion Angels reflect this collective strength. 

Interviewees for this film series are diverse by design, culture, profession, gender, race, sexuality and geography. The filmmakers’ work in South Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East, and the global partnerships and youth leadership networks that co-producer and science advisor Phoebe Barnard has founded or co-founded (Stable Planet Alliance, GirlPlanet.Earth, Global Restoration Collaborative, and the AMOC Preparedness Team) all have strongly shaped the justice, gender, scientific, economic, and social-change elements of the series.

The Climate Restorers began its impact early: from late 2022, showings and press conferences increased public engagement with effective communication on carbon removal and climate stabilization. The production team retained educational and theatrical rights, and has held 21 educational and legislative screenings thus far in the Pacific Northwest, in California, at COP27 in Egypt, online with global audiences, and at high-level global restoration summits in Zambia in March 2024 and Vancouver in March 2025. The use of social media and in-person/town hall-style screenings means that peer reviews from grassroots, professional and legislative audiences were incorporated into the series from the start. The CO2 Foundation science advisory team and selected grantees also had the privilege of engaging in the review process.

The Blue Carbon episode, screened at the Ocean Vision Summit in Vancouver, was very warmly received by leaders at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. In April 2025, The Climate Restorers was launched at the EarthX Congress of Conferences 2025 where the series’ first US television broadcast debuted on the EarthX channel. It will be repeated on EarthX Media and later be broadcast on national television channels in Australia and elsewhere. 

The CO2 Foundation is humbled to have been able to provide transformative funding toward this global conversation-starter on carbon removal, ecosystem and climate restoration, and the shift to a kinder, wiser, more humble civilization ahead.