BASELINE tells the story of the climate crisis in an unprecedented way — revisiting four locations every five years until 2050. Think of it as the environmental “Seven Up!” The series begins with the film BASELINE 2020, with support from the National Geographic Society and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. The goal: combat “shifting baseline syndrome,” a term coined by Daniel Pauly, an advisor on this project, to refer to “a phenomenon of lowered expectations in which each generation regards a progressively poorer natural world as normal.” Humans fail to be alarmed by slow-moving changes in extreme weather, heat and sea level rise. That raises the prospect that we’ll never truly see the destruction we’re causing. The BASELINE series, directed by National Geographic Explorer John D. Sutter, aims to be an antidote, turning a consistent lens to the problem and refusing to look away. By funding BASELINE 2020 through UnionDocs, you are helping to support production costs for 2020 shoots in Alaska, Utah, Puerto Rico, and the Marshall Islands. Your support is critical to the project’s success. Thank you for considering a donation, and please contact the director with any questions.

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Director John D. Sutter is a National Geographic Society Explorer and CNN climate analyst. At CNN, where Sutter was a senior investigative reporter, producer and columnist for more than a decade, he created and directed several award-winning projects, including “Two Degrees,” “Vanishing” and “Change the List.” His work has won the Livingston Award, IRE Award, Edward R. Murrow Award, Peabody Award and has received two EMMY nominations — one for new approaches to documentary, another for environmental storytelling. He is a former summer fellow at UnionDocs, a former Knight Visiting Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and is a visiting instructor at The Poynter Institute for media studies. Sutter is a member of The Association of LGBTQ Journalists and the Society of Environmental Journalists. He lives in Atlanta.

Director of Photography Edythe McNamee is Pulitzer Prize finalist and EMMY nominee. Her most recent film, “Katie’s New Face,” for which she was Director of Photography and an Executive Producer, aired internationally on National Geographic’s television and digital channels. A former staff videographer for CNN and National Geographic, McNamee’s work also has received the Livingston Award for Young Journalists and the Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, as well as awards from the American Society of Magazine Editors, the Webby Awards, the Foreign Press Association, Investigative Reporters and Editors and Amnesty International, among others. She lives in Washington.

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