Sorry, Ice Cream Lovers—Rainn Wilson Just Told Us Climate Change Might "Endanger" the Treat

Yesterday, if you walked through Union Square Park, you would have caught a glimpse of Rainn Wilson handing out ice cream to passersby—and the reason why may surprise you.

Wilson, an actor best known for his role in The Office as Dwight Schrute, has made it clear over the years that he is a huge advocate for climate change awareness, an example being when he briefly changed his name to "Rainnfall Heat Wave Extreme Winter Wilson."

"I had this realization about four or five years ago that climate change is something that I'm passionate about, and climate change education, but all I was doing was sending out occasional angry tweets," Wilson said in an interview with EatingWell with Gail Whiteman, Ph.D., prior to the New York event. "I knew I needed to actually do something and get off my butt and not be a keyboard activist."

It was around that time that he was introduced to Whiteman and her nonprofit, Arctic Basecamp. From there, Wilson joined her in the organization's efforts to spread awareness and physically help the Arctic.

"We started doing all kinds of stuff together: we went to Greenland, we went to the World Economic Forum in Davos, camped out in tents, we hauled an iceberg to COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, and bottled the iceberg water as glacial melt," Wilson said. "We've done lots of online events, and as we're moving more in the direction of a unique climate publicity and activations, we've founded this new organization, Climate Basecamp, as an offshoot of Arctic Basecamp."

Wilson is now one of the founding faces—alongside Whiteman and television comedy writer Chuck Tatham—of Climate Basecamp. As of yesterday, Climate Basecamp went live with their mission: using food, entertainment, sports, fashion and music to bring attention to the issues of climate change.

So let's backtrack: why hand out ice cream in the city? Fittingly at the start of New York Climate Week, Wilson, Whiteman and Tatham were focused on highlighting ice cream as a food that may be directly impacted by climate change.

"One of the things that scientists are talking about now is that we're in danger of having severe limitations to some of the flavors that we've come to know and love and rely on, like vanilla, chocolate, strawberry and mango and pistachio [and coffee]. So it's important to just bring some attention to that in a memorable, sticky way … sticky in two ways!"

"Scientists tend to say that climate change threats are 'severe threats to food and water security,' and that is very true, but that language is not gripping," Whiteman further explained to EatingWell. "It's like, what does that mean in my daily life in the summer in Manhattan? By picking such an iconic, everyday—who doesn't like ice cream? It's sweet, it's something that we've been having since we were kids. Many of those ingredients are directly threatened by climate change in a lot of different ways."

Named Save the Flavors, Monday's event at Union Square was intended to remind onlookers of the joy of ice cream while spreading awareness of these flavors' endangered states.

"It's less water, or more water in some cases, it can be changes in the pollinators, it can also be the bugs that eat the plants or viruses or fungi, and of course extreme weather events," Whiteman listed as some of the threatening factors to the ice cream flavors' origin plants. "All of those flavors are actually endangered."

While climate change is an extensive issue, spreading awareness and eating consciously are simple changes to make in your routine to help support Climate Basecamp's mission, according to Whiteman and Wilson.

"I think that eating well is eating consciously, and unfortunately most of our culture is eating sloppily and fast foods that have a negative climate impact," Wilson said. "As soon as you can support local farmers, you can eat locally, you can eat consciously. Shop at farmers' markets … I think that's a great way to go. I think eating well actually goes hand-in-hand with climate activism."

For more information on Climate Basecamp, check out their newly launched website.

Up next: How Your Food Choices Can Help Fight Climate Change