In the fall of 2018, Paradise, California, a small town among the high, forested buttes at the northern end of the Central Valley, was a tinderbox. The hot summer had sucked the moisture out of the grass and the pine forest. Demon winds blew through the trees and canyons. Everyone …
Read More »On Pandemics, Climate Change, and Finding Humor Amid the Doom
The Covid pandemic is not over, and may not be over for a long while yet. But with vaccination rates up, this might be a good moment to pause and think about what a microscopic virus has done to our world. Already there’s a literary pandemic of excellent books emerging, …
Read More »Lorde's Voyage to the End of the World
I’ve been obsessed with Antarctica since I was a kid. Growing up in New Zealand, the race to the South Pole is mythologized like the U.S.-Soviet race to the moon — two explorers, one British, one Norwegian, locked in a breathless, romantic fight for national honor. I always rooted for …
Read More »Climate Bills That Could Actually Pass in a Mitch McConnell-Led Senate
This article was originally published by Grist and is republished here as part of an ongoing collaboration. Americans won’t be getting a Green New Deal as a late Christmas present, or even a carbon tax. Barring a Democratic sweep of a Senate runoff election in Georgia, Republicans will hold on …
Read More »The Climate Crisis Is Killing Us, and America's Premier Public-Health Agency Doesn't Care
A thought experiment: What if we lived in a world where the climate crisis directly threatened the lives of rich white guys? How different would the political debate be about cutting carbon and adapting to a superheated world? These questions occurred to me the other day after reading an excellent …
Read More »Greta's World
T here is persona and there is reality in Greta Thunberg.It is Valentine’s Day in her hometown of Stockholm, but there’s only wind, no hearts and flowers. A few hundred kids mill about, with a smattering of adults. If there were not signs reading “Our Earth, We Only Have One,” …
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