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Cities Are Depaving for a Cooler Future
It all started because a man named Arif Khan wanted a garden. In 2007, he had recently moved into a house in Portland, Ore., whose backyard was covered in asphalt. Some friends helped him tear up the impervious surface, and soon after, they won a small grant to carry out a similar project in front ofREAD MORE
We’re Approaching Several ‘Positive’ Climate Tipping Points. Is It Enough?
When it comes to climate change, tipping points are typically a bad thing. They refer to a threshold at which irreversible, self-perpetuating and catastrophic environmental changes – often referred to as feedback loops – will ensue. For example, in the Amazon, deforestation threatens to set off a chain of processes in which the rainforest emits moreREAD MORE
Ben Jealous’s New Mission: Saving the Planet
Ben Jealous has spent much of his career fighting for voting rights and prison reform. Now, as he takes the helm of the Sierra Club, he’s thinking about other ways to fight injustice. That means pushing back against freeways that cut through neighborhoods, demanding accountability when a train derailment spills toxic chemicals into a community, andREAD MORE
In the Pacific Northwest, Salmon Declines Upend a Way of Life
Every spring and fall, Chinook salmon make their way from the Pacific Ocean into the Klamath River, in Northern California. Historically, their black-speckled bodies would swim upstream, around the Cascade and Klamath mountain range and into the Upper Klamath Lake in Oregon, before spawning in its major tributaries. Since time immemorial, local tribes — the Klamath,READ MORE
The Climate Crisis Is Changing Our Concept of Home
In a single week in July, more than 100 million Americans, from Massachusetts to Arizona, were under excessive heat warnings or advisories, as temperatures soared into the triple digits across the country. Thousands were forced to evacuate their homes in California as the Oak Fire burned near Yosemite National Park. Across the country, at least oneREAD MORE
Melissa Lin Perrella Says Community Is Key to Fighting Violence and Pollution
The daughter of Chinese immigrants, Melissa Lin Perrella sees a direct line from her childhood in a small town in Central California in the 1980s to her work on the front lines of environmental justice. “We looked different from most everyone else; my house smelled different because the food we ate was different; my parents hadREAD MORE
Native Growers Can Help the US Meet Its Climate Goals. Will the New Farm Bill Offer Enough Support?
Carly Griffith Hotvedt’s Cherokee ancestors planted what is called “the three sisters:” corn, beans and squash. The squash leaves provided shade and protection for the soil, and the beans, as nitrogen fixers, replaced nitrogen in the soil so corn and squash could draw it out. It kept the soil healthy and is something members of herREAD MORE
The U.S. Is Facing a Maternal Health Crisis. Is Climate Change Making It Worse?
Esther McCant, a doula in Miami, has visited clients in sweltering apartments without air conditioning. She has seen them exhausted from long days working on their feet in the South Florida heat. In 2017, she even helped one client, who was well into her third trimester, evacuate during a hurricane. It was soon after she helpedREAD MORE
“You Can’t Separate People From the Planet.”
As a child, Leah Thomas dreamed of becoming a veterinarian. When she arrived at Chapman University in 2013, her fascination with the animal world expanded to studying ecology and declaring a major in environmental science. But Thomas, now 27, was heartbroken to discover how often the environmental movement sidelined people of color. She wrote about it in herREAD MORE
A Tale of Two Climate Migrants
This story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. Climate change is fueling longer dry spells, bigger floods and more violent storms across the globe, but the effect is most pronounced in the tropics, where even a small rise in temperature can turn a heat wave from miserableREAD MORE
Climate Change and Capitalism Are Forcing Chilean Farmers to Abandon Their Land
This story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. In 2018, Marta Morales, a 35-year-old small farmer, was forced to leave her hometown of Colliguay in rural central Chile. Morales grew up cultivating her family’s one-acre plot, producing vegetables to eat and to sell for income. ButREAD MORE
California’s Climate Migrants
This story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. In September of 2020, California was in the midst of a record-setting heat wave. The hot and dry conditions fueled fires all over the state, and smoke from wildfires hundreds of miles away hung over the Bay AreaREAD MORE