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Yes! Magazine

Meals on Wheels Is a Climate-Relief Model

When an unprecedented heat wave bore down on Portland, Oregon, in June 2021, Jonna Papaefthimiou, the city’s chief resilience officer, immediately thought of the city’s most vulnerable populations: older people sweltering, often alone, in their homes. She called Suzanne Washington, who runs the local chapter of Meals on Wheels. “That overlap of their demographic and theREAD MORE

Can We Laugh at the Climate Crisis?

When David Perdue applied to be part of a climate comedy program, he felt a little out of his element: “I couldn’t recall one time I’d ever had a conversation with my friends about climate change,” said the Atlanta-based comic. Purdue, who is Black, added, “But I knew it was an issue that was going toREAD MORE

San Giovanni solar array

Italy Is Fighting Energy Poverty — and Climate Change

San Giovanni a Teduccio is a working-class neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples, Italy. Once an industrial center, today it’s home to abandoned factories that sit in ruins by the sea. But the rooftop of a former orphanage points to new beginnings for the community. There, the sun shines onto the deep blue surface of 166READ MORE

Daybreak

Can We Game Our Way Out of the Climate Crisis?

Europe is planting trees to offset its emissions but is swiftly hit with massive wildfires. The United States is investing in mining operations abroad to wean off its dependence on fossil fuels but harbors concerns about trading with an abusive government. Meanwhile, a coalition of countries from the Global South must decide whether to accept constructionREAD MORE

CWPP water volunteers

‘We’re Basically Condemning Them to Unhealthy Pregnancies.’

When Jamika Jones was pregnant with her son earlier this year, her mother worried about her drinking water from the tap. Jones lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where more than a third of the water service lines contain lead; when those pipes corrode, they can release the neurotoxin into the water flowing through them.  Lead exposure hasREAD MORE

Doulas as frontline climate workers

Doulas Are Frontline Climate Workers

As Hurricane Ian approached southern Florida in late September, Tifanny Burks got a call from a recent client.  A single mother of three, including an infant Burks had helped deliver, was facing eviction and scrambling to find a place to weather the storm.  Burks, who uses they/her pronouns, connected their client with lawyers who could helpREAD MORE

Detroit compost

Composting in Detroit Gets a Boost From the Philippines

On a recent Saturday morning, Pamela McGhee and several neighbors were busy at work in a community garden on Detroit’s East Side, weighing food scraps and assessing compost piles for compliance. Items in the compost are assessed according to a “yuck” and “yay” system. “Yuck” items, like animal bones and meat, which do not compost well,READ MORE

Can Indigenous Cultural Burning Fix America’s Wildfire Crisis?

Before fire suppression policies were put in place at the turn of the 19th century, Indigenous communities across California relied upon regular brush clearings to access culturally important plants. Where dead twigs, branches and leaves burned, ferns and tobacco plants re-emerged with healthy root systems, free from overgrowth that could sap their access to rainwater. TheseREAD MORE

Can a ‘Green Amendment’ Deliver Environmental Justice?

According to locals, two different types of odors emanate from the 366-acre High Acres Landfill, which sits just outside Rochester, New York.  “There’s the gas odors, and then there’s the garbage odors coming from when they open the landfill and are actually dumping, or the trains unloading from New York City,” Gary McNeil told City, aREAD MORE

Audrey Trufant Salvant surveys the damage to Ironton, Louisiana.

Six Months After Hurricane Ida, a Historic Black Community Races To Save Its Future

Audrey Trufant Salvant has deep roots in Ironton, a close-knit, majority-Black community 25 miles downriver from New Orleans.  Her great-great-great grandmother, who had been enslaved, is buried here, and her descendents kept the unincorporated town in Plaquemines Parish alive, despite near-impossible circumstances.  Founded by formerly enslaved people in the late 1800s, Ironton’s residents have since enduredREAD MORE

climate migration United States

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