Summer may be officially over, but mosquito season is showing no sign of abating. If you’re cursing the influx of winged whiners, save some vitriol for climate change, which definitely played a role in exacerbating this year’s mosquitogeddon. It was an unusually warm summer — the hottest summer on record for the contiguous United States […]
After decades of negotiations, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (CSKT) have finalized a $1.9 billion water rights settlement that resolves thousands of tribal claims tied to waterways throughout western Montana. U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland signed the long-pending water compact last week, executing a complex agreement that confirms CSKT’s water rights and […]
This story was originally published by Wired and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. California is famous for its beach weather, but it’s also growing increasingly infamous for its “fire weather,” which is when high temperatures, strong winds, and low humidity combine to prime the landscape to burn. It’s no accident […]
On September 22, seven popular late-night talk shows put out one massive climate change awareness special. After Hurricane Ida, a rash of “unprecedented” Western fires, biblical proliferation of blood-sucking pests, fatal heatwaves, and an IPCC report that essentially says, “we’ll be lucky if we keep things to a merely challenging degree of warming” — this […]
At 5 a.m. on December 4, 2017, Jesse Merrick got a text from his roommate. “Hoping your family is OK,” he remembers reading when he woke up. The Thomas Fire had just broken out in Southern California and was quickly growing into a nearly 300,000-acre behemoth. Jesse frantically tried to reach his relatives in Ventura. […]
It was 1 a.m. when Oscar Sampayo first saw the death threat against him. He was home alone, like he had been for most of quarantine. Signed by the paramilitary group “Aguilas Negras,” the letter, circulated around town, accused Sampayo and sixteen other environmental and social leaders in Colombia defending water and protecting the labor […]
Growing up was already hard enough. Now kids are also facing the prospect of living with rising temperatures, ferocious floods, and an unstable climate for the rest of their lives. The largest study of its kind shows that the environmental crisis is causing widespread psychological distress for young people across the globe. In a paper […]
Tropical Storm Nicholas made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane in Texas early on Tuesday morning, bringing high winds and torrential rainfall to the state’s coastal communities. The storm has weakened into a tropical storm with sustained winds of 60 miles per hour, and is now moving slowly over the Houston area. Heavy rain has […]
After Superstorm Sandy hit New York in 2012, the city and state spent billions recovering from the storm and building new storm surge protections for its subway system. Seven years after the storm, a reporter asked then–Metropolitan Transportation Authority chair and CEO Pat Foye whether the subway was prepared for another Sandy. “The answer is […]
Empowerment Temple, a predominantly Black megachurch in Baltimore’s Park Heights area, is a place neighbors can often go for free meals, school supplies, and drive-thru COVID-19 tests. Soon, they’ll also be able to visit the long, beige building to charge cell phones, refrigerate medications, and cool off (or warm up) during the next power outage. […]