JP Morgan Chase is the world’s leading financer of fossil fuel projects. And according to a report from within the company, recently leaked to the press, the world is seriously underestimating the adverse effects of climate change. The 22-page report, entitled “Risky Business: the climate and the macroeconomy” and dated January 14, 2020, has been […]
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Beyond a vaguely worded Instagram post, we don’t know much about how Jeff Bezos will spend the $10 billion he recently pledged to climate action through the Bezos Earth Fund. The richest man on the planet says his “global initiative” will fund “scientists, activists NGOs—any effort that offers a real possibility to help preserve and […]
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This week, analysis from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air estimated that government-directed quarantines and other restrictions due to the current coronavirus outbreak have temporarily reduced China’s greenhouse gas emissions by a quarter. China is currently the world’s largest emitter, even though the carbon footprints of most Chinese residents remain minuscule compared […]
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In his State of the Union Address this year, Donald Trump boasted that the United States “has become the number one producer of oil and natural gas in the world, by far,” giving credit to his administration’s “bold regulatory reduction campaign.” Whether an increase in oil exports deserves praise or censure depends on your view. […]
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California Representative Kevin McCarthy just can’t catch a break. Parts of his district were on fire last year, and—thanks partially to those blazes—climate change is a top concern for voters in his state, which has passed some of the most ambitious emissions reductions measures in the nation. Yet fossil fuel interests have been some of McCarthy’s […]
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The long black pruning poles looked cumbersome. But the farmers moved quickly, swarming over the small plot of land and hoisting the poles up to slice through cacao branches with ease. On the bottom end of the pole was a small gasoline engine; on the top, a chainsaw. Buzzing sounds mixed with the humming of […]
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In Kim Stanley Robinson’s recent climate change novel, New York 2140, New York City has been devastated by rising seas: The Atlantic Ocean has inundated Brooklyn and Queens, and lower Manhattan now lies in the shallows at high tide. Downtown real estate has become physically unstable and economically volatile. But as new construction technologies stabilize […]
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Ireland’s left-leaning nationalist party Sinn Féin won a historic upset this past weekend, taking the highest vote share in the country’s general election and effectively breaking a century of centrist and right-wing two-party rule by Fine Gael and Fianna Fái. The race was dominated by issues of dwindling public investment, healthcare and housing. But as […]
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Are we on track for a catastrophe, or a meltdown? This somewhat gnat-straining debate has emerged around new modeling, some of which suggests that a much-dreaded “worst case scenario” of five degrees celsius of warming by 2100 is less likely than previously thought, and some of which suggests exactly the opposite. A recent commentary in […]
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In the wake of Iowa’s caucus vote-counting disaster, political staffers and pollsters alike are reconsidering the state’s “first in the nation to vote” status. The quaint caucuses and infamous fry-forward state fair could disappear were Iowa were to be dethroned. But so too could one of Iowa’s largest industries, which has managed to carve out […]
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Jim Cramer is done with fossil fuel stocks. It’s not that the fundamentals are bad, the irascible investment guru and Mad Money host told CNBC anchor Becky Quick last week. The dividends are great. But “nobody cares,” he explains. “The world has changed. There’s new managers” trying to “appease younger people who believe that you can’t […]
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On a January weekend in New Hampshire, one month away from the state’s presidential primary, it was 64 degrees and sunny. The average high for January is 34 degrees. Members of the New Hampshire Youth Movement, a community organization focused on pushing youth engagement in politics in the state, were out knocking doors all day, […]
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Climate-friendly billionaires are a bit of a paradox. Their multi-home, private-jet lifestyles spew prodigious amounts of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Even those who donate massively to environmental causes tend to be doing more to warm the earth than your average meat-eating car-driver subsisting below the poverty line. There are two such paradoxical beings in […]
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It’s a natural fit for an administration as chaotic and corrupt as President Donald Trump’s that William Perry Pendley, who loathes America’s public lands, was picked last September, and reappointed in January, to manage them. The Bureau of Land Management, which Pendley now directs, oversees more acreage of the public domain than any other federal agency. Thus […]
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Since the idea of a wide-reaching plan to stimulate the economy, combat inequality, and curb climate change entered the national spotlight in 2018, Fox News and the Republican Party have suggested it might be at odds with rural America. Conservative pundits have cited its association with a democratic socialist from New York City, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, […]
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Consider the life of someone with the misfortune of contracting coronavirus in the United States. Let’s call her Mary, and let’s say she works at an airport as a baggage agent helping travelers locate their lost belongings. At work one day she starts feeling run down and develops a dry cough. It’s just a cold, […]
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It’s not known yet how, exactly, the current coronavirus outbreak got started. The viral pneumonia, called 2019-nCoV for now, belongs to the virus family that also gave birth to SARS and MERS. As with the SARS outbreak in 2002–03, it’s likely this new coronavirus originated in bats, with an intermediary animal that transmitted the altered […]
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Texas’s 10th Congressional District stretches, improbably, from the outer fringes of the Houston metro area to suburbs West of Austin. After sending Democrats to Congress for over 100 years, it has voted Republican Representative Michael McCaul in every election since its 2005 redistricting. Two years ago, Mike Siegel—a civil rights lawyer and labor activist running […]
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The history of modern economic planning doubles as a resort travelogue. In 1947, the forefathers of neoliberalism launched their world-conquering project at the Hôtel Du Parc on Mont Pèlerin in the Swiss Alps. Global economic consensus has remained synonymous with jet-setting hospitality in the decades since. From Davos to Doha, today’s brave new market masters […]
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Is it irresponsible to bring a child into a warming world? For some who are plagued by this question, the problem is the carbon footprint their offspring will leave. Others anguish about the difficulties their children will encounter on a ruined planet. But is population the proper target in our efforts to combat global warming? […]
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In December, as the remaining Democratic primary candidates participated in another one of the seemingly endless string of presidential debates, Senator Amy Klobuchar was asked about climate-forced relocation efforts. “I very much hope we will not have to relocate entire cities, but we will probably have to relocate some individual residents,” she said. On January […]
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These aren’t easy days for travel touts. The class of journalists who enjoy comped experiences at Hawaiian resorts and Michelin-starred restaurants don’t normally generate a lot of public compassion. But I couldn’t help feeling a few pangs of sympathy for the writers and editors who put together The New York Times’ recent Travel package “52 […]
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For the first time in its history, the top five slots in the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) annual survey of global risks all come from one category: the environment. As no shortage of marketing materials will tell you, the elites gathering this week in Davos are worried about climate change—so much so that some are […]
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