Most recent 40 articles: The Atlantic
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A 600-year-old blueprint for weathering climate change - The Atlantic (Apr 2) |
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Apr 2 · During the Little Ice Age, Native North Americans devised whole new economic, social, and political structures.
Around the year 1300, the Huhugam great chief Siwani ruled over a mighty city near what is now Phoenix, Arizona. His domain included adobe-and-stone pyramids that towered several stories above the desert; an irrigation system that watered 15,000 acres of crops; and a large castle. The O’odham descendants of the Huhugam tell in their oral history that Siwani “reaped very large harvests with his two servants, the Wind and the Storm-cloud.” By Siwani’s time, Huhugam farms and cities had thrived in the Sonoran Desert for nearly 1,000 years. But then the weather refused ... Read more ...
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America's climate boomtowns are waiting - The Atlantic (Mar 23) |
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Mar 23 · Rising temperatures could push millions of people north.
As my airplane flew low over the flatlands of western Michigan on a dreary December afternoon, sunbursts splintered the soot-toned clouds and made mirrors out of the flooded fields below. There was plenty of rain in this part of the Rust Belt - sometimes too much. Past the endless acres, I could make out the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, then soon, in the other direction, the Detroit River, Lakes Huron and Erie, and southern Canada. In a world running short on fresh water in its lakes and rivers, more than 20 percent of that water was right here. From a climate standpoint, there couldn’t be a safer place in the country ... Read more ...
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Joe Biden and Donald Trump have thoughts about your next car - The Atlantic (Mar 20) |
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Mar 20 · Get ready for the EV election.
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The Biden administration earlier today issued a major new rule intended to spur the country’s electric-vehicle industry and slash future sales of new gas-powered cars. The rule is not a ban on gas cars, nor does it mandate electric-vehicle sales. It is a new emissions standard, requiring automakers to cut the average carbon emission of their fleets by nearly 50 percent by 2032.
This would speed up the transformation of the car ... Read more ...
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America could be in for a rough fall - The Atlantic (Sep 06, 2023) |
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Sep 06, 2023 · The weather is about to get even weirder.
On Labor Day, you could drive from Minnesota’s border with Canada all the way to where Louisiana hits the Gulf of Mexico and not encounter a high under 90 degrees. The heat hasn’t broken: Today, nearly a third of Americans are sweltering under heat alerts.
Such weather is a fitting end to a devastating season, the kind you run out of superlatives for. This summer, climate extremes suddenly seemed to be everywhere, all at once. It was the world’s hottest June since humans started keeping track. July was even worse. Phoenix - which averaged 102 degrees in July - got so hot that people received third-degree burns from touching ... Read more ...
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What Your Insurer Is Trying to Tell You About Climate Change - The Atlantic (Aug 28, 2023) |
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Aug 28, 2023 · Insurers are trying to send a message. The government is trying to suppress it.
Having worked for decades in conservation nonprofits, Beth Pratt, who lives high in the Sierra Foothills in Midpines, California, understands how climate change is putting her home at ever greater risk. Her community is experiencing what she calls “climate whiplash”: forest fires, record heat, massive snow dumps, mudslides, rockslides, and even a tornado.
When Pratt, now 54, bought her 1,400-square-foot house in 1999, she thought the setting was ideal: on a big lot near Yosemite National Park. As recently as a decade ago, she told me by Zoom one recent morning, she didn’t particularly worry ... Read more ...
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The internet's next great power suck - The Atlantic (Aug 23, 2023) |
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Aug 23, 2023 · AI’s carbon emissions are about to be a problem.
All of that was before the generative-AI boom. Compared with many other things we use online, ChatGPT and its brethren are unique in their power usage. AI risks making every search, scroll, click, and purchase a bit more energy intensive as Silicon Valley rushes to stuff the technology into search engines, photo-editing software, shopping and financial and writing and customer-service assistants, and just about every other digital crevice. Compounded over nearly 5 billion internet users, the toll on the climate could be enormous. “Within the near future, at least the next five years, we will see a big increase in the carbon ... Read more ...
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Vermont was supposed to be a climate haven - The Atlantic (Jul 21, 2023) |
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Jul 21, 2023 · Lamoille County, Vermont, is home to 26,000 people living in small towns nestled among the woods and mountains. It’s known for two ski resorts - Stowe and Smugglers’ Notch - and a winding river where locals and tourists fly-fish and canoe. In 2020, a ProPublica analysis identified Lamoille as the one county, across the entire United States, that could be most protected from the combined effects of climate change, including sea-level rise, wildfires, crop damage, and economic impact. But that was before the floods.
Earlier this month, five to 10 inches of rain fell in Morrisville, near the center of the county. Roads were destroyed in nearby Wolcott. Thirty people were ... Read more ...
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The West agreed to pay climate reparations - The Atlantic (Mar 29, 2023) |
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Mar 29, 2023 · Breaking:Manhattan grand jury indicts former President Donald Trump
At this point, the UN fund is “an empty bucket.” How full could it get?
Sign up for The Weekly Planet, The Atlantic’s newsletter about living through climate change, here.
Last year, Pakistan was hit with floods so devastating that they were hard to comprehend. In some areas, 15 inches of rain fell in a single day. And the rain went on for months, inundating one-third of the country, spreading disease, and displacing nearly 8 million people. Six months later, Pakistan is still in crisis - nearly 2 million people are living near stagnant floodwater. Pakistan has estimated that it needs about $16.3 ... Read more ...
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Fighting Climate Change Was Costly. Now It’s Profitable. - The Atlantic (Feb 08, 2023) |
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Feb 08, 2023 · Just how far can this climate momentum take us?
Sign up for The Weekly Planet, The Atlantic’s newsletter about living through climate change, here.
It is a good time to be in the decarbonization business in the United States. The Inflation Reduction Act - with its $374 billion cornucopia of green incentives, subsidies, and grants - was designed to entice private companies to invest in the transition away from fossil fuels. Initial reports already suggest that the IRA may be working. An analysis by American Clean Power, a lobbying group of renewable-energy companies, indicates that even just the anticipation of its bounty catalyzed $40 billion in investments and created ... Read more ...
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Electric Vehicles Are Bringing Out the Worst in Us - The Atlantic (Jan 04, 2023) |
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Jan 04, 2023 · The downside of heavy, overpowered trucks and SUVs
American car executives keep insisting that there is no trade-off between saving the planet and having a hell of a good time behind the wheel. “What I find particularly gratifying,” Ford’s executive chair, Bill Ford, said in April as he unveiled his company’s new electric truck, “is not only is this a green F-150, but it’s a better F-150 … You’re actually gaining things that the internal combustion engine doesn’t have.” Mary Barra, the CEO of General Motors, sounded equally bullish in a recent social-media post: “Once you’ve experienced an [electric vehicle] and all it has to offer - the torque, handling, performance, ... Read more ...
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Climate Action Won - The Atlantic (Nov 11, 2022) |
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Nov 11, 2022 · Democrats braced for a midterm backlash to the Inflation Reduction Act. It never came.
Probably the best day for climate action in American political history was August 7, 2022, when the Senate overcame 30 years of sclerosis and passed the Inflation Reduction Act, the country’s first comprehensive climate bill. After that day, the bill’s adoption into law was all but assured, and it sailed through the House and reached the president’s desk.
But perhaps the second most important day for American climate policy was this past Tuesday. Democrats’ surprisingly strong showing in the midterm elections will prove to be a landmark in the history of how the country has handled ... Read more ...
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The Paris Agreement Is Working … for Now - The Atlantic (Nov 09, 2022) |
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Nov 09, 2022 · The world’s much-maligned climate treaty has produced some stunning results.
This week, tens of thousands of diplomats, activists, and world leaders are gathering in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, for the annual United Nations climate summit, known as COP27. They’re meeting to discuss the ongoing implementation of the Paris Agreement, the global climate treaty that was finalized in 2015. The key issue is likely to be the pact’s “loss and damage” provisions - diplomatic shorthand for whether rich countries, which have emitted the bulk of carbon pollution into the atmosphere, should reimburse poor countries facing climate-change-intensified disasters. It’s one of the most controversial ... Read more ...
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The climate art vandals are embarrassing - The Atlantic (Oct 27, 2022) |
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Oct 27, 2022 · Aesthetics matter in politics. But not like … this.
Earlier this month, two young people visiting room 43 of the National Gallery in London shed overcoats to reveal T-shirts printed with the name of their activist group, JUST STOP OIL. Then they poured tomato soup across one of Vincent Van Gogh’s sunflower paintings, turned around, and glued their hands to the wall. “What is worth more: art or life?” one of the activists asked. “Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting or the protection of our planet and people?”
Then it happened again, and again. Last weekend, two activists associated with Letzte Generation, a German climate-activist group, splattered ... Read more ...
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A plan to cool off the hottest neighborhoods - The Atlantic (Oct 26, 2022) |
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Oct 26, 2022 · As the climate changes, hyperlocal projects are helping keep disadvantaged areas livable.
“Grandma, is the air on?” Kisha Skipper was worried. She’s the vice president of the Yonkers NAACP and a member of the Climate Safe Yonkers Task Force, a group that’s planning projects to make the city safer in a hotter world. And she could see her 95-year-old grandmother sweating on the video call.
Skipper’s grandmother is reluctant to turn on her air-conditioning even on the hottest days, because running the unit costs money and she’s on a fixed income. Every dollar is already spoken for. “I am going to turn it on right now,” she tells Skipper whenever she asks. But Skipper fears ... Read more ...
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Wildfires Quietly Threaten a Crucial Water Source in the West — The Atlantic - The Atlantic (Sep 25, 2022) |
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Sep 25, 2022 · Snow is melting earlier in fire-ravaged areas, with potentially disastrous consequences.
This article was originally published in High Country News.
The ground beneath the researcher Stephanie Kampf’s boots was black and burned to a sooty crisp in June 2021 as she walked across the burn scar left by the Cameron Peak Fire of 2020. A summer after the fire engulfed more than 200,000 acres in flames, there was no snow to be found in its footprint - despite the fact that it was almost 10,000 feet above sea level, where snow often persists in Colorado. However, in a nearby stand of unburned trees, Kampf noted that some “nice snow” did appear. “It was really striking,” she ... Read more ...
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What Many Progressives Misunderstand About Fighting Climate Change — The Atlantic - The Atlantic (Sep 25, 2022) |
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Sep 25, 2022 · Wishful thinking hampers the clean-energy revolution.
About the author: Alec Stapp is a co-founder of the Institute for Progress.
Since the 1960s, fighting for the environment has frequently meant fighting against corporations. To curb pollution, activists have worked to thwart new oil drilling, coal-fired power plants, fracking for natural gas, and fuel pipelines. But today, Americans face a climate challenge that can’t be solved by just saying no again and again.
Decarbonizing the economy will require an unprecedented amount of new energy investment. Fossil-fuel infrastructure built over centuries needs to be replaced within the next few decades by clean-energy ... Read more ...
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The East Coast will not escape fire - The Atlantic (Sep 19, 2022) |
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Sep 19, 2022 · Even parts of the country normally considered “wet” are drying out, with dangerous results.
The lawns are dead. Trees that should be green have turned brittle and brown. And highway signs caution drivers not to flick cigarettes out the window. These conditions have become the norm of summer and its high fire risk in the western United States. But this is not California, or Colorado, or Idaho. This is New Jersey. And during this summer’s thirsty days, undergirded by climate change, the state has gotten far too little rain.
“We’re in the midst of a very dry spell,” David Robinson, New Jersey’s state climatologist, told me. “Borderline drought in central New Jersey, and dry ... Read more ...
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A very California lesson on just how weird electricity is - The Atlantic (Sep 13, 2022) |
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Sep 13, 2022 · The state’s record-smashing heat wave is a window into the future … and it’s okay.
Last week, Americans had a rare view into what the future might look like. It came from California, as usual, but it was not courtesy of Apple’s annual keynote, or indeed of any technology company. It came from the state’s electricity grid.
Wait - wait! Don’t click away yet. Electricity is, I hasten to add, extremely interesting. It is the energy source of the future. In basically any world in which America addresses climate change and zeroes out carbon pollution from its economy, we will have to use more electricity. Electricity will propel our cars, cook our food, and heat our homes. And ... Read more ...
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California's Water-Saving Policies Could Start a Mini Dust Bowl — The Atlantic - The Atlantic (Sep 10, 2022) |
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Sep 10, 2022 · Conserving groundwater could lead to dirtier air in some of the state’s most vulnerable communities.
This article was originally published in High Country News.
For a century, California’s San Joaquin Valley has been called “the food basket of the world.” The 27,000-square-mile region produces roughly $35 billion worth of food a year, a productivity made possible only by its large-scale irrigation projects and groundwater pumping. In 2014, however, California passed the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), making it the last Western state to regulate its groundwater - and bringing the San Joaquin Valley into compliance with the law will require retiring at ... Read more ...
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And despite the pushback that industry voices gave to Rob Meyer for his - The Atlantic (Sep 07, 2022) |
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Sep 07, 2022 · The electricity industry knew about the dangers of climate change 40 years ago. It denied them anyway.
The MIT professor was unequivocal.
“If we had to stop producing CO2, no coal, oil, or gas could be burned,” Carroll Wilson declared. The world would have to adopt nuclear energy en masse and perhaps even turn to “electric motor vehicles.”
It was June 9, 1971. Wilson, a management professor, wasn’t speaking at an environmental rally or a scientific meeting. He was talking to a room full of engineers and businessmen who had gathered in Cleveland, Ohio, for the electricity industry’s annual conference.
His speech was as up-to-date a discussion of climate ... Read more ...
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It wasn't just oil companies spreading climate denial - The Atlantic (Sep 07, 2022) |
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Sep 07, 2022 · The electricity industry knew about the dangers of climate change 40 years ago. It denied them anyway.
The MIT professor was unequivocal.
“If we had to stop producing CO2, no coal, oil, or gas could be burned,” Carroll Wilson declared. The world would have to adopt nuclear energy en masse and perhaps even turn to “electric motor vehicles.”
It was June 9, 1971. Wilson, a management professor, wasn’t speaking at an environmental rally or a scientific meeting. He was talking to a room full of engineers and businessmen who had gathered in Cleveland, Ohio, for the electricity industry’s annual conference.
His speech was as up-to-date a discussion of climate ... Read more ...
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It wasn't just oil companies spreading climate denial - The Atlantic (Sep 07, 2022) |
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Sep 07, 2022 · The electricity industry knew about the dangers of climate change 40 years ago. It denied them anyway.
The MIT professor was unequivocal.
“If we had to stop producing CO2, no coal, oil, or gas could be burned,” Carroll Wilson declared. The world would have to adopt nuclear energy en masse and perhaps even turn to “electric motor vehicles.”
It was June 9, 1971. Wilson, a management professor, wasn’t speaking at an environmental rally or a scientific meeting. He was talking to a room full of engineers and businessmen who had gathered in Cleveland, Ohio, for the electricity industry’s annual conference.
His speech was as up-to-date a discussion of climate ... Read more ...
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‘The biggest thing to happen in international climate diplomacy in decades' - The Atlantic (Aug 31, 2022) |
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Aug 31, 2022 · The Inflation Reduction Act could change the world in at least five ways.
Sign up for The Weekly Planet, Robinson Meyer’s newsletter about living through climate change, here.
Nearly seven years ago, a single mischosen word nearly killed the Paris Agreement.
With only hours left to go on the final day of the talks, American diplomats noticed a discrepancy in the new climate agreement’s text. Where previous drafts of the pact had said that rich countries “should” take the lead on preparing greenhouse-gas reductions plans, the final draft replaced that word with the more definitive “shall.” If the new treaty had created new binding legal requirements for the United ... Read more ...
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The EPA just quietly got stronger - The Atlantic (Aug 24, 2022) |
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Aug 24, 2022 · The new climate bill isn’t quite “all carrots, no sticks.”
Sign up for The Weekly Planet, Robinson Meyer’s newsletter about living through climate change, here.
All carrots, no sticks. That is the story of the Inflation Reduction Act. Since the law was unveiled last month, savvy commentators have noted that its policies consist almost entirely of “carrots,” incentives meant to encourage companies to decarbonize, with very few “sticks,” policies meant to punish them for using fossil fuels or emitting carbon. (Just so we’re clear: This analogy is meant to invoke a stubborn donkey that, Looney Tunes–style, is craning to reach a carrot hanging in front of its face while its ... Read more ...
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Biden's climate law is ending 40 years of hands-off government - The Atlantic (Aug 18, 2022) |
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Aug 18, 2022 · For America to decarbonize, it must reindustrialize.
On Tuesday, President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law. It is no exaggeration to say that his signature immediately severed the history of climate change in America into two eras. Before the IRA, climate campaigners spent decades trying and failing to get a climate bill through the Senate. After it, the federal government will spend $374 billion on clean energy and climate resilience over the next 10 years. The bill is estimated to reduce the country’s greenhouse-gas emissions by about 40 percent below their all-time high, getting the country two-thirds of the way to meeting its 2030 goal under the Paris ... Read more ...
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Not even a single Republican voted for the climate bill - The Atlantic (Aug 12, 2022) |
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Aug 12, 2022 · The Inflation Reduction Act is unmistakably partisan. Can the GOP undo it?
The Inflation Reduction Act, passed by the House of Representatives today, is about to become the first comprehensive climate legislation in U.S. history. Compared with Congress’s desultory approach to the issue in the past, the numbers are striking: The legislation will spend roughly $374 billion on decarbonization and climate resilience over the next 10 years, getting us two-thirds of the way to America’s Paris Agreement goals.
But perhaps the most important number about the package is zero. Zero Republicans in the House. Zero Republicans in the Senate. The IRA was adopted entirely along party ... Read more ...
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Congress just passed a big climate bill - The Atlantic (Aug 10, 2022) |
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Aug 10, 2022 · A bipartisan act is quietly about to invest billions in boosting green technology.
Sign up for The Weekly Planet, Robinson Meyer’s newsletter about living through climate change, here.
Yesterday, President Joe Biden signed into law one of the most significant investments in fighting climate change ever undertaken by the United States. The new act will boost efforts to manufacture more zero-carbon technology in America, establish a new federal office to organize clean-energy innovation, and direct billions of dollars toward disaster-resilience research.
No, I’m not talking about the Inflation Reduction Act, the landmark Democratic climate and taxes bill that passed ... Read more ...
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Congress Just Passed a Big Climate Bill. No, Not That One. - The Atlantic (Aug 10, 2022) |
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Aug 10, 2022 · A bipartisan act is quietly about to invest billions in boosting green technology.
Sign up for The Weekly Planet, Robinson Meyer’s newsletter about living through climate change, here.
Yesterday, President Joe Biden signed into law one of the most significant investments in fighting climate change ever undertaken by the United States. The new act will boost efforts to manufacture more zero-carbon technology in America, establish a new federal office to organize clean-energy innovation, and direct billions of dollars toward disaster-resilience research.
No, I’m not talking about the Inflation Reduction Act, the landmark Democratic climate and taxes bill that passed ... Read more ...
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The climate bill would change the course of the 2020s - The Atlantic (Aug 03, 2022) |
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Aug 03, 2022 · The Senate deal would change the course of the 2020s, finally putting America’s climate goals in sight.
First we got the bill. Now we have the numbers. The Inflation Reduction Act, the surprise deal that Senator Joe Manchin and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer struck last week, would significantly reduce greenhouse-gas pollution from the American economy. If passed, the bill would cut annual emissions by as much as 44 percent by the end of this decade, according to a new set of analyses from three independent research firms.
That would make the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, the most significant climate bill ever passed by Congress. No law has ever made such a big ... Read more ...
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100 degrees fahrenheit is just a number - The Atlantic (Aug 03, 2022) |
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Aug 03, 2022 · But it sure feels bad.
It’s hot outside. It’s been hot outside pretty much everywhere this summer. On five continents. In China, which is less than halfway through a predicted 40 days of extreme heat. In the United Kingdom, which recently set its new all-time heat record. In Seville, which for the first time named a heat wave. (Hi, Zoe.) And in the United States - very recently in Northern California, where a historic drought and the heat have conspired to create ideal conditions for wildfires, and in Oregon, where authorities have preliminarily blamed heat for at least 14 deaths; now in Kentucky, where it will compound deadly flash flooding that has left whole communities ... Read more ...
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The World Needs to Start Planning for the Fire Age — The Atlantic - The Atlantic (Jul 28, 2022) |
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Jul 28, 2022 · The science of when to evacuate a community - and how - is still in its infancy.
About the author: Caroline Mimbs Nyce is a staff writer at The Atlantic.
Tens of thousands of people around the world have been evacuated this summer because of wildfires. Fires are burning in Portugal and Italy and Greece and Spain and France (and California and Alaska and Texas). And yet, when it comes to things like planning evacuations, best practices don’t really exist - there’s no book to consult, no checklist to follow.
The reason for this is that wildfire-evacuation research is still in its infancy. “Wildfires only started to emerge as a major disaster in recent years,” Xilei ... Read more ...
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Deforestation Is Bad. De-grass-ification Is Worse. — The Atlantic - The Atlantic (Jul 25, 2022) |
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Jul 25, 2022 · Preserving the world’s great expanses of grass could be essential to combatting climate change.
Once upon a time, not a blade of grass could be found on this planet we call home. There were no verdant meadows, no golden prairies, no sunbaked savannas, and certainly no lawns. Only in the past 80 million years - long after the appearance of mosses, trees, and flowers - did the first shoots of grass emerge. We know this in part because a dinosaur ate some, and its fossilized poop forever memorialized the plant’s arrival.
Grass then was still an odd little weed, vying for a spot on the forest floor. It took ages for grasses to grow in numbers that might constitute a ... Read more ...
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We've had other climate defeats. This one is by far the weirdest. - The Atlantic (Jul 20, 2022) |
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Jul 20, 2022 · Seven ways of looking at where climate action goes from here
When I started writing about climate change a few years ago, I tried to give readers regular dollops of hope with their gruel. I focused on renewable energy (which was getting cheaper) and American carbon emissions (which were falling) at the same time that I covered sea-level rise, extreme weather, or the collapse of major ecosystems.
The point wasn’t to sanitize the deterioration of the planet. It was to report on the topic honestly. Even after President Donald Trump took office, you could look across the economy and see bright spots of decarbonization, if only policy makers would capitalize on ... Read more ...
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When does the clean-energy infinity loop start? - The Atlantic (Jul 13, 2022) |
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Jul 13, 2022 · Digging up minerals for rechargeable batteries has a high initial cost, but eventually those minerals can be recycled indefinitely.
Last month, my 1983 Volvo broke down in a remote part of Oregon. It took two days to get a replacement fuel pump. In those two days, sitting in the dry High Desert heat in a plastic chair outside the shop, waiting for mechanics to completely replace the ancient fuel lines under my beloved little sedan, I spent a lot of time thinking about buying an electric vehicle. What was I, an environmental journalist, doing burning fossil fuels on the daily just to get to point B? In 2022? It was shameful.
These days, the hot slogan among the climate ... Read more ...
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Whatever this is, it won't be Build Back Better - The Atlantic (Jul 13, 2022) |
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Jul 13, 2022 · At this point, the ideal climate bill is out of the picture. Here are two ways to make sense of Democrats’ next move.
Sign up for The Weekly Planet, Robinson Meyer’s newsletter about living through climate change, here.
Welcome, all. We are gathered here today to mourn Build Back Better, President Joe Biden’s overstuffed and too ambitious domestic-policy package.
It had its flaws, of course. We all do. But I am not here to dwell upon any of those. I wish, instead, to speak only of BBB’s climate provisions, because, had the bill passed, it would have been the most aggressive action against climate change we have ever seen from Congress.
Build Back Better would ... Read more ...
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‘Greenwashing' isn't about consumers - The Atlantic (Jun 29, 2022) |
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Jun 29, 2022 · Corporate climate action has become an employee perk
Sign up for The Weekly Planet, Robinson Meyer’s newsletter about living through climate change, here.
In February, Bank of America offered its employees a notable perk: If they had worked at the bank for at least three years, and made less than $250,000, then it would give them $4,000 to buy a new electric car. (Employees interested in merely leasing an EV could claim $2,000.) The move, attached to a company-wide round of salary increases, wasn’t the first time that the bank had made the offer; it had made a similar one in 2015, and again in 2020, although those incentives had also applied to gas-electric ... Read more ...
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Full-bodied with notes of band-aid and medicine - The Atlantic (Jun 26, 2022) |
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Jun 26, 2022 · Climate change is altering wine as we know it.
This article was originally published by Knowable Magazine.
Soon after the devastating Glass Fire sparked in California’s Napa Valley in September 2020, wine chemist Anita Oberholster’s inbox was brimming with hundreds of emails from panicked viticulturists. They wanted to know if they could harvest their grapes without a dreaded effect on their wine: the odious ashtray flavor known as smoke taint.
Oberholster, of UC Davis, could only tell them, “Maybe.”
Industry laboratories were slammed with grape samples to test, with wait times of up to six weeks. Growers didn’t know whether it was worth harvesting their ... Read more ...
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How to be a good person without annoying everyone - The Atlantic (Jun 22, 2022) |
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Jun 22, 2022 · The Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade. Read The Atlantic’s full coverage of the abortion debate.
There’s a simple trick to provoking better behavior, without seeming like a self-righteous jerk.
You’ve heard the joke: How do you know someone’s vegan? Don’t worry; they’ll tell you. The punch line to the punch line, though, is that they very deliberately may not.
Vegans and vegetarians are aware of their reputation as sanctimonious killjoys - so aware that nearly half of the non-meat-eating participants in one recent study declined to promote vegetarian options when in the company of unsympathetic meat eaters. Their caution is well founded: The people ... Read more ...
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A hotter, poorer, and less free America - The Atlantic (Jun 15, 2022) |
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Jun 15, 2022 · In the next few weeks, Senate Democrats could fall short - for arguably the third time in 30 years - of passing a climate deal. What will that mean for the planet and the country?
For the past 18 months, Senate Democrats have been trying to find a climate deal acceptable to all 50 of their members. The main obstacles, so far, have been Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, the owner of a coal-trading company, who wants any deal to reduce the federal budget deficit, and Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who refuses to increase tax rates, the easiest way to satisfy Manchin’s deficit-reduction goal. Senators are now back at the negotiating table, trying to work within the rules ... Read more ...
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Biden's Climate Goals Rest on a 71-Year-Old Defense Law — The Atlantic - The Atlantic (Jun 08, 2022) |
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Jun 08, 2022 · The Defense Production Act has become an important tool as the White House’s climate policy has stalled in Congress.
Sign up for The Weekly Planet, Robinson Meyer’s newsletter about living through climate change, here.
A legal relic dating back to the Korean War has become one of the White House’s most important tools to pursue its climate goals.
On Monday, the White House announced that it was invoking the Defense Production Act to boost manufacturing of certain technologies that will be essential for decarbonization, such as solar panels, heat pumps, and transformers for the electrical grid. This move may sound like standard federal paper-shuffling (heat ... Read more ...
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