Politics

Climate Change

Burning Up

Reading John Vaillant’s Fire Weather and Jeff Goodell’s The Heat Will Kill You First, you may wonder if civilization is getting so hot that we’re no longer thinking straight.

May 9, 2024 issue

Michelle Nijhuis

The Digital Planet

Digital technologies may worsen environmental problems, but they can also assist in the protection and restoration of ecosystems —and strengthen our relationships with them.

April 18, 2024 issue

Verlyn Klinkenborg

The Cost of Our Debris

The stated purpose of Jay Owens’s new book is to “think with dust,” specifically “human-made” dust and what it reveals—the forensic fingerprint, so to speak, that our species has left upon this planet.

March 21, 2024 issue

Emily Raboteau

A New Environmental Canon

New books by Camille Dungy and Elizabeth Rush argue that the ethics of care we often associate with maternity is crucial in combating issues as large as the climate crisis.

February 22, 2024 issue

Rachel Nolan

The Forest Eaters

In 2017, the Brazilian journalist Eliane Brum moved from São Paulo to a small city in the Amazon. Her new book vividly uncovers how the rainforest is illegally seized and destroyed.

February 22, 2024 issue

Nicolas Niarchos

In Congo’s Cobalt Mines

The lucrative mining industry is unscrupulous, environmentally disastrous, and a linchpin of Congo’s economy. How can it be reformed?

December 7, 2023 issue

Bill McKibben

Toward a Land of Buses and Bikes

There is more housing for each car in the United States than there is for each person.

October 5, 2023 issue

Jonathan Mingle

Après-Ski

Climate change is rendering the winter season shorter, warmer, and more erratic. What are we losing beyond the alpine resort?

May 11, 2023 issue

Our Waning Winter

Sophie Pinkham

A Hotter Russia

The cliché, avidly promoted by Moscow, is that Russia will be a relative winner in climate change, but a new book argues that the country will find itself in trouble.

June 23, 2022 issue

Tim Flannery

The Big Melt

Sometimes, it seems, threats to our future become so great that we opt to ignore them.

August 16, 2018 issue

Gerhard Richter: Iceberg in Mist, 1982; from ‘Gerhard Richter: Painting After All,’ an exhibition at the Met Breuer. For more on the exhibition, see Susan Tallman’s essay on pages 4–8 of this issue.

Jonathan Mingle

A World Without Ice

The project before us is paradoxical: thinking on long time scales while acting with furious urgency.

May 14, 2020 issue

Zadie Smith

Elegy for a Country’s Seasons

It’s hard to keep apocalypse consistently in mind, especially if you want to get out of bed in the morning.

April 3, 2014 issue

Adam Hanieh

The Climate Finance Racket

By investing in climate finance while accelerating fossil fuel production, the Gulf states are playing all sides of the energy market.

November 11, 2024

Olivia Paschal

Who Owns the Mountains?

Hurricane Helene has revived urgent questions about the politics of land in Appalachia. In western North Carolina, those questions have everything to do with the booming tourist economy.

November 3, 2024

Michelle Nijhuis

Life in the Ruins

Two new books consider the delusion of the human quest to be free from the constraints of nature.

November 21, 2024 issue

Jonathan Mingle

Planet 2025

Donald Trump’s war on what he calls the “deep state” and his broader war on climate science are neatly aligned.

October 30, 2024

Verlyn Klinkenborg

What the Ocean Holds

Most of our planet’s biosphere exists in the dark of the deep ocean. Will we protect it? Or will we cash it in without concern for the harm we’re causing?

October 17, 2024 issue

Vanessa Ogle

Shipping’s Shadow World

The shipping industry, which moves more than 80 percent of global trade, is poorly regulated, environmentally dangerous, and rife with labor violations.

April 9, 2024

Christopher Bosso

Eyes on the Farm Bill!

Congress’s periodic battles over the Farm Bill often pass unnoticed, but the document effectively determines what, how, and how much we eat.

March 10, 2024

Adam Hanieh

‘Every Molecule of Hydrocarbon Will Come Out’

Gulf States are increasingly shaping global climate policy, even as they plan to accelerate fossil fuel production.

February 21, 2024

Caroline Tracey

Stopping the Old Rio Grande

In the 1950s the construction of a dam on the Texas–Mexico border displaced communities from their land—and anticipated the wall-building underway today.

January 11, 2024

Jonathan Mingle

The Crash to Come

Insurance companies have responded to climate disasters by raising premiums and dropping customers. Now there’s a new housing bubble waiting to burst.

November 11, 2023