climate change 
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2/18/2021
The Texas Weather and Power Catastrophe
by HNN Staff
The combination of severe winter storms and persistent cold and a deregulated energy supply system without compulsion to invest in winterization has left Texans without power, heat or drinking water for days. Senator Ted Cruz appears to have decamped to Cancun while politicians blame wind and solar power for frozen natural gas refineries.
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SOURCE: LA Progressive
12/2/2020
"A Life on Our Planet" Provides Environmental Hope
by Walter G. Moss
Although the recent Netflix documentary on the global environment describes a grim present, it explains a path forward that is simple (if the political will can be found).
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SOURCE: TomDispatch
11/12/2020
A Convergence of Calamities: The War Refugee Crisis will be Dwarfed by Climate
by Nick Turse
The crisis of people displaced by war is set to be compounded by the accelerating problems of desertification, drought, flooding and famine brought on by climate change.
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SOURCE: BBC
9/23/2020
Are We Living at the "Hinge of History"?
Journalist Richard Fisher examines the argument that the present--this moment--is the most important juncture in human history because human capacity to affect the planet outstrips human wisdom to direct that capacity.
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SOURCE: The New Yorker
8/26/2020
Why Hurricane Katrina Was Not a Natural Disaster
by Nicholas Lemann
Fifteen years ago, New Orleans was nearly destroyed. A new book by Tulane historian Andy Horowitz suggests that the cause was decades of bad policy—and that nothing has changed.
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SOURCE: TIME
8/4/2020
How Understanding the History of Hurricanes Can Help Us Prepare for the Next Big One
by Eric Jay Dolin
We, as a society, can decide how best to respond to the continued barrage that is sure to come from the greatest storms on earth, thereby lessening their impact.
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7/12/2020
Humanity is an Endangered Species. Can We Do What it Takes to Save Ourselves?
by Lawrence Wittner
The dire crises facing humanity--climate change, pandemic disease, widespread pollution, and nuclear weapons, to name a few--demand that we reject a fatalistic sense of impotence and the legacies of nationalism that prevent cooperative solutions.
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SOURCE: Tropics of Meta
7/1/2020
Underwater: Global Warming to Flood the Former Ports of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
by Daniel B. Domingues da Silva
How will the inundation of historic seaports as climate change progresses affect historical memory of the Atlantic slave trade?
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SOURCE: ABC (Australia)
5/25/2020
Australia Heading Into New 'Fire Age', Warns Global Fire Historian
Thirty years ago, Stephen J. Pyne wrote the definitive history of fire in Australia and has just released an updated version of his book, Still Burning Bush.
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SOURCE: West Virginia Public Broadcasting
5/15/2020
What History Tells Us About Building Climate Coalitions
Author Matto Mildenberger has examined how politics have shaped decades of climate policy in his new book, "Carbon Captured: How Business and Labor Control Climate Politics."
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SOURCE: TomDispatch
4/28/2020
The Beginning of the End for Oil?
by Michael T. Klare
If there is a silver lining to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is that it creates the conditions necessary to do what we have known was necessessary for decades: drastically curtail fossil fuel consumption.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
4/26/2020
How Past Crises Changed America’s Public Schools — ‘And so too Will COVID-19’
by Ann Marie Ryan and Charles Tocci
While this certainly feels unprecedented, the history of American public schooling shows us it's not.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
4/21/2020
50 Years Later, Earth Day’s Unsolved Problem: How to Build a More Sustainable World
The first celebration called for people to change their relationship with the planet. After a half-century, we’re still figuring out what that means.
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4/21/2020
After 50 years of Earth Day, Will we Have 100?
by Kimberlee Hurley
This fiftieth celebration of Earth Day should serve as a celebration of the work that has been done. However, it should also serve as a wake-up call for the work that still needs to be done.
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4/21/2020
50th Anniversary of Earth Day, Occasion for Hope and Action
by Fred Zilian
Organized by Denis Hayes, the first Earth Day was celebrated in ceremonies at some two thousand colleges and universities, ten thousand primary and secondary schools, and hundreds of communities across the U.S.
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SOURCE: The New York Times
4/19/2020
Ten Years After Deepwater Horizon, U.S. Is Still Vulnerable to Catastrophic Spills
Members of the bipartisan commission created to investigate the spill say Congress and the Trump administration have failed to take safety seriously.
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SOURCE: The New York Times
4/20/2020
The ‘Profoundly Radical’ Message of Earth Day’s First Organizer
Denis Hayes organized the first Earth Day in 1970. Since then, he has continued fighting for environmental justice.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
4/16/2020
The Western U.S. is Locked in the Grips of the First Human-Caused Megadrought, Study Finds
Unlike historical megadroughts triggered by natural climate cycles, emissions of heat-trapping gases from human activities have contributed to the current one, the study finds.
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SOURCE: PBS
4/5/2020
Will The Coronavirus Change How Skeptics Think About Science?
Naomi Oreskes, professor of the history of science at Harvard University and author of “Why Trust Science?” explores whether or not the world's lack of preparation for the coronavirus outbreak has a silver lining.
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SOURCE: Washington Monthly
4/7/2020
When Environmentalists Won Over the Supreme Court
How one improbable legal case drove the federal government to regulate greenhouse gases.
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