climate change

Reading Peter Frankopan's Ambitious Planetary History

by Walter G. Moss

The Oxford historian's new book is a work of immense scope that succeeds in making human interaction with the environment a central character in history and argues for urgent action against the climate change that could write the final pages of that story.

Can Activists Use Banking Regulations to Force Decarbonization?

by Bart Elmore

After Clinton-era reforms enabled consolidation of the banking industry, environmental groups in the early 2000s began to target the commercial banking sides of the firms that raised capital and provided credit to the fossil fuels industry. 

"An Inconvenient Truth" Shows the Missed Opportunities to Act on Climate Change

by Robert Brent Toplin

Al Gore's documentary project was more influential on the public than on the political system when it came to advancing awareness of climate change. One wonders what might have been if Gore had been advancing his message from the Oval Office 20 years ago. 

Climate Policy Needs a Return to Land Reform

by Jo Guldi

In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, the United Nations' international development agenda took its cues from struggles for decolonization from Ireland to India, making the redistribution of rural land a top priority. Is this the key to more effective climate change mitigation? 

Historical Data on Mosquito Range Shows Climate Change is Spreading Malaria Risk

Data stretching back to 1898 show mosquitoes spreading further from the equator in Africa year by year, with recent acceleration consistent with climate change estimates.

Exxon's Scientists Predicted Warming for Decades While Exxon Executives Sowed Doubt

Predictions made by Exxon's own scientists beginning in the 1970s accurately tracked the actual progress of subsequent warming, and those scientists explicitly contradicted dismissals of anthropogenic climate change linked to fossil fuels. 

Historians of Science: What Exxon Knew About Oil and the Climate, and When

Exxon Mobil's internal documents show that since the late 1970s the company's researchers agreed with academic scientists' predictions of global warming—but continued for decades to pretend that the science was too uncertain to justify constraining the industry. 

How is the Biden Doctrine Working after Two Years?

by Matt Duss and Stephen Wertheim

After pledging to reorient foreign policy around the global issues affecting Americans – climate, disease, and ending "forever wars" – progress toward a Biden Doctrine has been incremental. 

We Know About Fire. What Does Ice Tell Us About Humanity's Past and Future?

by Fred Hogge

Harnessing cold – both natural and artificially-created—has been a key support for human flourishing, but also a factor in the consumption of resources that imperils the environment. 

Melting European Glaciers Yielding Artifacts Faster than Archaeologists Can Keep Up

Artifacts trapped in glacial ice are valuable because they are preserved; for archaeologists, climate change means both glaciers and artifacts are at risk. 

God Save Us From the Economists

by Timothy Noah

Actress Jayne Mansfield was killed in a 1967 traffic accident; a truck trailer safety regulation review prompted in part by her highly public demise was finally implemented in 1996, after nearly 9,000 people were killed in similar crashes. Why? Blame a bipartisan faith in economists as policymakers. 

Will Other Elite Unis Follow Princeton's Lead in Rejecting Fossil Fuel Money?

by Ilana Cohen and Michael E. Mann

A student movement is realizing its first successes in convincing university administrators to refuse donations that, activists argue, inevitably compromise the integrity of university research on climate change. 

Ancient Flood Tales May be More than Myth

The climate crisis is pushing some historians and folklorists to reconsider indigenous societies' origin stories of flooding and geographic cataclysm. Should science take this perspective into account? 

How Fossil Fuel Dollars Warped University Climate Research

Fossil fuel profit "secures favorable white papers, journals, societies, public-policy comments, courtroom testimony, and front groups that attack what the industry sees as damaging science," copying the 1950s playbook of the tobacco industry with more money and higher stakes. 

The Fatal Attraction to Florida

by Diane Roberts

Growth may make the Sunshine State unlivable. 

Not Just Oil: The Electricity Industry Fed Climate Change Denial for Decades

Like the petroleum industry, America's electric utilities deliberately sowed confusion about the growing scientific consensus on climate change in order to influence policy and protect profits. 

On Climate, the British Monarchy Mortgaged the Planet's Future

by Priya Satia

The monarchy, as a cultural core of the British empire, papered over the separation and alienation among humans resulting from the conversion of the Earth to a set of exploitable commodities. 

History's Greatest Barrier to Climate Action—the Senate—May Have Fallen

Critics have legitimate disagreements with the scope and urgency of climate action enabled by the just-passed Inflation Reduction Act. But it's a departure from precedent for the Senate to do anything at all. 

Climate Change Just Erased the Past in Kentucky. Where Will it Happen Next?

by Tina A. Irvine

The archives of the Hindman Settlement School in Knott County were inundated by flood waters on July 28—a devastating loss of one community's history and culture, and a warning to historians that our knowledge of the past is at risk from climate change. 

Forget the Metaphorical Heat – The Literal Temperatures are the Problem

by Tom Engelhardt

"Somehow, in this country, climate change has yet to become a significant part of the national debate or mainstream politics."