Environment and Climate

Sacrificing for the Climate

In the most turbine-surrounded community in the world, poor residents understand that their loss—of land, jobs, and serenity—has nothing to do with the common good. Clean energy advocates should take notice.

The Inescapable Dilemma of Infectious Disease

Our mastery over microbes is only a few decades old. It is also far more precarious than we imagine.

The Circular Economy

Pushing back against the throw-away economy, the EU is designing an industrial policy around garbage.

The Battle for Okinawa

While Japanese and U.S. officials celebrate a demilitatization in the pacific islands, Okinawans protest persistent military colonialism.

No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies

The U.S. Department of Defense is ramping up the militarization of Guam. If we hope to withstand the forces of predatory global capitalism, we need to begin articulating alternatives.

Poetry in the Critical Zone

In a new book of lyric essays, poet Cole Swensen answers a call issued by theorists Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel: to reimagine the globe in terms of the fragile surface ecosystems that support all life.

COVID and the Climate Crisis Can’t Be Separated

—and nor can our health and the health of animals. An earth day reading list.

This Veil of Smoke

On life in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan—one of the most polluted cities in the world.

The Politics of the Anthropocene in a World After Neoliberalism

Can today’s crises inspire action at the scales required to think about planetary sustainability?

Use Sunlight Locally (or Lose It)

A new “solar homesteading law” could harness rays of sun that fall on roofs and parking lots in cities and advance the aims of energy democracy.

End Capitalism

If many marine mammals are on the verge of extinction, it is not for lack of environmental activism, but because we are entangled in a global financial system that it does not seem possible to transform.

Poisoning Tallevast

First, segregation blocked this Florida community from equal education and other public goods. Then the military–industrial complex sickened residents and destroyed their property.

Crises and Common Sense

The pandemic holds important political lessons for the climate crisis, but they must be taught.

Realizing a Green Future

A transcript of our panel discussion on the Green New Deal and our new issue, Climate Action.

Politics Is Plastic

In these times especially, both politics and interests are plastic. Experimentalism seeks to make this fact both politically visible and politically productive.

How to Fix the Climate

Diplomacy isn’t enough. To decarbonize the economy, we must integrate bottom-up, local experimentation with top-down, global cooperation.

How to Fix the Climate

Biden should rejoin the Paris Agreement, but diplomacy isn’t enough. To decarbonize the economy, we must integrate bottom-up, local experimentation with top-down, global cooperation.

To Save the Climate, Give Up the Demand for Constant Electricity

Waiting to ensure uninterrupted power for everyone as we transition away from fossil fuels will cost too much time—and too many lives.

The Trouble with Carbon Pricing

Only a bold approach that centers politics can meet the scale of the climate crisis.

The Political Economy of Saving the Planet

An interview with Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin on the climate crisis, COVID-19, and the future of environmental politics. 

From Restraining Orders to Assassinations, the Dangerous Work of Saving the Monarchs

Monarch butterflies may be gone in thirty years. Saving them seems apolitical, but environmentalists have landed in the sights of drug cartels, illegal loggers, Trump supporters, and even clandestine avocado farmers.

Climate Change’s New Ally: Big Finance

Huge investors like BlackRock are forcing corporations to take action on emissions. But what does their power mean for democracy?

Pigs and Capital

The meat business has become a vast, fragile beast teetering on the brink of ecological and financial ruin.

Imagining American Utopia

On Kim Stanley Robinson’s trilogy Three Californias, rereleased this year in a single volume.

Get our newsletter

Vital reading on politics, ideas, and culture to your inbox


A political and literary forum, independent and nonprofit since 1975

Registered 501(c)(3) organization