This page explores the science and politics of climate change.

Out of Eden: A Christian Study and Action Guide to Food and the Environment

A practical Study and Action Guide for use by small groups discussion or personal reflection. The guide covers topics that are actionable on the personal and policy levels: sugar’s impact on our bodies and sugar corporations’ truth-telling and accountability, corn and corn subsidies creating over-supply, plastic and its biological impact on animals and humans, the true cost of meat in terms of soil depletion and air pollution, and food waste and the practices which can diminish it.

Dr. Aaron Bernstein, Climate Change and Children’s Health. Harvard School of Public Health.  Children’s increased vulnerability to diseases, heat, air quality, etc. See also Bernstein, Climate Change and a Child’s Brain, and Bernstein, Climate Change and Nutrition.

Climate Central, Land Projected to Be Below Annual Flood Level in 2050. Climate Central.

National Geographic, Four Ways to Look at Global Carbon Footprints. National Geographic.

Bunker Roy, Learning from a Barefoot Movement. TED Talk, Jul 2011.

Colin Schultz, Meet the Money Behind The Climate Denial Movement. Smithsonian Magazine, Dec 23, 2013.  “Nearly a billion dollars a year is flowing into the organized climate change counter-movement.”

Robert Krulwich, What Happened on Easter Island - A New (Even Scarier.  Scenario. NPR, Dec 10, 2013.

Kali Ma, Humanity in Flux: Would a Species that Recognizes its Own Worth Be Actively Destroying Itself? The Hampton Institute, Dec 12, 2013.

Phil Plait, The Very, Very Thin Wedge of Denial. Slate, Jan 14, 2014.

Tom Kenworthy, How Ultra-Conservative Utah Became an Unlikely Bastion of Environmental Activism. Think Progress, Feb 20, 2014.

Gwynn Guilford, An Entire Island Nation is Preparing to Evacuate to Fiji Before They Sink Into the Pacific. Quartz, Jul 1, 2014.

Jeremy Caradonna, Is 'Progress' Good for Humanity? Rethinking the Narrative of Economic Development, With Sustainability in Mind. The Atlantic, Sep 9, 2014.

Jerry Pinto, In India, Growth Breeds Waste. New York Times, Nov 16, 2014.

Justin Gillis, Restored Forests Breathe New Life Into Efforts Against Climate Change. New York Times, Dec 23, 2014.

Slavoj Žižek, Democracy and Capitalism Are Destined to Split Up. Big Think, Jan 7, 2015.  Capitalism is brutally efficient and no longer needs democracy for its functioning. Problems of commons. e.g. ecology.  which reflect the ground of our being need to reinvent large scale solutions.

U.K. Guardian, Overpopulation, Overconsumption in Pictures. UK Guardian, Apr 1, 2015.

Michelle Nijhuis, Is the "Ecomodernist Manifesto" the Future of Environmentalism? New Yorker, Jun 2, 2015.

Nicholas Yeap, This Group is Waging War on the Pope's Climate Change Plans. CNN Money, Jun 17, 2015.  See also Jeet Heer, The Last Time Conservatives Dismissed a Major Encyclical, It Ended Terribly for Them. New Republic, Jun 17, 2015.

Arthur Nelson, Dutch Government Ordered to Cut Carbon Emissions in Landmark Ruling. The Guardian UK, Jun 24, 2015.

Rick Noack, Europe to America: Your Air Conditioning Is Stupid. Washington Post, Jul 22, 2015.  See also Leon Neyfakh, How to Live Without Air Conditioning. Boston Globe, Jul 21, 2013.  See also Ana Swanson, How America Fell in Love with Crazy Amounts of Air Conditioning. Washington Post, Aug 3, 2015.

Eric Roston and Blacki Migliozzi, What's Really Warming the World. Bloomberg, Jun 24, 2015.  Breaking it down by factors, especially greenhouse gases

Eric Holthaus, The Point of No Return: Climate Change Nightmares Are Already Here. Rolling Stone, Aug 5, 2015.

Finis Dunaway, Without Context, Environmental Images Obscure Who's Responsible for Climate Change. Truthout, Aug 22, 2015.

Jason Hickel, Forget ‘Developing’ Poor Economics, It’s Time to ‘De-Develop’ Rich Countries. The Guardian UK, Sep 23, 2015.

Joe Cortright, The True Cost of Driving. The Atlantic, Oct 25, 2015.

Brittany Patterson, Lettuce Produces More Greenhouse Gas Emissions Than Bacon Does. Scientific American, Dec 15, 2015.

Jonathan Chait, People Who Were Certain Climate Change Is Fake Are Now Certain That Paris Can’t Stop It. New York Magazine, Dec 20, 2015.

Michael Shermer, Why Climate Skeptics Are Wrong. Scientific American, Dec 1, 2015.

Steven Stankevicius, New Atheists Must Become New Vegans: Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and the Extra Burden on Moral Leaders. Salon, Jan 9, 2016.  On why animal suffering should be a moral factor.

Drew Hansen, Unless It Changes, Capitalism Will Starve Humanity By 2050. Forbes, Feb 9, 2016.

Gabriel Kahn, Dreamers of the Golden Dream; Does California Have a Blueprint to Fix Global Warming? Mother Jones, Mar/Apr 2016.

Elizabeth Kolbert, Climate Catastrophe, Coming Even Sooner? New Yorker, Mar 31, 2016.  Re: the West Antarctic Ice Sheet

James Conca, Kids Win Again In Lawsuit Blaming Gov't For Not Fighting Global Warming. Forbes, May 1, 2016.

Natasha Lennard and Adrian Parr, Our Crime Against the Planet, and Ourselves. New York Times, May 18, 2016.

Chelsea Harvey, Climate Change Doubters Really Aren't Going to Like This Study. Washington Post, May 18, 2016.

Christian Connections for International Health, CCIH 2016 Conference Opening Plenary Session.  Christian Connections for International Health, Aug 8, 2016. “Christians and Sustainability. In the opening session of the 2016 CCIH Annual Conference,  speakers Doug Fountain, Medical Teams International; Karen Sichinga, Churches Health Association of Zambia; and Dan O'Neill of the Christian Journal for Global Health explore the role of Christians in sustainable global health programming, what sustainability means, and how scripture supports these concepts.”

Robin Bravender, Trump Picks Top Climate Skeptic to Lead EPA Transition. Scientific American, Sep 26, 2016.

Dominique Mosbergen, We Just Passed A Grim Carbon Dioxide Threshold, Possibly For Good. Huffington Post, Sep 28, 2016.

Shaena Montanari, VP-Elect Mike Pence Does Not Accept Evolution: Here's Why That Matters. Forbes, Nov 10, 2016.

Gary Cameron, Billionaire Green Activist Steyer Vows To Battle Trump, Says Money Not An Issue. Huffington Post, Nov 16, 2016.

Oliver Milman, Trump to Scrap NASA Climate Research in Crackdown on 'Politicized Science'. Guardian, Nov 23, 2016.

Slavoj Žižek, Why There Are No Viable Political Alternatives to Unbridled Capitalism. Big Think, Nov 27, 2016.  All 20th century leftist projects came to an end.

Chelsea Harvey, Trump Could Face Biggest Trial of the Century Over Climate Change. Washington Post, Dec 1, 2016.

Robinson Meyer, Trump’s EPA Pick Is Skeptical of More Than Just Climate Change. The Atlantic, Dec 8, 2016.

Leah Burrows, Mitigating the Risk of Geoengineering. Harvard Gazette, Dec 12, 2016.

Nicholas Kristof, As Donald Trump Denies Climate Change, These Kids Die of It. New York Times, Jan 6, 2017.

Barack Obama, The Irreversible Momentum of Clean Energy. Science, Jan 9, 2017.

US National Park Service, Cultural Resources Climate Change Strategy (NPS)

Robert Hunziker, Human Extinction 2026. Counterpunch, Feb 3, 2017.

Daniel W. O’Neill, What Works? Evidence on the Role of Faith in Poverty Reduction.  Journal of Christian Journal of Global Health, Mar 2017.

William Kaufman, Climate Change Denial, Democratic-style. CounterPunch, Mar 9, 2017.  Focuses on media coverage of climate change.

Dahr Jamail, Release of Arctic Methane "May Be Apocalyptic," Study Warns. Truthout, Mar 23, 2017.

Brad Plumer, Scientists Made a Detailed Roadmap for Meeting the Paris Climate Goals. It's Eye-Opening. Vox, Mar 24, 2017.

Nick Stockton, The Billionaire on a Mission to Save the Planet from Trump. Wired, Mar 23, 2017.  Re: Tom Steyer

Victoria Herrmann, I Am an Arctic Researcher. Donald Trump is Deleting My Citations. The Guardian UK, Mar 28, 2017.

Christopher Sellers, How Republicans Came to Embrace Anti-Environmentalism. Vox, Apr 22, 2017.

Jasmin Fox-Kelly, There Are Diseases Hidden in Ice, and They're Waking Up. BBC, May 4, 2017.

Nathan J. Beacom, Why Conservatives Should Be Environmentalists. Witherspoon Institute, May 4, 2017.

Mary Rezac, Pope Benedict XVI: The Green Pope.  The Catholic Register, May 7, 2017. 

Brian Kahn, A Century of Global Warming, in Just 35 Seconds. Scientific American, Aug 8, 2017.  New animation, the "Temperature Circle," shows every nation is now in the red.

Umair Irfan, Puerto Rico Is Slipping Into an Environmental Crisis. Vox, Oct 26, 2017.

Amy Goodman, Nigerian Environmental Activist: Displacement from Climate Change Contributed to Rise of Boko Haram. Democracy Now, Nov 16, 2017.

William J. Ripple, et.al., World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice. American Institute of Biological Science, Dec 2017.

Kendra Pierre-Louis, A Secret Superpower, Right in Your Backyard. New York Times, Mar 6, 2018.  re: backyard soil absorbing carbon effectively.

David Roberts, Trump White House Quietly Issues Report Vindicating Obama Regulations. (Vox, Mar 6, 2018.

Kendra Pierre-Louis, Antarctica Is Melting Three Times as Fast as a Decade Ago. New York Times, Jun 13, 2018.

Katherine Ellen Foley, Those 3% of Scientific Papers That Deny Climate Change? A Review Found Them All Flawed. Quartz, Sep 5, 2017.

Umair Irfan, Sucking CO2 Out of the Atmosphere, Explained. Vox, Oct 24, 2018.

Charlie Loyd, A Disaster of Our Own Making. The Atlantic, Nov 20, 2018.  "California was always going to burn—but it should have happened differently"

Kari Paul, Climate Change Has Cost the Government $350 Billion — Here’s What It Will Cost You. MarketWatch, Nov 24, 2018.  estimates $35 billion per year.  See also Rex Nutting, Calamitous Weather Destroyed $175 Billion of Wealth. MarketWatch, Nov 13, 2018.

Carolyn Kormann, Deforestation, Agriculture, and Diet Are Fueling the Climate Crisis. The New Yorker, Aug 8, 2019.

Lisa Friedman, E.P.A. to Roll Back Regulations on Methane, a Potent Greenhouse Gas. New York Times, Aug 29, 2019.

Ryan Grim, A Top Financier of Trump and McConnell is a Driving Force Behind Amazon Deforestation. The Intercept, Aug 27, 2019.  See also The Young Turks, Trump Donors Lit the Amazon on Fire. The Young Turks, Aug 29, 2019.

Samantha Bee, Meet the Rich: The Koch Brothers. Full Frontal, Sep 18, 2019.  On anti-climate change activism, funding of misinformation, and Republican flip-flops on policy due to Koch-funded lobbying

Luiza Ch. Savage, How Russia and China Are Preparing to Exploit a Warming Planet. Politico, Aug 29, 2019.  Arctic exploration and drilling, exploiting extremist groups in Africa and the Middle East affected by climate change

Ravi Agrawal, Can ‘Supercharged’ Plants Solve the Climate Crisis? Foreign Policy, Jul 20, 2019.  re: Salk Institute’s estimate that 20-46% of excess carbon can be absorbed by ‘Ideal Plants’

The Economist, The Past, Present, and Future of Climate Change. The Economist, Sep 21, 2019.  Replacing the fossil-fuel technology which is reshaping the climate remains a massive task

Robinson Meyer, A Major but Little-Known Supporter of Climate Denial: Freight Railroads. The Atlantic, Dec 13, 2019.  “For nearly 30 years, America’s four biggest rail companies—which move the majority of the country’s coal—have spent millions to deny climate science and block climate policy.”

PBS, Climate Change is Jeopardizing Trade Along the Mississippi River. PBS News Hour, Jan 5, 2020.

Ciara Nugent, YouTube Has Been 'Actively Promoting' Videos Spreading Climate Denialism, According to New Report. Time, Jan 16, 2020.  

Matthew Taylor, Study Finds Shock Rise in Levels of Potent Greenhouse Gas. The Guardian UK, Jan 21, 2020.  used in air conditioners, refrigerators, and inhalers

Laura Geggel, Ancient Viruses Never Observed by Humans Discovered in Tibetan Glacier. NBC News, Jan 22, 2020.  “Melting ice from climate change could release the pathogens into the environment, one researcher said, calling it a "worst-case scenario."”

Catrin Einhorn, Animal Viruses Are Jumping to Humans. Forest Loss Makes It Easier.. New York Times, Apr 9, 2020.  

Vox, Why Scientists Are So Worried About This Glacier. Vox, Jul 13, 2020.  the Thwaites Glacier in West Antartica, which could lead to 3 meters of sea level rise

Nadja Popovich, Livia Albeck-Ripka, and Kendra Pierre-Louis, The Trump Administration Is Reversing 100
Environmental Rules. Here’s the Full List.. New York Times, Jul 15, 2020.

Michael McDonald and Mark Chediak, Hedge Fund Collects $3 Billion in Bet on Wildfire Insurance Claims. Insurance Journal, Aug 24, 2020.  Baupost Group, the hedge fund run by Seth Klarman, received more than $3 billion in July from its bet on insurance claims against PG&E Corp. connected to a series of deadly California wildfires, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The payout yielded Baupost’s biggest profit generator last month and represented a sizable markup from what the firm had anticipated, it told investors Thursday. The fund bought $6.8 billion of subrogation claims against PG&E, court documents show… In a subrogation claim, an insurer sells the right to sue to recoup damages suffered by policyholders. Insurers offer the claims at a discount to investors in return for the certainty of being paid upfront… PG&E entered bankruptcy in January 2019 facing massive liabilities from blazes blamed on its equipment that scorched Northern California in 2017 and 2018. The fires killed more than 100 people and destroyed tens of thousands of structures. The utility, insurers and claims holders including Baupost reached a deal last September that would bring the investors $11 billion in cash, an arrangement approved by a federal judge. A spokesman for fire victims at the time called the accord a blatant move by the utility and insurers “to help wealthy hedge funds and Wall Street.””

David Roberts, What’s Causing Climate Change, in 10 Charts. Vox, Sep 11, 2020.  by country, carbon emissions, fuel type, industrial sector

Ellen Knickmeyer and Seth Borenstein, Getting Warmer: Trump Concedes Human Role in Climate Change. Associated Press, Sep 30, 2020.

Deutsche Welle, Fine-Tuning the Climate.  DW Documentary, Oct 14, 2020.  An excellent overview of climate engineering technologies.  Solar geo-engineering imitates a volcanic eruption by scattering sulfur particles in the stratosphere to reflect 1-2% of sunlight.  Oceanic engineering pumps cold, nutrient-rich water from the ocean depths to the surface, so algae can grow, absorb CO2, and feed new populations of fish.  Carbon capture technology in Iceland is effective when placed near geothermal energy, but is energy-intensive and expensive.  

Kiss the Ground Movie (2020)

Saul Griffith and Sam Calisch, No Place Like Home: Fighting Climate Change (and Saving Money) by Electrifying America’s Households. Rewiring America, October 2020.  Summarized by Alexander C. Kaufman, Electrifying Homes And Cars Could Save The Climate — And $2,500 Per U.S. Household. Huffington Post, Oct 22, 2020.  “New research shows that the U.S. can rapidly decarbonize with existing technology and no real lifestyle changes.”

Sarah Lazare, “Colonizing the Atmosphere”: How Rich, Western Nations Drive the Climate Crisis. In These Times, Sep 14, 2020.  “New analysis finds the Global North is responsible for 92% of all excess global carbon dioxide emissions, while the Global South bears the brunt of the devastation.”

Craig Welch, First Study of All Amazon Greenhouse Gases Suggests the Damaged Forest is Now Worsening Climate Change. National Geographic, Mar 11, 2021.

World Wide Fund for Nature, The Orthodox Church Addresses the Climate Crisis.  World Wide Fund for Nature, Mar 29, 2021.  Focuses particularly on a region which is still heavily dependent on fossil fuels, while facing serious social and economic challenges: the Balkans.

Daniel W. O'Neill and Beth Snodderly, All Creation Groans: Toward a Theology of Disease and Global Health.  Wipf and Stock, May 2021. 

Amy Goodman, Western States Face Record Heat & Historic Drought, But GOP Rejects Green Infrastructure Funding. Democracy Now!, Jun 22, 2021.

Ran Boydell, Most Buildings Were Designed for an Earlier Climate — Here’s What Will Happen as Global Warming Accelerates. The Conversation, Jul 2, 2021.  “Houses will be more prone to overheating, putting the lives of residents at risk, which is what has happened during the recent “heat dome” over North America. Flooding will happen more often and inundate greater areas, to the point that some places might have to be abandoned… More intense wind and rain will cause external cladding to deteriorate more rapidly and leak more often. Higher temperatures will expand the regions where some insects can live. That includes timber-eating termites that can cause major structural damage, or malaria-carrying mosquitoes which living spaces must be redesigned to protect us from. Materials expand as they get hotter, especially metals, which can cause them to buckle once their designed tolerance is exceeded. For one skyscraper in Shenzhen, China, high temperatures were partially blamed for causing the structure to shake, forcing its evacuation, as the steel frame stretched in the heat. Extreme temperatures can even cause materials to melt, resulting in roads “bleeding” as the surface layer of bitumen softens. Subsidence – when the ground below a structure gives way, causing it to crack or collapse – is also expected to happen more often in a warmer world. Perhaps the biggest concern is how climate change will affect reinforced concrete, one of the most widely used materials on Earth… When the steel inside the concrete gets wet it rusts and expands, cracking the concrete and weakening the structure in a process sometimes referred to as “concrete cancer”. Buildings in coastal areas are especially susceptible as the chloride in salt water accelerates rusting. At the same time, the concrete is affected by carbonation, a process where carbon dioxide from the air reacts with the cement to form a different chemical element, calcium carbonate. This lowers the pH of the concrete, making the steel even more prone to corrosion. Since the 1950s, global CO₂ levels have increased from about 300 parts per million in the atmosphere to well over 400. More CO₂ means more carbonation.”

Aatish Bhatia and Winston Choi-Schagrin, Why Record-Breaking Overnight Temperatures Are So Concerning. New York Times, Jul 9, 2021.  discuss the physical implications. Aatish Bhatia and Josh Katz, Why We’re Experiencing So Many Unusually Hot Summer Nights. New York Times, Sep 13, 2021.  present very effective graphics on major cities’ nighttime temperatures over time.

Nafeez Ahmed, MIT Predicted in 1972 That Society Will Collapse This Century. New Research Shows We’re on Schedule.. Vice, Jul 14, 2021.  “A 1972 MIT study predicted that rapid economic growth would lead to societal collapse in the mid 21st century. A new paper shows we’re unfortunately right on schedule.” See discussion by David Doel, Societal Collapse ‘On Schedule’ According To 1972 MIT Study. The Rational National, Jul 19, 2021.

Ruby Mellen and Willian Neff, Beyond Human Endurance (Washington Post, Jul 28, 2021.  “How climate change is making parts of the world too hot and humid to survive”

Alexis Drutchas, What COVID and the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker Being Declared Extinct Have in Common. NBC News, Sep 29, 2021.  “The proliferation of animal-borne diseases that ignite horrific pandemics will escalate so long as human activity continues to alter and destroy the delicate ecosystems of the natural world. We cannot afford to talk about Covid without talking about climate change, too.”

Vice News, Oregon Already Has a Climate Refugee Crisis. Vice News, Aug 19, 2021.  Because of the Oregon fires which burned more than a million acres.

Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez, Ramon Mejia, War Helps Fuel the Climate Crisis as U.S. Military Carbon Emissions Exceed 140+ Nations. Democracy Now, Nov 9, 2021.  See also Amy Goodman and Amitav Ghosh, “A Process of Violence”: Indian Author Amitav Ghosh on How Colonialism Fueled the Climate Crisis. Democracy Now, Nov 10, 2021.

Yanis Varoufakis, Ann Pettifor, and Noam Chomsky, Visionary Realism: A Green Future Beyond Capitalism. Diem25, Nov 15, 2021.  A 60 minute discussion responding to COP26 with very important institutional insights. They argue for the redistribution of power, such as on-shoring capital, labor power and international trade agreements, public control of utilities, the WTO and immoral patent rights, etc.

David Roberts, Don’t Get Too Bummed Out About COP26. Volts, Nov 15, 2021.  for a more positive take and a list of agreements on stopping deforestation, etc.

James Ross Gardner, A Willfully Misunderstood Earmark Can Help Reduce Climate-Change Heat Deaths. The New Yorker, Nov 29, 2021.  “The tree-equity portion of the Build Back Better Act aims to redress some of those decades-old policies. In its current form, the bill, passed by the House earlier this month, earmarks three billion dollars to expand and protect urban tree canopies, with priority toward neighborhoods where thirty per cent or more residents live below the poverty line and in areas “with lower tree canopy and higher maximum daytime summer temperatures compared to surrounding neighborhoods.” Grants would go to nonprofits and state and local governments to achieve equity goals. According to one estimate, that will require five hundred and twenty-two million new trees in urban neighborhoods.”

Eliza Griswold, How to Talk About Climate Change Across the Political Divide.  The New Yorker, Sep 16, 2021.  “Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist and evangelical Christian, has written a book that lays out strategies for discussing the climate crisis in a divided country.”

Robinson Meyer, We’ve Never Seen a Carbon-Removal Plan Like This Before.  The Atlantic, Apr 13, 2022.  “Companies including Google and Facebook are pouring more than $900 million into a nascent technology that’s essential to zeroing out emissions.”  “I first covered Stripe’s carbon-removal purchases in 2020. The company has now contracted to buy carbon removal from 14 different start-ups. They include CarbonBuilt, which is trying to sequester carbon by capturing it in concrete; the Future Forest Company, which seeks to accelerate the natural process of rock weathering; and Project Vesta, which wants to line beaches with a carbon-capturing mineral called olivine. Stripe was just a customer for those start-ups, providing them with money today to capture carbon in the future. As I wrote last year, Stripe—and now Frontier—aims to be a “buyer of first resort,” sending a demand-side signal to entrepreneurs and investors that a large market for permanent carbon removal exists.”

Neel Dhanestra, The Daunting Task of Making Cryptocurrency Climate-Friendly. Vox, Apr 18, 2022. “Bitcoin is extremely energy-hungry. One oft-cited example is that it uses more energy than the annual consumption in countries like Finland or Denmark — and that’s concerning in a world that’s already on track to blow past its climate goals, thanks in large part to fossil fuel emissions from energy consumption.”

Adele Peters, A Startup in Hawaii Just Launched the World’s First Ocean-Assisted Carbon Removal Plant.  Fast Company, May 12, 2022.  “The current version of the technology can capture CO2 at a cost of $475 per ton—lower than any other direct air capture in the world.”

The Venus Project (website).  A new socio-economic model of human life.

PBS News Hour, Compelling New Evidence Tracks COVID’s Origin to Wuhan Market.  PBS News Hour, Jul 27, 2022.  Not about animal extinction per se, but the impact of climate change and government policy on human-animal interaction. Interview with Angela Rasmussen, Canadian virologist, who published an article in the Journal of Science.  There is physical evidence of the virus at the live animal market from November and December of 2019.  Also, incidents of human infection clustered around the market, not the Wuhan Institute of Virology.  Argues for two separate introductions at the market of SARS-COV-2 lineage A and B.  Although see Briahna Joy Grey, Robby Soave, Ryan Grim and Emily Jashinsky, Lab Leak Theory Not Debunked By New Studies Claiming Natural Origin. Rising | The Hill, Jul 28, 2022. The market was very close to the lab. The natural emergence theory actually looks worse for the Chinese government than the lab outbreak theory, because the Chinese government had promised to regulate live animal markets.  This raises the equally troubling concern that climate change is driving shifts in animal habitats and behavior, and therefore in human-animal interaction, and the need for global cooperation in health monitoring systems.

Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, "Freedom Dreams": Historian Robin D. G. Kelley on 20th Anniversary of His Book & Movements Mattering.  Democracy Now, Aug 31, 2022.  Discusses how many aspects of racial justice politics have been co-opted.  Argues that we can’t just fight for the poor, but we need radical change, because of the climate crisis.

United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, Global Assessment Report 2022: Our World at Risk: Transforming Governance for a Resilient Future.  UNDRR, Aug 2022.  “COVID-19 and climate change are rapidly making it clear that, in today’s crowded and interconnected world, disaster impacts increasingly cascade across geographies and sectors. Despite progress, risk creation is outstripping risk reduction.”  See Second Thought, Capitalism Is Destroying Us - The New Climate Report.  Second Thought, Aug 22, 2022.  

National Association of Evangelicals, Loving the Least of These: Addressing a Changing Environment.  National Association of Evangelicals, Aug 2022.  Christine Amanpour and Michele Martin, Top Evangelical Leader Urges Community to Rethink Stance on Climate Change. Amanpour & Company, Sep 16, 2022.  Dr. Walter Kim of the National Association of Evangelicals discusses the publication of Loving the Least of These.  Kim says climate change concerns are both stewardship and solidarity.  Michele Martin says 54% of white evangelicals are skeptical of climate change, and Dr. Kim explains the approach of the booklet to understand climate devastation through the experience of food insecurity, flooding, etc. by evangelical communities around the world.  See also Jack Jenkins, Bible Demands Action on Climate Change, Evangelicals Say in New Report.  Washington Post, Aug 30, 2022. 

Second Thought, How Capitalism Robs the Developing World, Sep 2, 2022.  Provides an excellent bibliography.

Phil Vischer, Skye Jethani, and Christian Taylor, Episode 525: Why Don’t Evangelicals Care About the Climate? & American Extremism w/ Bob Roberts Jr. Holy Post, Sep 7, 2022.

Leaf of Life, How Australia is Regreening its Deserts Back into a Green Oasis. Leaf of Life, Sep 18, 2022.

Despite the low population Australia is one of the worst developed countries in the world for broadscale deforestation, wiping out endangered forests and woodlands. In fact, they have cleared nearly half of all forest cover in the last 200 years!

It began in around the early 1800s when the British colonized Australia in search of land and fortunes. At that time Britain had already been completely stripped of trees for centuries by intensive agriculture and war, even today The United Kingdom has one of the lowest percentages of forest cover in Europe. British timber companies were granted free access to vast areas of virgin forest in Australia and trees were felled for agriculture and railway tracks which were constructed alongside other transit infrastructure such as roads, bridges and jetties.

By the 1880s concerns about stripping the forests were being raised but no steps towards conservation were taken and now Australia has become the worst offending country in the world for mammal extinctions, 55 wildlife species plus 37 plant species have gone extinct. The wide spread deforestation has resulted in 55% of all Australian land area being used for agricultural purposes and around 72% of all agricultural output is exported. Meat and live animals has been the fastest-growing export segment, growing 33% in value, However agriculture only accounts for 1.9% of value added (GDP) and 2.5% of employment in 2020–21.

The wide spread land degradation has resulted in man made desertification after centuries of tiling, and the introduction of non native grazing grasses has taken its toll on the landscape. However some regions in Australia are starting to turn this around, transforming large areas of degraded land back into bio-diverse ecosystems, by restoring millions of trees and in turn improving the lives for rural farming communities, as well as capturing over a million tons of carbon to benefit the planet as a whole. This can be considered a major accomplishment for any country, particularly one that has a low average rainfall of 16 inches per year. In this video we will show you how a 200km long green corridor will connect 12 nature reserves across a 10,000 km².

Yonat Shimron, Poll: Politics Drives Religious Americans' Views on the Environment.  Religion News, Nov 17, 2022. 

PBS Terra, The Most Important Storm Footage of 2022 Shows the Risk for Millions.  PBS, Nov 29, 2022.  Salt water storm surges are the biggest danger of the combination of sea level rise and stronger hurricanes.  The footage of Hurricane Ian hitting Fort Myers, Florida is featured.

Damian Carrington, Oceans Were the Hottest Ever Recorded in 2022, Analysis Shows.  The Guardian UK, Jan 11, 2023.  

Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, Elite Capture: Philosopher Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò on How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics.  Democracy Now, Jan 18, 2023.  Expands on coalition politics over identity politics, yet corporations (mostly white elite interests) focused on “diversity, equity, and inclusion” at the expense of real and constant change.  Táíwò also argues that reparations has to account for climate change, both in a past compensatory sense and in a future, sustainability sense.

Neall Pogue, Evangelicals Have Moved from Environmental Stewardship to Climate Skepticism.  UPI, Jan 31, 2023.  A helpful summary overview of the last few decades.

Kasha Patel, Nearly Everyone Is Exposed to Unhealthy Levels of Tiny Air Pollutants, Study Says. Washington Post, Mar 7, 2023. “Only 0.001 percent of the global population is exposed to levels of PM 2.5 pollution that the World Health Organization deems safe.”

PBS Terra, What is the Riskiest Region in the US as the Climate Changes? PBS Terra, Jan 25, 2023. South Carolina, Florida, New Orleans, Texas’ Gulf Coast, and the California-Arizona border are the riskiest areas. “Climate Change is increasing the frequency and severity of natural disasters all around the world. And in the United States, more and more people seem to be moving to the places that are projected to be most impacted by climate change, from hazards such as flooding, wildfire, storms, drought and extreme heat; and leaving the most climate-resilient areas. At first glance, this seems like a bizarre and paradoxical trend. So, for this episode of Weathered, we decided to see if we could get to the bottom of it.”

Daniel W. O’Neill, Healing as God’s Intention for Ministers of Reconciliation.  International Bulletin of Mission Research, Jul 2023.  “There is something missing in our view of the intentions of God and the purposes of the church in global mission. Tracing the historical precedent for the church as a healing agent in the world, and challenging narrow views of what healing means, a biblical healing metanarrative emerges as the primary telos of God, and reconciliation as an essential part of healing. By reconciling salvation and healing, spirit and matter, as well as healing and suffering, the ongoing work of the reconciling Healer is highlighted along with the implication that healing is an indispensable part of collective global mission.”

Noah Smith, Our Climate Change Debates Are Out of Date. Noahpinion | Substack, Sep 7, 2023. Solar and batteries are going to win.

Rebecca Falconer, NOAA: 2023 Worst Year on Record for Billion-Dollar Disasters.  Axios, Sep 12, 2023.

Our Changing Climate, Our Food Is Killing Us.  Our Changing Climate, Sep 22, 2023.  Why we are depleting our soil and producing high levels of carbon by monocropping soy and corn.  

Selin Oğuz, Ranked: The Foods With the Largest Environmental Impact.  Visual Capitalist, Oct 27, 2023. 

Noah Smith, A Few Handy Charts About Climate Change. Noahpinion, Feb 13, 2024.

Frederick Hewitt, Project 2025 Tells Us What a Second Trump Term Could Mean for Climate Policy. It Isn’t Pretty. WBUR, Mar 27, 2024.

Manuela Andreoni, Can Forests Be More Profitable Than Beef? New York Times, May 2, 2024. “Cattle ranches have ruled the Amazon for decades. Now, new companies are selling something else: the ability of trees to lock away planet-warming carbon.”

Sabrina Tabernisis and Christopher Flavelle, The Possible Collapse of the U.S. Home Insurance System. New York Times, May 15, 2024. Climate change has made some house insurance companies to stop covering Florida homes.

Thom Hartmann, New Law Makes It Illegal To Say Climate Change Is Real. Thom Hartmann, May 16, 2024. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis angles to get billionaire oil money. The ramifications on Florida will be massive.

Al Jazeera, Militaries Are Fuelling the Climate Crisis | All Hail The Planet. Al Jazeera, Jun 20, 2024. If armies across the world were a country, they would be the fourth largest emitter of carbon on earth. The US Dept of Defense has a larger carbon footprint than most countries, including Sweden, Finland. Reporter Ali Rae speaks with Author & Researcher at the Transnational Institute (TNI), Nick Buxton; Author & Associate Professor of International Relations at Georgetown University, Marwa Daoudy; and Political Scientist & Co-director of Brown University’s ‘Costs of War’ project, Neta Crawford. One US fighter jet uses more gas in one hour than the average civilian car driver uses in seven years.

PBS News Hour, The Big Environmental Costs of Rising Demand for Big Data to Power the Internet. PBS News Hour, Jun 22, 2024. The rise of artificial intelligence is requiring faster and bigger computations for even simple tasks compared to, say, a Google search. It’s adding to the demand for more internet data centers, but these facilities come at a big environmental cost, especially for the communities that host them. Science journalist Sachi Kitajima Mulkey joins Ali Rogin to discuss. Northern Virginia hosts 70% of global data traffic and processing.

Lois Parshley, Rise Of The Insurance Apocalypse. The Lever, Sep 23, 2024. “But as climate change intensifies extreme weather and claims pile up, this system has been thrown into disarray. Insured losses from natural disasters in the United States now routinely approach $100 billion a year, compared to $4.6 billion in 2000. As a result, the average homeowner has seen their premiums spike 21 percent since 2015. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the states most likely to have disasters — like Texas and Florida — have some of the most expensive insurance rates. That means ever more people are forgoing coverage, leaving them vulnerable and driving prices even higher as the number of people paying premiums and sharing risk shrinks.”

Linda Coombs, A Nation in Balance: Sovereignty, Earth and the Meaning of Right Relation. Partnership of Historic Bostons, Oct 26, 2024.

“Aquinnah Wampanoag citizen, educator and author Linda Coombs on how Native people saw sovereignty as the right relationship to the earth. For English colonists, sovereignty meant control over land – and land meant property. For the Eastern Woodland's Native people, sovereignty meant something very different indeed. In this important and revelatory presentation, Aquinnah Wampanoag citizen, educator and author Linda Coombs delves into the true meaning of sovereignty as being in right relationship to the Earth. She reveals how the Wampanoag people did that for thousands of years before European contact, and recounts the cost of colonization, which caused, and continues to cause, the disruption of our intended lives.”

Deutsche Welle, Is Prosperity Without Economic Growth Possible? DW Documentary, Oct 30, 2024. Germany as a case study.

Lois Parshley and Freddie Brewster, GOP Takes First Steps To Shut Down Climate Groups. The Lever, Nov 21, 2024. “Earlier this month, the House Energy and Commerce Committee laid out a plan to target environmental justice nonprofits and organizations working to transition the economy away from fossil fuels. That report preceded a major House vote on Thursday in which Republicans and 15 Democrats passed legislation giving the Treasury Department the power to strip nonprofit news organizations, advocacy groups, and universities of their tax-exempt status. The Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act was originally proposed last year, ostensibly to prevent U.S. nonprofits from supporting groups like Hamas after widespread protests over Israel’s invasion of Gaza. Nicknamed the “nonprofit killer,” it gives the president unprecedented authority to go after political opponents. Advocacy groups like the American Civil Liberties Union warned of the bill’s potential “to grant the executive branch extraordinary power… based on a unilateral accusation of wrongdoing.” After an essentially identical bill failed to pass last week, the newly approved bill now goes to the Senate for a vote.”