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Mountains on fire above a town.

Defensible Space

“Megafires” are now a staple of life in the Pacific Northwest, but how we talk about them illustrates the tension at the heart of the western myth itself.
by Jessie Kindig via Boston Review on October 22, 2018
original

Paying for Climate Change

Despite his extreme rhetoric, Trump is merely the latest in a long line of U.S. leaders unwilling to pony up for global environmental accords.
by Stephen Macekura on January 16, 2018

Toxic Legacy: New Boom Highlights Oil’s Hundred-Year Environmental History in West Texas

The ecological history of West Texas challenges the narrative of the region's rugged independence.
by Sarah Stanford-McIntyre via Process: A Blog for American History on May 9, 2017
A surfer carries his oil-coated board.

‘The Ocean Is Boiling’: The Complete Oral History of the 1969 Santa Barbara Oil Spill

How the disaster energized the nascent environmental movement and led to a slew of legislative changes.
by Kate Wheeling, Max Ufberg via Pacific Standard on April 18, 2017
Empty plastic bottles to be recycled.
partner

Cashing In

How big business lies behind early efforts to encourage Americans to recycle.
via BackStory on August 4, 2016
Painting of passenger pigeons over farm

They Covered the Sky, and Then...

Perhaps, in ethical terms, it doesn’t matter whether overhunting was or was not the cause of the passenger pigeon’s extinction. Practically speaking, it matters a good deal.
by Elizabeth Kolbert via New York Review of Books on January 9, 2014
Photograph of cars bumper to bumper on a highway, USA (year unknown, likely during 1970s energy crisis)

How Congress Planned To Solve The 1970s Energy Crisis

Representative Mo Udall's ambitious strategy to wean the United States off fossil fuels by the year 2000.
by Morris K. Udall via The New Republic on June 16, 1973
John Muir

John Muir's 1897 Case for Saving America's Forests

"God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, and avalanches; but he cannot save them from fools—only Uncle Sam can do that."
by John Muir via The Atlantic on August 1, 1897
Yellow amaryllis flower in its bulb.

The American Colony of Jerusalem’s “Wild Flowers of Palestine” (ca. 1900–20)

Photographs of wild flowers taken by photographers from a Christian utopian community that settled in East Jerusalem at the turn of the 20th century.
by Adam Green, Hunter Dykes via The Public Domain Review on July 24, 2024
Site of leaking underground gasoline tanks in Colorado.

How Environmental Law Created a World Awash in Toxic Chemicals

Putting the burden on the government to demonstrate significant risk of harm before regulating has allowed willful ignorance to undermine public health.
by William Boyd via LPE Project on May 28, 2024
Richard and Pat Nixon plant a tree on the White House lawn on Earth Day, 1970.

The “Carbon Dioxide Problem”: Nixon’s Inner Circle Debates the Climate Crisis

A collection of records from the Nixon Presidential Library and other sources on the internal debates Nixon advisors were having about climate change and environment.
by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Henry Kissinger, Hubert Heffner, U. Alexis Johnson, Rachel Santarsiero via National Security Archive on April 26, 2024
The 1917 Silent Parade march in New York City protesting antiblack violence.

The Social-gospel Roots of Environmentalism

America's environmental movement has always been moralistic, which has made it bad at weighing tradeoffs. This accounts for its successes and also its failures.
by William A. Murray via National Affairs on March 21, 2024
Photo of a blue bin filled with recyclable garbage.

Petrochemical Companies Have Known for 40 Years that Plastics Recycling Wouldn't Work

Despite knowing that plastic recycling wouldn't work, new documents show how petrochemical companies promoted it anyway.
by Joseph Winters via Grist on February 20, 2024
Heinrich Harder's "Megatherium americanum," or elephant-sized ground sloth, 1908.

The Nature Trade

Dan Flores reminds us that modern North Americans still walk in the footsteps of our fellow animals.
by Michelle Nijhuis via New York Review of Books on August 1, 2023

Smoke Blanketing New York City Evokes Memories of 1966 ‘Killer Smog’

The wildfire haze reminded some of the 1966 "killer smog" that wrapped New York in a toxic cloud. A woman recalled how her dad built a machine to save her mom.
by María Luisa Paúl via Washington Post on June 8, 2023
President Obama wipes the sweat from his forehead at a press conference.

We Now Know the Full Extent of Obama’s Disastrous Apathy Toward the Climate Crisis

Obama’s official oral history contains new evidence of his indifference and foot-dragging on the most important issue of our time.
by Nathan J. Robinson via Current Affairs on June 5, 2023
Chainlink fence in a desert with a danger sign warning of arsenic poison

The Toxic Legacy of the Gold Rush

Almost 175 years after the Gold Rush began, Californians are left holding the bag for thousands of abandoned mines.
by Leah Campbell via Gizmodo on May 15, 2023
Jimmy Carter at a podium against the backdrop of an American flag.

Is Jimmy Carter Where Environmentalism Went Wrong?

Carter’s austerity was part of a bigger project. It didn’t really have much to do with environmentalism.
by Kate Aronoff via The New Republic on April 18, 2023
People cleaning up an oil spill on coastal rocks.
partner

Unprepared: Lessons From Two Massive Oil Spills

A disastrous oil spill in Alaska and massive rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico revealed a pattern of unsettled standards and inconsistent oversight.
via Retro Report on December 8, 2022
Photo of E.P.A Headquarters, shot through a bush

How Government Ends

Through an assault on administrative agencies, the Supreme Court is systematically eroding the legal basis of effective governance.
by Lisa Heinzerling via Boston Review on September 28, 2022
A field of manoomin - wild rice - in northern Minnesota, with water and trees in the background.

What Minnesota's Mineral Gaze Overlooks

The tendency to favor interest in resource extraction over the protection of the state’s waters, vital to the native Ojibwe population, has deep historical roots.
by Andrew Hoyt via Edge Effects on July 14, 2022
The Detroit Renewable Power waste incinerator

Dire Straits

A new history of Detroit’s struggles for clean air and water argues that municipal debt and austerity have furthered an ongoing environmental catastrophe.
by Scott Wasserman Stern via New York Review of Books on June 2, 2022
Oil rigs just south of town extract crude for Chevron at sunrise in Taft, California, on July 22, 2008.

How Private Oil Companies Took Over U.S. Energy Security

And why it’s time to take it back.
by Gregory Brew via Foreign Policy on May 16, 2022
<p>Thick smoke from multiple forest fires shrouds El Capitan (right) and the granite walls of Yosemite Valley on Saturday 12 September 2020, in Yosemite National Park, CA.<em> Photo Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times/Getty</em></p>

What Yosemite’s Fire History Says About Life in the Pyrocene

Fire is a planetary feature, not a biotic bug. What can we learn from Yosemite’s experiment to restore natural fire?
by Stephen Pyne via Aeon on December 24, 2021
Sign reading "One World" with a picture of Earth.

Climate Change Governance: Past, Present, and (Hopefully) Future

The 2015 Paris Agreement represented a shift in the climate regime towards "new governance," expanding the roles of nation-states and non-state actors alike.
by Jessica Green via Cambridge University Press on December 2, 2021
The skeleton of a whale

Out to Sea

Since the 1970s, the U.S. and Russia have used marine mammals to further their military objectives, sparking protest from animal rights activists.
by Susanna Space via Guernica on July 15, 2021
A red, white, and blue star over a cropped portrait of James Madison.

America Must Become a Democracy

The authors of the Constitution feared mass participation would unsettle government, but it’s the privileged minority that has proved destabilizing.
by David Frum via The Atlantic on February 15, 2021
Forest on fire with two firefighters spraying water

A Note from the Fireline

Climate change and the colonial legacy of fire suppression.
by Jordan Thomas via The Drift on October 21, 2020

Climate Change Was on the Ballot With Jimmy Carter in 1980—Though No One Knew It at the Time

Gains made under Carter’s presidential leadership in the early 1980s might have bought the planet precious time.
by Jonathan Alter via Made By History on September 29, 2020
Greenpeace demonstrators opposing drilling.
partner

Liberal Activists Have to Think Broadly and Unite Across Lines

The forgotten environmental action that pointed the path forward for the left.
by Matthew D. Lassiter via Made by History on March 11, 2020
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