Environment & Climate Change

Journalist Chloe Sorvino says the meat industry pollutes the environment, contributes to climate change and leaves the meat supply chain vulnerable to major disruptions.

New York Times science writer David Wallace-Wells says the cost of solar and wind energy has fallen dramatically. Nevertheless, we're still facing painful, long-lasting changes to the planet.

Forty million people rely on the river. ProPublica's Abrahm Lustgarten says that water scarcity in the West hasn't been recognized as the national emergency that it is.

While it may sound nice to live in a world with fewer roaches, environmental writer Oliver Milman says that human beings would be in big trouble without insects. That's because insects play critical roles in pollinating plants we eat, breaking down waste in forest soil and forming the base of a food chain that other, larger animals — including humans — rely upon.

NY Times reporter Ivan Penn unpacks the debate over infrastructure: Do we fund huge wind and solar farms with new transmission lines, or go local, with rooftop solar panels, batteries and micro-grids?

SUZANNE SIMARD says trees are "social creatures" that communicate with each other in cooperative ways that hold lessons for humans too. Simard grew up in Canadian forests as a descendant of loggers before becoming a forestry ecologist. She's now a professor of forest ecology at the University of British Columbia. She explains her research on cooperation and symbiosis in the forest, and shares her personal story in the new memoir Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest.

Scott Weidensaul has spent decades studying bird migration. "There is a tremendous solace in watching these natural rhythms play out again and again," he says. His new book is A World On the Wing.

New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert talks about the ways humans have harmed the natural world — and the unintended consequences of efforts to reverse the damage. Her new book is Under a White Sky.

Trump called climate change a hoax. Biden calls it an existential threat. Washington Post journalist Juliet Eilperin talks about how Biden might reverse some of his predecessor's policies.

Lopez, who died Dec. 25, won the 1986 National Book Award for Arctic Dreams, an account of his travels in the far north over a period of four years. Originally broadcast in 1989 and 2013.

An Alabama native, Flowers has been awarded a MacArthur fellowship for her work on behalf of rural Americans living without proper sewage treatment. She says the hookworm study was a "smoking gun," that highlighted the sanitation and environmental problems the rural poor face.

Nunez's latest novel, What Are You Going Through, is about facing the possible death of our planet from climate change — while also dealing with our mortality as individuals.

Climate change has put organisms on the move. In her new book, The Next Great Migration, Science writer Sonia Shah writes about migration — and the ways in which outmoded notions of "belonging" have been used throughout history to curb what she sees as a biological imperative.

While researching his new book, Notes from an Apocalypse, about people who are preparing for doomsday, author Mark O'Connell undertook what he calls "a series of perverse pilgrimages."

Mudlark author Lara Maiklem scours the edge of London's River Thames looking for historical artifacts. Among her finds: Roman pottery, medieval jug handles and a 500-year-old child's shoe.

Author Adam Minter remembers two periods of grief after his mother died in 2015: the intense sadness of her death, followed by the challenge of sorting through what he calls "the material legacy of her life."

Journalist Gilbert Gaul says federal subsidies encourage developers to keep building on the coasts — despite accelerating and increasing risks from climate change.

Environmental scientist Kate O'Neill discusses recycling and the global politics of waste. "Once you throw something away, you've got to think about where's it going to go next," she says.

Environmental journalist Amanda Little says the sustainable food revolution will include meat cultured in a lab, 3-D printer food, aquaculture and indoor vertical farming.