Tag: climate-change
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Building Power in the Polycrisis
Two years ago this week, I presented my TED Talk at TED Countdown: Overcoming Dilemmas in the Green Transition in Brussels. Acknowledging the challenges of the green transition, along with the broader obstacles to achieving the 1.5 degree goal set in the Paris Agreement, the event was designed to help “tip the balance in this…
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How Disasters Became Political
Map showing the only other times storms hit both coasts simultaneously. Source: https://www.foxweather.com/weather-news/rare-tale-two-coasts-unfolds-tropical-systems-target-gulf-west-coast#google_vignette Last night, Hurricane Isaias made landfall on the Florida Panhandle as a category 2 hurricane. As of 8am this morning, over 900,000 people are without power and states in the storm’s path are preparing for tornadoes. At the same time, the Pacific…
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Why the Permitting Reform Bill is Bad for our Democracy and for the Climate
(In other words, here we go again…) Image Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/05/climate/data-centers-pollution-trump-ai-energy.html On Wednesday, a group of Senators introduced the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act (BAAJA). The bill aims to reform the federal environmental review and permitting process for energy projects in the US. The release was notable for including a diverse list of co-sponsors, including…
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Who’s Talking About Climate Change (and why does it matter)?
This week, we are releasing the first landscape assessment of climate communicators in the US and Canada. The project was conducted in collaboration with the folks at The Talking Climate Collaborative and maps out the ecosystem of climate communication. For anyone who doesn’t understand why communicating about climate change is so important, remember that the…
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Will the Polycrisis Get the Attention it Deserves at Climate Week NYC?
Source: World Economic Forum, Global Risks Report, 2023, p. 10. In a week, the largest climate event in the US–Climate Week NYC–gets underway. Intentionally scheduled to coincide with the meeting of the UN General Assembly, Climate Week NYC “brings together more than 100,000 people across 1,000+ events in New York City. From global leaders shaping…
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On Overshoot and Democratizing AI
I had planned to take this weekend off since it’s Labor Day here in the states, but there’s just too much to say… This week, the UN Environment Programme released its new report: Limiting Overshoot – Navigating exceedance of 1.5°C and pathways towards return. The report “examines the implications of entering an era of 1.5°C…
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How Climate Shocks Motivate Social Change
Even though September begins on Tuesday, this summer of climate shocks has yet to slow down: record-breaking heat and extreme weather are continuing across much of the northern hemisphere and thousands of people are missing and hundreds of lives are confirmed lost after a glacier’s collapse triggered a flash flood in Nepal and Tibet this…
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The Summer of Climate Shocks Rages On
The summer of 2026 will go down as a summer of climate shocks. “Climate shocks are deviations from normal environmental patterns in the form of droughts, floods, heat waves, or other extreme events that have been exacerbated by climate change” (Saving Ourselves, p. 3). While I write this newsletter, the US and Europe continue to…
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Why Media Coverage Matters?
Credit: MeCCO/CU Boulder As our world warms and many of us feel the effects of the climate crisis first hand, the media coverage of climate change, which is making heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, and storms stronger, has declined substantially (also see the work of the Media and Climate Change Observatory at CU-Boulder, which created the figure…
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Why Science Can’t Save Us from the Climate Crisis
source: Nature 2026 Ever since IPCC chair Bob Watson informed me that “science was necessary but not sufficient” and “only one small input” in the polcymaking process over a meal at the UNFCCC Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) meetings in 2001, I’ve been trying to understand the role that science plays in…
