Tag: environment
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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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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…
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What I learned studying the social consequences of the LA Wildfires
This week, my paper on wildfire displacement (co-authored with Julie Gonzalez) was published at Environmental Research Climate. The paper summarizes our efforts to understand the social consequences of wildfires after the LA Wildfires in January 2025. Our goal was to study the ways that people personally and collectively experience the effects of wildfire and what…
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Earth to Trump: You Can’t Cancel Climate Change
Yesterday, President Trump eliminated the endangerment finding that classified greenhouse gases as air pollutants. This finding was the basis for federal climate policy in the United States and made it possible to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. Without it, the rules that regulate emissions standards for vehicles, power plants, and fossil fuel…
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Introducing the Apocalyptic Optimist Podcast:
Real talk about what’s broken and how to fix it. The Apocalyptic Optimist Podcast is LIVE! In the first episode, I speak with Rachel Carmona and Tamika Middleton from Women’s March about the Free America Walkout and what’s next for Resistance 2.0. For details on how to watch or listen to the conversation, go here.…
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What’s on my Radar for 2026:
What apocalyptic optimists need to be thinking about as the new year begins Elections 2026: By November, we will see if free and fair federal elections in the US have survived the many efforts to change our system, but the efforts to chang elections through partisan redistricting in various states, the new rules about when…
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Introducing the COPOut Podcast
This weekend, I am launching the COPOut Podcast for apocalyptically optimistic climate conversations. During each episode, I will host a panel of guest experts who will share their unique perspectives on the state of climate action, the path towards more effective climate solutions, and the role that the international regime—including the annual UN sponsored Conferences…
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Waking Up In Trump’s America 2.0
On the day after the 2016 election, I published a reflection at HuffPost. “Waking Up In Trump’s America And Watching The Ocean Rise” looked at the climate consequences of what candidate Trump had promised. Since I’m still processing the outcome from last night (Trump was just announced as the 47th President of the US 7…
