Will Environmental Crises Segregate Sports?

Snowless Mountains and Poisoned Beaches Will Drive a Wedge Between Athletes of Different Classes

In Brazil, Olympic rowers and sailors will chase gold through dying rivers and poisoned lagoons. Even amid all the crises piling up on this year’s games—unfinished infrastructure, political drama, financial turmoil, the Zika epidemic that had prominent experts calling for the games to be moved—the water stands out. Reports say athletes may have to compete in oil-slick water stinking of raw human sewage and contaminated with antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Their boats are already turning brown.

Marquee sporting events are often billed as a great boon for cities and the environment. Chapter 1 …

By Andrew Dana Hudson | August 10, 2016

Frankenstein Is a Story About Climate Change’s Horrors

How a Massive Volcanic Eruption Spun the World Into Chaos and Helped Inspire the Famous Novel

By Kent Linthicum | June 27, 2016

Two hundred years ago this June, during a dreadfully cold and wet summer, Mary Shelley began writing Frankenstein. Since then Frankenstein has become iconic, spawning a legion of adaptations and …

Canada’s Fort McMurray Wildfire Highlights the Trouble with Fighting Fire with Fire

Call It the “Pyrocene,” an Unprecedented Collision of Free-Burning Flames with Our Fossil-Fuel Powered Society

By Stephen Pyne | May 20, 2016

“And where two raging fires meet together, they do consume the thing that feeds their fury.” —William Shakespeare

The images are gripping. Horizons glow with satanic reds squishing through black and …

How Angelenos Beat Back Smog

High Aspirations, Law, and Science Helped Make Southern California a Better Place

By Mary D. Nichols | October 15, 2015

My personal battle against smog began in 1971, when I moved to L.A. with a brand new degree from Yale Law School and no job.

The city was sprawling but …

Why I Drowned L.A. and the World

It Started As a Lark. But It Turned Out To Be a Major Conversation-Starter About Climate Change.

by Andrew David Thaler | November 1, 2013

One day, I’ll look back fondly and tell my grandkids about the week I spent flooding the planet.

It began as a lark. For the past few months, I’ve been writing …

Are We Really Out of Water?

Doomsday Predictions About Scarcity Haven't Panned Out, But Water May Be Different

October 10, 2013

Across the globe, countries and communities are asking, with fear: Do we have enough water? But fear, in many places, has not transformed into action, and the forces that have …

global warming