Why Journalists Shouldn’t Be Neutral on Climate Change

Calls to Keep Politics Out of Science Reporting Ignore a Core Responsibility: Minimize Harm

Can we, and should we, ever really be neutral? In a new series, Zócalo explores the idea of neutrality—in politics, sports, gender, journalism, and more. In this essay, journalism scholar Perry Parks makes the case for favoring evidence over equivalence when it comes to climate change.

Last year was the hottest summer on record in the Northern Hemisphere. Earth’s ocean surfaces were warmer in the first month of 2024 than any previously recorded January. And by the end of this year, global climate-related deaths since …

by Perry Parks | August 12, 2024

A hand holds a polaroid picture of Vancouver, which looks bright with green hills and mountains. Behind the polaroid, the rest of the Vancouver landscape is visible. It is darker, with the city and mountains lit in orange and red.

An Elegy for Vancouver Summer

Rising Temperatures and Raging Wildfires Have Me Dreading My Favorite Season—And Mourning the Splendid Days of My Childhood

by Paloma Pacheco | June 20, 2024

Last summer was my first in my new apartment. I’d moved into the building in the fall, several weeks into a cool Vancouver November. The trees were bare, and our …

Is the Wilderness Act Still Protecting Nature?

The Landmark 1964 Law Is Now Preventing Effective Land Management and Critical Climate Research

by Daniel T. Blumstein and Thomas B. Smith | April 22, 2024

At the end of 2023, four environmental groups sued the National Park Service and invoked the Wilderness Act to stop the replanting of trees following a catastrophic wildfire in Sequoia and …

The Road to Climate Hell Is Downhill—and Scenic

Death Valley’s Present Is a Window Into the Future

by Joe Mathews | January 30, 2024

If the world really is going to hell, you should get your brakes checked. The ride is going to be very downhill.

I learned that lesson, among others, after my own …

What Asteroids Can Teach Us About Climate Change

Scientists Are Aware of the Perils of Near-Earth Objects and Rising Temperatures. Humanity Can’t Come Together to Deal With Them

by Andy Bruno | September 25, 2023

On June 30, 1908, a sudden blast knocked down over 2,000 square kilometers of forest in a sparsely inhabited part of Siberia. Witnesses saw a fireball from hundreds of miles …

Extreme Heat Is Boring

But Can Feeling Trapped Indoors Motivate Us to Climate Action?

by Caroline Tracey | August 3, 2023

The first time I met someone from Tucson, Arizona, I asked him a burning—pardon the pun—question. How did people there tolerate the summer heat? I pictured my childhood summers in …

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