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

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 away. At least one Indigenous Evenki man, and possibly two more, perished, and several individuals suffered minor injuries.

No one could find a meteorite or a crater near the site of what is now known as the Tunguska explosion. The absence fueled rampant speculation about its cause, with everything from aliens to antimatter considered as possible culprits. But by now, most …

Extreme Heat Is Boring

But Can Feeling Trapped Indoors Motivate Us to Climate Action?

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 …

Is There Such a Thing as a Sustainable Mining Boom?

An Early-20th-Century Copper Company Has Lessons for the Industry Today

In the Western U.S. and the north of Chile, large-scale mining has produced similar landscapes of extraction: open-pit and underground mines, smelter stacks, and large masonry structures. Transportation networks connected …

There Is No ‘I’ in the Climate Crisis

Connection and Interdependence Can’t Capture Carbon But Can Get to the Root of the Problem

The environmentalist Paul Hawken says, “The most complex, radical climate technology is the human heart and mind, not a solar panel.” What would it mean to imagine the heart and …

Is Puerto Rico a Global Model for Disaster Recovery?

In the Wake of Three Hurricanes—And Centuries of Exploitation—Islanders Turned to One Another for Relief

When Hurricane Fiona hit Puerto Rico on September 18, 2022, the U.S. colony had still not fully recovered from Hurricanes Irma and Maria, in 2017. Collapsed bridges had not been …

tktk | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

California’s Prop 30 Is So Bad It Might Be Good

The Contest Over the Measure—and Others to Follow—Will Determine Whether the Climate Crisis Can Be Addressed Within the Current System

Will the fight against climate change finally force the replacement of California’s broken governing system?

That’s the most interesting question posed by the most interesting measure on this November’s statewide ballot. …