“It’s Catastrophe Upon Catastrophe”—Michigan Flooding Is One of Many Pandemic Weather Disasters
Aerial photo of flooding in downtown Midland, Mich.Kelly Jordan and Junfu Han/Zuma For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis and more, subscribe to Mother Jones’ newsletters.This piece was originally published in HuffPost and appears here as part of our Climate Desk Partnership. Rivers swollen from days of record-breaking rain topped two dams in Michigan’s Midland…
New Emails Reveal that the Trump Administration Manipulated Wildfire Science to Promote Logging
An aerial view of a neighborhood destroyed by the Camp Fire on November 15, 2018 in Paradise, California.Justin Sullivan/Getty This piece was originally published in the Guardian and appears here as part of our Climate Desk Partnership. Political appointees at the Interior Department have sought to play up climate pollution from California wildfires while downplaying emissions from…
A Rare Species of Tree Was Saved from Australia’s Wildfires. And Then Something Amazing Happened.
NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service personnel inspect Wollemi pine trees in the Wollemi National Park, New South Wales, Australia.NSW National Parks and Wildfire Service/AP This piece was originally published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and appears here as part of our Climate Desk Partnership. Buried amid the horrific news from Australia about climate…
Australia’s Nightmare Fires Are on Track to Spew an Entire Year’s Worth of the Country’s Emissions
Sam Mooy/Getty The bushfires raging for months across Australia have devastated communities and wildlife, but they pose another major but less visible threat—this one to the global fight against climate change. While the fires are made worse by climate change, they’re actually part of a disruptive and dangerous cycle: As trees and brush burn, they’re also…
FEMA Spent a Ton Fighting California’s Fires. Now It Wants Victims to Pay It Back.
Mason Trinca (Washing Post via Getty Images) When disasters strike and overwhelm cities and states, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is supposed to step in and help emergency response and recovery efforts. Unfortunately, FEMA is best known for its failures—dangerously slow response times, public relations scams, languishing aid—and it seems now the agency has hit another…
The Truth Behind That Viral “1 Billion Aussie Animals Are Dead” Stat Is Way More Complex—and Sad
A dehydrated and injured Koala receives treatment at the Port Macquarie Koala Hospital in Port Macquarie, New South Wales.Saeed Khan/Getty Numbers help frame the sheer enormity and devastation of the Australian wildfires. The flames have overrun more than 32,000-square miles of landacross Australia, most acutely in the southeast states of New South Wales and Victoria.…