Why the U.S. Doesn’t Dominate the Solar-Panel Industry Anymore
America invented silicon solar cells in the 1950s. It spent more on solar R&D than any other country in the 1980s. It lost its technological advantage anyway.
Aubrey Trinnaman
The West Can End the Water Wars Now
Far-right radicals in Southern Oregon are threatening to bust open an irrigation canal. Instead, the region could be a model for managing watersheds in a warmer world.
The Gods Were Right
They punished Prometheus for stealing their fire. Now look what humans have done with it.
Wall Street’s Skirmish With Exxon Is ‘Monumental’
Why a hedge fund’s successful assault on ExxonMobil matters
Stop Worrying and Love the F-150 Lightning
Here are seven ways Ford’s first electric pickup truck signals that decarbonization has entered a new era.
Why Ford’s New Electric Car Is So Important
I spent a weekend in the Mustang Mach-E, Ford’s biggest bet so far on a zero-carbon future.
Why Dead Trees Are ‘the Hottest Commodity on the Planet’
Blame climate change, wildfires, hungry beetles … and Millennial home buyers.
The Weekly Planet: An Outdated Idea Is Still Shaping Climate Policy
Biden’s team is split on how to think about climate change.
The Dark Side of the Houseplant Boom
American culture is becoming more and more preoccupied with nature. What if all the celebrations of the wild world are actually manifestations of grief?
The True Costs and Benefits of Fracking
New York is getting more out of the domestic oil boom than North Dakota ever will.
The Weekly Planet: The 1 Thing to Understand About Biden’s Infrastructure Plan
This is the only climate bill coming. Also: Why methane levels surged last year.
Your Diet Is Cooking the Planet
But two simple changes can help.
The Weekly Planet: 3 Ways That Biden Could Green the Financial System
“If it actually looks seriously like the world is gonna cut carbon emissions in half by 2030, you could, overnight, see fire sales of fossil-fuel assets.”
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The Weekly Planet: Why Celebrities Are Agog Over This Tiny Climate Think Tank
A one-of-a-kind Washington nonprofit has become a hit with musicians selling crypto-art.
The Weekly Planet: Why a Climate-Denial Coalition May Be Cracking Apart
And the world’s largest polluter plans its next five years.
The Weekly Planet: Biden’s Stimulus Is a Big Deal for Public Transit
Why the rescue bill is (sort of) a climate bill
The Weekly Planet: Why a Political Philosopher Is Thinking About Carbon Removal
Rich countries should mop up their climate pollution, the Georgetown professor Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò argues.
You’re Thinking About Home Heating Wrong
Getting a heat pump is one of the easiest ways for homeowners to fight climate change.
The Weekly Planet: The Great Climate Bill of 2021 Is Being Shaped Now
The game before the game has started.
Texas Failed Because It Did Not Plan
What went wrong? The Lone Star State made three fundamental errors.
The Weekly Planet: The Big Idea From Bill Gates’s New Climate Book
Call it the “Gates Rule.”
An Ever-Moving, Unloved Fish Is Stirring Chaos in the North Atlantic
When mackerel started showing up in Iceland, it started a decade-long fight over how to divide the ocean’s riches.
The Weekly Planet: Hail! It’s America’s Most Underrated Climate Risk
It’s smashing, in the bad way.
A Super Bowl Ad That the Biden Presidency Made Possible
GM has cast its electric vehicles as normal American cars, in a normal Super Bowl ad. Here are seven ways to think about that.
Ultra-fast Fashion Is Eating the World
Even a pandemic can’t stop people from buying clothes they don’t need.
The Terrifying Warning Lurking in the Earth’s Ancient Rock Record
Our climate models could be missing something big.
Inevitable Planetary Doom Has Been Exaggerated
Hope for the future is a reasonable and necessary prerequisite for action.
How Useful Is Recycling, Really?
Among all possible climate actions, recycling ranks pretty low in its impact.
The Weekly Planet: Why Biden Is Buying 645,000 New Cars
The president’s most interesting climate proposal yet hasn’t appeared in an executive order.
The Weekly Planet: How to Think About President Biden’s Big Climate Plans
Democrats have learned not to peg their hopes to a single major climate bill.
The Weekly Planet: What 2020’s Bizarre Economy Taught Us About Climate Change
U.S. carbon pollution hasn’t been this low in decades—that’s the bad news.
If You Can’t Stand the Heat
How I became a cook at fire camp
The Weekly Planet: The 5 Biggest Climate Stories of 2020
Joe Biden’s victory isn’t on the list.
The Weekly Planet: The Only Way to Achieve Carbon-Neutral Flight, According to an Airline
United Airlines is betting on carbon removal as the key to climate-friendly air travel.
The Weekly Planet: What Extremely Muscular Horses Teach Us About Climate Change
You can’t understand the history of American energy use without them. A new visual history puts them in context.
The Weekly Planet: The Best Way to Donate to Fight Climate Change (Probably)
These are the most effective carbon offsets and climate-advocacy groups, according to a new evidence-based group.
Photography Has Gotten Climate Change Wrong From the Start
Smoggy-looking daguerreotypes in 19th-century London foreshadowed today’s muted smartphone photos of California fires.
The Weekly Planet: A Start-Up’s Unusual Plan to Suck Carbon Out of the Sky
An online-payments company may fund more carbon removal than anyone else.
The Weekly Planet: What Donald Trump Taught the Electric-Car Industry
Tesla, Uber, and utilities are consolidating their power in Washington.
The Weekly Planet: 5 Ways to Think About Biden and Climate Change
He could have the best chance to fight carbon pollution of any American leader in a decade.
The Weekly Planet: How Jeff Bezos Is Spending His $10 Billion Earth Fund
These nine environmental groups are some of his first grantees.
Land Managers Can’t Burn the West Fast Enough
Prescribed burns, which create buffers against larger fires, can do only so much.
The Weekly Planet: The Secret Political Power of Fossil Fuels
Coal and fracking don’t work like other declining industries, and that matters for Democrats.
The Weekly Planet: The Question That Haunts Climate Advocates
It’s not “Will Donald Trump win?”
A New Way of Thinking About Climate Change
Introducing Atlantic Planet
Earth’s New Gilded Era
The world is getting hotter, and the divide between rich and poor is getting bigger.
Kill Your Gas Stove
It’s bad for you, and the environment. If you can afford to avoid it, you probably should.
Scylla and Charybdis
Beyond climate denial and despair
I’m Leaving the West Coast
The fires, smoke, and heat are no longer a fluke, but our future. The time has come for us to flee.
The United States Has Become a Disaster Area
Hurricanes in the Gulf, fires in the West, the coronavirus everywhere—the country is a mess.
The West Has Never Felt So Small
With fires raging up and down the West Coast, and the pandemic restricting travel, the instinct to bolt has nowhere to go.
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All That Performative Environmentalism Adds Up
Don’t depersonalize climate change.
A Mental-Health Crisis Is Burning Across the American West
Each fire season can compound the trauma of the one before it.
‘We Knew They Had Cooked the Books’
The Trump administration’s attempt to kill one of America’s strongest climate policies has been a complete debacle.
The Concession to Climate Change I Will Not Make
I’ve never thought we should stop having children. But I will have to teach our son to wonder at the world before he learns to fear for it.
A Major but Little-Known Supporter of Climate Denial: Freight Railroads
For nearly 30 years, America’s four biggest rail companies—which move the majority of the country’s coal—have spent millions to deny climate science and block climate policy.