Texas’s Energy Crisis Shows Why We Need to Reform Our Privatized Energy System
Texas’s Power Crisis Has Turned Into a Disaster That Parallels Hurricane Katrina
Climate Apartheid Is the Coming Police Violence Crisis | Dissent Magazine
Unless we win serious changes now, the worst is yet to come.
How California Became Ground Zero for Climate Disasters
The engineering and land management that enabled the state’s tremendous growth have left it more vulnerable to climate shocks — and those shocks are getting worse.
When will the Netherlands disappear?
The low-lying country has centuries of experience managing water. Now climate change is threatening to flood it completely.
Disarm the lifeboats
In this week’s Long Version I cite my fellow Substacker Emily Atkin, whose newsletter, Heated, has become an indispensable daily read on the most urgent crisis of our time. Her mission is to force accountability for global warming on the powerful, corrupt institutions that quite literally fuel it. Past issues have tackled America’s
The dam and the damned
Note from Lefteast editors: This articles is published in cooperation with the Croatian portal Bilten, published originally on 10.01.2020. Pernik, a declining industrial city in Western Bulgaria th…
Australia: The Fires and Our Future | by Tim Flannery
Australia is no stranger to bushfire. In 1994, in Sydney, I lost a house to one, and in 2002, just north of Sydney, I fought off another. But I’ve never experienced anything like the current fire season before. These bushfires have been burning since September, taking lives and property across the nation, but the worst came in late December, just as families were settling into their holidays. Our country is the world’s fifteenth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases and at the back of the pack for climate action, as its emissions from the burning of fossil fuels continue to grow. Australians ...
Australia’s Bushfires Expose an Extinction Crisis Decades in the Making
The extinction crisis is acutely felt in Australia, where more than 1,800 species are federally listed as threatened.
Australia’s dark age of climate catastrophe
On the Waterfronts | Jake Bittle
Nearly twenty thousand homes built since 2010 are at a significant risk of chronic flooding by the mid-twenty-first century, and buyouts have different outcomes for rich and poor.
Essential background on Australia fires
Doug Henwood's interview with journalist Jeff Sparrow
Australia’s Profit-Driven Apocalypse
The Banality of Apocalypse: Escaping the Australian Fires
An American family’s escape: “At the gas station, we found a long line of vehicles stretching most of the length of the very small town. The sight of this, plus thickening orange haze, reminded me of a disaster movie.”
‘A Slow-Motion Chernobyl’: How Lax Laws Turned a River Into a Disaster
A look at 15 years of attempts to clean up Mexico’s most polluted waterway revealed that the country has neither the means nor the laws to preserve its environment.
Australia's Big Smoke
I am in Sydney, having just spent 6 days in Brisbane to the north. The area around, and to the south of, Sydney has been engulfed by extensive wildfires which have been burning since August. This includes 20% of the Blue Mountains world heritage area. According to The New York Times, in the middle of More
Australia's Big Smoke - CounterPunch.org
I am in Sydney, having just spent 6 days in Brisbane to the north. The area around, and to the south of, Sydney has been engulfed by extensive wildfires which have been burning since August. This includes 20% of the Blue Mountains world heritage area. According to The New York Times, in the middle of More
Meehan Crist · Diary: California Burns
As we glide along the path of our own destruction, this is how we normalise it – one tweet at a time.
After the War, Before the Flood, in Colombia | by Jessica Camille Aguirre
The Colombian energy company EPM has developed programs for people directly affected by the dam, but the wider effects of a drastically altered ecology and changed landscape have reverberated beyond the obvious immediate emergencies. To the activist Isabel Zuleta, the irrevocable loss of a place—including all the unresolved issues of the disappearances and the victims’ remains—is the worst, final act of violence against its people. “That is incredibly painful,” she told me. “Because we, the displaced, have fought for the right to return. Without the possibility of return, it can no longer b...
From California to El Salvador, Climate-Driven Displacement Is on the Rise
Climate disruption is shaping migration patterns -- of humans and birds alike.
California of Fire and Profit - The Bullet
Intentional blackouts by power companies were designed to prevent fires. Yet the strategy has not spared California from infernos caused by faulty infrastructure. It’s a case which sheds light on the equally untenable condition of capitalism applied to public administration.
The Smoldering State
California doesn’t know how to run a power grid in the climate century. But no one else does, either.
Opinion | It’s the End of California as We Know It
The fires and the blackouts are connected to a larger problem in this state: a failure to live sustainably.
Rising sea levels pose threat to homes of 300m people – study
Figure based on new analysis of coastlines is more than three times previous estimate
Has the climate crisis made California too dangerous to live in? | Bill McKibben
As with so many things, Californians are going first where the rest of us will follow
Julian Castro’s climate change plan would recognize a new class of refugees
The Democratic presidential candidate is the first to address a solution for climate-induced mass migration.
Russian cities are still choking under smoke from massive Siberian wildfires
Fires are not unusual in Siberian forests, but the concern about this year’s blazes is their scale and their proximity to population centers. Siberia also saw massive fires last year, the year before, and the year before that. The most recent fires were preceded by temperatures upward of 14 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the long-term average for the area. That fits within the pattern of what scientists expect as the global climate changes. As average temperatures rise, heat waves are becoming longer, more frequent, and more intense.
Life in Flames
Elizabeth Peredo Beltrán (Bolivia) Translated by: Mark Cramer (Paris) These days I am immersed in rage, pain and despair. The Amazon is in flames, the Chiquitanía is gravely wounded and beneath the fires, many of our hopes●●●
For Some in Texas, Imelda’s Heavy Rain Feels Like Harvey 2.0
Tropical Depression Imelda was nowhere near as widespread as Hurricane Harvey. But in some areas, the flooding was worse.