climate – Page 11 – Jessica S. McKenzie

Bulletin: Author and activist Bill McKibben on the “timed test” of the climate crisis

When it comes to the climate crisis, author and environmentalist Bill McKibben hasn’t been a fully “objective journalist” since he finished penning his first book, The End of Nature, over three decades ago, and realized he didn’t want the world to burn up. While McKibben continues to write on the subjects of climate and the environment for publications like The New Yorker, The Nation, and the Bulletin, in recent years his attentions and energies have been at least equally spent on climate activism. The organization that McKibben and others founded in 2008, 350.org, is now a vast operation that has affiliations with some 300 other climate organizations around the world.

Earlier this year, McKibben founded a new group for Americans over the age of 60 called Third Act and started a Substack newsletter called The Crucial Years. In an interview with Bulletin associate editor Jessica McKenzie, McKibben discusses these new endeavors, when he realized the fight over climate was more about money and power than science and evidence, the technological shifts that make climate action easier now than 10 years ago, and which environmental crisis McKibben believes is underappreciated by the general public.

Bulletin: Beware the Blob! Ocean heatwaves threaten microbes that help counter global warming

Warm water anomalies like the Blob are more likely because of climate change—and by reducing the ocean’s ability to store carbon, could lead to more warming.

Bulletin: “Harrowing” intelligence report still downplays threat of climate change to national security

In late October, 18 US intelligence agencies forecast that Americans will face “massive” impacts and “wrenching” adjustments because of climate change over the next two decades. The warning was buried on the last page of a report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on the threat climate change poses to US national security. The report states that the world is unlikely to meet the Paris Agreement’s stated goals for decarbonization and outlines scenarios that will probably play out, including geopolitical tensions that will arise as countries play the climate crisis blame game, and how climate change will exacerbate political instability around the globe. It is the first-ever National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) to focus on the climate crisis, but a former intelligence analyst said the document downplays the risks.

Bulletin: Joe Manchin listens to WV climate activists. But does he hear them?

I spoke with West Virginian environmentalists about what it’s really like to (try to) work with Sen. Joe Manchin.

Audubon: From Meadow to Marsh, Habitats May Take a Hit During Pandemic

Lesser celandine, with its a small, pale yellow blossoms, looks like an innocuous plant. But the sprawling weed crowds out native species when it blooms in spring and then goes dormant, leaving ground brown and bare through summer and fall. Normally at this time of year, volunteers with the New York New Jersey Trail Conference’s Invasives Strike Force would be pulling up the species and other invasive plants during weekend meet-ups. This year, however, is anything but normal—the group suspended work on March 23.

Across the country this spring as the COVID-19 pandemic has taken hold, conservation organizations and government agencies have postponed or canceled projects that require groups to meet and work together. Although public health is everyone’s firm priority, gaps in invasive species removal, controlled burns, and habitat restoration can create short- and long-term setbacks to time-sensitive projects