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Climate Messaging: A Case for Negativity

Nell Zink, Joy Williams, and a different kind of climate skepticism.

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Grow Up

Being an adult at the end of the world means listening to children tell the truths grown-ups refuse to actually hear.

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Fire Sale: Finance and Fascism in the Amazon Rainforest

From global capital to YouTube, carbon credits to indigenous land defenders in their own words, Will Meyer has compiled a reading list on who lit the match and how the fire might be stopped.

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It’s Time To Talk About Solar Geoengineering

We need to start talking about seemingly drastic approaches to the climate crisis, such as sun-dimming aerosols, right now — or we risk losing democratic control of the process.

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The Ugly History of Beautiful Things: Orchids

Sometimes a flower is just a flower, and sometimes it's a powerful vehicle for giving free rein to our worst colonialist and misogynist impulses.

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‘I Went Quiet…and That Allowed Me To Understand’: The Life of a Molecatcher

Marc Hamer discusses life, death, and the lost art of catching a mole.

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This Month In Books: ‘One Degree Is About the Uncanny’

This month’s books newsletter is suspended in a state of anticipation.

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Research and Rescue: Saving Species from Ourselves

We're developing high-tech genetic tools to pour new life into animals lost to human destruction. Deciding how — and whether — to use that power is as complex as the science behind it.

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The Final Five Percent

If traumatic brain injuries can impact the parts of the brain responsible for personality, judgment, and impulse control, maybe injury should be a mitigating factor in criminal trials -- but one...

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A Green New Jail

What does environmental justice look like in a landscape overrun by prisons? Where the incarcerated suffer from unusually polluted surroundings, and prisons are a toxin in their own right?

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Seagulls Who Eat People Food Poop People Food on Protected Lands

Human beings are unquestionably the worst offender when it comes to destroying the planet, but now California seagulls have gotten in on the action by eating fast food and messing up the protected...

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The Misconception of the Wild

Leo Schwartz writes for Buzzfeed News about his romanticized notion of spending a summer in the Oregon backcountry. A fresh graduate, complete with an air of self-importance, he set off from New York...

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A View of the Bay

Aimée Lutkin | Longreads | November 2019 | 15 minutes (3,262 words) “Hello?” my grandmother’s cigarette-seasoned voice would always answer the phone immediately. I pictured her sitting directly beside...

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Should We Create New Life As Our Planet Struggles to Support Life In General?

Procreation is one of many issues environmentally minded people wrestle with when thinking about our role in combating or worsening climate change. If it isn’t completely irresponsible to have children...

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How To Destroy Texas While Helping The Coal Economy

Natural gas, wind, and solar power are all cutting into coal’s profitability, so mining companies are looking for ways to reduce expenses, including reducing clean-up efforts. In their three-part...

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Burning Out

Sarah Trent | Longreads | November 2019 | 22 minutes (4,920 words) Jack Thomas was home in time for dinner, but he wasn’t really home. His head was still in the fire, gnawing on the details of what his...

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The Adaptation of Language Evolution

Your speech, or thine speech as Shakespeare would have said, has evolved with each generation that preceded you. The bubbling melting pot of language absorbs new influences with alacrity. Every time we...

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A Beautiful, Rugged Place: Erosion of the Body

Terry Tempest Williams | Erosion | Farrar, Straus and Giroux | October 2019 | 39 minutes (7,820 words)   “We are only lightly covered with buttoned cloth; and beneath these pavements are shells, bones...

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Checking in on the Masculinity Crisis

Kelli María Korducki | Longreads | December 2019 | 14 minutes (3,786 words)   Not long ago, I noticed a woman reading Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life at my Manhattan yoga studio as we both waited...

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The Traffic Jam on Mount Everest that Cost 11 Lives

Despite bitterly cold and harsh conditions, the prestige associated with summiting the tallest mountain in the world continues to make Mount Everest a dangerous lure for many, regardless of their...

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