By Shuang-Ye Wu | – Alongside a lingering global pandemic, the year 2021 was filled with climate disasters, some so intense they surprised even the scientists who study them. Extreme rainstorms turned to raging flash floods that swept through mountain towns in Europe, killing over 200 people. Across Asia, excessive rainfall inundated wide areas and […]
Don’t care about the Build Back Better Act? Hearing People’s personal Stories might change that
By Angela Bradbery | – When U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said that he wouldn’t support President Joe Biden’s signature Build Back Better Act, he set off a wave of breaking news alerts. It was fitting. For months, media coverage has breathlessly focused on the behind-the-scenes wrangling and hour-by-hour negotiations around the legislation. How much […]
Biden, Infrastructure Law in Hand, Will at Last replace all Poisonous Lead Water Pipes from Coast to Coast
By Gabriel Filippelli | – The Biden administration has released a plan to accelerate removal of lead water pipes and lead paint from U.S. homes. As a geochemist and environmental health researcher who has studied the heartbreaking impacts of lead poisoning in children for decades, I am happy to see high-level attention paid to this […]
bell hooks will never Leave Us – She lives on through the Truth of her Words
By Karsonya Wise Whitehead | – I was introduced to the work of bell hooks for the first time when I was 14 years old, sitting on my Nana’s porch, complaining about the mosquitoes and the heat. My Nana, who was probably frustrated by my endless complaints about being bored, stuck a copy of “Ain’t […]
An Iranian festival, Yalda, celebrates the triumph of light over darkness, with pomegranates, poetry and sacred rituals
By Pardis Mahdavi | – As the days become shorter and the nights become longer and darker, we are reminded that indeed winter is coming. As a child I would dread this time of the year. Not only was there was less time to play outside, but there was a string of holidays that my […]
Why spending $2 trillion on child care, health care and fighting climate change won’t make inflation any worse than it already is
By Michael Klein | – One of the main concerns raised by critics of President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan is that it will drive up inflation, which is already running at the fastest pace in four decades. The Senate is currently considering a roughly US$2 trillion bill passed by the House that would […]
How Climate Change and extreme Weather may lead to Food Shortages and Escalating Prices
By Paul Ekins | – In a world with an increasing human population, climate change may have a serious impact on our ability to grow enough food. Research from as far back as 2007 found that around 30% of year-to-year fluctuations in tonnes of crops grown per hectare were due to changes in the climate. […]
Alarming Loss of Sea Ice diminishes the Arctic’s ability to cool the Global Climate
By Matthew Druckenmiller, Rick Thoman, and Twila Moon | – The Arctic has long been portrayed as a distant end-of-the-Earth place, disconnected from everyday common experience. But as the planet rapidly warms, what happens in this icy region, where temperatures are rising twice as fast as the rest of the globe, increasingly affects lives around […]
Afghanistan: heroin and human trafficking are the only two sectors of the economy still thriving
By Jonathan Goodhand and Jan Koehler | – In the frontier town of Zaranj on Afghanistan’s border with Iran, young men jostle one another as they cram into pickups that leave at regular intervals to be smuggled across the border. Human trafficking is one of the few sectors of the Afghan economy that is thriving. […]
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