Fiction

The Smoke of the Land Went Up

By Andrew Cominelli March 4, 2024

Material reality had suddenly decided to rearrange itself.

Climate & EnvironmentSex

Spotlights

On Farms

By Isabelle Lim February 5, 2024

For a country that has lost touch with any mainstream practice of farming, what does it mean for us to want to farm again?

Guernica Global Climate & Environment

FictionSpotlights

Komorebi

By Tanmayi Gidh November 6, 2023

Somewhere on another continent, in a city far away, on the twenty-fourth of January, a clock chimed at midnight, indicating we had run out of time.

Guernica Global Climate & Environment

Wish You’d Been Here

Still Life

Photo by Veejay Villafranca, text by Lian Sing September 5, 2023

They say we are sinking, but the sea has spat out the bones of our villages a thousand and one times.

Climate & Environment

Wish You’d Been Here

Terms of Inheritance

By Ephrem Sebatigita, as told to Lionel Ntasano August 7, 2023

My grandfather started one of the first coffee farms in Burundi. Will climate change leave any trees for my grandson?

Climate & Environment

EssayWish You’d Been Here

Spring Without Flowers

By Rishu Nigam June 5, 2023

Spring blossoms have been at the center of this Himalayan village's spiritual life. What happens when they arrive too early?

Climate & Environment

Essay

Clean Water

By Yoko Uema, translated from the Japanese by Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda May 1, 2023

Every day, the water in Okinawa is becoming more and more contaminated. I don't know where to run to.

Climate & Environment

EssayWish You’d Been Here

When the Rain Came

By Doug Van Gundy May 1, 2023

Misery has a long reach when unprecedented flooding comes to the Appalachians.

Climate & Environment

Wish You’d Been Here

The End of Ice

By Amy Sacka April 5, 2023

We don’t need to talk much, because the ice speaks for us. What happens when it melts?

Climate & Environment

Interview

Amali Tower: What Climate Justice Takes

By Amali Tower and Emma Hardy April 5, 2023

“Crisis isn’t triggered the minute somebody crosses a border; it’s triggered because it’s happening to them right now.”

Climate & Environment

FictionSpotlights

Wajo

By Tjak S. Parlan, translated by Clarissa Goenawan December 15, 2022

Two old acquaintances walk by an artificial river, recuperating all that they've lost in their conversation.

Guernica Global Climate & Environment

Essay

Fake Plastic Trees

By Jennifer Gersten December 12, 2022

I moved to Norway for music, not forests.

Arts & CultureClimate & Environment

Essay

Treading Water

By Nazish Brohi November 8, 2022

Can imperiled people’s stories prompt more than empty empathy?

Asia & OceaniaClimate & Environment

Essay

Whatever the Weather

By Lina Tran April 18, 2022

Climate change has emboldened hurricanes. Is home still home when the weather changes?

Climate & EnvironmentUSA

AudioPoetry

Without Them

By Bernardo Wade March 23, 2022

Thirsty / doesn’t describe what we’re looking for, / yet for some it means desperate for another’s touch.

Climate & Environment

Lives

Red Tides

By Eiren Caffall February 10, 2022

My father, and the ecosystem I loved, were both slipping away.

Bodies & NatureClimate & Environment

Essay

Itasca, Alight

By Clare Boerigter November 22, 2021

I was twenty the first time I saw wildfire reduce a forest to moonscape.

Bodies & NatureClimate & Environment

Fiction

Mbuze

By Kasimma October 29, 2021

An excerpt from the short story collection All Shades of Iberibe

AfricaClimate & Environment

Lives

One Man’s Pest

By Sam Schramski October 13, 2021

In the urban Amazon, black vultures are a threat to aviation — but otherwise a boon, however distasteful, to humans.

Climate & Environment

Essay

A Garden in the Desert

By Debbie Weingarten September 20, 2021

How far should we bend a thing to fit inside it, or make it fit around us?

Climate & EnvironmentFamily & Relationships

Essay

In a World Without Sushi

By Juhea Kim June 30, 2021

On family, salmon, and survival.

Climate & EnvironmentFamily & Relationships

Review

Reading in the Anthropocene

By Daegan Miller June 16, 2021

To survive the end of everything, start from The Porch.

Climate & Environment

Review

The Desert Is Not Empty

By Alicia Mireles Christoff June 9, 2021

The poems in On This Side of the Desert multiply and reimagine the borderland desert.

Climate & Environment

Lives

There’s No Simple Way to Make it OK

By Kathy Davis March 31, 2021

I was enamored with the notion that all I had to do to drive the sadness away, to have something to look forward to, was open a can of meadows.

Bodies & NatureClimate & Environment

Report

Raccoon Trouble

By Kimon de Greef February 10, 2021

One trapper’s affection for the animals is both a gift and a burden.

Climate & Environment

ArtEssay

Shedding Light

By Pamela Petro November 2, 2020

Darkness obscures and sunlight reveals, but dusk—that liminal moment in between—murmurs suggestions.

Arts & CultureClimate & Environment

Essay

Mixed Blessings

By Michele Moses October 20, 2020

Harvesting wheat in California's warming climate, a writer considers what’s sacred.

Climate & EnvironmentReligion

Interview

Jennifer Hijazi: Climate and the Courts

By Amy Brady October 20, 2020

The climate reporter on what a Justice Amy Coney Barrett would mean for the environment.

Climate & EnvironmentLit World

Commentary

The Sacrifice Zone

By Chloe Hooper October 8, 2020

Historic wildfires reflect not only a failure to care for the environment, but for each other.

Climate & Environment

Essay

Fitness: How the Climate Killed My Children

By Joseph Osmundson August 20, 2020

If we won’t change to save ourselves, what hope is there for our children?

Bodies & NatureClimate & Environment

Essay

Alone in the Wilderness, Again and Again

By Amy Marsh July 22, 2020

Dick Proenneke has achieved something mythical: he seems happy.

Bodies & NatureClimate & Environment

Report

Poison Route

By Grey Moran June 15, 2020

National Grid’s North Brooklyn pipeline will funnel fracked gas through largely low-income neighborhoods of color. Can it be stopped?

Climate & EnvironmentRace

Essay

The Season of Children

By Emilio Carrero June 11, 2020

After a series of hurricanes ravages one Central Florida neighborhood, three kids consider home, change, and the efficacy of destruction.

Climate & EnvironmentRaceUSA

Report

A Drowned World

By Brandon Holmes May 1, 2020

“It’s quite a lot of sadness, in realizing that everything you love about the world is falling to pieces.”

Climate & Environment

Essay

Astrophotography and the Zeitgeist

By Alessandro Tersigni April 22, 2020

Photos of Earth taken from space can teach us about how we think—about our home planet, and its place in the universe.

Climate & Environment

Essay

The Optimist’s Apocalypse

By Rafael Frumkin March 30, 2020

What if the world can “end,” as your life has many times—and then begin again?

Climate & EnvironmentHealthPolitics

Essay

From Environmental Crisis to Pandemic, Waging a War with Nature

By John Kaag March 17, 2020

What the 19th century American pragmatist William James can teach us in the age of coronavirus.

Climate & EnvironmentPolitics

Review

Pigs in Shit

By Hunter Braithwaite March 9, 2020

Jean-Baptiste Del Amo's Animalia, and naturalism after nature.

Climate & EnvironmentLit World

Interview

Jenny Offill: The Doomy Bits

By Drew Johnson March 6, 2020

The author of Weather talks about confronting dread, navigating hope, and how to not write a bad book about climate change.

Climate & EnvironmentLit World

Report

Mapping the End of the World

By Mario Reinaldo Machado February 5, 2020

A polar scientist and a heavy-metal band depict global climatic dystopia.

Climate & Environment

Essay

World Without End

By Martha Park January 20, 2020

Lately, I’ve found the language of apocalypse creeping up in my own life for the first time, and with increasing frequency.

Climate & EnvironmentReligion

Essay

After the Storm

By Mary Heglar October 22, 2019

How Hurricane Katrina and the murder of Emmett Till shaped one woman’s commitment to climate justice

Climate & Environment

Interview

Four Storytellers Tackle Climate Change

By Amy Brady October 15, 2019

Experts in art, writing, journalism, and policy discuss why climate change is the biggest story of our time.

Climate & Environment

Essay

Starshift

By Gabrielle Bellot September 9, 2019

In an era of climate change, everything feels strange. Even the places we call home.

Climate & Environment

Essay

Everything We Do Not Know

By Aaron Gilbreath September 4, 2019

Environmental and personal fallout from the Fukushima disaster continues nearly a decade later.

Climate & Environment

Report

American Folly, American Dream

By Emma Hine September 3, 2019

J. David Bamberger turned his fried chicken fortune into an ecological experiment in the Texas Hill Country.

Climate & Environment

Essay

Anthems for the Anthropocene

By Mario Reinaldo Machado August 26, 2019

Eco-hardcore music, with its aggressive lyrics and antisocial performances, upended stereotypes of hippie environmentalists—today those visceral live performances match the sense of panic around environmental concerns.

Climate & Environment

Essay

Before the Shaking Starts

By Trevor Quirk July 10, 2019

Living in the shadow of Utah’s next big earthquake.

Climate & Environment

Interview

Terese Svoboda: Writing the Desert

By Amy Brady May 14, 2019

The author and translator on the changing American region that shaped her thinking.

Climate & Environment

Video

Five Writers on Climate Change and Popular Culture

By Amy Brady April 23, 2019

Five contemporary writers and critics discuss how climate change is represented in novels, film, comic books, and even in the works of Plato.

Climate & Environment

Video

Presented by SIMA: Sanctuaries of Silence

By Mary Wang April 1, 2019

This virtual reality documentary follows an acoustic ecologist's journey to document noise pollution in one of the quietest places in North America. Watch it here.

SIMA docs Climate & Environment

Lives

Escaping Paradise

By Melissa Mesku April 1, 2019

How my family barely got away from the deadliest fire in California history.

Climate & EnvironmentFamily & Relationships

Fiction

Floating

Fiction by Pitchaya Sudbanthad March 11, 2019

That night, by the time she fell asleep, Cookie would understand that these were her last hours in the place she’d long called home.

Climate & Environment

Interview

David Wallace-Wells: “We Will Need to Learn How to Navigate a New World with New Rules”

By Amy Brady March 8, 2019

The provocative journalist on why we should stop speculating about the “threshold of catastrophe,” and instead ask ourselves “How bad are we going to let it get?”

Climate & Environment

Fiction

Woodland

Fiction by Lydia Millet March 4, 2019

They warned us we’d be wide open. No electricity or security. No uplink to connect us, and anyway our devices would soon lose their power and turn to scrap.

Climate Fiction Climate & Environment

Fiction

Climate Fiction: A Special Issue

By Amy Brady March 4, 2019

We've known for years about climate change, but only 54% of Americans think it's a "serious issue." That's why, says guest fiction editor Amy Brady, we need to read climate fiction.

Climate Fiction Climate & Environment

Video

Presented by SIMA: The Super Salmon

By Mary Wang February 15, 2019

Watch the gorgeously-shot, deliriously-paced documentary that follows an Alaskan salmon on an unlikely journey on "the Mount Everest of rivers," as residents consider the costs and benefits of a mega-dam.

SIMA docs AmericasClimate & Environment

EssayPhotography

To Smolder, Burn Slow

By Harrison Dietzman February 5, 2019

In this photoessay, a Washington State firefighter recounts how suppressing wildfires involves bleeding hands, burning lungs, and rare moments of freedom.

Climate & Environment

Essay

In the Ruins of Paradise

By Tiffany Higgins December 17, 2018

I begin coughing uncontrollably, a wave of it crests, and then stops. I touch the tape on the windows.

Climate & EnvironmentUSA

Interview

Meghan Brown: Ecology, Storytelling, and The White Deer Terroir Project

By Jeff VanderMeer October 31, 2018

Author Jeff VanderMeer interviews biology professor Dr. Meghan Brown about her use of The Wonderbook in her science class.

Climate & Environment

Photography

The Archipelago of Hope

By Gleb Raygorodetsky September 28, 2018

Indigenous peoples are disproportionally burdened by climate change. Yet, their traditional knowledge is essential to securing the health of our planet.

AmericasAsia & OceaniaClimate & EnvironmentEurope

Interview

Roy Scranton: Some New Future Will Emerge

By Amy Brady July 10, 2018

The author and Army veteran on climate change, war, and "the radical transformation of the basic structures of our existence."

Climate & EnvironmentConflict

Interview

Sonam Wangchuk: An Ice Fountain Brings Water to the Himalayan Desert

By Teresa Krug May 7, 2018

Will this engineer’s “ice stupa” come to symbolize climate change adaptation?

Deserts Asia & OceaniaClimate & Environment

Essay

The Mirage: Writing and Upheaval in the Chihuahuan Desert

By Anna Badkhen May 7, 2018

The northern Chihuahuan Desert was drowned, kneaded, jabbed, choked with ash for half a billion years of geologic tumult. Now it's being throttled for oil.

Deserts AmericasClimate & Environment

Report

Kenya’s Thirsty Year

By Nanjala Nyabola May 7, 2018

In Kenya's Turkana County, political failures turned what could have been a manageable drought into a catastrophe.

Deserts AfricaClimate & Environment

Essay

John Chiara, and California’s Beauty and Terror

By Sophie Haigney April 18, 2018

As wildfires raged across California, the photographer’s surreal landscapes put my new home in perspective.

Climate & Environment

Report

Fahrenheit 2017

By Stewart Lawrence Sinclair April 18, 2018

At the center of a wildfire was a town I called home.

Climate & EnvironmentLabor

Essay

Ghost Tigers: Climate Change and the Escalation of Extinction

By Sean P. Smith March 21, 2018

As the climate crisis intensifies, try this simple exercise: count how many animals you can’t see.

Climate & EnvironmentHistory

AudioPoetry

An Iranian Rat Prepares for Space Flight

Poetry by Robin LaMer Rahija January 8, 2018

I have no name unless I make / it back alive

Climate & EnvironmentTechnology & the Future

Interview

Hugo Blanco: The Future Is Indigenous

By Ted Hamilton December 11, 2017

The veteran guerilla fighter and activist on the native groups at the vanguard against climate change.

Climate & EnvironmentJustice

AudioPoetry

The last dog in the world

Poetry by Sarah Messer November 15, 2017

What are days? Just him and / the left-over spiders.

Climate & EnvironmentPoliticsTechnology & the Future

AudioPoetry

I Give You My Heart/Os doy mi corazón

By Ricardo Alberto Maldonado October 10, 2017

A poem for Puerto Rico.

Climate & EnvironmentUSA

Essay

Drain the Swamp

By Hunter Braithwaite September 28, 2017

Over fifty years ago, author J.G. Ballard was giving us words for today's hurricanes.

Climate & EnvironmentLit World

Lives

Waiting for Hurricane Irma

By John Sims September 27, 2017

Me, myself, and Sarasota: a meditation on real and metaphorical storms.

Climate & EnvironmentJustice

Report

The Marsh at the End of the World

By Elizabeth Rush September 6, 2017

Wetlands are some of the world’s greatest carbon sinks, and they're starting to rot: from Maine, an investigation of an ecosystem on the brink.

Bodies & NatureClimate & EnvironmentUSA

Essay

An Inconvenient Movement

By Mimi Bluestone August 30, 2017

The problem with Al Gore’s latest documentary about the climate crisis is Al Gore himself.

Climate & Environment

Essay

By the Horns

By Pippa Biddle August 28, 2017

The costs of doing business in Interior, South Dakota, population: 94.

Climate & EnvironmentUSA

Interview

Jeff VanderMeer: Life Apocalyptic

By Puloma Mukherjee August 7, 2017

The writer dubbed the “Weird Thoreau” on ecological fiction and the cult of climate-change denial.

Arts & CultureClimate & Environment

AudioLivesNews

The Fallout

By Lacy M. Johnson July 10, 2017

In St. Louis, America's nuclear history creeps into the present, leaching into streams and bodies.

Climate & Environment

Report

The Fallout

By Lacy M. Johnson July 10, 2017

In St. Louis, America's nuclear history creeps into the present, leaching into streams and bodies.

Climate & EnvironmentHealthJustice

Interview

Leslie T. Sharpe: If the Critters Fail, We Are All Going to Fail

By Daniela Petrova July 3, 2017

The naturalist on our vital relationship to wildlife, economic arguments for preservation, and why nature is “America’s moral compass.”

Bodies & NatureClimate & Environment

Interview

Amy Benson: Like a Cloud You Walk Into and Then Out of Again

By Julia Bosson June 11, 2017

The essayist on the first person and the end of humanity.

Arts & CultureClimate & Environment

Comics

Warmer: A Collection of Comics about Climate Change for the Fearful & Hopeful

By Madeleine Witt, Andrew White, Anya Grenier, Nick Soucek, and Tor Brandt June 8, 2017

An excerpt from the forthcoming anthology, edited by Madeleine Witt and Andrew White.

Bodies & NatureClimate & Environment

Interview

Marcel Dicke: It’s Just a Matter of Time before Americans Eat Insects

By Amy Wright June 2, 2017

Probing the possibility of insects for dinner with the entomologist and author.

Climate & EnvironmentHealth

Interview

Joe Quirk: Seasteading Is the Story of Progress

By Maya Weeks May 22, 2017

The floating-cities advocate says moving to the oceans will save us from environmental catastrophe.

Climate & Environment

Essay

The Hunted

By Debbie Weingarten May 15, 2017

The desert crossers move like flocks of birds. They scramble through washes at night, drinking from stock tanks gone green with slime.

Bodies & NatureClimate & EnvironmentJusticeUSA

Comics

Under the Water

By Madeleine Witt May 4, 2017

A comic about baptism, the rising seas, and the end of the world.

Bodies & NatureClimate & EnvironmentPolitics

Essay

Three Minutes to Midnight

By Edward McPherson May 1, 2017

Adventures in Los Angeles and apocalypse: a city on the cusp of nirvana, the next big thing, or falling into the sea.

Climate & EnvironmentConflict

Essay

Renegade Canyon

By Barret Baumgart April 24, 2017

A pilgrimage in the Mojave, to a vortex thrumming with spiritual energy and military jets.

Bodies & NatureClimate & EnvironmentUSA

Poetry

All-Purpose Elegy

By Paul Guest April 10, 2017

For ashes. For the wind. / For this emergency we call life.

Bodies & NatureClimate & Environment

Interview

Blair Braverman: Natural and Unnatural Violence

By Ariel Lewiton March 29, 2017

The polar explorer on navigating danger.

Bodies & NatureClimate & EnvironmentEuropeGenderTravel & Adventure

AudioPoetry

Oasis

By Beth Bachmann March 13, 2017

We want what God wants: to be pure.

Bodies & NatureClimate & EnvironmentReligion

Interview

Clive Oppenheimer: Werner Herzog’s True Virgil

By Rebecca Bates December 16, 2016

The volcanologist on "red water," white whales, and the center of the earth.

Arts & CultureClimate & Environment

Interview

Kate Harris: Beyond Borders

By Sarah Tory December 13, 2016

The Canadian writer on the allure of remote landscapes and what we learn when man-made boundaries fail.

Arts & CultureClimate & Environment

Commentary

We Are the Cavalry

By Chris Lombardi December 8, 2016

Veterans stood for Standing Rock, but their history of activism runs deep.

Climate & EnvironmentJusticeUSA

Essay

Late Migration

By Margaret Renkl December 6, 2016

Waiting for the monarchs.

Bodies & NatureClimate & EnvironmentUSA

Interview

David Holmgren: A Matter of Scale

By Naomi Riddle November 22, 2016

The cofounder of permaculture on why the radical idea he developed in the 1970s is key to fighting climate change today.

Climate & Environment

Report

Going Where the Reindeer Go: Sami Culture at a Crossroads

By Zach St. George November 3, 2016

In Norway’s far north, members of Europe’s last intact nomadic culture struggle to adjust as development and climate change reshape the landscape and their future.

Climate & EnvironmentEurope

Report

Healing the Gulf with Buckets and Balloons

By Anya Groner September 8, 2016

How fenceline communities are gathering clues to help them combat environmental pollution.

Bodies & NatureClimate & EnvironmentUSA

Lives

Soot

By Jennifer Baum August 29, 2016

Breathability then and now.

Climate & EnvironmentFamily & RelationshipsHealth