Climate change and myriad other environmental crises were not meaningfully addressed in 2024. But WhoWhatWhy and our Covering Climate Now partners remained dedicated to bringing you news on all of it.
Listen To This Story
From WhoWhatWhy
Photo credit: Illustration by WhoWhatWhy from COP28 / Wikimedia and PublicDomainPictures / Pixabay.
COP28: No Final Solution, But the Writing Is on the Wall
Nothing was resolved at the COP28 Conference on Climate Change except the growing conviction that the days of fossil fuels are numbered. WhoWhatWhy’s Kennedy Maize analyzed the outcomes of Dubai’s COP28. Read more.
A hurricane making landfall. Photo credit: Michelle Raponi / Pixabay
Billion-Dollar Climate Disasters Soar in 2023
In the US in 2023, billion-dollar climate disasters claimed the lives of nearly 500 people and cost over $90 billion. Yet a significant segment of the country continues to deny the reality of climate change. We evaluate the statistics behind the natural disasters of 2023 — and were not at all surprised when storms in 2024 added to the toll. Read more.
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska is the breeding place for many birds. Photo credit: Lisa Hupp / USFWS
Donald Trump Drills Deep Into the Pocket of Fossil Fuel
Look at Trump’s words under a microscope. What do you see? Russ Baker saw at the beginning of the year exactly how dangerous Donald Trump and his commitment to the fossil fuel industry will be in the event of Trump’s reelection. Read more.
Fionn Ferreira: Removing microplastics from water. Photo credit: European Patent Office / YouTube
Life in the Plastocene: Solutions to the Plastics Plague
There was life before plastics. Is it realistic to hope there will be life after them? For Earth Day, Russ Baker examines the damage wrought by 70 years of indiscriminate plastic use. Read more.
Photo credit: Warner Brothers
Furiosa and the Spectacular Joys of the Climate Crisis
“There will still be Mondays after doomsday.” Brandon R. Reynolds reviews “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” as a piece of “cli-fi,” or climate fiction. He comes to the conclusion that viewers and consumers of cli-fi assume the responsibility to do something about the very real climate crisis upon leaving the theater. Read more.
Artist’s rendering of the Seattle Lid I-5 Project. Photo credit: City of Springfield, OR
Gridlocked: How the US Addiction to Cars Jeopardizes Safety and Climate Goals
While the public grows louder in their demands for sustainable transportation options, elected officials continue to support car-centric policies, placing the nation in gridlock. WhoWhatWhy apprentice Grace Spiegel examines the American car addiction at the University of Oregon. Read more.
From Our Covering Climate Now Partners
Portrait of Lyndon B. Johnson at the LBJ ranch near Stonewall, TX, 1972. Photo credit: LBJ Library
A US President Was First Informed of CO2’s Impact 59 Years Ago Last Month
A 1965 memo to Lyndon Baines Johnson disclosed the link between CO2 emissions and climate change — showing federal climate action could have started decades sooner. DeSmog’s Rebecca John dives into the story behind the memo, the hopes for an ambitious environmental program, and the devastating consequences of our failure to act. Read more.
Chile’s BASE Millennium Institute researchers during the expedition that first confirmed H5N1 in Adélie penguins and Antarctic cormorants. Summer 2023/24. Photo credit: Fabiola León / Daily Maverick
Behind the Ice Curtain: Antarctic Treaty Talks Hide Looming Bird Flu Catastrophe
Cash-strapped scientists in Antarctica face ‘unimaginable’ challenges — from sampling a lethal virus on floating ice to fighting a ‘climate’ threat that could kill millions of wildlife, and even humans. Despite calls for global assistance, 29 states meeting in India this spring remained entrenched in Cold War-era secrecy. Tiara Walters reports for the Daily Maverick. Read more.
Painting by Henry C. Pitz showing John Wesley Powell and his party descending the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, presumably during the historic 1869 expedition. Photo credit: Smithsonian Institution / Bureau of American Ethnology / NPS
When Will Climate Change Turn Life in the US Upside Down?
Intensifying extreme weather events and an insurance crisis are likely to cause significant economic and political disruption in the US sometime in the next 15 years. For Yale Climate Connections, Jeff Masters takes a 7,000 word deep dive into the climate catastrophes coming for the United States. Read more.
Prison guard house in Del Sur, CA, October 23, 2008. Photo credit: Rennett Stowe / Flickr (CC BY 2.0 DEED)
CA Inmates Urgently Need Workplace Heat Standards — But State Has Delayed Them
Where prisons are located, the way they are built, and the health condition of prisoners means deaths will likely increase with climate change, experts say. Capital & Main’s Hilary Beaumont details the heat-related suffering of tens of thousands of California inmates and the state’s refusal to take action. Read more.
Photo credit: Tess Abbot / ExxonKnews
Climate Accountability Under Trump: The Courts
The outlook for climate action in the US is grim, but there’s a separate path forward for accountability in the courts. In Part 1 of an ExxonKnews series examining what holding the fossil fuel industry accountable looks like under the incoming Trump administration, Emily Sanders takes a look at what’s next for the legal battle against Big Oil. Read more.
A forest emerges in place of the Kakhovka Dam reservoir. Photo credit: Serhiiy Skoryk (used with permission) via The Revelator
‘Like a Phoenix’: A New Forest Emerges From the Destruction in Ukraine
Russia’s bombing of Kakhovka Dam in 2023 killed hundreds of people and tens of thousands of animals, but it has also provided a potential ecological reset. For The Revelator, Ruchi Kumar takes us to experience the unexpected reblossoming of nature in the delta of the Dnieper River. Read more.