Biden Cannot Declare Victory on Climate Without One of These Policies
In the past few years, a historic shift has occurred in American public opinion: For the first time ever, and across a variety of polling outlets, a majority of Americans say that they want to see the government take serious action on climate change. This shift has accompanied an eruption of climate-related disasters. Wildfires now […]
Rivian Wants to Be the Apple of Electric Pickup Trucks
This is an excerpt from The Atlantic’s climate newsletter, The Weekly Planet. Subscribe today. Many fights about climate policy have been raging, basically unbroken, for the past 40 years. But something that sets this moment apart is that a subset of people who care about climate change, and who have founded companies to fight it, […]
Big Business Is Bankrolling an Effort to Kill the Democratic Climate Bill
Four years ago, when President Donald Trump announced that he would take the United States out of the Paris Agreement, the world’s largest companies leapt into action. Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, personally beseeched Trump to remain in the pact. Bob Iger, Disney’s chief executive, resigned from a White House advisory council in protest. Goldman Sachs’s […]
Electric Cars Have Hit an Inflection Point
This is an excerpt from The Atlantic’s climate newsletter, The Weekly Planet. Subscribe today. One theme of this newsletter is that the world’s physical infrastructure will have to massively change if we want to decarbonize the economy by 2050, which the United Nations has said is necessary to avoid the worst effects of the climate […]
Democrats May Be on the Verge of Climate Disaster
This is an excerpt from The Atlantic’s climate newsletter, The Weekly Planet. Subscribe today. I’m starting to become concerned about President Joe Biden’s ability to pass a climate bill. They’re speaking sotto voce, but still: In the past few days, Democrats on the party’s left and right flanks have started to hint that, well, in […]
Why I’m Thinking About Alcohol Taxes
This is an excerpt from The Atlantic’s climate newsletter, The Weekly Planet. Subscribe today. The climate scientist Ken Caldeira recently tweeted a joke meant to charm carbon-tax advocates. “If we don’t want people to drink so much alcohol, rather than taxing alcohol, we can subsidize everything that is not alcohol,” he wrote. His point, if […]
When the Climate Crisis Becomes Unignorable
Every week, our lead climate reporter brings you the big ideas, expert analysis, and vital guidance that will help you flourish on a changing planet. Sign up to get The Weekly Planet, our guide to living through climate change, in your inbox. In retrospect, last week was an interlude. Hurricane Ida had made landfall in […]
The Planet Needs Jerome Powell
In recent weeks, the climate movement has become caught in the middle of a fight that seemingly has nothing to do with the environment: Should President Joe Biden renominate Jerome Powell to lead the Federal Reserve? The choice of who should run the country’s central bank has historically not captivated climate advocates—or many Americans, for […]
We’re Hitting the Limits of Hurricane Preparedness
Seventy-four hours. That’s roughly how much time separated the moment that Tropical Depression Nine formed in the Caribbean from the moment that the storm, transformed into a ruthless Category 4 hurricane named Ida, made landfall at Port Fourchon, Louisiana. Even less time—perhaps 60 hours—separated the storm’s promotion to hurricane strength and the first arrival of […]
How the U.S. Could Slash Climate Pollution by 2030
President Joe Biden has been giving climate advocates heartburn. In April, soon after rejoining the Paris Agreement, he set a goal: The United States would cut its greenhouse-gas pollution by 50 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. The White House promised that “a careful interagency process” had produced that goal, and at least a dozen […]
