Environmental Library

​

Our collection is divided into five sections: Climate Change, Southern California, In the Biosphere, Solutions and Advances, and Environmental Activism. Articles are from a wide range of reputable sources, including the New York Times, Washington Post and The Guardian. They are arranged chronologically, with the newest on top.

​

Climate Change ​​​​ 

​

• 7/10/21: "The science of heat domes and how drought and climate change make them worse" WaPo

• 7/8/21: "Pacific Northwest heat wave would have been "virtually impossible" without climate change, experts say" CBS News

• 7/6/21: "Another intense heat wave to roast Western U.S., southwest Canada" WaPo

• 7/5/21: "The scientists fighting to save the ocean’s most important carbon capture system"  WaPo

• 7/2/21: "Australia ranks last on climate action in U.N. report" WaPo

• 6/30/21: "In Video, Exxon Lobbyist Describes Efforts to Undercut Climate Action" NYT

• 6/28/21: Northwest "heat dome" signals global warming's march"

• 6/26/21: "Global warming makes extreme weather a regular event: Earth's climate has drastically shifted in three decades" Axios

• 6/25/21: "Bill McKibben: It’s Not the Heat—It’s the Humanity" New Yorker Climate Crisis Newsletter

• 6/24/21: "Terrifying UN Draft Climate Report Urges Total Transformation of Our Way of Life"

• 6/16/21: "Earth is now trapping an ‘unprecedented’ amount of heat, NASA says" WaPo

• 6/17/21: "To save planet, solve twin crises of climate change and species loss together, say UN scientists"

• 6/13/21: "David Attenborough Warns Humans ‘On Verge Of Destabilising The Entire Planet’

• 6/3/21: "Climate tipping points could topple like dominoes, warn scientists" Guardian

• 6/7/21: "Carbon Dioxide in Atmosphere Hits Record High Despite Pandemic Dip" NYT

• 5/27/21: "Warren Proposes $1.9T in Investments in Energy Research, American Manufacturing"

• 5/27/21: "Exxon, Shell, and Chevron All Lose Big on Climate Battles"

• 5/26/21: "Oil giant Shell ordered to halve greenhouse gas emissions"

• 5/26/21: "Tracking Biden’s environmental actions" WaPo

• 5/25/21: "It’s wrong to blame ‘overpopulation’ for climate change" WaPo

• 5/24/21: "West Virginia’s coal mine cleanup process is an underfunded ‘house of cards'"

• 5/24/21: "World’s Largest Iceberg Breaks off From Antarctica"

• 5/24/21: "Can We Fight Climate Change by Just Electrifying Everything?"

• 5/21/21: "G7 nations vow to phase out international financing for coal projects" WaPo

• 5/22/21: "The fight for the soul – and the future – of ExxonMobil: Three giant pension funds are set to vote against the oil titan’s management and in favor of new directors"

• 5/18/21: "A mysterious rise in methane levels is sparking global warming fears" New Scientist

• 5/17/21: "Part of the Greenland ice sheet may be close to a tipping point"

• 5/12/21: "Climate emissions shrinking the stratosphere, scientists reveal: Thinning indicates profound impact of humans and could affect satellites and GPS" Guardian

• 4/28/21: "Climate has shifted axis of Earth, says study"

• 4/20/21: "What Earth was like last time CO2 levels were this high"

• 4/14/21: "Carbon dioxide levels now higher than at any time in past 3.6 million years"

• 4/13/21: "Sea levels are going to rise by at least 20ft. We can do something about it"

• 4/12/21: "Glacier Is Surging Down Denali Mountain in Alaska"

• 4/7/21: "Atmospheric CO2 Passes 420 PPM for First Time Ever"

• 4/3/21: Bill McKibben, "The Powerful New Financial Argument for Fossil-Fuel Divestment"  New Yorker

• 4/12/21: The Search for Environmental Hope: Climate news is relentlessly, objectively grim. Should we ever allow ourselves to feel optimism?

• 4/22/21: Overcoming climate anxiety could be the secret to real change WaPo

• 3/31/21: "Biden plan eliminates billions in fossil fuel subsidies"

• 3/24/21: "One of Earth’s giant carbon sinks may have been overestimated - study" Guardian

• 3/23/21: "New Report: World’s 60 Largest Banks Have Poured $3.8 Trillion Into Fossil Fuels Since Paris Agreement; Climate Groups Sound Alarm as Financing for Fossil Fuel Expansion Continues to Rise"

• 3/9/21: "3/9/21: "Big U.S. Banks May Curb Lending to Fossil Fuel Companies" Scientific American"

• 3/17/21: "Why a powerful planet-warming gas is surging in Earth's atmosphere" (CH4)

• 3/8/21: "China's Five-Year Plan 'Underwhelming' on Climate"

• 3/5/21: "Call the Fossil Fuel Industry’s Net-Zero Bluff"

• 3/4/21: "In the Atlantic Ocean, Subtle Shifts Hint at Dramatic Dangers" NYT Storymap with detailed graphics"

• 3/2/21: Guardian: "Fossil fuel emissions in danger of surpassing pre-Covid levels, International Energy Agency data shows steady climb over second half of 2020"

• 3/1/21: "How the United States can return to credible climate leadership" Brookings

• 2/25/21: "We Need 4 Waves of Climate Action"

• 2/25/21: "Michael Klare, Heating the Planet Through a New Cold War"

• 2/22/21: "Why Texas Republicans Fear the Green New Deal" Naomi Klein, Opinion, NYT

• 2/10/121: "The Case for Declaring a National Climate Emergency"

• 2/2/21: "American cities under-reporting greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 20%, research says, Up to 75 per cent of all carbon emissions produced by burning fossil fuels coming from cities"

• 2/3/21: "The Terrifying Warning Lurking in the Earth’s Ancient Rock Record: Our climate models could be missing something big."

• 2/2/21: "Sea level rise could be worse than feared, warn researchers"

• 1/21/21: WaPo: "Tracking Biden’s environmental actions: the new president is unwinding Trump’s climate change legacy while forging his own"

• 1/12/21: "The carbon skyscraper: A new way of picturing rapid, human-caused climate change" WaPo

• The "good, the bad and the ugly" from the UN climate Report 12/9/20

• 12/9/20: NYT, McKibben, " "You Should Have Listened, New York Tells Big Oil"

• 12/4/20: WaPo "Denmark becomes first major oil-producing nation to set deadline to end extraction"

• 12/3/20: The Climate Crisis Is Already Killing People, New Lancet Report Warns

• 11/13/20: "Are We Really Past the Point of No Return on Climate? Scientists Respond To Controversial New Study"

• 11/20/20: Can California’s Cap and Trade Actually Address Environmental Justice?

• 11/25/20: NASA and California Team up on Climate Research

• 11/3/20: Money manager calls for climate Marshall Plan

• 10/30/20: :"In 'Road Map for a More Sustainable Future,' NY Regulator Tells Banks to Consider Climate Risks in Planning"

• 10/29/20: How "Net Zero" Targets Disguise Climate Inaction

• 10/19/20: Driver of the largest mass extinction in the history of the Earth identified

• 10/14/20: The number of global methane hot spots has soared this year despite the economic slowdown

• 8/7/20: Earth is overheating. Millions are already feeling the pain. NYT

• 8/28/20: UCSD free online course attempts to reach a worldwide audience to educate on climate.

• 8/24/20: "8/24/20: "The End of Oil Is Near:  The pandemic may send the petroleum industry to the grave" Sierra Club

• 8/17/20: "'Canary in the Coal Mine': Greenland Ice Has Shrunk Beyond Return, Study Finds"

• The Climate Crisis – A Race We Can Win (United Nations)

• 7/14/20: "Methane levels have hit a scary record high, new studies say"

• 7/13/20: "Earth Could Hit Critical Climate Threshold in Next Five Years"

• 7/14/20: "Global Methane Emissions Reach a Record High" NYT

• Warmest Oceans on Record Could Set Off a Year of Extreme Weather

• Bill McKibben on the death of fossil fuels and the legacy of oil wells 3/10/20

• 10 Myths about climate change that need debunking.  ​​

• Fossil Fuels Are to Blame for Soaring Methane Levels 2/19/20

• Climate Models Are Running Red Hot, and Scientists Don’t Know Why

• 2019 Capped the World's Hottest Decade in History (WaPo, 1/15/20)

• COP25 climate summit ends in staggering failure of leadership

• Summary of the Chile/Madrid Climate Change Conference COP25

• Paris Agreement Targets Need to Be 5 Times Stronger to Actually Work

• Carbon Dioxide Reaches Highest Recorded Levels In Human History 11/30/19

• Goldman Sachs will no longer fund drilling in Arctic refuge sacred to First Nations

• How Scientists Got Climate Change So Wrong

• Nature-Tipping points-too risky to bet against 11/28/19

• In bleak report UN says drastic climate action needed now 11/26/19

• ‘Untold human suffering’: 11,000 scientists from across world unite to declare global climate emergency

• As Sea Levels Rise, so do the Ghost Forests of the Eastern Seaboard NYT 10/8/19

• Landmark UN report warns sea levels will rise faster than projected by 2100

• LAT Editorials on Climate, 3 parts, 9/15/19

• Voters like taxing carbon as long as you don’t say ‘carbon tax’

• Dangerous new hot zones are spreading around the world WaPo 9/11/19

• We scientists must rise up to prevent the climate crisis. Words aren’t enough 9/6/19

• Frustrated by the lack of action on climate change and gun violence? Divest 8/30/19

• The University of California is Ending its Investments in Fossil Fuels (Vox, 9/18/19)

• Climate Scientists Drive Stake Through the Heart of Skeptics' Arguments

• Alaska's Sea Ice Has Completely Melted Away 8/5/19

• There is time to avoid the worst of climate change 8/5/19

• Historic Greenland Melt Is a “Glimpse of the Future” 8/2/19

• YouTube: Did You Know the State of Sea Level Rise (2019)? (30 mins)

• We've Exceeded 415ppm of Carbon Dioxide for the First Time Since the Pliocene (RSN 5/13/19)

​

Los Angeles and Southern California​​​​
​

• 7/9/21: "Reservoirs are drying up as consequences of the Western drought worsen" WaPo

• 6/28/21: "How much water goes into oil fracking in drought-stricken California?" SFGate

• 6/28/21: "An entire California town is without running water — in a heat wave"

• 6/21/21: "How Cows Destroyed an Entire Marine Ecosystem in California"

• 6/19/21: "‘If You Move Out Here, You Make a Deal With Nature’: Life in a Fire-Prone Canyon" NYT

• 6/18/21: "A Northern California reservoir is expected to fall so low that a hydro-power plant will shut down for first time"

• 6/18/21: "The drought in US south-west is the worst in 1,200 years. It might be here to stay"

• 6/18/21: "How a heat dome is pushing extreme temperatures to new heights in the West" WaPo

• 6/17/21: "‘Mega-heat wave’ is peaking in the West, breaking records and intensifying drought, fires" WaPo

• 5/26/21: "In California’s Drier Future, What’s the Best Investment for Securing Water?"

• 5/7/21: "South L.A. doesn’t have easy access to fresh food. One man wants to change that by turning lawns into microfarms" LAT

• 3/20/21: LAT: Alexis Navarro (ELAC) and his affordable ADUs

• 3/10/21: LAT: "Deep-sea ‘Roombas’ will comb ocean floor for DDT waste barrels near Catalina"

• 2/2/21:"Mapping Los Angeles’s Unequal Covid-19 Surge" NYT Map

• 8/28/20: "Extreme wildfires make their own dangerous weather"

• 8/28/20: ProPublica: "They Know How to Prevent Megafires. Why Won’t Anybody Listen?"

• 8/26/20: "The Biblical Flood That Will Drown California" MotherJones

• 8/25/20: "‘The forest is not gone’: California’s ancient redwoods survive wildfires" Guardian

• 8/24/20: "The Climate Crisis Has Already Arrived. Just Look to California's Abnormal Wildfires" Guardian/RSN

• California wildfires reach historic scale and are still growing WaPo 8/22/20

• LA County: We Need More Air Quality Management District Monitoring Stations

• Against the Current on LA River

• The Toxic Legacy of Southern California oil wells, LAT 2/7/20

• The California coast is disappearing under the rising sea. Our choices are grim LAT

• Super-Emitters’ In California Release A Third Of The State’s Methane

• How climate change will affect California's birds. Audubon Report, 28pp) 10/30/19

• How Hot is it Going to Get in LA?

• Americans' plastic recycling is dumped in landfills, investigation shows 7/21/19​

• Mayor's Report on Resilient Los Angeles (Jul2018)

• California and the Human Right to Water OEHHA August, 2019

• Online Data Tool for California Water Quality

• Maps show where wildfires have burned over and over again in LA county CurbedLA 1/22/2019

• The shot hole borer beetle could kill 38 percent of all trees in LA​ ​ LAT 11/30/2017

• The LA River and the future of LA LAT 4/12/2018

• LA's tap water rated better than bottled water LAist 4/12/2017

​

In the Biosphere

​

• 5/30/21: "May 30, 2021 Finding the Mother Tree, An Interview with Suzanne Simard"

• 5/27/21: "Brazil aerial photos show miners’ devastation of indigenous people’s land" Guardian

• 4/19/21: "New Study Pushes Origins of Human-Driven Global Change Back Thousands of Years"

• 4/20/21: "Humans Have Altered 97 Percent of Earth’s Land Through Habitat and Species Loss"

• 4/20/21: "The world is 'on the verge of the abyss’, says UN"

• 3/31/21: "Tropical Forest Destruction Accelerated in 2020"

• 3/26/21: "Are We Managing Invasive Species Wrong?"

• 3/11/21: "There’s a Global Plan to Conserve Nature. Indigenous People Could Lead the Way." NYT

• 3/11/21: "First study of all Amazon greenhouse gases suggests the damaged forest is now worsening climate change"

• 3/9/21: "'Frightening' New Data Reveals Humanity Has Destroyed Two-Thirds of World's Rainforest"

• 2/25/21: "Australian scientists warn urgent action needed to save 19 'collapsing' ecosystems"

• 1/28/21: "50 Countries Join Ambitious Plan to Protect 30% of Earth by 2030"

• 2/6/21: "Insect Invasions Are Destroying our forests" NYT

• 1/13/21: "Climate crisis: record ocean heat in 2020 supercharged extreme weather"

• 1/13/21: "Top scientists warn of 'ghastly future of mass extinction' and climate disruption' Guardian

• 1/13/21: "Scientists Sound Alarm About Insect Apocalypse"

• 1/13/21: California-sized area of forest lost in just 14 years, Mongabay

• 11/21/20: "A Plan to Save Wildlife May Have Done More Harm Than Good"

• 11/11/20: "Indigenous leaders count on Biden to help save Amazon forest from 'brink of collapse'"

• 10/19/20: Deforestation threatens to wipe out a primate melting pot in Indonesia

• Geographers find tipping point in deforestation

• Climate Crisis Threatens a Third of Plant Species, Endangering Food Supply

• North America Has Lost Nearly 3 Billion Birds Since 1970

• The EPA's roll back of the Clean Water Act could impact drinking water for millions of Americans 9/13/19

• The Amazon rainforest is burning 8/22/19

• Fires in the Amazon could be part of a doomsday scenario 8/22/19

• We ignore thousands of threatened plant species at our own peril 8/13/19

• Trump Weakens the Endangered Species Act 8/12/19

• A Quarter of Humanity is facing a water crisis NYT 8/4/19​

• The Water Risk Atlas WRI/UN

• More of the planet is turning into desert 7/23/19​​

 

 

Solutions and Promising Advances​​
​

• 6/29/21: "I Wrote About This Environmental Injustice Decades Ago. It Hasn’t Changed" Robert Bullard NYT

• 7/11/21: "More Power Lines or Rooftop Solar Panels: The Fight Over Energy’s Future" NYT

• 6/22/21: "Legal experts worldwide draw up ‘historic’ definition of ecocide"

• 6/17/21: "Renewables Are the Cornerstone of Decarbonization, Report Says"

• 6/14/21: "The rush to ‘go electric’ comes with a hidden cost: destructive lithium mining"

• 6/8/21: "To Combat Climate Change, Researchers Want to Pull Carbon Dioxide From the Ocean and Turn It Into Rock"

• 5/28/21: "Where Wind and Solar Power Need to Grow for America to Meet Its Goals" NYT

• 4/22/21: "The PR industry aims to demobilize environmental movements — here’s what organizers can do about it"

• 4/6/21: "The United States Department of Sustainability: Its Purpose and Moral Underpinnings"

• 3/29/21: "Wind and solar power generated a tenth of the world's electricity in 2020"

• 3/15/21: "Yes, America, There Is (Some) Hope for the Environment: By Margaret Renkl, NYT

• 2/26/21: "This EPA mapping tool could reshape environmental justice"

• 2/21: "Kenyan woman’s startup recycles plastic into bricks that are stronger than concrete"

• 2/1/21: "Europe Generated More Electricity From Renewables Than Fossil Fuels in 2020"

• 1/28/21: "New Biden executive order makes science, evidence central to policy"

• 11/24/20: WaPo, "An ancient people with a modern climate plan"

• The Drawdown Project: Climate Solutions (PDF report)

• Is BlackRock Announcement "Beginning of the End for Fossil-fuel System?" 1/21/20

• Indigenous Blockades Don’t Just Decry Destruction — They Affirm Life

• The Short List Of Climate Actions That Will Work 9/29/19

• The winning conservative climate solution 1/16/20 WaPo

• The fastest way to cut carbon emissions is a ‘fee’ and a dividend, top leaders say 2/13/20 WaPo

• Georgetown University Announces Fossil Fuel Divestment

• Stiglitz on capitalism and climate: Fighting the climate crisis need not mean halting economic growth 12/9/20

• 3 ways companies can start embracing the circular economy

• Towards a circular economy, Piketty

• 4 fastest growing green jobs pay up to 90K a year​

• What Wall St. wants- A way to price carbon

• The climate solution Democrats aren’t talking about 9/12/19

• How to Cut US carbon emissions by 40% in 10 years (a carbon tax)

• Here’s how we solve the planet’s food waste problem 8/21/19

• Agroecology as Innovation 8/7/19

• Could Renewable Natural Gas Be the Next Big Thing in Green Energy? 7/25/19

• Massive Tree planting and climate reversal WEF 7/8/19

• Tree Planting and Climate Crisis GUA 7/4/2019

• The trouble with tree planting as a climate solution 7/5/19

• NASA worked out how to make food out of thin air 8/4/19

• Electric food of the future (10/18 Guardian)

• UN revises population projections downward 6/24/2019

• Forget Overpopulation. The World could soon face a population bust (LAT, 5/13/19)

• The cost of generating renewable energy has fallen WEF 5/7/2019

• LA is on the verge of becoming 100% renewable! CityWatch 6/13/2016

• The Fusion Reactor Next Door (NYT 5/13/19)

• Kenya court votes down a coal fired power plant (6/29/19.350.org)

 

 

Environmental Activism:​​​
​

• 5/13/21: "Why I Am Not a Climate Doomist" Patrick Mazza

• 4/22/21: "10 Examples of Environmental Racism and How it Works"

• 2/27/21:"Climatologist Michael E Mann: 'Good people fall victim to doomism. I do too sometimes'"

• 12/14/20: Greta Thunberg: 5 Years After Paris Agreement, World Is “Speeding in the Wrong Direction” on Climate

• 8/25/20 "Reforms Are Won When Social Movements Inflict Real Costs on the Economic Elite"

• Environmental defenders voice concerns as COVID-19 crisis deepens

• 6/20. "Why Every Environmentalist Should Be Anti-Racist"

• The Environmental Burden of Generation Z 2/23/20

• Naomi Oreskes: Feminist Science is Better Science

• Six Books to Read on Climate Crisis

• TED talk: Why I became a climate activist—and why you should too

• Mary Robinson: Disruption is best option left to head off climate disaster 9/13/19

• 6 Environmentalists Inspiring Climate Action RSN 7/17/19

• Greta Thunberg and OPEC GUA 7/5/2019

• It's Time to Rebel Against the Existential Threat of Climate Change MED 6/3/2019

• Sierra Club activists challenge LADWP on gas fired power plants

• Climate Despair ​VICE 7/11/2019

• How the Mental Health Community Is Bracing for the Impact of Climate Change 5/16/19

• Climate Crisis Forces Us to Ask to what do we devote ourselves? TRTH 5/6/2019

• To stop global catastrophe we must believe in humans again, McKibben GUA 4/23/2019

​

Offsite archives of articles

​

Special (offsite) page on Coronavirus (frequent updates)

​