Climate One

The “rights of nature” is the idea that if a corporation can have legal standing as a person, why can’t a river or a mountain? Thomas Linzey, one of the early architects of a legal framework for granting rights to nature, now believes that structure doesn’t go far enough: Even when ecosystems are granted rights, the land is still owned by someone or some entity, even if that is a land trust or con...

Summer is here, temperatures are rising — and so are electric bills. That also means many people are facing a severely overlooked issue: power shutoffs. According to a report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in 2024 utility companies disconnected U.S. households from electricity more than 13.4 million times due to a customer’s inability to pay. When that happens, people can’t turn on...

Across the country, developers are racing to build huge new buildings to house computers to fuel the AI boom, creating an explosive demand for new energy. While some hyperscalers seek renewable energy, others are turning to fossil fuels. But concerns around high electric bills, air and noise pollution and water depletion have generated widespread community pushback against these giant facilities,...

More and more, conservative voices are making the case that the U.S. can’t achieve energy dominance without solar power. Even the leading industry trade group is changing its strategy. Earlier this year, Politico reported that the American Clean Power Association launched the “American Energy First” campaign to engage Kellyanne Conway and conservative influencers like Katie Miller “to amplify the...

Industrial agriculture accounts for a significant share of global emissions, but meat alternatives face real hurdles in becoming a mainstay of consumer diets. The hype around plant-based meat has cooled: hurt by price gaps, ultra-processed rhetoric, and culture-war politics around masculinity and food identity. Yet feeding a growing planet will require eating less beef, wasting less food, and prod...

While the federal government has all but abandoned trying to address the climate crisis, cities around the world are stepping up. C40 is an international network of 97 cities representing 920 million people and 23% of the world’s economy. Seventy-three percent of these cities have already peaked their emissions. Here in the US, Climate Mayors is a bipartisan network of nearly 350 U.S. mayors, repr...

When real and internal maps come up short, and the path ahead is uncertain, how do we find our way? In her new book “Climate Wayfinding," Dr. Katharine Wilkinson (co-founder of the All We Can Save Project) offers a compassionate and empowering guide for navigating through ache to action, doubt to possibility. Whether we’re steeped in climate or newly curious, we can look inward with care, outward...

The Goldman Environmental Prize is known as the Nobel for grassroots environmental champions, for good reason. Award-winners are earth defenders, often bucking entrenched systems and powerful interests in order to protect and restore the natural environments we all depend on. This week we feature conversations with two of the 2026 Goldman Prize winners:  Iroro Tanshi, a tropical conservationist an...

Protest is the ultimate in equal-opportunity political action. As Annie Leonard, former executive director of Greenpeace USA says, "Making change is like laying a stone path across the garden. Peaceful protest may be every 4th or 8th or 200th stone; it helps us get where we want to go but also we need a lot of other stones too.”  Leonard explores the history of protests in her new book “Protest: R...

Sometimes mothers are biological; other times, they’re chosen. But often, they're the fiercest people you can have on your side. In this special Mother’s Day episode, we’ll hear stories about the vital role mothers and caregivers play in confronting the climate crisis. From a midwife providing essential healthcare in one of the most climate-stressed regions on the planet to an organizer who leads...

In 2021, legendary investor John Doerr outlined his plan to solve climate change in his bestseller “Speed & Scale.” The plan outlines 10 objectives, each with their own set of key results, to cut emissions to net zero. And in true John Doerr style, the results are to be measurable and trackable.  ​Now, five years later, Doerr and co-author Ryan Panchadsaram unveil their 2026 update, revealing wher...

This year, one of the most powerful politicians in the country decided not to seek re-election. For nearly 38 years, Nancy Pelosi has represented the people of San Francisco in the US House of Representatives. As one of the most powerful House Speakers in U.S. history, Pelosi played a central role in advancing landmark environmental and climate laws, and bringing energy and climate policy to the f...

Finding one's voice in climate action can come in many forms. Author and activist Taylor Brorby grew up in Center, North Dakota as a fourth-generation member of a fossil-fuel family. He struggled to find his place as a young gay kid who loved art, music, nature and poetry. Over time, he turned that tension into writing that challenges the fossil fuel industry, makes space for others stuck in a bro...

We are living through a time where big positive change seems unachievable, but there are two instances from the recent past that prove change is possible. For over a century, Indigenous people along the Klamath River fought to protect their way of life, and the salmon they depend on. Their persistence helped remove four dams and restore hundreds of miles of river. In Los Angeles, decades of scienc...

About half the global population spends some amount of their leisure time playing games, whether it’s a board game after dinner with friends or online role-playing experience through an alternate world. While many video and board games have long incorporated elements we can imagine in a climate-altered future — such as resource scarcity, conflict, and survival — some in the industry are working to...

In a moment when nearly everything feels polarized, Benji Backer is trying to carve out a different path, one where caring about the natural world isn’t a partisan issue. As the founder of Nature Is Nonpartisan, he’s bringing together voices from across the political spectrum who might disagree on climate policy, but still share a desire to preserve public lands, wildlife, and the outdoors.  Can c...

For decades we’ve seen nations exercise geopolitical dominance tied to their production and control of fossil fuels – especially oil. But that leverage may be changing. Last year, China installed nearly twenty times the amount of wind and solar as the United States. In this essay in The National Interest, the authors lay out a global political and economic realignment already underway. Petrostates...

More than perhaps any other state, Hawaii has major incentives to decarbonize. Imported oil accounts for about 90% of Hawaii's total energy consumption, and electricity prices are more than three times the national average. So it may not be surprising that Hawaii was the first state in the nation to set a 100% renewable energy goal by 2045. But that’s a hard goal to achieve, especially given the r...

Food loss and waste account for up to 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions and cost $1 trillion annually, according to the United Nations. About a third of all food grown on the planet gets wasted, rather than eaten. In developing countries, waste usually occurs between the field and the store, due to poor infrastructure, lack of refrigeration, and broken supply chains. In rich countries, most w...

While the federal government has all but abandoned trying to address the climate crisis, cities around the world are stepping up. C40 is an international network of 97 cities representing 920 million people and 23% of the world’s economy. Almost three out of four of these cities have already peaked their emissions. Here in the U.S., Climate Mayors is a bipartisan network of nearly 350 municipal le...

Rising electricity rates across the country are adding pressure to families and businesses already dealing with inflation in other aspects of their lives. Most Americans get their power from a utility that needs to turn a profit for its investors. And people are fed up with the status quo. “Across the country, the utilities have just gotten greedy and are asking for more than they need,” says Ariz...

Congress approved billions for federal grants and programs through the EPA during the Biden administration. Those dollars were meant to help disadvantaged communities and fund community resilience projects, public health programs, and initiatives to reduce energy insecurity on tribal lands. But just as these projects were getting underway, the Trump administration froze many of the grants, put oth...

It’s been an unusually warm and dry winter across the west, and that’s bad news for the seven states and 40 million people that rely on water from the Colorado River. The water flowing into the river from snowmelt and rain is dwindling, partly because of climate change. The basin's two major reservoirs are at historic lows, and without a sudden influx of snowstorms, streamflow forecasts for the co...

On January 3, U.S. forces captured Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, and flew them to New York to stand trial for drug trafficking and narco-terrorisim. At the same time, President Trump has not been shy about stating his other motivation for intervening in the country: Back in December, he said, “We had a lot of oil there. As you know they threw our companies out, and we want i...

As the planet warms, the story of climate change is increasingly becoming a story about human health. Rising temperatures, wildfire smoke, flooding, and shifting disease patterns are no longer distant threats; they are everyday realities. The climate crisis is reshaping health care systems, exposing inequalities, and forcing doctors and policymakers to rethink some of their practices. Medical scho...