Water scarcity and the climate crisis in ‘Stillicide’
Welsh writer Cynan Jones has long depicted the fraught relationship between humanity and the natural world in his writing: Cove tells the tale of a man struck by lightning while kayaking, The Dig is a...
View ArticleHoliday gift guide: 3 books on hurricanes for weather enthusiasts
A book on historical U.S. hurricanes, another offering a harrowing first-person account of Hurricane Irma in the Virgin Islands, plus a fun cli-fi story about a meteorologist who discovers he can...
View ArticleClimate change alters a Louisiana tribe’s way of life
Citizens of the United Houma Nation in southeastern Louisiana say that the ground is disappearing beneath their feet. Members of this state-recognized tribe have long lived on the Gulf Coast, so their...
View ArticleMemoir, poetry, and climate change in Felicia Luna Lemus’‘Particulate Matter’
Unlike most books explored in this column, Felicia Luna Lemus’s Particulate Matter is not a novel. It’s a slim, exquisitely crafted memoir about living in California during 2020’s record-setting...
View Article12 new books explore fresh approaches to act on climate change
Despite a journey to this moment even more treacherous than expected, Americans now have a fresh opportunity to act, decisively, on climate change. The authors of the many new books released in just...
View ArticlePoet Amanda Gorman’s ‘Earthrise’ climate change video
Poet Amanda Gorman got well-deserved rave reviews for her dramatic reading of her six-minute “The Hill We Climb” poem January 20 before a global TV and online inauguration day audience. It’s fair to...
View ArticleResilience in action: Highlights from a virtual eco film festival
NEVADA CITY, CALIF. Amidst a historic pandemic and social unrest, watching the accelerating impacts of climate change on the silver screen could create a sense of helplessness – or deepen the resolve...
View ArticleMysteries past and present in ‘Waiting for the Night Song’
Julie Carrick Dalton’s debut novel, Waiting for the Night Song, hums with the magic of a New England childhood. She describes the landscape with the eye of a painter but with the heart of an...
View ArticleNew ‘Meltdown’ film: A different kind of Greenland ice documentary
“Meltdown” – a new documentary featuring renowned art photographer Lynn Davis and climate communications expert Anthony Leiserowitz, made its online debut February 12. Shot on location in Greenland and...
View ArticleNew books, reports on environmental and climate justice
The COVID-19 pandemic has confirmed again a fundamental truth about the Anthropocene: When disaster strikes, the vulnerable take the hardest punches. Communities of color have suffered much higher...
View ArticleHis business is building ice castles. Will that get harder in a warming world?
In the movie “Frozen,” Queen Elsa magically creates a palace made of sparkling ice. For Brent Christensen, making an ice palace is harder, but the results are still enchanting. “We try to create what...
View ArticleAn honest look at ‘Self-Portrait with Cephalopod’
When I began this column four years ago, climate change was still an unusual subject to find in most contemporary fiction. That has since changed. Today, writers of all kinds, including sci-fi and...
View ArticlePennsylvania poet Art Zilleruelo grapples with coal’s legacy
Art Zilleruelo’s poetry is often inspired by nature. Growing up, he wandered the hills of rural Pennsylvania. “It’s still possible to do things like get lost in the woods here if you want to,” he says....
View ArticleNew and recent books about women, climate change, and the environment
To honor Women’s History Month, Yale Climate Connections’s March bookshelf presents a selection of new and recent titles on how women are changing the politics and prospects for action on climate...
View ArticleArtist and scientist install fake bakery storefront in Chicago to draw...
In December, a new window display popped up in a Chicago storefront. At first glance, it looks like a new bakery. But when people look closer, they read signs promising cakes made with cricket flour....
View ArticleCartoonists – left, right, and center – have their say on Texas freeze and...
Winter may still have a surprise or two in store for us, like the four feet of snow that fell in the Rockies last week. Odds are, however, that the polar vortex of 2021* – or the “Texas Freeze” as […]...
View ArticleComposers, scientists, designers update Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’ for an era...
Three hundred years ago, Vivaldi wrote “The Four Seasons.” It portrays the natural world, from birdsong to summer storms. But the warming climate could radically alter the natural world by 2050, so a...
View ArticleCostumed as ‘Cyril the Sorcerer,’ Connecticut man uses magic to teach kids...
C.J. May is the recycling coordinator for the city of Waterbury, Connecticut. But that’s not the only role he plays to help the environment. “I wear several different hats, and one of them is indeed a...
View Article12 books on repairing our relationship with our only planet
For April’s bookshelf we take a cue from Earth Day and step back to look at the bigger picture. It wasn’t climate change that motivated people to attend the teach-ins and protests that marked that...
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Children’s ideas for cooling a Philadelphia neighborhood on hot days
On a sweltering summer day, residents of the Grays Ferry neighborhood in Philadelphia fan themselves on their stoops, cool off in kiddie pools, and line up for a cold treat from the ice-cream truck....
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