environmental history

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  4/22/2022
  

  Earth Day is a Chance to Win the Messaging War Against Polluters

  by Laura J. Martin

  Climate protectors are at war with the fossil fuels industry in the arena of public opinion, and they're losing. It's time to stop allowing Earth Day statements of corporate concern to substitute for real change. 

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• SOURCE: Mother Jones
  4/18/2022
  

  EPA Will Finally Investigate "Cancer Alley" as a Civil Rights Violation

  The EPA will investigate whethe the state of Louisiana granted emissions permits to chemical producers in ways that exposed Black communities to significantly higher cancer risk. 

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• SOURCE: Bloomberg CityLab
  4/21/2022
  

  Peter Algona: How Cities Became Accidental Wildlife Havens

  Algona's book traces the history of land use decisions that inadvertently allowed species, particularly the coyote, to spread across the United States even as the nation became more urbanized.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  3/18/2022
  

  Nuclear Power Plants Aren't Made to Survive War

  by Kate Brown and Susan Solomon

  "It is difficult to believe, but in all the decades of imagining nuclear-emergency scenarios, engineers did not design for an event so human and inevitable as war."

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• SOURCE: Vice
  3/7/2022
  

  What Killed Electric Mail Trucks?

  Although the current Postmaster is a fine villain figure for environmentalists, the USPS's failure to move ahead with electric vehicles traces back to the agency's reorganization in the 1970s and restrictions placed on the postal service by Congress. 

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• SOURCE: The Conversation
  2/10/2022
  

  Was the Black Death Less Severe and Shorter than We Think?

  by Adam Izdebski, Alessia Masi and Timothy P. Newfield

  "While no two pandemics are the same, the study of the past can help us discover where to look for our own vulnerabilities and how to best prepare for future outbreaks. To begin to do that, though, we need to reassess past epidemics with all the evidence we can."

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• SOURCE: The Metropole
  1/25/2022
  

  Greening Detroit's History

  by Brandon Ward

  Urban historians are starting to recognize something that urban activists grasped in the 1960s: power and inequality are reflected in cities' environments. 

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• SOURCE: The Nation
  1/25/2022
  

  Tularosa Downwinders: a 75 Year Wait for Justice

  Residents of New Mexico's Tularosa basin received no advance warning of the 1945 atomic bomb tests nor of the risks to their health. They've been excluded from relief legislation that has benefitted residents near the Nevada test sites and workers in uranium mines. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  1/11/2022
  

  The Soldiers Came Home Sick. The Government Denied It Was Responsible

  Veterans of post-9/11 wars are increasingly showing serious lung damage. Is the Pentagon concealing the role of "burn pits" in creating airborne toxins? 

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• SOURCE: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
  12/9/2021
  

  The Industrial Infrastructure Catastrophe Hanging Over the Gulf Coast

  The flooding and destruction of the refineries and storage facilities along 52 miles of the Houston Ship Channel is a matter of if, not when, says environmental lawywer Jim Blackburn. 

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• SOURCE: Mother Jones
  12/1/2021
  

  Australia's Spy Agency Identified Climate Risk 40 Years Ago; The Government Protected the Coal Industry Instead

  "Concerns from high levels of government show that from the beginning, the country was seeing the climate change issue through the prism of its fossil fuels."

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• SOURCE: WBUR
  11/29/2021
  

  What Can 19th Century Whaling Diaries Tell Us About Climate Change?

  Whaling ships' logbooks contain detailed navigational notes and descriptions of wind and weather, which can help construct a picture of climate patterns on distant stretches of ocean. 

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• SOURCE: KCRW
  11/6/2021
  

  Dorceta Taylor on the History of Racism in the Environmental Movement

  The historian of environmental movements discusses how those movements have evolved and been pushed toward examining racist legacies. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  11/3/2021
  

  We Are Still Feeling the Ecological Impact of Whaling

  In one century, whalers killed at least 2 million baleen whales, which together weighed twice as much as all the wild mammals on Earth today. New research suggests this has impacted the ecology of the oceans significantly.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  10/7/2021
  

  The Planet Isn't Doomed. That's Why We Can and Must Act

  by Dagomar Degroot

  Climate "doomism" is a dangerous fatalism about our planet that justifies our political failure to take the necessary actions to slow climate change. 

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• SOURCE: New York Magazine
  10/2/2021
  

  Fire Historian Stephen Pyne: "A Fire Age is Upon Us"

  "The Pyrocene is not just a metaphor: Whatever we decide to call it, a fire age is upon us. Our fire behavior made the problem and will have to unmake it."

• 
• SOURCE: Rolling Stone
  9/16/2021
  

  Cajun Punk Musician Louis Michot on Saving the Bayous

  by Andy Horowitz

  Can the DIY punk ethos of mutual aid, plus broadly distributed solar power, save the Louisiana Cajun country from the climate threat? 

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• SOURCE: NPR
  8/30/2021
  

  The Globe's Last Supply of Leaded Gasoline is Gone, Ending a Toxic Era

  Despite knowledge of the toxicity of lead, gasoline refiners added lead compounds to gasoline beginning in the 1920s, launching an era of massive low-grade lead poisoning. 

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• SOURCE: TomDispatch
  8/24/2021
  

  By 2049, China Will be a Climate Disaster Zone, not a Global Superpower

  by Michael Klare

  Instead of inflating the military threat posed by the People's Republic, American policymakers should recognize that both nations face far more dire threats from climate change. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/18/2021
  

  Superweeds are Here

  After a generation of use, agricultural herbicides have pushed weeds to evolve resistance. Industrial agriculture may be at risk.