Sublime

Around Scotts Valley, the dear fog appeared, and suddenly the season was different, the hour less determinate. Most evenings in June, a great paw of Pacific fog reached into Santa Cruz, over the wooden roller coaster, along the stagnant San Lorenzo, up through the wide streets where surfers lived, and into the redwoods on the hills. By morning the

In the Andes, where most of the world’s lithium is located, mining companies are burning through the water tables and leaving farmers with nothing to irrigate their crops. Many have had no choice but to abandon their land altogether. Meanwhile, chemical leaks from lithium mines have poisoned rivers from Chile to Argentina, Nevada to Tibet, killing

Another, more theoretical approach involves making cement out of seawater and the carbon dioxide captured from power plants. The inventors behind this idea think it could ultimately cut emissions by more than 70 percent.

As with temperatures, sea levels have in the past varied dramatically. At the end of the Wisconsin, as the great ice sheets were breaking up, there were periods when they rose at the astonishing rate of a foot a decade. (It’s been proposed that one of these “meltwater pulses” inspired the account of the deluge in Genesis.) Obviously, our ancestors

(about half of the recorded sea-level rise in the twentieth century came from the expansion of the warming oceans).

more low-hanging fruit, so to speak: mangrove forests. Mangroves are short trees that grow along coastlines, having adapted to life in salt water; they reduce storm surges, prevent coastal flooding, and protect fish habitats. All

Why was the EPA willing to move on Flint and not in Washington County? The difference was public versus private water. If there had been forty houses below that leaking pond, and if Stacey, Beth, and Buzz relied on public water, which, unlike their private wells, was subject to regulation, then they’d have a winning criminal case.

minimum. Four degrees: Europe in permanent drought; vast areas of China, India and Bangladesh claimed by desert; Polynesia swallowed by the sea; the Colorado River