Climate Change

The Sense of an Endling

In the early nineteenth century, the idea of species extinction was an alien concept. That changed after an expedition to Iceland in search of the last of the great auks.

December 5, 2024 issue

Coq au Pépin

More than almost any other public figure, Jacques Pépin has followed the trajectory of twentieth-century cuisine, from the Hôtel Plaza Athénée to Howard Johnson’s, and from his Burgundy backyard to national television.

October 5, 2023 issue

Intrepid Navigators

Migration’s demands on birds are as daunting mentally as they are physically.

February 25, 2021 issue

They Covered the Sky, and Then…

Perhaps, in ethical terms, it doesn’t much matter whether overhunting was or was not the sole cause of the passenger pigeon’s extinction. Practically speaking, though, it matters a good deal.

January 9, 2014 issue

The Revolt of Empty Spain

A nonpartisan movement to bring attention to the depopulation of Spain’s countryside has begun to shape national politics.

August 17, 2022

The Lost Rivers of Owens Valley

Water—who owns it, who uses it—has shaped this landscape from the Paiutes’ irrigation canals to the Los Angeles aqueduct. And it is a history in which my own family played a part.

February 16, 2021

New York’s Rising Tides

Hurricane Sandy revealed just how poorly suited our system is to absorb the shock of climate change and particularly sea-level rise—and how unequally the effects are felt.

June 13, 2020

After the War, Before the Flood, in Colombia

To many in Colombia, there was something eerily familiar about the seemingly inexorable progress of a big scheme built in the name of national necessity on a pile of corpses.

November 13, 2019