Photos: The Aftermath of Hurricane Helene – the Atlantic

Devastation in Asheville: Hurricane Helene caused widespread devastation in Western North Carolina (by Bill McMannis, CC BY 2.0 via Flickr).

Late Thursday night, Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida as a Category 4 hurricane, with winds gusting up to 140 mph…Millions remain without power as first responders work to reach those in need and search for survivors…

The Prescience of Octavia Butler

Octavia E. Butler Tribute NYC, June 5, 2006 (by Houari B. CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED via Flickr).

The effects of climate change are reshaping America. Those with sufficient resources retreat inside protected communities. Those with even greater resources finance an exploratory Mars mission, presumably in an attempt to one day escape Earth’s destabilization. In the political realm, a populist presidential candidate denounces claims made by scientists, promising the electorate that he’s going to “return us to the glory, wealth, and order of the twentieth century.” This is life in 2024…Or at least it’s life in 2024 as imagined by the writer Octavia Butler 31 years ago…

How Octavia Butler Told the Future – the Atlantic

Panel at the American Writers Museum in Chicago (by valoisem CC BY-NC 2.0 DEED via Flickr).

As a science fiction writer, Butler forged a new path and envisioned bold possibilities. On the eve of a major revival of her work, this is the story of how she came to see a future that is now our present..

Sorry, Honey, It’s Too Hot for Camp (Podcast) – Atlantic Radio

Hot Walk (by Moodycamera Photography CC BY-NC 2.0 via Flickr).

Summer is getting too hot and dangerous, killing the childhood of our imaginations.

A heat dome in Texas. Wildfire smoke polluting the air in the East and Midwest. The signs are everywhere that our children’s summers will look nothing like our own. In this episode, we talk with the climate writer Emma Pattee about how hot is too hot to go outside. The research is thin and the misconceptions are many—but experts are quickly looking into nuances of how and why children suffer in the heat, so we can prepare for a future that’s already here…

Every Coastal Home Is Now a Stick of Dynamite – the Atlantic

Aerial view of the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy to the New Jersey coast, Oct. 30, 2012. (DVIDSHUB: U.S. Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Mark C. Olsen CC BY 2.0 via Flickr).

Wealthy homeowners will escape flooding. The middle class can’t.

The Langfords got out of Houston just in time. Only two months after Sara and her husband, Phillip, moved to Norfolk, Virginia, in June 2017, Hurricane Harvey struck, destroying their previous house and rendering Sara’s family homeless…

The Earth Transformed: An Untold History – Reviewed in the Atlantic

In his sweeping new book, Peter Frankopan looks at how the climate has changed human society—and how we have changed the climate.
Does climate change directly influence the weather we experience? Until recently—for the past 40 years or so—that question has followed nearly every major hurricane or flood, every record snowfall or heat wave. In some people, it provokes instant denial, often political or economic, often rooted in prideful ignorance…