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When Hurricane Irene neared New York at the end of August, the city took the unprecedented step of shutting down the entire transit system—buses, subways and commuter trains in the largest city in America. The danger was that heavy rains from Irene could cause flooding that would swamp tunnels and tracks, causing lasting damage to [...]
2010 was a pretty serious year for Atlantic hurricanes. The season tied with 1995 and 1887 for the third largest number of named storm, with 19, and tied with 1969 for the second largest number of hurricanes, with 12. One of those hurricanes—Earl—reached Category 4 status, with winds hitting a maximum of 145 mph, stronger [...]
Environmentalists and gas drillers alike snapped to attention when the news alert went up earlier today: the New York Times reported that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was ready to lift the state’s moratorium on natural gas drilling via hydraulic fracturing. The moratorium was put into place by Cuomo’s predecessor David Paterson, who signed an [...]
In part because we have a political press obsessed with Washington, we tend to gauge the success of climate and energy legislation only through the national lens. And the picture from Capitol Hill is deeply depressing. One party completely ignores the science of climate change and only wants to engage on fossil fuels, and that [...]
Yesterday afternoon, as we were closing this week’s issue of Time, I ended up in a debate with one of my editors over how the air travel system had responded to a December of terrible weather. I’d written a short piece coming out in the magazine describing the travel Armageddon the storm had created for [...]
You remember water fountains, right? If your grade school experience was anything like mine (Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Class of ’93!), you’ll recall getting your water not from a plastic Evian bottle, but straight from the ceramic fountain—usually kid-sized. The same went for parks, museums and public buildings—water fountains were common, and they were [...]
