Susie Cagle: ‘Fire is medicine’| The tribes burn California forests to save them
For millennia, native people have used flames to protect the land. The US government outlawed the process for a century before recognizing its value.
Peter Makuck: Grackles
But after a few minutes
they become bold and
like dark thoughts
return
Sally Bliumis-Dunn : Echolocation
I saw one once—heaved onto the sand with kelp
stuck to its blue-gray skin.
Heavy and immobile,
it lay like a great sadness.
Nathan Williams: Experiencing Firsthand Failures of UN Climate Politics, I Realized Civil Disobedience Only Route Left
We exist in the midst of planetary tragedy. A tragedy that demands we face the truth and ask the hardest questions about how we now must live.
James Wright: Northern Pike
We prayed for the game warden’s blindness.
We prayed for the road home.
We ate the fish.
Luray Gross: Fox Follows
At noon, fox lolls in the sun
rises and trots, pausing now and then
to look my way.
Sandra McPherson: On the Abundance of Shell Hinges after a Storm
How have these ligaments
held, for their umbones, each life’s intention
of never letting go?
Michael T. Klare: Welcome to a World in Which All Hell Is Breaking Loose
A prelude to what can be expected in the future was provided by the events of August and September 2017, when the military was called upon to provide disaster relief in the wake of three particularly powerful hurricanes — Harvey, Irma, and Maria — at the very moment California and the state of Washington were being ravaged by powerful wildfires.
Michael Simms: Antbed
You may remember my father
died when I was eight
my mother closed up
the house and we went to stay
with my grandmother for a few months
S. B. Merrow: Reading Half-Earth
E.O.Wilson says we already know
what happens to elephants—to us—
when families are broken, when
matriarchs and memories are lost.
Stephen Pyne: California wildfires signal the arrival of a planetary fire age
We can envision Earth entering a fire age comparable to the ice ages of the Pleistocene, complete with the pyric equivalent of ice sheets, pluvial lakes, periglacial outwash plains, mass extinctions, and sea level changes.
James Crews: God Particles
Call them God if you must
these messengers that bring hard evidence
of what I once was and where I have been…
Naomi Oreskes: The Greatest Scam in History
Science failed to have the necessary impact in significant part because of disinformation promoted by the major fossil-fuel companies, which have succeeded in diverting attention from climate change and successfully blocking meaningful action.
