Mark Hertsgaard
Mark Hertsgaard is the environmental correspondent and investigative editor at large at The Nation and a co-founder of Covering Climate Now. He has covered climate change since 1989, reporting from 25 countries and much of the US in his books "Earth Odyssey: Around the World In Search of Our Environmental Future" (1999) and "HOT: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth" (2012), as well as for various outlets. Follow him on his website: markhertsgaard.com and on Twitter: @markhertsgaard
Articles by this author
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Views Thursday, January 21, 2021 'If Only We’re Brave Enough to Be It': Amanda Gorman's Poem Rhymes with Biden’s Climate Agenda For there is always light If only we’re brave enough to see it If only we’re brave enough to be it. Those are the closing words of “The Hill We Climb,” the stunning poem Amanda Gorman, the first Youth Poet Laureate of the United States, delivered yesterday at the inauguration of now-president Joe... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, January 13, 2021 Trump's Attacks on Democracy Threatens Climate Survival It’s doubtful that Donald Trump or the bloodthirsty armed supporters who invaded the US Capitol threatening to kidnap or kill Vice President Mike Pence and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi were thinking much about climate change at the time. Nevertheless, the mob Trump unleashed to try to overturn... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, January 06, 2021 With Climate Action Finally on the Table, Journalists Must Redouble Their Commitment to the Climate Story Humanity begins 2021 with a real chance to pull back from the brink of climate catastrophe. The odds get even better if Democrats win both Georgia run-off elections and take control of the US Senate. (At the time of writing, some outlets had reported a victory for Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, December 16, 2020 As 2020 Ends, It’s Time for News Outlets to Declare a "Climate Emergency" “I call on all leaders worldwide to declare a State of Climate Emergency in their own countries until carbon neutrality is reached.” So said United Nations Secretary General António Guterres in his speech to the Climate Ambition Summit on December 12, the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, December 02, 2020 Humanity Faces Climate "Suicide" Without US Rejoining Paris Agreement, Says the UN Secretary General “The way we are moving is a suicide,” United Nations Secretary General António Guterres said in an interview on Monday, and humanity’s survival will be “impossible” without the United States rejoining the Paris Agreement and achieving “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050, as the incoming Biden... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, November 11, 2020 The Fall of Trump Propels the Climate Story into a Decisive New Era Donald Trump’s defeat in the US presidential election is the biggest development in the climate story in years, if only because it means that the story might not have a hellish ending after all. News columns and Zoom meetings are already abuzz with to-do lists and speculation about what the... Read more |
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Views Thursday, October 29, 2020 The World Is Burning, but the Political Press Insists on its Horserace Last week, audiences watched the most substantive conversation on climate change to ever feature in a US presidential debate. Moderator Kristen Welker, of NBC News, first asked the candidates what each would do to combat climate change while also supporting job growth—a welcome improvement on... Read more |
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Views Thursday, October 15, 2020 Journalists Must Demystify The Green New Deal In the first presidential debate, in September, Donald Trump was eager to attack his opponent’s $2 trillion plan to address the climate crisis. “He’s talking about a Green New Deal,” the president said, talking over Joe Biden. In the vice presidential debate, Mike Pence likewise assailed the Green... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, October 07, 2020 60 Minutes, The Guardian, and Game-changing New Science On Sunday night, America met Michael Mann on “60 Minutes”, one of the country’s most watched and influential television news programs for nearly 50 years now. A professor at Penn State University, Mann is one of the world’s most eminent climate scientists, and also one of the most outspoken. The "... Read more |
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Views Friday, October 02, 2020 A Second Trump Term Would Be 'Game Over' for the Climate, Says Top Scientist This article is published as part of Covering Climate Now, a collaboration of 400-plus news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story. The Guardian is the lead partner of CCN. Michael Mann, one of the most eminent climate scientists in the world, believes averting climate catastrophe on a... Read more |