When the Saints go marching out: New Orleans and the resilience of cities

A recent study published in Nature Sustainability concluded that New Orleans residents should plan now to move away from the city. For the hundreds of thousands who live in New Orleans, and the millions of others who love the Crescent City, this is an incredibly sad conclusion. And it’s a conclusion that many other cities rich in culture and history around the world will face as sea levels rise.

We’re measuring extreme heat better than ever. The human toll still goes underreported

Heat warning tools have become more sophisticated, yet public attention is still focused on record temperatures rather than the social conditions that turn heat into illness or even death. Why social risk, not temperature alone, should be at the center of how we report on extreme heat.

For 6,000 years humanity controlled water. Climate change is changing the equation

For 6,000 years, human societies have sought to control water through ever-larger infrastructure. As climate change brings more extreme floods, droughts and heatwaves, a growing number of cities are exploring a different path: adapting to water’s rhythms rather than trying to dominate them.

Meet the artist whose decoys are rebuilding the world’s seabird colonies

For more than a decade, Sue “Seabird Sue” Schubel’s lifelike decoys have anchored a global seabird restoration effort built on “social attraction,” luring colony-nesting birds back to lost or safer habitats, a strategy that has aided about a third of the world’s seabird species, including some of the most endangered.

Kokushobi: My vote for word of the year for 2026

As Japan coins a new term for “cruelly hot days,” its linguistic and institutional adaptation to extreme heat starkly contrasts with growing climate denial among U.S. political elites, revealing an emerging global split between fossil-fuel holdouts and nations pushing for a rapid energy transition.

Sovereignty and rising sea levels: Climate change is reshaping the meaning of nationhood

As rising sea levels threaten low-lying island nations, questions once confined to legal theory are becoming urgent realities. From Tuvalu to the Maldives, climate change is forcing governments and communities to reconsider what sovereignty and nationhood mean when territory itself is disappearing.

Countries must back commitments to transition from fossil fuels with action

Many participants framed the first international Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels in Colombia as a historic turning point. But with no binding pledges and reliance on voluntary coalitions, its impact now hinges on whether governments turn rhetoric into enforceable policies.