Climate change threatens the natural world, our world, the only one we have, and yet you would hardly know it from the way it was treated at the first Presidential debate—particularly by the President. But attention must be paid. What is more important? For nearly sixty years, The New Yorker has published groundbreaking coverage of environmental issues and the growing crisis of climate change. From Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” published in 1962, to Elizabeth Kolbert’s “Climate of Man” series, from 2005, the magazine has brought awareness to the urgency of global warming and the rise in pollution. This week, we’re releasing “The Fragile Earth,” a new anthology filled with some of the best pieces we’ve published in the magazine on this crucial subject. To accompany its publication, we’re bringing you a selection of stories from our archive on the environment and the global climate crisis. In “The End of Ice,” Dexter Filkins writes about the scientists who are assessing the rapid melting of a prominent glacier in the Himalayas. In “A Grand Plan to Clean the Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” Carolyn Kormann explores a young entrepreneur’s dream of ridding the oceans of plastic contaminants. In “Silent Spring,” Rachel Carson offers a sweeping investigation into the environmental impact of DDT and other pesticides. In “How Extreme Weather Is Shrinking the Planet,” Bill McKibben examines how wildfires and rising sea levels risk making large regions of our planet uninhabitable. Finally, in “Greenland Is Melting,” Elizabeth Kolbert chronicles how the shrinking of the country’s ice sheet is accelerating the global crisis. We hope that these pieces offer an illuminating glimpse into the slight progress that we’ve made and the enormous obstacles that remain.
—David Remnick
From The New Yorker’s Archive
A Reporter at Large
Silent Spring—I
If we are living so intimately with chemicals, we had better know something about their power.
By Rachel Carson | June 16, 1962
A Reporter at Large
The End of Ice
Exploring a Himalayan glacier.
By Dexter Filkins | April 4, 2016
A Reporter at Large
A Grand Plan to Clean the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
Can a controversial young entrepreneur rid the ocean of plastic trash?
By Carolyn Kormann | February 4, 2019
Reflections
How Extreme Weather Is Shrinking the Planet
Large tracts of the earth are at risk of becoming uninhabitable. But the fossil-fuel industry continues its assault on the facts.
By Bill McKibben | November 26, 2018
Letter from Greenland
Greenland Is Melting
The shrinking of the country’s ice sheet is triggering feedback loops that accelerate the global crisis. The floodgates may already be open.
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