At the Frontlines of the Global Transition
WHETHER they pulled tires out of the Bronx River in White Plains, set up recycling booths in Chicago or marched in San Francisco, the millions of Americans who celebrated the first Earth Day in 1970 were bound by two principles: the environment was a mess, and the Government needed to do something about it. This week, America marks Earth Day’s 25th anniversary. But that cracking sound heard across the country is more than the breaking …
I was a 14-year-old eighth grader in White Plains, N.Y. on April 22, 1970, the very first Earth Day. It was such a national happening that Highlands Junior High School organized work parties for the occasion. My friends and I decided to paint the dingy New York Central train station downtown; we laid on so much white enamel that the brick walls looked as though they’d been bleached. The New York Times was impressed. They reported on …
I was a very young cat, just turned 14 years old, when 20 million Americans celebrated the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. Schools closed where I was raised in White Plains, N.Y. to give students like me freedom to take part in all manner of eco-sustaining activities. I gathered a few friends to join me downtown to paint the White Plains train station and drag tires and old appliances from the dark, heavily …
BENZONIA — America, the resistance is us! All of us. We experienced that here in the far northwestern corner of Michigan when more than 500 people gathered with signs displaying all manner of messages of resistance. Then we marched along US 31 to a sound track of excited voices and honking horns in a historic “Hands Off!” protest of President Trump’s MAGA recklessness. Nobody in that crowd ever experienced a political demonstration of that size …
Say this much, President Trump’s vow to “go as far as we have to” to control Greenland is pernicious, consistent, and ironic. Though he’s obscured his reasons for bringing the world’s largest island under American management, Trump’s aides and geopolitical experts offer three justifications. The first: gaining access to critical minerals, even those for batteries to power the electric vehicles that Trump purportedly dislikes. The second: securing a larger military perch at the top of …
One of the signature moments in contemporary American environmentalism occurred on October 6, 1967, in Suffolk County, New York, when nine scientists and a lawyer formally launched the Environmental Defense Fund. Now a $314-million-a-year global organization with 750 employees, EDF went on to influence pivotal environmental achievements, among them the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, and then helping the agency ban DDT and close the ozone hole. In January, Suffolk County bobbed …
Among the maddening features of Donald Trump’s presidency is this: His instinct for identifying structural weaknesses is keen. His capacity to decide and execute solutions is generally terrible. How else to explain that, for Trump, stopping the killing in Ukraine means siding with the dictator who started the conflict. Or that Trump identified the deep resentment of working people who supported him, but proposes stark changes in health, food, job, childcare, and retirement programs that …
There are still a number of Americans, readers of the New York Times, who recall the Pulitzer-nominated project I led in the late 1980s and early 1990s to uncover the decrepit and dangerous conditions at the nation’s secret nuclear weapons production facilities. I reported from all the weapons production sites in 12 states, including the Hanford reservation where the plutonium for the Nagasaki bomb was manufactured. In December 2024 I returned to Hanford to interview …
Attacking the virtue and validity of research science is nothing new in certain corners of American culture. A century ago, in the famous Scopes trial, a high school teacher in Tennessee was prosecuted for teaching evolutionary biology in violation of state law and religious doctrine. In the 21st century, Christian conservatives are at it again. They’ve united with fossil fuel industry executives to attack the scientific research that projects with astonishing accuracy the pace and damaging …
Woody Allen taught me years ago that “80 percent of success is just showing up.” So I did last October, to attend the White Plains High School class of 1974’s 50th reunion. Let’s just say this straightaway. It was a blast, just like the two others I attended, the 35th and 40th reunions. The 50th was so well staged in an event center on North Broadway in White Plains close to end of the route …
