“None of this is normal, yet we treat it as if it is,” wrote Sam Keck Scott in his Longreads piece on the disappearing tiger salamander population in California’s Sonoma County. “And it isn’t just Northern California that’s changed — the entire planet has. All the way down to the fish in the sea.”
In her reading list “Low Country, High Water,” Spencer George ponders another crisis — water rise and a drastically changing coastline in the American South. “How do you cope with that reality? How do you love a place that is sinking?” she asks. “I spent my entire life waiting to leave the South, thinking I would only find happiness away from here, but now that it is disappearing I find I cannot look away. I am desperate to find ways to archive my home. To preserve it.”
Gathering perspectives that range from bleak to hopeful, the writing we’ve published and recommended on the climate crisis, wildlife conservation, and other topics is at once urgent yet reflective. This week, in time for Earth Day on April 22, we encourage you to dive into our favorite Longreads essays, reported features, and reading lists, as well as favorites the editors have selected from across the web.
Original Longreads stories
Great American Wasteland
California Burning
Dreaming of Water with Tiger Salamanders
After Water
Fire/Flood: A Southern California Pastoral
The Case for Letting Malibu Burn
Bones, Bones: How to Articulate a Whale
The Poke Paradox
Longreads reading lists
Tomorrow Isn’t Over: A Reading List About Brighter Futures
Low Country, High Water: A Reading List for a South Under Climate Change
There Are No Seasons: A Reading List on Loss, Love, and Living with Fire in California
Nature Isn’t Called ‘the Wild’ for Nothing: A Queer Ecology Reading List
The Sounds of Silence: A Reading List About Listening to Nature
A Tall Tree Reading List
Recent editors’ picks
Boots on the Ground
“As FEMA struggles to keep up with climate disasters, extremist groups see an opportunity.”
The Law of the Sea
“Down in the deep, the legal distinction between land and sea no longer holds.”
Honduran Hydra
“The unstoppable Guapinol mine.”
An Icelandic Town Goes All Out to Save Baby Puffins
“Kids and senior citizens alike rally to rescue beloved young seabirds that have lost their bearings.”
Tripping for the Planet: Psychedelics and Climate Activism
“With more states legalizing psychedelics, activists are interested in exploring their power.”
‘This Place Belongs to You’
“Joshua Tree National Park is synonymous with the desert. Yet record numbers of guests threaten to overwhelm its beauty, wildlife, and small staff.”
In a Famed Kenyan Game Park, the Animals Are Giving Up
“As a climate change-induced drought wears on, it’s putting more pressure on wildlife, livestock, and people.”
How We Came to Know and Fear The Doomsday Glacier
“It’s the world’s most vulnerable glacier and key to the stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, yet we’re only now getting to know Thwaites Glacier.”
On Mother Trees: What Old-Growth Trees Taught Me About Parenting
“I was helpful, but unlike the giving tree, I was not entirely happy.”
The Great Forgetting
“Earth is losing its memory.”
The Dirty Road to Clean Energy
“How China’s electric vehicle boom is ravaging the environment in neighboring Indonesia.”
What If We Cancel the Apocalypse?
“How the aesthetic, utopian yet pragmatic movement of Solarpunk reimagines a future without a climate catastrophe.”
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