As the death toll from COVID-19 continues to rise in the U.S. — and as...
Wednesday, April 29, 2020 - 10:38 • Justin Nobel
Cancerous lesions have developed across Keith MacDonald’s body and his son is dead from leukemia. His life has disintegrated, and in his eyes fault lies with the third richest company on earth. It is headquartered in the Netherlands, incorporated in the United Kingdom, and is an entity (thanks to the Parliamentary Pension Fund) that every single British MP has a stake in — Royal Dutch Shell.
The story of how MacDonald got here is a tale of adventure and tragedy fit for a Hollywood thriller, only it is real. Even with many unknowns, MacDonald’s case unearths a shocking part of the world’s most powerful industry that somehow has remained hidden for generations.
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Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - 16:24 • Maina Waruru
Read time: 4 mins
Before becoming a local politician, Assunta Gelgetile was a nurse in Marsabit, northern Kenya. During that time, she saw many patients, mainly women and children, having difficulty swallowing solids. She would refer the cases to Marsabit County hospital dozens of miles away, where further tests revealed the patients had throat cancer.
“I reasoned that this must be related to the food or water people were consuming,” she told DeSmog. After detecting a trend, she asked the authorities to help “investigate what exactly was the cause of the cancer that was causing so many deaths,” she said.
Tuesday, April 21, 2020 - 01:19 • Julie Dermansky
Read time: 9 mins
A decade after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded, killing 11 and spewing 200 million gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, south Louisiana resident Kindra Arnesen told me that the community was never made whole again, despite BP’s ads promising it would.
Monday, April 20, 2020 - 22:32 • Steve Horn
Read time: 13 mins
This story is a part of Covering Climate Now’s week of coverage focused on Climate Solutions, to mark the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Covering Climate Now is a global journalism collaboration committed to strengthening coverage of the climate story.
The response among many American public officials and the public at large to the COVID-19 pandemic has, in many ways, paralleled the response to the climate crisis.
First came a denial that it was a problem at all, then a denial of its depth and gravity. Later came an acceptance of the problem but the stance that responding is too economically costly. And as with the climate crisis, this is no accident. The well-funded machinery that sowed doubt about climate is now sowing seeds of doubt over the economic and public health response to COVID-19.
Monday, April 20, 2020 - 12:05 • Guest
Read time: 5 mins
By Chris Garrard, Co-Director of Culture Unstained
Livelihoods lost and businesses closed overnight. A “slow, inadequate and incomplete” response. The health of a community severely hit. 10 years ago, an infamous moment created a new reality for those living along the US Gulf Coast.
At 9.45pm on Monday 20 April 2010, an explosion occurred on board BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling platform killing 11 rig workers. A “blowout preventer” – a crucial device designed to shut off the oil well in emergencies – failed, and for the following 87 days, crude oil would flow into the Gulf of Mexico, polluting coastlines, waters and ecosystems.
Sunday, April 19, 2020 - 11:00 • Sophie Mbugua
Read time: 9 mins
This story is a part of Covering Climate Now’s week of coverage focused on Climate Solutions, to mark the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Covering Climate Now is a global journalism collaboration committed to strengthening coverage of the climate story.
Around 2014, Somo Mohamed Somo, a 47-year old father of seven, accompanied a team of researchers conducting preliminary research ahead of a proposed coal power plant along the Indian Ocean in Lamu, a UNESCO World Heritage site on the northern Kenyan coast.
Sunday, April 19, 2020 - 08:01 • Ashley Braun
Read time: 9 mins
This story is a part of Covering Climate Now’s week of coverage focused on Climate Solutions, to mark the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Covering Climate Now is a global journalism collaboration committed to strengthening coverage of the climate story.
While time feels distorted these days, it was only seven months and a lifetime ago that millions around the globe, led by school children, were marching in the streets, passionately demanding action and investment to match the scale of the climate crisis. Today, we’d instinctively recoil imagining those crowds, fearful of the potential to spread more than the idea that humans deserve a livable climate. But in both cases, pulling away from each other, at least in spirit, may be our collective undoing.
Simultaneously surviving climate disruption and this pandemic — because they cannot be separated — will require us to grapple with two major challenges.
Thursday, April 16, 2020 - 13:49 • David Njagi
Read time: 8 mins
The repeated honking of a speeding Tawakul shuttle announces the return of travellers to Merti from distant towns at dusk. It also marks the close of another searing and slow day in this part of northern Kenya.
Idling villagers’ faces are suddenly lit by the prospect of seeing their families as they rush to meet the late arrivals, stirring this sleepy shopping centre into activity.
Wako Ade, a local motorbike taxi rider nods towards a reunited couple as the dusty vehicle empties its passengers at the bus terminal and says with frustration: “We are tired of this life. The bus is our only connection with Kenya through Isiolo town. I think the rest of the country forgot us.”
It wasn’t always like this.
