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Colorado River: The Navajo Nation’s ‘Forever Home’ Is in Crisis
As the Supreme Court examines the Navajo Nation’s water rights to the Colorado River, The Frontline explores the issue through a personal historic lens.
The Frontline
Revel and Rebel: Partying as Environmental Protest
Guided by movements past, defenders against Cop City in Atlanta’s South River Forest won’t go down without a fight—and a rave.
Art & Culture
Movement Building
This IPCC Report Will Be the Last for Several Years
The final report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is out. The Frontline sheds light on the work that remains until we hear from these scientists again.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Playing Our Part
Sea lions are renowned for their propensity for play—a reminder of what it means to live lightly.
The Overview
Deep Ecology
Why I Am Swimming 450km To Help Stop Waste Colonialism
Accra’s waterways are bubbling with synthetic microfibers and material debris after decades of nonstop waste-dumping by countries in the Global North. Yvette Tetteh is swimming the length of the country’s longest river to draw attention to the urgency of the problem.
Ethical Fashion
Anthropocene
Salt of the Earth: Preserving the Great Salt Lake
The Frontline dives into the history of Indigenous people harvesting salt from the drying Great Salt Lake.
The Frontline
Indigeneity
Can Made-To-Order Brands Slow Down the Fashion System?
The rise of made-to-order fashion labels is good news for the industry’s sustainability credentials, reducing waste, minimizing stock surplus, and encouraging clothes to treasure. But the scale of impact remains uncertain.
Ethical Fashion
Why Cop City Goes Against Jewish Values
Two Jewish advocates argue that the Jewish community should stand against Atlanta’s proposed police training facility on The Frontline.
The Frontline
Movement Building
Saving Grace
Deer have an artful elegance with which they attempt to avoid their attackers. What lessons can they impart on us about grace?
The Overview
Deep Ecology
Raveena Aurora Leads with Love
Through her hypnotic, soulful music, the Indian-American singer is imagining a Desi-futurist world that celebrates queerness, builds community, and empowers radical self-love.
Art & Culture
Earth Sounds
What’s the Real Cost of Mezcal?
The Frontline talks to communities in Oaxaca, Mexico, striving to produce mezcal sustainably—but soaring demand from across the border makes it tough.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Riley Black Reflects on the Power of Growth
Over 300 bills have been introduced just this year in an attempt to erase queer people, including a total ban of trans healthcare in, among other places, Texas. Atmos contributor Riley Black explores why planting seeds of hope is essential to the fight against bigotry.
Identity & Community
Queer Ecology
The Willow Project Would Be a Public Health Crisis for Alaska
The Willow project proposal would expand oil infrastructure on Alaska’s North Slope. The Frontline talks to an Iñupiaq leader who shares their public health concerns.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Why Look At Animals?
Photographer Yana Wernicke turns her lens on two young women who have established profound relationships with animals typically considered solely for their economic value, striving to close the gulf between ourselves and the other animals we live alongside.
Photography
Art & Culture
Sturdy as an Oak
Storms are always going to come. Looking to oak trees, we can learn how to weather them.
The Overview
Deep Ecology
Palestinian Tatreez: Embroidering Resistance and Remembrance
Palestinian women have played an integral role in resisting the Israeli occupation. Tatreez—an artful embroidery technique with radical roots—is just one of the many tools they have utilized.
Ethical Fashion
Identity & Community
The Ohio Train Derailment: Tracing the Origins of Disaster
The Frontline zooms into the St. Louis region where the Ohio train that derailed last month started its journey.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
From Reservation Dogs to Murder in Big Horn, The Rise of Native Media
Real Native American representation is making a splash in the mainstream entertainment industry, writes Atmos columnist Ruth Robertson. After decades of erasure, films and TV shows are focusing on the issues our communities are wrestling with on a daily basis.
Art & Culture
Indigeneity
One Year On, The Cultural Losses of War in Ukraine
How one woman is leading Ukraine’s Museum Crisis Center in the race to preserve the country’s vast cultural legacy from permanent destruction.
Art & Culture
Anthropocene
The Angels of the Nile Are Dying
The Nile River has already witnessed the displacement of Nubians in Egypt. The Frontline explores how climate change threatens their cultural connections to the river even more.
The Frontline
Identity & Community
The Mobile Darkroom Making Photography Accessible to Turkish and Syrian Youth
Sirkhane’s aim is to grow the creative confidence of young refugee communities. A caravan-turned-darkroom is traveling the Turkish-Syrian border to make that happen.
Art & Culture
Photography
How Prisons and Jails Can Go Green
A formerly incarcerated writer argues for The Frontline that, as long as prisons exist, they should reduce their environmental impact.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Staying Alive
Crocodilians have endured apocalypse, swimming murky waters for millions of years. What’s their secret to survival?
The Overview
Deep Ecology
Where’s the End of Hawai’i’s Water Crisis?
The Frontline talks to water protectors in O’ahu, Hawai’i, who are sounding the alarm over growing threats to their precious water.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Climate Love (And Lies) on Dating Apps
Roses are red, violets are blue, can I talk about climate change denial with you?
Art & Culture
Anthropocene
A Poetic Lesson on Black Anatomy
Denisse Ariana Pérez reimagines the anatomy of the Black body through poetic words and images in a captivating film that celebrates all that Blackness is and can be.
Black Liberation
Art & Culture
Jacqueline Patterson: Honoring Legacy in the Environmental Movement
The Frontline talks to environmental and climate justice leader Jacqueline Patterson on the legacies of the present and past.
The Frontline
Changemakers
Coming of Age
For thousands of years, humankind has told tales of the fountain of youth. Has it been swimming in the ocean all along?
The Overview
Deep Ecology
Composing Climate Change: The Radical Legacy of Black Musicians
White musicians are often credited for their activism. But Black artists were using music as a means of protesting climate injustice long before.
Art & Culture
Earth Sounds
Gas Stoves Are Hazardous. Are Induction Stoves Better?
Among the voices speaking out against gas stoves is a group worried about induction stove radiation. The Frontline investigates what the science says.
The Frontline
Well Being
Copenhagen Fashion Week Rewrites Fashion’s Villain Era
This season, Copenhagen Fashion Week implemented minimum sustainability criteria that brands must adhere to in order to show their collections. But can regulation be enough?
Ethical Fashion
Carbon Removals: The Danger of Desperation
Since the Inflation Reduction Act passed last year, more U.S. dollars are headed toward carbon removal technologies—but are they really a solution? For The Frontline, writer and researcher Nathan Thanki argues absolutely not.
The Frontline
Climate Solutions
The Webs We Weave
Spiders have much to teach us about extended cognition—and what it means to be part of a larger web.
The Overview
Deep Ecology
Johann Hari: Our Attention Spans Are Being Stolen
Our ability to focus is being systematically taken from us, argues Stolen Focus author Johann Hari. And the effects are prohibiting us from taking collective action on the climate emergency.
Anthropocene
Art & Culture
What the Tenebrous Roly-Poly Taught Me About Black Futurity
For The Frontline, writer Ashia Ajani ruminates on the parallels between roly-polys and Black people: both forced to filter out the bad from their environments.
The Frontline
Deep Ecology
How Climate Change Is Forcing Therapists to Mend Their Field
The Frontline talks with the Climate Psychology Alliance about the challenges of addressing eco-distress in our current mental health paradigm.
The Frontline
Well Being
It All Depends
In the natural world, species find ways to not only coexist but support each other as a means of survival—a symphony of symbiosis.
The Overview
Deep Ecology
The Certainty of Becoming
With the gradual return of the sun, Atmos columnist Ruth Robertson reflects on reemerging from darkness and experiencing the rebirth of spring once more.
Indigeneity
Deep Ecology
The Environmental Movement’s Silence on Cop City Police Killing
Police killed environmental activist Manuel Esteban Páez Terán last week. The Frontline reminds us that police violence is an environmental issue.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Dr. Bayo Akomolafe on Slowing Down in Urgent Times
For The Wild founder Ayana Young speaks with the poet, teacher, and public intellectual about the generative powers of stillness and fugitivity.
Anthropocene
Deep Ecology
‘The Last of Us’: Where Mycology and Climate Apocalypse Collide
HBO’s latest drama The Last of Us portrays a future plagued by fungi that turn humans into zombies. The Frontline explores the actual fungi that threaten public health.
The Frontline
Science & Nature
To Build a Home
Beavers may be busy, but for good reason. What can they teach us about progress both personal and collective?
The Overview
Deep Ecology
America’s Wild Horse Population Is Booming. At What Ecological Cost?
A symbol of the American West, a once-prosperous, now drought-stricken landscape, wild horses are dismantling the very place they represent.
Science & Nature
Anthropocene
Productivity: The Ableist Fantasy
Capitalism doesn’t want you, writes The Slow Grind editor Georgina Johnson. If you can’t fully oil and optimize your being to its standards, it will spit you out with inaccessibility and an overly-complicated medical system.
Identity & Community
Well Being
Tripping for the Planet: Psychedelics and Climate Activism
With more states legalizing psychedelics, activists are interested in exploring their power. The Frontline examines whether that’s a good idea.
The Frontline
Well Being
Hermit Wisdom
The hermit crab is a creature of constant change: as they grow larger, they must seek out new shells that better fit their expanded selves.
The Overview
Deep Ecology
Is Extinction Rebellion Right To Move Beyond Disruptive Tactics?
XR says its decision indicates a willingness to listen to criticism, and adapt. Others believe it undermines the movement’s powerful potential for change.
Movement Building
Solarpunk: Why 2023 Must Be the Year of the Sun
The ongoing global energy crisis demands a shift away from fossil fuels. The Frontline looks back at the history of the solar industry—and where it needs to head next to succeed in 2023.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Digital vs Slow: The Future of Sustainable Fashion
Fashion designer and pedal loom artist Nicklas Skovgaard speaks with Anna Liedtke, digital design director at The Fabricant, about their respective approaches to disrupting the fashion system.
Ethical Fashion
Art & Culture
How to Endure the Winters of a Life Sentence
An incarcerated person writes for The Frontline about winter’s lessons in helping him navigate seasons of light and dark, hope and despair.
The Frontline
Deep Ecology
Out of Curiosity
For all of human history, curiosity has been leading us to discovery. In the new year, it can help lead us to new worlds.
The Overview
Deep Ecology
Our Cultural Watchlist for 2023
From Dune II to Kelela’s Raven, the next 12 months promise exciting new releases across all areas of culture. Here are some that stand out.
Art & Culture
Here’s How We Protect Earth’s Defenders
After a deadly decade for environmental activists and defenders of the Earth, The Frontline asks: is there a way out?
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
It’s Time to Adapt
Here we are in 2023, having been told time and again that at long last we have returned to normal, writes Atmos contributor Riley Black. But that’s not entirely true—all of us have had to find ways to grieve what we’ve lost in the last three years.
Deep Ecology
Well Being
Stay the Winter
This season is often dominated by darkness and a feeling of lifelessness, but it is also a time to reflect, restore, and recharge.
The Overview
Deep Ecology
2022 Through the Lens of Atmos Contributors
Members of our creative ecosystem share photographs taken in 2022, reflecting on moments of loss, joy, freedom, perseverance, and togetherness.
Art & Culture
Photography
Are Christmas Trees Really the Enemy?
The Frontline travels to the Morvan, France’s oldest Christmas tree growing region where Christmas tree farmers face climate impacts—and critics.
The Frontline
Science & Nature
A Look Back on Life in Permacrisis
Permacrisis, defined as “an extended period of instability and insecurity,” was named word of 2022 by Collins Dictionary. But within every crisis lies the potential for a better future.
Well Being
Anthropocene
How Asian-Pacific Islanders Shaped Environmental Activism
For The Frontline, a young Asian-American environmental justice organizer reflects on the history of her community—and the work that lies ahead.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
On Ice
The Patagonian ice dragon has adapted to survive amidst frigid glaciers—and plays a role in ensuring that neither become mythical.
The Overview
Deep Ecology
High-Rise Buildings Are Not the Future of Housing. Low-Rises Are.
Architect and Pau Studio founder Vishaan Chakrabarti breaks down his vision for accessible, sustainable, and culturally relevant housing to accommodate the world’s growing population.
Art & Culture
Climate Solutions
COP15: Aboriginal Australians Connect Biodiversity to Human Rights
As the biodiversity summit COP15 takes place in Montreal, The Frontline asks Aboriginal Australians about what they want to see happen.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Reimagining Our Recipes, Preserving Our Histories
With the help of Veggie Mijas, young Latines are cooking up a plant-based revolution using ancestral recipes—to feed themselves, their communities, and la cultura.
Identity & Community
Future of Food
Fossil Fuels Aren’t the Answer to European Energy Crisis—Peace Is
As the war in Ukraine rages on, so does Europe’s energy crisis. The Frontline talks to a youth climate activist in Poland who believes clean energy is the answer.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Quicker than Coal Ash
Photographer Will Warasila spent a year and a half getting to know the residents, the landscapes, and the structures of energy and power of Walnut Cove—where toxic coal ash is stored.
Art & Culture
Photography
World’s End
Lichens invite us to embrace curiosity: to admit where we may have gotten it wrong and question where one thing ends and another begins.
The Overview
Deep Ecology
Set Them Free
For over 80 years, the Peabody Museum at Harvard University has been in possession of a large collection of hair clippings taken from Native children who were forced to attend government-run boarding schools. There is no excuse for such a crime, writes columnist Ruth Robertson. Give them back to us.
Identity & Community
Indigeneity
Does Antisemitism Exist in the Climate Movement?
In light of Ye, or Kanye West’s, recent antisemitic comments, The Frontline explores whether antisemitism exists in the climate movement.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
How Art Became the Battle Ground for Climate Activism
Just Stop Oil has come under fire this year for targeting renowned works of art in the hope of halting all new oil and gas projects. Do the controversial protest tactics work?
Art & Culture
Movement Building
10 Environmental Justice Wins in 2022 to Celebrate
We didn’t save the world in 2022, but there were notable wins in the climate and environmental justice space. The Frontline takes time to celebrate these and remind us why we fight at all.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Ride With Me
Humans have long shared a unique companionship with horses, which—humans aside—may have altered history more than any other animal.
The Overview
After COP27, a Plea—and a Pathway—for Urgent Corporate Action
Policy advisor Ayana Elizabeth Johnson lays out steps for the private sector.
Anthropocene
Democracy
The Salton Sea’s Feral Splendor
The Salton Sea has long been regarded as an apocalyptic wasteland, but it’s much more. The Frontline explores the future of the lake threatened by drought and pollution—and what it means for the people who live nearby.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Make Believe: Vignettes of Everyday Magic
Excerpted from Jonas Lindstroem’s new project Believe, these seemingly unconnected images reveal an intensely personal lens on how fragmented modern life can be.
Art & Culture
Photography
On Vancouver Island, Land Back Looks Like Going Home
Indigenous-led land back efforts are underway on Canada’s Vancouver Island. The Frontline digs into this reclamation—and how the land’s original stewards are protecting forests from logging.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
The Complexity of Gorilla Conservation in the DRC
When it comes to conservation, even seemingly simple solutions have complex consequences. Fortress conservation works by drawing a boundary between humans and the rest of the natural world—with both paying a price.
Science & Nature
Biodiversity
An Ode to Common Places
Photographer Scott Rossi reflects on how public parks can create space to soothe and restore the human spirit.
Art & Culture
Photography
The Indigenous Fight to Bring Back Ancestral Foods
Dallas Goldtooth travels to the homelands of the Dakota Oyate people in Minnesota to visit Indigenous chefs Sean Sherman and Dana Noelle Thompson at their restaurant, Owamni.
Environmental Justice
Indigeneity
Where the Jungle and Garden Meet
For The Frontline, writer Ashia Ajani explores how colonization cultivated a world that prefers the garden to the jungle. It’s time to restore the jungle.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
The Crystalline Beauty of Iceland’s Ice Caves
Nowhere in the world are the myriad ways that water manifests more prominent than in Iceland. On its glassy shores, a dazzling display of crystalline caves and shapeshifting seas remind us that form and flow are forever in flux.
Science & Nature
Photography
Queer Climate Activists Speak Out After COP27 in Egypt
This year’s climate negotiations were held in Egypt, a country notoriously known for its human rights abuses against the LGBTQIA+ community. Non-Egyptian queer climate activists talk to The Frontline about why they still went.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
The Toxic History of Color
For all of human history, our species have used both natural and synthetic dyes—but have we taken our obsession with color to an extreme?
Ethical Fashion
Art & Culture
A Star Is Born
Humanity has always searched the stars for answers, whether through navigation, prophecy, or clues to our wider universe.
The Overview
Deep Ecology
Riley Black on the Joy of Bruises
Push your limit, fall down, scrape your knee, get up and do it again, smiling the entire time. A bruise or scar doesn’t have to be a warning.
Well Being
Sacred Feathers—and the Tribes That Need Them
The Frontline explores how a Comanche-led feather repository is helping return bird parts and feathers to Indigenous ceremonies, a practice the extinction crisis threatens.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Uprooting the Tree of Life
The image of the Tree of Life depicts a world neatly organized by lines of progress. But the living world is much more exciting: it’s a tangled network of relationships, both biological and chosen.
Science & Nature
Queer Ecology
Art Inspires Action at COP27
Leo Cerda, cofounder of Black Indigenous Liberation Movement, explains why culture spaces are crucial in the fight for climate and racial justice.
Art & Culture
Movement Building
ANOHNI On Queer Ecology and Trans Ferality
In the early ’90s, few artists were connecting the dots between queer erasure and ecocide—but ANOHNI was. Four years after her first contribution to Atmos, the transdisciplinary artist reflects on her pioneering work in queer ecology, trans ferality, and moving beyond binary notions of nature.
Art & Culture
Earth Sounds
A Common Thread
Photographer Kin Coedel spends time with the local communities of the Tibetan plateau dedicated to conserving sustainable, age-old textile-making practices.
Art & Culture
Photography
Ebbs and Flows
Tide pools are microcosms of life—unlikely, marvelous, and home to all kinds of creatures that have learned to exist amidst ephemerality.
The Overview
Deep Ecology
How the Flower Industry is Wilting the Planet
Flowers are big business—but the cost of commercial flower farms to our environment is even greater. What’s the alternative?
Science & Nature
Anthropocene
Education Culture Wars Didn’t Stop Midterms Climate Wins
The U.S. midterm elections have shown that educators can win—and book banners can lose. The Frontline digs into why that matters for climate justice.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Life In a Blue Zone: Okinawa and the Wisdom of Community
In our pursuit of longer life, we overlook the experience of the long-lived.
Identity & Community
Well Being
Climate Change Is Hurting the Global South. Will COP27 Help?
COP27, the global climate conference, is kicking off in Egypt. Activists from the Global South talk to The Frontline about what they need to see happen this year.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
New Song of Silence: A Poet Remembers Leaving Ukraine
Ukrainian poet Anastasia Afanasieva was living in Kharkiv when the war broke out. After hiding in a basement for weeks, she was finally able to escape. Now a refugee, her poem speaks to the pain and resilience of the Ukrainian people.
Art & Culture
Democracy
Nyctophobia
Is our ancient fear of the dark anything more than a fear of what we do not know or are not yet ready to face?
The Overview
Deep Ecology
Sage Against the Machine
Native Nations have historically embraced sage for its power to heal bodies, hearts and minds, cleanse spaces, and make holy. But with the advent of social media, sage usage among non-Natives has grown in popularity, endangering the medicinal plant in the process.
Indigeneity
Well Being
Brazil Has A New President. What’s Next for the Amazon?
The Frontline travels to Brazil during the presidential election to meet with scientists, politicians, and land defenders protecting the Amazon Rainforest. They highlight the many ways to save a forest.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Over the Rainbow: How Culture Shapes Color
In the Western world, we are taught that there are seven colors in the rainbow. But is it true?
Science & Nature
Art & Culture
In Florida, Queer Youth Battle Bigotry and Climate Change
Right-wing monsters are tormenting young LGBTQIA+ people by writing and passing homophobic and anti-trans bills. In Florida, queer youth climate activists speak out.
The Frontline
Democracy
Standing Out
We focus on chameleons’ ability to change in order to belong to a place, but being themselves is often enough. Imposter syndrome is no different.
The Overview
Deep Ecology
The Evolution of Eco-Horror
Ecological horror depicts evil as the result of our own fractured relationship with the environment. But does it ever provide solutions beyond annihilation?
Art & Culture
10 Years After Superstorm Sandy, Building Local Resilience
After Superstorm Sandy, one Brooklyn neighborhood realized its concentration of auto shops posed environmental harm. The Frontline reports on community-led efforts to clean up businesses, rather than shut them down.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Cristina Mittermeier Reflects On Her Life Underwater
The ocean churns with life, from the surface we swim on to the deep underwater currents below. Photographer and conservationist Cristina Mittermeier talks about how the ocean powers life on Earth—and how urgently we must protect it.
Science & Nature
Ocean Life
The Abolitionists Born After Hurricane María
On the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Maria, Hurricane Fiona came roaring onto Puerto Rico. The Frontline digs into the colonial struggle the archipelago still faces—and the people rising up to demand freedom.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Calling In: Loretta J. Ross’s Antidote to Cancel Culture
What does it take to have a challenging conversation in the era of cancel culture? For MacArthur Fellow Loretta J. Ross, the answer lies in calling in: a communicative strategy rooted in compassion, accountability, and restorative justice that recognizes the many realities of a muddled world.
Art & Culture
Identity & Community
De-extinction: When Woolly Mammoths Return
Scientists want to rescue woolly mammoths from extinction, promising climate and ecological benefits. Does it matter if it’s a real mammoth?
Science & Nature
Biodiversity
Waste Not
Scavengers might just be the most important teachers we have now: living reminders of how resourceful nature can be.
The Overview
Deep Ecology
Should AI Help Visualize the Future of the Climate Crisis?
Publicly accessible AI art generators like DALL-E 2 and Midjourney have made it easy for anyone to create unique images that reimagine what the future might hold. But, the ethics remain murky.
Art & Culture
Anthropocene
Buffalo, for the Land and the People
The Frontline talks with Sicangu Lakota people, who are bringing back buffalo to heal environmental and cultural wounds.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Full Spectrum: Honoring Queerness in Nature
For many queer people, nature is a place free of judgment and conformity, where diversity is celebrated and crucial to survival. Here, queer models weighed in on how queerness and nature connect—a reminder that there is nothing more natural than being who you are.
Art & Culture
Queer Ecology
My End of the World
When it feels as if the world is unraveling, nature remains a source of sublimity. But who is afforded access to beauty during times of apocalypse?
Art & Culture
Deep Ecology
Rites of Passage
Every autumn, trees show us how beautiful it can be to shed our leaves—and that what we let go of can never really be lost.
The Overview
Deep Ecology
In Vietnam, Cultivating Harmony Across the Spectrum of Disability
At Vietnam’s Peaceful Bamboo Family, teachers and residents across a spectrum of disability cultivate community—with each other and with the land.
Identity & Community
Well Being
How Bomba Estéreo’s Simón Mejía Honors History and Nature in Music
Simón Mejía, founder of Colombia’s Grammy-nominated band Bomba Estéreo, talks to The Frontline about how music-making is inextricable from the Earth.
The Frontline
Earth Sounds
The World Must Stand With the Women of Iran
Leva Zand, founder and executive director of the nonprofit, ARTogether, shares her memories of life as a religious minority under Islamic law, and explains why the last three weeks of protests have offered a glimmer of hope.
Identity & Community
Democracy
In the Age of Distraction, Honoring the Light Within
With so much external stimulation, we often forget to see and honor the light within. Ruth H. Robertson reminds us that all perception is ultimately reflection.
Indigeneity
Deep Ecology
Swan Song
Swans seek to mate for life, and migrate each year between two homes. What do we long for in love if not a place, a person to belong to?
The Overview
Deep Ecology
Richard Mosse: Depicting Ecological Collapse in the Amazon
The photographic artist turns his lens on the devastating ecological narratives that have emerged from Bolsonaro’s sustained attack on the Brazilian Amazon for his latest project, Broken Spectre—which is nothing less than a call to action.
Art & Culture
Anthropocene
Protecting Our Elders From Hurricane Ian and Beyond
The Frontline examines the risks older people face from climate change—and the need to protect older people who represent a “walking piece of history,” as one activist said.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Visible Light: Colorism and Perception
Light touches all that we see, giving way to a world of complex shapes, tones, and textures—from the skin to the walls we live in.
Art & Culture
Ethical Fashion
Vandana Shiva on the Wisdom of Biodiversity
We are but one strand in the web of life. To keep the web whole, activist and author Vandana Shiva argues that we must honor the wisdom of biodiversity.
Deep Ecology
Science & Nature
In Living Color
Atmos Volume 07: Prism is finally here. This week’s edition of The Overview looks at the many hues it contains.
The Overview
Deep Ecology
Chasing Rainbows in the Azores
In the Azores off the coast of Portugal, verdant, flower-lined mountains are lit up by rainbows filtered through waterfalls and sunsets reflected on the ocean. Through this play of light and water, the islands offer a kaleidoscopic view of nature’s beauty.
Science & Nature
Photography
Until We Are Gone
The once thriving canyon community of San Jose de Gracia is on the frontline of climate change. As weather patterns change and water security evaporates, the last keepers of the community’s cultural heritage look towards an uncertain future.
Environmental Justice
Identity & Community
The Women Fighting Fire With Fire
The Frontline talks to women who work on wildfires by setting forests ablaze to reduce wildfire risk in a world shaped by climate change.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
ALOK and Munroe Bergdorf on the Power of Trans Imagination
Who gets to determine another person’s reality? Alok Vaid-Menon has become a global leader in the trans and nonbinary liberation movement. Here, they speak with fellow luminary Munroe Bergdorf about the rise of fascism in the U.S. and U.K., the dangers of dictating what is natural, and the power of trans imagination.
Art & Culture
Identity & Community
Unpacking Clean Beauty’s Real Impact
One of the industry’s most lucrative buzzwords abounds with gray areas—especially when it comes to how good products are for our health and the planet. What’s to be done?
Ethical Fashion
How Youth Are Stepping up Against the Mountain Valley Pipeline
Youth are stepping up to stop the contentious Mountain Valley Pipeline. The Frontline celebrates the young people working to defend their futures.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Atmos Celebrates Community With Climate Week Dinner at Brooklyn Grange
On Thursday, Atmos had the honor of hosting members of our community in New York City for climate week. The event took place over a farm-to-table dinner at Brooklyn Grange, a rooftop garden and farm which promotes sustainable living and local ecology through food, education, and events. As the climate crisis looms over us, we are incredibly grateful for the moments we get to rest, rejuvenate, and refill our cups in one another’s company—a crucial component of sustaining the movement.
Art & Culture
Pearls of Wisdom
Bivalves offer not only pearls of beauty but of wisdom, too. The Overview looks at what they can teach us about suffering.
The Overview
Deep Ecology
Why the Crown’s Commitment to Climate Action Falls Flat
King Charles III has been dubbed King Climate for his conservation efforts. But an institution rooted in hierarchy can’t uphold nor deliver climate justice.
Environmental Justice
Democracy
Ocean Conservation for La Gente
For Latine Heritage Month, Marce Gutiérrez-Graudiņš, the founder and executive director of the only marine conservation group dedicated to Latines in the U.S., shares how her community carries a special relationship to the ocean on The Frontline.
The Frontline
Identity & Community
The New Black Hills Gold Rush
There is no doubt that gold mining is seeing a resurgence in the sacred Black Hills of the Lakota. Not once, however, has the consent of the Lakota people been sought.
Environmental Justice
Indigeneity
COP27: Egypt’s Environmental Defenders Need Solidarity
The Frontline dives into a new human rights report that shows the fear environmental groups in Egypt feel—and their weariness in participating in the upcoming COP27.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Dusk Till Dawn
Transcending binary thinking is not easy. But what hope do we have if we don’t try?
The Overview
Deep Ecology
Rewilding Mythology
The rise of empire was in part facilitated by the deracination of local mythologies. As climate collapse worsens, a return to multi-species mythmaking might just be what saves us.
Deep Ecology
India’s Tale of Climate Extremes
The Frontline sheds light on the spectrum of climate disasters India faces—and the structural change necessary to prevent such loss in the future.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Would You Wear a Living Plant?
Designer Paula Ulargui Escalona is channeling her creativity to grow greenery from clothes. Her mission is to show just how beautiful fashion’s collaboration with nature could be.
Ethical Fashion
We Can’t Normalize Jackson’s Water Crisis
The water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, reminds us how much worse things will get in a heating world if we don’t take action now. The Frontline shows us a path forward.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
The Skin We Live In
It is during our periods of transformation that we often feel the most vulnerable. But vulnerability can be powerful, too.
The Overview
Biodiversity
How Bobby Kolade Is Taking on the Secondhand Clothing Trade
Used clothes have become big business, and corporations in the Global North are reaping the benefits. With Buzigahill, the Ugandan designer is repurposing the West’s secondhand garments and sending them back to the countries from which they came in a bid to reimagine the system.
Ethical Fashion
Yellowstone Reveals Its Indigenous Soul
At Yellowstone Revealed, a program dedicated to sharing Indigenous history at the world’s first national park, connections run deep. The Frontline went to experience the energy firsthand.
The Frontline
Indigeneity
No Forest Stands Forever
Losing all that’s grown, chunks of a lifetime gone in a mere instant, can’t be anything other than painful, writes Riley Black. But new growth isn’t somehow lesser.
Deep Ecology
Salix Babylonica
When I think of willows, I think of fluidity. Other arbors grow steadfastly skyward, but willows turn back and bow toward the earth that birthed them.
The Overview
How Sound Can Help Soothe Eco-Anxiety
The healing potential of sound has been channeled by cultures across the world for centuries. Now, as news about the scale and scope of environmental degradation worsens, a new generation of sound practitioners are looking for ways to help us cope.
Anthropocene
Dust and Bones
The impact of climate change on migrant deaths at the southwestern border
The Frontline
Climate Migration
Making Us Whole
Practicing rituals can serve as a critical tool in fighting settler colonialism, a system that demands we commodify what matters to us and sacrifice our souls for capital gain.
Indigeneity
The Greenland Ice Sheet’s Terrifying Future
A new study shows, for the first time, how much sea level rise the Greenland ice sheet’s melting will cause. The Frontline dives into the climate injustice the issue raises.
The Frontline
Ocean Life
60 Seconds on Earth with Xiye Bastida
Mexican-Chilean climate activist Xiye Bastida lets us in on her favorite animals, go-to food, and what keeps her hopeful in the latest installment of 60 Seconds on Earth.
60 Seconds on Earth
‘Enough Is Enough’: Ukrainian Climate Activists Demand End to Fossil Fueled War
After six months of Russia’s war in Ukraine, climate activists share with The Frontline what must come next: the end of fossil fuels.
The Frontline
Democracy
Sleep More, Save the Planet?
Who has the right to sleep? In the ongoing climate crisis, it’s just another area where the scales are tipped toward injustice.
Anthropocene
What Can Queer Ecology Teach Us About Monkeypox?
Gay intersectionista Alex Carr Johnson talks to The Frontline about the latest zoonotic disease and how queer ecological imagination can help us prepare for future viruses.
The Frontline
Queer Ecology
Remembering the Fossils I Never Knew
Sitting among petrified pieces, science writer Riley Black attempts to find the words to grieve for an era long gone—and the dinosaurs she never got a chance to meet.
Biodiversity
The Environmental Movement Faces Burnout. This Woman Wants to Repair That
Everyone needs time to recover after a fight. The Frontline dives into the burnout harming the environmental movement—and one woman’s effort to keep the fire alive.
The Frontline
Changemakers
Soul Fire Farm: Revolution is Based on Land
Soul Fire Farm is an Afro-Indigenous centered community farm applying ancestral wisdom to reclaim agency in food production and land stewardship. Members Danielle Peláez and Azuré Keahi speak to the environmental, spiritual, and revolutionary impacts of the farm’s mission.
Black Liberation
Indigeneity
On the Fire Line After Prison
Brandon Smith is a formerly incarcerated wildland firefighter working to dismantle the prison-industrial complex—by training others like him to fight wildfires. He shares his story on The Frontline.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Are Earthship Homes the Answer?
For over 30 years, a group of sustainably-focused folks have been living off-the-grid in Earth-sheltered living in Taos, New Mexico. Now, the rest of the world wants to follow suit.
Anthropocene
The Fight to Stop the Inflation Reduction Act’s Fossil Fuel Giveaway
The U.S. is poised to pass its first real climate bill in decades. The Frontline dives into what comes next given the Inflation Reduction Act’s harmful fossil fuel provisions.
The Frontline
Democracy
The Way Back
The contemporary model of monocultural farming relies on the dispossession of wealth and the conquest of beautiful lands. For Atmos, The Slow Grind Editor Georgina Johnson explains why cultivating a varied garden can be an anti-colonial act.
Black Liberation
Losing a Species, Losing a Culture
Losing a species doesn’t only devastate the ecosystem. Its reverberating loss also devastates cultures, as laid out in The Frontline.
The Frontline
Biodiversity
From Attire to Ashes: Clothing Waste in the Atacama Desert
In Chile’s Atacama Desert, there are mountains of unwanted clothes from brands like Nike, Old Navy, Hugo Boss, and even Chanel. Photographer Naguel Rivero and stylist Stephania Yepes reimagine the real-life effects of the fashion industry’s systemic overproduction of goods.
Ethical Fashion
The Dangers of a COP27 in Egypt
This year, international climate negotiations are set to take place in Egypt, which has a flagrant record of violating human rights. The Frontline talks to advocates who share their responses.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
The Toy Industry’s Eco-Future
In a plastic-reliant industry aimed at children, the environmental and social impacts are tenfold. With that in mind, toy companies, large and small, are making strides toward a more sustainable world.
Anthropocene
Covering the Heat
The climate crisis is creating a situation where more and more people are experiencing extreme heat. The Frontline dives into the media’s responsibility to cover the impact on the most vulnerable.
The Frontline
Anthropocene
Beyoncé’s Radical Ode to Pleasure
Renaissance, Beyoncé’s first solo album in six years, is a celebration of joy, movement, and togetherness. It’s also a radical call to action in apocalyptic times.
Art & Culture
Black Liberation
Dialed In
Like any ecosystem, the social media networks that we are part of are also part of us. The question becomes: how can we create balance in our natural and online worlds?
The Overview
60 Seconds on Earth with Plant Kween
Ultimate Plant Kween Christopher Griffin joins us to chat about the value of community, rest, and being a parent to over 235 plants.
Changemakers
Counting Butterflies
Where have all the insects gone? The Frontline dives into the great insect decline—and how a group of scientists in Ecuador is revolutionizing how we may solve it.
The Frontline
Anthropocene
A Call for Native Bodily Autonomy
Following the reversal of Roe v. Wade, as the conquest of Native women’s bodies continues, Atmos columnist Ruth H. Robertson urges us to join the fight for the reproductive rights of all, including Indigenous peoples.
Indigeneity
How Reproductive Justice Is Climate Justice
As abortion access grows more limited in the U.S., The Frontline looks at the crisis this creates for people who need reproductive health care during or after extreme weather events.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
The Climate Message of Jordan Peele’s ‘Nope’
The Frontline dives into Jordan Peele’s latest horror film Nope, which reminds us of the critical role Black people play in the climate movement—and why we’ve got to listen up.
The Frontline
Black Liberation
Burning Out
Burnout has spread like wildfire. But we will not ignite long term change unless we find ways of sustaining our own flames.
The Overview
Life on Brazil’s Open Landfills
Trash picking communities across Brazil have become the backbone of the country’s waste management systems despite the discrimination, persistent financial insecurity, and health hazards of the job.
Environmental Justice
Healing Body, Mind, and Earth Through Natural Hair
Writer Britny Cordera heads to Jamaica for The Frontline to learn how natural hair can help empower Black women to reconnect with nature, overcome intergenerational trauma, and combat environmental racism.
The Frontline
Black Liberation
Matter of Life and Death
Fungi are responsible for turning death into new life, offering lessons on how to live in transformative times.
The Overview
Creatures of Possibility
My transition was a crash course in biology, writes Riley Black. It shifted how I see life on Earth and made me think harder about the boundaries we create and uphold.
Queer Ecology
Rewilding the Axolotl
Everyone knows the axolotl’s adorable face, but one team of scientists is working to ensure the endangered animal can live in the wild like it was meant to. The Frontline shares a day in the life of their work.
The Frontline
Deep Ecology
The Courts Won’t Save Us
In the face of recent Supreme Court rulings, The Frontline looks back at history to remind us that the courts are operating as they were always designed.
The Frontline
Democracy
Down to Earth
What goes up must come down. What can gravity teach us about our current climatic and cultural crises?
The Overview
Scaling a Next-Gen Material
The recent release of Stella McCartney’s Frayme bag, the first ever mushroom leather bag to be sold commercially, has been a long time coming. Its debut serves as a blueprint for brands entering an era of biomaterials in search of greener fabrics.
Ethical Fashion
Lessons From Latin America
As the U.S. faces blows to human rights and climate justice, The Frontline looks at one beacon of hope: Latin America. What can the U.S. learn from its southern neighbors?
The Frontline
Democracy
Colonization’s Lasting Impact on Photography
The language to describe the photographic process—taking, shooting, capturing an image—is rooted in the violence of colonial practice. Indigenous artists Josué Rivas and Rose B. Simpson reflect on the brave act of breaking free.
Indigeneity
Puerto Rico Is Not Yet Free
As Americans celebrate Fourth of July, The Frontline considers what independence means for Puerto Ricans, a group of U.S. citizens still under colonial rule.
The Frontline
Democracy
In and Through the Body
Despite popular opinions on abortion, climate change, and gun control, recent Supreme Court rulings have made one thing clear: there is a dissociation between the United States government and its people.
The Overview
The Native Citizenry
This Fourth of July, Atmos columnist Ruth Robertson examines the colonization of U.S. citizenship, and explains why we must expand our understanding of it to include pre-colonial Native citizenship standards.
Indigeneity
Climate Activist Vic Barrett on Wonder, Transformation, and Storytelling
Vic Barrett is best known for suing the federal government, but the climate activist is finally figuring out who he is outside the activism. The Frontline digs deep into Barrett’s queerness and where his work is headed next.
The Frontline
Changemakers
Listening as a Radical Act
Indigenous people are experts on planetary health. It’s why Health In Harmony, a nonprofit dedicated to reversing global heating, is listening to and acting on the experiences of rainforest communities across the world.
Indigeneity
Upside Down
While on assignment for Atmos, Lea Colombo’s trek through the Namib Desert took an unexpected turn: a brush with death that brought a new perspective.
Art & Culture
Redefining Gender in the Amazon
As we celebrate Pride, The Frontline shares the work of Uýra Sodoma, an Indigenous nonbinary performance artist who is dedicated to saving the Brazilian Amazon.
The Frontline
Queer Ecology
For Your Pleasure
Battling a grim future, the question becomes: how can we understand activism and social engagement not as separate from, but intertwined with pleasure?
The Overview
Queer Ecology
DIY Is Not a Trend—It’s a Necessity
Western fashion media have hailed the rise of DIY as a pandemic-era fad. But in Nairobi’s Warembo Wasanii—a community program that teaches women to create art from trash—a culture of upcycling was born to solve the problem of imported waste.
Ethical Fashion
Exxon’s Rainbow Smokescreen
When June rolls around, oil giant ExxonMobil is quick to parade rainbow flags on social media. In a collaboration with EXXONKNEWS, The Frontline shows the reality its queer workers face year-round.
The Frontline
Queer Ecology
Learning to Surrender: The Sacred Lessons of Yemayá
Santería practitioners Lilith Dorsey and Raven Morgaine discuss the environmental and spiritual lessons we can learn from the Queen of the Sea, Yemayá.
Ocean Life
In Search of Emancipation
For Juneteenth, Catherine Coleman Flowers draws links in The Frontline between the name of her beloved Lowndes County, Alabama, and the region’s history of slavery—and freedom.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
El Bosque
The cloud forests of Veracruz, Mexico are otherworldly in their beauty and lifegiving in their nature. As climate change and industrialization close in on these disappearing landscapes, Mexican poet María Baranda contemplates the multitudes they contain—the forest beyond the trees.
Deep Ecology
We All Fall Down
We will never reinvent the wheel as long as we’re busy running on it; at a certain point, we need to decide to get off.
The Overview
Queering the Food System
A new generation of LGBTQIA+ farmers are tending the land through a lens of radical empathy and mutual respect by putting people and planet before profit.
Queer Ecology
Climate Denial’s Racist Roots
Writer Mary Annaïse Heglar shows how white supremacy is the throughline between the gun crisis and the climate crisis in The Frontline.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Why Photographic Literacy Matters
Photography can be a powerful agency for change, especially in a time of mass inaction. It’s what drives Lens on Life—a nonprofit providing photographic training by the likes of Philip-Daniel Ducasse to at-risk youth—as they prepare to host their third photo auction.
Art & Culture
Nurturing the Next Generation
In an essay for The Frontline, queer Black writer and educator Ashia Ajani raises questions about the U.S. school system and its role amid the pandemic, the climate crisis, and gun violence. What are we growing? What are we wasting away?
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Crumbling Capital
One way or another, late-stage capitalism will collapse. We can let it take us down with it, or we can grow something new: a world where mindsets of scarcity have been overrun by sustainability.
Democracy
Anthropocene
Róisín Pierce’s Radical Reimagining of Zero Waste Fashion
The fast-rising designer outlines why the pace of the current fashion calendar is at odds with respectful and sustainable industry practices.
Ethical Fashion
Can Plant Medicine Survive Climate Change?
Indigenous healers have used plants for thousands of years to help with illness. The Frontline explores how climate change is threatening this ancestral practice.
The Frontline
Indigeneity
60 Seconds on Earth with Cristina Mittermeier
Conservation photographer and SeaLegacy cofounder Cristina Mittermeier sits down with us for our newest installment of 60 Seconds on Earth.
60 Seconds on Earth
When Native Foods Heal
For Indigenous communities, connecting to ancestral foodways could be a life saver. The Frontline digs into the mental health benefits of eating well.
The Frontline
Indigeneity
The Sound of Solidarity
“Al-Hara” means neighborhood in Arabic, but Radio Alhara’s community isn’t defined by any geographic boundary. Amid COVID lockdowns and the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the station’s blend of music and political activism became essential—both globally and locally—as a beacon for collectivism and self-determination.
Art & Culture
Climate Migration
True Colors
The journey we take back to ourselves is part of the queer and trans experience—rediscovering, under all the learned shame, our true nature.
The Overview
Queer Ecology
The Language of Water
A team of researchers in Mexico are working to translate scientific processes into various Indigenous languages. The Frontline digs into their latest project: translating the water cycle.
The Frontline
Indigeneity
Product Drops—But Make It Mindful
The drop model, where a brand releases a limited run of items every few weeks, is often linked to overconsumption and waste. But a new wave of designers are utilizing the strategy as a way to run sustainable fashion businesses.
Ethical Fashion
Dreaming Awake
In a society still rooted in oppressive systems, dreaming isn’t an escape—it’s an act of resistance. As contributing editor Rachel Cargle writes, Black women have always been birthing new worlds by way of the imagination.
Black Liberation
Going Deeper
Deep ecology advocates for a societal shift from a worldview that places humans at the center to one that sees us as equal in importance to all life on Earth—one strand in the web of life.
The Overview
60 Seconds on Earth with Aditi Mayer
Sustainable fashion advocate and photojournalist Aditi Mayer joins us to chat about intergenerational wisdom, leading with love, and current projects she’s working on.
60 Seconds on Earth
A Slow Violence Comes to an End in LA
Nalleli Cobo has been an organizer for most of her life–despite being only 21. The Frontline digs into how her leadership is creating a new future for Los Angeles youth.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Can K-Pop Fans Save the Planet?
Inspired by Blackpink’s climate change video, a small but intrepid group of activists is harnessing the power of K-pop for good—from fighting deforestation to lobbying entertainment companies for Earth-conscious CDs.
Anthropocene
The Great Mystery
Ruth Hopkins invites us to behold Wakan Tanka, the essence at the heart of Oceti Sakowin spirituality, in which the sacred flows through everything: from the movement of muscles to the stars in the sky.
Indigeneity
Texans to the Polls
Texas voters are hitting the polls to decide who will hold a key congressional seat. The Frontline dives into the climate reality facing Texans.
The Frontline
Democracy
Spreading Seeds
While some might consider them a weed, dandelions have a lot to teach us about persistence—and the power of a single seed.
The Overview
Why One Vaccine Scientist Turned to Rap Music
Hip-hop has the means to educate the masses, according to Ruby Ibarra, the Filipina-American biotech scientist turned rapper. For Atmos, she breaks down why intentional music-making matters in the era of climate catastrophe. She also curates a Spotify playlist in celebration of AAPI Heritage Month.
Earth Sounds
Catherine Coleman Flowers on America’s Dirty Secret
The sanitation system in the U.S. is crumbling. Author and MacArthur genius grant winner Catherine Coleman Flowers tells her story in The Frontline.
The Frontline
Changemakers
Conserving Biodiversity, Preserving Mental Health
Activist Tori Tsui dismantles the euro-centricity and ableism of ‘eco-anxiety’ and outlines why mental health is planetary health.
Changemakers
In Hawaii, Water Is Life—And It’s in Danger
Before the military and tourism sectors began exploiting Hawaii’s water resources, Native people were caring for them. The Frontline explains how the islands can look to the past to build a better future.
Environmental Justice
The Frontline
Come Together
If the future asks one thing of us, it’s reconnection—to ourselves, each other, and the wider realm of nature. While the U.S. wrestles with its own division, photographers from around the world reflect on moments of concord they have captured on camera.
Democracy
Gentle Now
Hummingbirds, as the only birds capable of hovering, have a lot to teach us about living lightly.
The Overview
The Future of Climate Careers
Atmos speaks with young climate visionaries working across food, tech, activism, fashion, and education about how they are reimagining their respective industries.
Anthropocene
Changemakers
Drowning in Student Loans and Rising Tides
It’s time for President Joe Biden to forgive student loans—in the name of climate justice. The Frontline connects student debt to climate change.
The Frontline
Democracy
Reimagining Rehabilitation
In a system that invests in incarceration rather than redemption and punishment rather than people, abolition is the only answer. So what does a world free of prisons look like?
Environmental Justice
The Climate Reality of Roe v. Wade
As the Supreme Court considers overturning Roe v. Wade, threatening abortion access to all, The Frontline sheds light on research showing how fossil fuels and climate change are making pregnancy more risky.
The Frontline
Democracy
Like Minds
In every aspect of capitalist culture, we are indoctrinated into the cult of individualism, keeping us isolated. But everywhere we look in nature, we see the power of interdependence.
The Overview
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Rachel Holmes has spent 10 years with the Connecticut Interstate Fire Crew as an initial attack wildland firefighter. For Atmos, she breaks down the reality of life on the fireline.
Changemakers
The Problem With Nature-Based Solutions
There’s plenty of hype around nature-based solutions, but are they really all that great? The Frontline hears from Indigenous advocates who decry the idea as a solution at all.
The Frontline
Indigeneity
How the Ethical Fashion Movement Changed Policy
The passage of SB62, a bill focused on protecting garment workers’ rights in California, is a case study in how the sector might start to right some of its wrongs.
Ethical Fashion
Saad Amer: Combating Climate Change and India’s Heat Wave
Climate activist Saad Amer talks to The Frontline about being a Desi man, the heat wave affecting South Asia, and how the climate movement can protect his community.
The Frontline
Democracy
The Umbilicus
Land defender Tara Houska reflects on her experiences fighting Line 3 on the frontlines—and why reconnecting with our future will require reconciling with our past.
Indigeneity
A Day in the Life
All life has a rhythm. Our biological clocks do more than just tell us when it’s time to wake and sleep: they connect us to nature.
The Overview
Terrestrial Indigeneity
There is much to learn from Native Nations. After all, humanity is Indigenous to this planet and we must use that as the basis for everything we do, writes Ruth H. Hopkins.
Indigeneity
Vice President Kamala Harris Promised Me a Fracking Ban
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris promised voters sweeping climate policy. Instead, they’re ramping up oil and gas production. The Frontline takes on fracking—and the power of a ban like the one Harris promised back in 2019.
The Frontline
Democracy
60 Seconds on Earth with Bonnie Wright
The filmmaker and Greenpeace ambassador joins Atmos for a series of rapid-fire questions ahead of the launch of her new book.
60 Seconds on Earth
The Veil of The Velvet Queen
The documentary, which follows Vincent Munier and Sylvain Tesson’s attempts to observe the latent and vulnerable snow leopard, welcomes viewers to meditate on the beauty of solitude and autonomy within the natural world.
Art & Culture
Beyond the Human
Humanity is at an evolutionary turning point. The question is: What are we becoming? More animal? More machine? The founders of Queer Nature explore ecological identity beyond binaries.
Anthropocene
Of the Earth
The Earth is not a day or a month, it’s something we belong to. Now more than ever, it needs our love—and protection.
The Overview
Losing Flowers For All Occasions
Imagine no flowers left on Earth—a potential reality if climate change continues at its current rate. Writer and director Meetra Javed explores what this might look like in a sobering experimental visual poem for Atmos.
Anthropocene
Art & Culture
Home Growing a Cannabis Revolution
Most people are focused on smoking cannabis on 4/20, the plant’s (horti)cultural holiday. The Frontline dives into what many activists are focused on, instead: growing weed at home.
The Frontline
Deep Ecology
Who Might Inherit the Earth?
Evolution has seen species adapt along with their environment for millennia. But the inconsistent and rapid effects of climate change are making it difficult for some to keep up.
Anthropocene
Seeing Through the Veil
In the West, many Muslim women are defined by their head covering. Coco Khan looks beyond the stereotypes surrounding the veil, into the fight for power and representation in a world that insists on oversimplification.
Ethical Fashion
Eco-Influencer Brown Girl Green on Transparency and Greenwashing
Kristy Drutman is better known as Brown Girl Green. She talks to The Frontline about the nuance of creating content as an influencer—and the danger of greenwashing around Earth Day.
The Frontline
Changemakers
Growing Pains
Each spring, the Earth makes rebirth look easy; all we see on the surface is her becoming, never betraying the unseen effort it requires.
The Overview
How Vanessa Nakate Mobilizes the Masses
The Ugandan climate justice activist breaks down what it will take to hold the Global North responsible for the climate crisis and make it pay up.
Changemakers
When Protest Becomes Criminal
After an explosion of climate action and Black Lives Matter protests, the U.K. is trying to limit what action in the streets looks like. The Frontline explores the dangerous potential of this bill—in England and beyond.
The Frontline
Democracy
Culture-Building as Climate Work
Organizer Reverend Lennox Yearwood Jr. talks about creating a more inclusive climate movement and the sustaining power of faith.
Black Liberation
The Other Side of Disaster
Climate catastrophe is not just one event—it’s a force that reverberates. This has been the heartbreaking reality for Nicaragua’s Miskito communities, many of whom are seeking refuge north after Hurricanes Eta and Iota hit in 2020.
Climate Migration
Indigeneity
Myth and Miasma
In mythology, miasma describes a corrupt atmosphere emanating from crimes against nature—and the parallels to the climate crisis are clear.
The Overview
Writing a Queer Black Eco-Pleasure Politic
Kemi Alabi’s debut poetry collection, Against Heaven, connects environmental abundance with queer futurity.
Black Liberation
More Citizen Science, Please
Citizen science and local knowledge play an important role in our response to climate change, the lPCC report confirms. The Frontline talks to folks on the ground taking science into their own hands.
The Frontline
Climate Solutions
In Celebration of Unity
Artist couple Johanna Tagada Hoffbeck and Jatinder Singh Durhailay on working with natural dyes, making paper from waste, and presenting their work at London’s HOME gallery. They also curate a Spotify playlist inspired by the lifecycle of a seed exclusively for Atmos.
Earth Sounds
Yes, Colonialism Caused Climate Change, IPCC Reports
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its final report Monday. The Frontline explores the significance of the sixth report finally naming “colonialism” as a historical and ongoing driver of the climate crisis.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Broken From the Colony
For Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors, a climate-fiction contest from Fix, Grist’s Solutions Lab, Ada M. Patterson conjures a future in which trans women and nonbinary folks find acceptance and security among the coral as the sole survivors of a storm that submerged their Caribbean island.
Queer Ecology
60 Seconds on Earth with Pattie Gonia
Drag queen and outdoor equity activist extraordinaire Pattie Gonia sits down with us for our latest installment of 60 Seconds on Earth.
60 Seconds on Earth
Do You Know Where Your Fragrance Comes From?
The fragrance industry has a complicated relationship with climate change—from intricate yet vast supply chains to natural and synthetic ingredients, brands face challenges on several fronts.
Ethical Fashion
Carrying Capacity
The work of kayayei in Ghana’s Kantamanto Market is grueling for the women and girls who carry loads of clothing waste upon their heads. The Frontline shares the words of Liz Ricketts, cofounder of The Or Foundation, which is dedicated to fostering new opportunities for these women.
The Frontline
Ethical Fashion
We Are Earth
To change the course of the climate crisis, we must draw on the strategies of our fellow life-forms, ensuring collective survival through interconnectedness.
Deep Ecology
The Carbon Footprint of an Oscars Dress
From the extraction and production of materials to international atelier visits and fittings, the environmental cost of creating a purpose-made couture gown does not come cheap.
Ethical Fashion
Striking for Reparations
Across the world, youth took part in climate strikes last week calling for climate reparations. The Frontline explores the power of reparations—and how the global climate strike movement is centering the needs of the most affected people and areas.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Back to the Future
What does it mean to see beyond? How do we create new futures? The Overview takes a holistic look at the latest issue of Atmos.
The Overview
Seeding Sanctity
As the climate crisis threatens frontline communities and fragile ecosystems, practitioners of nature-connected belief systems—like Santeria—are calling on their roots to reawaken an eco-consciousness embedded deep within.
Deep Ecology
Expanding Horizons
Science fiction can help predict the future—whether it will be utopian interplanetary communities or ruthless colonial societies. As humans look toward building new worlds in space, a question looms: Will we drag our problems with us?
Anthropocene
The Saga of Grimes
How does science fiction become history? Few artists are better equipped to answer this question than GRIMES, who has gone from being a visionary indie musician to having a front row view of humanity’s potential future among the stars. Here, she talks with award-winning sci-fi author Nnedi Okorafor about embracing the dark and the light, the spirituality of technology, and writing her own saga.
Art & Culture
Course Correction
For the Klamath River and its people, teachings for justice can be found in the corner, charting a new course for the future steered by the wisdom of the past.
Indigeneity
The Space Between
In BEWILDERMENT, the follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel THE OVERSTORY, Richard Powers turns his attention to the universe within and without. Here, he speaks with Atmos about the shift from alienation to interbeing, the question vexing astrobiologists, and what it means to live where you live.
Deep Ecology
True Blue
Blue is a central color for both our planet and politics. In our conflict-driven world, it reflects the emotions a lot of us may be feeling.
The Overview
The Adorable Red Panda in Disney’s ‘Turning Red’ Is in Danger
Climate change and habitat loss threaten the cute, endangered species. The film offers us an opportunity to learn about the red panda—and take urgent action to save it.
Biodiversity
The Sacred Women of the World
During Women’s History Month, we honor the Indigenous women land defenders who have been leading the way in protecting and defending our first mother: Planet Earth.
Indigeneity
Ukrainian Refugees Today, Climate Refugees Tomorrow
The Frontline digs into the disturbing parallels between the ongoing Ukrainian refugee crisis and what we might expect in the future due to climate change.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Nicole McLaughlin Can Repurpose Just About Anything
With over 780,000 followers on Instagram and countless brand collaborations under her belt, Nicole McLaughlin has become known as the queen of upcycling. For the March edition of EchoSphere, she explains why repurposing is the future in her own words.
Art & Culture
Changemakers
Eunice Foote: The First Climate Scientist’s Legacy
Who was the first scientist to make findings relevant to climate science today? The Frontline dives into a woman that history erased—and the women who continue to pave the path today.
The Frontline
Changemakers
Let’s Talk About Sex
For too long, Western ideas about gender and sexuality have been imposed upon the human and nonhuman worlds—when everywhere we look on Earth, we find a diverse array of flora, fauna, and fungi that challenge these notions.
The Overview
Sparking Joy Through Climate Action
Climate-positive habits, like curtailing consumption, are often framed in a negative light. But there’s evidence to suggest that reducing our carbon emissions can make us happier. Dr. Elizabeth Dunn and Dr. Jiaying Zhao, founders of interactive workshop Happy Climate, break down why.
Anthropocene
‘Respect Science’: Mona Hanna-Attisha Shares Climate Lessons From Flint
The Frontline interviews whistleblower and acclaimed scientist Mona Hanna-Attisha, who alerted the world that her patients were exposed to toxic water. History will remember her.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Women’s Fight Against Street Harassment
Eliza Hatch, founder of feminist photography campaign Cheer Up Luv, discusses the many ways misogyny is prevalent in the public realm, and how she is using her platform to inspire and educate. In celebration of International Women’s Day, Hatch curates a playlist of songs by groundbreaking women exclusively for Atmos.
Earth Sounds
The Tiger Widows of India Conserving the Mangrove Forest Where Their Husbands Died
In the Sundarbans, the tiger is king. In its shadow stands the Sundari tree, an endangered mangrove. The Frontline talks to a group of women whose husbands were killed by tigers and is now conserving these trees to protect the forest where their partners were lost.
The Frontline
Biodiversity
Who Runs the World?
For Women’s History Month, The Overview looks to the animal kingdom for what it can teach us about the power of putting women in charge.
The Overview
Searching for the Night Sky
Humans have always looked to the stars: they have built their calendars and cultures around the night sky and found inspiration and information in its patterns. Searching the skies as they always have, people are now faced with an expanse clouded with light and satellites—straining to glimpse what their ancestors may have seen.
Anthropocene
Healing the Land with Indigenous Science
In her new book, Dr. Jessica Hernandez lays out a case for centering Indigenous voices in scientific discourse.
Indigeneity
Climate Justice Must Include All Women
As Women’s History Month begins, The Frontline looks at how climate change is already affecting women—and exacerbating present-day vulnerabilities.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Disrupting London Fashion Week
London Represents was organized by model and disability activist Samanta Bullock and diversity advocate Gaia Beck in a bid to create change within a largely exclusive industry. But the fashion world still has a long way to go.
Ethical Fashion
IPCC Report: The Climate Crisis Requires Solutions That Do It All
A new report is here from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. While it has plenty of alarming findings on how climate change is here, The Frontline is focusing on how much we can still do to save people and the planet.
The Frontline
Anthropocene
Cellular Call
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers a holistic look at life on Earth, seen from above.
The Overview
60 Seconds on Earth with Rachel Cargle
Atmos catches up with contributing editor and social entrepreneur Rachel Cargle to discuss white privilege, morning routines, and her upcoming book, Beyond Love and Light—A Memoir and Manifesto on Reimagining.
60 Seconds on Earth
Rooted In Blackness
It’s not a stretch to use elements of Mother Nature as a lens to explore and appreciate the beautiful, complicated reality of the Black experience, writes Rachel Cargle.
Black Liberation
The Power of a Name
How can we expect Black people to feel safe in nature if the names of outdoor spaces are racist? The Frontline looks at the ongoing effort to rename federal lands in honor of Black history.
Black Liberation
The Frontline
Justice for Leonard Peltier
Peltier, an Anishinabe/Dakota man, is now believed to be the longest-serving political prisoner in the United States. He still maintains his innocence, 45 years on.
Indigeneity
Meet the Black-Owned Company Making Hair From Bananas
Two Black women share their journey to launch a toxic-free, plastic-free hair company for Black folks in a special guest edition of The Frontline.
Black Liberation
The Frontline
Enlighten Me
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers a holistic look at life on Earth, seen from above.
The Overview
Radical Self-Love Reconfigures the World
Sonya Renee Taylor, founder of The Body Is Not An Apology, on the revolutionary potential of loving oneself in a society built on domination and extraction.
Changemakers
Well Being
A Year After Her Arrest, Indian Climate Activist Disha Ravi Is Still Not Free
In a special edition of The Frontline, writer Amber X. Chen talks to Indian climate justice activist Disha Ravi a year after she was arrested for her outspoken support of the farmers’ movement.
Changemakers
The Frontline
Love Songs for Nature’s Kind
A curation of poems and songs to celebrate Mother Earth, who is so often overlooked during the most romantic time of the year.
Earth Sounds
Finding Love in the Apocalypse
In the era of climate calamity, what is love? The Frontline talks to three climate couples—folks in the movement who won’t let a burning planet keep them from its greatest gift: love.
The Frontline
Changemakers
Entrapment
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers a holistic look at life on Earth, seen from above.
The Overview
Sheila Heti’s Pure Colour is a New Creation Myth
In her fantastical new climate change novel, Heti imagines we are living in the first draft of God’s creation, one he is ready to scrap in order to start afresh.
Art & Culture
Black People Can’t Walk Outside
In an essay for The Frontline, environmental justice writer Adam Mahoney discusses the troubling reality of how Black people experience the environment around them.
The Frontline
Black Liberation
A Cultural and Mythological History of Pearling in the Arabian Gulf
The pearl industry is shifting into a space of preservation, diversification, and restoration with the help of local communities in order to revive the ancient traditions in pearling that define the collective cultural identity of countries in the Gulf.
Ocean Life
Ethical Fashion
No Climate Justice Without Trans Rights
The discovery of an anti-trans group’s involvement in an Indigenous-led land defense battle highlights the dangers of binary thinking. The Frontline reminds us why the climate movement must center the voices of queer, trans, nonbinary, and two-spirit people.
The Frontline
Queer Ecology
Exaptation, Exaltation
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers a holistic look at life on Earth, seen from above.
The Overview
60 Seconds on Earth with Mikaela Loach
Climate Justice Activist Mikaela Loach joins us to chat about Jamaican food, Zoom crushes, and her advice on taking climate action.
60 Seconds on Earth
A Seaweed Mama’s Journey on a Vanishing Island
Atmos speaks with Tanzanian farmer-artisan Hadija Nassor Mwalim on working to ensure a stable future for herself and her family in the face of Zanzibar’s rising sea levels.
Ocean Life
Black Liberation
Summer Dean on Being a Climate Diva
The Frontline is kicking off Black History Month by celebrating today’s Black climate leaders. Meet Summer Dean—or, as you might know her on Instagram, Climate Diva.
Changemakers
The Frontline
The Case for Natural Dyes
Coloring clothes using flowers, foods, and plants is an ancient art. Now, a rise in ethical and sustainable practices across fashion is breathing new life into such age-old traditions.
Ethical Fashion
Not Perfect, Just Better
The climate crisis requires systemic solutions, but we can all play a role in making Earth a better place. This intimate edition of The Frontline gets into some personal changes climate director Yessenia Funes has made in her life.
The Frontline
Anthropocene
Piecing It Together
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers a holistic look at life on Earth, seen from above.
The Overview
Hoda Katebi’s Mission to Abolish Sweatshops
The community organizer is the founder of Blue Tin Production, an apparel manufacturing co-operative run by immigrant, refugee, and working-class women of color. Together, they’re setting the tone for what an equitable fashion system could be.
Ethical Fashion
America’s Climate Workforce Suits Up
A new bill has the potential to revolutionize the workforce. The Frontline explores what it could mean for disaster response and recovery.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Desecrating the Sacred
Irreparable damage has been done to countless Indigenous burial sites, landmarks and artworks. If we truly showed respect for the sacred, Ruth H. Hopkins writes, we would cease such acts of violence.
Indigeneity
Stop the Clock
The Frontline has got the annual Doomsday Clock update. With the clock set at 100 seconds to midnight, the message is clear: There’s no time to waste.
The Frontline
Anthropocene
How’s the Weather?
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers a holistic look at life on Earth, seen from above.
The Overview
Jawara Alleyne Reimagines Fashion’s Value System
Ahead of London Fashion Week, the Jamaican-Caymanian menswear designer talks upcycling, circularity, and finding roots in music—discover his exclusive Spotify playlist for Atmos.
Earth Sounds
The Dark Side of Paper
Paper may seem like a great alternative to plastic, but it’s got its own environmental issues, too. The Frontline explores how activism in Kalamazoo, Michigan, is finally shining a light on the city’s air pollution crisis.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Will The World Run Dry?
A new book by science writer Nancy F. Castaldo lays out the leading causes behind the world’s water crisis—and how to reverse it.
Anthropocene
Dolores Huerta: Workers Must Unite to Take on Climate
In an interview with labor rights activist Dolores Huerta, The Frontline looks at the power organizing holds to achieve climate justice. The labor movement and climate movement must join hands to tackle our global crisis.
The Frontline
Changemakers
Just Enough
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers a holistic look at life on Earth, seen from above.
The Overview
Climate and the Overdose Crisis
The U.S. saw 100,000 deaths from drug-related overdoses in the first year of the Covid-19 outbreak. But even before the pandemic, climate change was affecting drug use and overdose deaths.
Anthropocene
The Future of Fashion Is Justice
California and New York are paving the way to sustainable and equitable fashion. The Frontline explores recent legislation passed and introduced in the states—and the signal they send to the rest of the world.
The Frontline
Ethical Fashion
Where Dreams Get Shattered
Photographer Jermain Cikic turns his lens on life as a refugee on Samos, the home of Greece’s first refugee holding camp.
Climate Migration
A Blazing Air Pollution Crisis
A historic winter wildfire in Colorado challenges the notion of a wildfire season. The Frontline explores what that means for human health after a new study finds wildfires are increasing air pollution across the American West.
The Frontline
Anthropocene
Decarbonizing the Art World
The art world has historically underestimated its own footprint. But as the industry looks ahead to the new year, it has finally reached a critical mass of collective action.
Art & Culture
No Time to Waste in 2022
You can’t take climate action without addressing voter rights. The Frontline looks at what’s at stake in 2022, a key election year in the U.S.
The Frontline
Democracy
Building Unity Through GoGrowWithLove
The Black and femme-led horticultural collective is advocating for food security and land reparations. One of its members, dayax raage, explains how soil regeneration can help foster a collective sense of wellbeing.
Deep Ecology
A New Year’s Wish for Peace
Defending the land can be deadly in certain parts of the world. A Colombian land defender shares her new year wish with The Frontline: to care for the land without the fear of death.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
How Climate Infiltrated Pop Culture in 2021
As 2021 draws to a close, Atmos reflects on some of the ways in which climate influenced music, fashion, film, and television over the past 12 months.
Art & Culture
The Best of Atmos in 2021
On The Frontline and beyond, Atmos published a multitude of climate stories centering the voices of the first and worst impacted by the climate crisis. Take a look at some of our favorites from 2021.
The Frontline
An Ode to Ghost Dancing
December marks three somber anniversaries for Oceti Sakowin people. One of them is the killing of Sitting Bull, who propagated the ritual of ghost dancing that promises to reunite us with the spirits of our ancestors.
Indigeneity
Peoples of the Water: Saving a River and the Amazon From Industry
A proposed project to industrialize a major river in the Brazilian Amazon threatens to uproot the culture and home of quilombola communities that have persisted for centuries on this land. The Frontline investigates what this project means for local fishing traditions—and the forests that surround them.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
The Tide Country
Deep in the Sundarbans, life is governed by the flow and ebb of the tides. The river delta region that spans across India and Bangladesh is famous for its vast mangrove forests that are threatened by rising sea levels and increasing temperatures. For the past seven years, photographer Swastik Pal has been captivated by the people who call this fragile ecosystem home. His ongoing project Tide Country documents this changing landscape and its impact on their way of life.
Ocean Life
Photography
Take It Easy
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers a holistic look at life on Earth, seen from above.
The Overview
Isaias Hernandez: Traditional Knowledge is True Wealth
The environmental educator, best known as @QueerBrownVegan on Instagram, is upending elitist academic norms by bringing lived experience into discussions about veganism, zero waste, and climate justice.
Changemakers
Environmental Justice
Kentucky’s Whirlwind of Community
After a devastating and historical weekend of tornadoes across the Midwest and South, community organizers are coming together in response. The Frontline shows how the climate crisis requires mass mobilization during times of disaster.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
60 Seconds on Earth with Max La Manna
Zero waste chef and author Max La Manna joins us to chat about Christmas food waste, his cooking inspirations, and what he misses most about New York City.
60 Seconds on Earth
Combating Music’s Carbon Crisis
From audience travel to branded merchandise, music tours generate a huge amount of waste. But on London’s DIY scene, some insiders are leading the way for a greener future.
Art & Culture
The Danger of the Rich
A new report sheds light on the role the 1% play in driving the climate crisis. The Frontline emphasizes the crucial role of the government to limit the carbon footprint of the ultra-rich.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Going Through It
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers a holistic look at life on Earth, seen from above.
The Overview
‘Don’t Look Up’ Reminds Us the Rich Will Doom Us All
Netflix’s latest comedy thriller Don’t Look Up serves as a metaphor for the real world crisis that is climate change. It shows us the dangers of allowing the rich to hold too much power.
Art & Culture
Environmental Justice
Flowerovlove on Putting the Planet First
The 16-year-old singer, who is spreading love and mindfulness through her music and lifestyle, speaks with Atmos about practicing radical self-love and curates a Spotify playlist exclusively for the second edition of EarthTones.
Earth Sounds
Behind the Lens
As a new wave of aspiring nature photographers enter an increasingly volatile global market, five established image-makers share the learnings they’ve picked up along the way and discuss their newly-launched initiative, Vital Impacts.
Art & Culture
11 Climate Justice Wins That Got Us Through 2021
There’s no denying that 2021 was another year from hell, but The Frontline is here to remind us of the climate justice victories from around the world—made possible through the devoted work of community.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
The Great Divide
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers a holistic look at life on Earth, seen from above.
The Overview
Foraging for Joy
Alexis Nikole Nelson, aka Black Forager, is inspiring a new generation of wild food enthusiasts with her whimsical approach.
Deep Ecology
Eco-Grief Around the World
Environments are changing across continents. Journalist Mélissa Godin shares stories of ecological grief from Malawi to Australia for The Frontline.
The Frontline
Anthropocene
Storytelling to Protect the Sacred
For Indigenous peoples, passing down stories through generations has become a vehicle for sharing spiritual beliefs, tribal values and customs, history, genealogy and scientific findings.
Indigeneity
Deep Ecology
60 Seconds on Earth with Quannah Chasinghorse
As part of our video series with climate leaders, The Frontline talks to Indigenous activist and model Quannah Chasinghorse on land back, fashion, and self-care.
60 Seconds on Earth
Indigeneity
Quannah Chasinghorse on Chasing Dreams and Caribou
Activist-turned-model Quannah Chasinghorse shares with The Frontline her deep connection to the land and how she is using her modeling career as a way to bolster Indigenous rights.
The Frontline
Indigeneity
Trash Walking to Save the Planet
Anna Sacks—otherwise known as The Trash Walker on social media for strolling the streets and exposing the contents of residential and corporate dumpsters—on rethinking our relationship to waste.
Changemakers
Anthropocene
Joy Yamusangie’s Musical Dreamscapes
In the first edition of EarthTones, a monthly column at the intersection of art, music and climate, artist Joy Yamusangie speaks about the role of nature in their multimedia practice and curates a Spotify playlist exclusively for Atmos.
Earth Sounds
Trials and Transformations
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers a holistic look at life on Earth, seen from above.
The Overview
Our (Tr)Ancestor in the Mirror
How an exhibition about a queer hairdresser from Cape Town helped inspire the next generation of LGBTQIA+ South Africans reclaim the land and language of their ancestors.
Queer Ecology
Reawakening Ancient Channels
Off the coast of California, the Channel Islands carry a rich history. Julie Tumamait-Stenslie, a Chumash elder, shares the stories of her people and the importance of reconnecting with the land on The Frontline.
The Frontline
Indigeneity
Nina Gualinga: ‘Indigenous Voices Are Still Not Heard’
The environmental activist from Sarayaku, Ecuador, speaks to Atmos about the urgency of redefining progress and why fossil fuel extraction must cease entirely.
Indigeneity
The Road to Recovery
Following COP26, The Frontline asks: How are you, really? Negative emotions are inevitable, but it’s important to find community and recharge, too.
The Frontline
Anthropocene
Food for Thought
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers a holistic look at life on Earth, seen from above.
The Overview
Sonnets for Solidarity with the Earth
As COP26 draws to a close, Atmos brings together nine eco-poems that were performed at the global climate event to help inspire change in the way we think and act.
Art & Culture
Defending the Elders of Fairy Creek
On the coast of Canada’s Vancouver Island, a battle to protect the region’s old growth forests reminds us of what’s at stake: Indigenous sovereignty. The Frontline shows how efforts to stop deforestation connect to the COP26 climate talks.
The Frontline
Indigeneity
Damon Albarn Creates Music from Mountains
Ahead of the release of his new album, The Nearer The Fountain, More Pure The Stream Flows, Damon Albarn speaks with Atmos about writing music at the intersection of art and politics.
Earth Sounds
The Gentle Giant Storing Carbon
A new study on whales shows us there’s still so much to learn about the ocean. The Frontline explores how whales are a critical carbon sink that deserves more attention at COP26.
The Frontline
Biodiversity
The Forest for the Trees
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers a holistic look at life on Earth, seen from above.
The Overview
A Guide to Nature’s Remedies
In this modern age, many of us have become disconnected from our food. Here, Atmos explores the powerful medicinal qualities of the foods we eat.
Deep Ecology
Demilitarize, Decarbonize
Climate justice advocates want to see world leaders tackle the military’s environmental footprint at COP26 this year. The Frontline takes a look at how damaging war can be—and why it deserves more scrutiny across global climate efforts.
The Frontline
Democracy
Transcending the Human Epoch
Anthropocene: The Human Epoch is a sobering documentary about humanity’s reengineering of the planet. Ahead of its screening at COP26, Atmos speaks with filmmaker Nicholas de Pencier about the creation of the monumental project.
Anthropocene
Teens on the Fire Line
The use of prison labor to fight wildfires is nothing new, but did you know youth fire camps exist, too? The Frontline breaks down the use of incarcerated juvenile firefighters across the U.S.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Blessed are the Hungry
For five youth activists, climate action is worth hunger striking for.
Anthropocene
Enchanted Nature
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers a holistic look at life on Earth, seen from above.
The Overview
Looking to Mythology in a Time of Crisis
Throughout world mythology, the lore surrounding mythical creatures is rife with environmental undertones—and takeaways.
Deep Ecology
Spice and the Sacred
The new sci-fi film Dune offers some key lessons on colonialism, extraction, and the violence that follows them. The Frontline dives into the film and its messaging around connecting to nature.
The Frontline
Deep Ecology
Indigenizing Cartography
Map-making has long been used as a means of navigation. But it has also been utilized to exert power over the disenfranchised and oppressed.
Indigeneity
Pushing Polluters Out at COP26
The world’s largest climate gathering kicks off this weekend. The Frontline talks to Ayisha Siddiqa, who co-founded Polluters Out, a group dedicated to removing fossil fuel industry presence from climate negotiations.
The Frontline
Changemakers
Sliding Scales
Both scientifically and symbolically, humanity’s history on Earth is intertwined with the serpent—and so is its future.
The Overview
Ode to a Glacier
Rising temperatures have accelerated the speed with which glaciers are melting. Commemorating their histories—grieving them and remembering them—has become a radical act.
Anthropocene
Scream Like Hell
Across the globe, people are hitting the streets in protest. Global leaders must listen up—and shift the power to the people if they want to tackle the climate injustice so many face. The Frontline highlights the voices rising up from Puerto Rico to Scotland.
The Frontline
Democracy
In Favor of The Slow Grind
Curator Georgina Johnson’s book, which includes conversations with vital cultural voices such as Curator Francesca Gavin and articles by Fashion Revolution co-founder Orsola de Castro, explores alternative models of working and values for living for a more equitable and sustainable future.
Black Liberation
Environmental Justice
Mining Atop a Massacre
A proposed lithium mine touches on the troubles of the clean energy revolution as tribal opponents raise concerns. The Frontline explores why their voices are needed at the table.
The Frontline
Indigeneity
Echo Chambers
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers a holistic look at life on Earth, seen from above.
The Overview
Fehinti Balogun Asks, Can I Live?
In his new theatre-film hybrid performance, the I May Destroy You actor tackles the climate crisis through the lens of a Black man.
Art & Culture
Changemakers
A Botanical Ballet in My Abuelita’s Garden
Holding onto your culture isn’t always easy as a child of immigrants, but graphic journalist Jennifer Luxton shows how her abuelita’s garden helped her find joy in her heritage in this special edition of The Frontline.
The Frontline
Deep Ecology
The Roots of Sisterhood
Under the soil roots communicate with each other about possible dangers to help their chances of survival. Amid a growing movement to roll back reproductive rights, solidarity among women is not dissimilar.
Anthropocene
Rightful Lands, Rightful Hands
Indigenous people around the world are calling for the return of their ancestral lands. The Frontline examines how this is playing out in real time—from Australia to the American Southwest.
The Frontline
Indigeneity
Sanguine and Sacred
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an aerial view of the latest events in climate and culture—and how they all fit together.
The Overview
A Sustainable Redesign of Mexico’s Social Housing
Architect Fernanda Canales has spent the last two decades rethinking private housing in relation to collective needs. Here, she speaks to Atmos about her mission.
Anthropocene
COP26: Climate Summit or Superspreader Event?
The Frontline talks to various climate justice advocates—both those who are attending COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, this year and those who refuse to. Attendees from the Global South are risking exposure to COVID-19 to speak out for their communities.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
When Fashion Shows Returned
It’s been a year since industry leaders called for the fashion system to slow down and produce less. Now, physical shows are back in full swing—but so is the waste.
Ethical Fashion
Whitewashing Organics
National media still talks about organic as a consumer issue, but for Latine farming communities, it’s about labor, equity, and public health. Amy Westervelt explores in a special edition of The Frontline.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
In Season
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an aerial view of the latest events in climate and culture—and how they all fit together.
The Overview
The Legacy of Inyan
For Indigenous people, rocks are so much more than the minerals they are composed of. They carry histories that can help teach us about the interconnectedness of our world.
Indigeneity
Deep Ecology
Striking to Survive
Youth turned up around the world last week in the first climate strikes since the pandemic. The Frontline dives into a new study that shows how urgent it is for world leaders to listen.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Carbon-Light Cooking with Kelp
The global food system is in urgent need of rewiring. Here, chef Tara Thomas creates two recipes using kelp, a nutrient-rich zero-input seaweed, to help inspire more mindful and sustainable ways of eating.
Anthropocene
The Hidden Climate Messages in ‘Reservation Dogs’
Dallas Goldtooth plays the spirit William Knife-Man on FX’s critically acclaimed Reservation Dogs. He’s also an Indigenous environmental activist. The Frontline talks to him about how these two backgrounds came together on screen.
The Frontline
Indigeneity
Part of the Pack
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an aerial view of the latest events in climate and culture—and how they all fit together.
The Overview
Democratizing Access to Nature
Nature is a Human Right is the non-profit organization campaigning to make contact with nature a basic right as recognized by the UN. Atmos speaks with founder Ellen Miles and ambassadors Poppy Okotcha and Kalpana Arias about the urgency of their mission.
Environmental Justice
Changemakers
Waters Change, Colors Fade
The Mesoamerican Reef is a coral system often ignored, but it’s critical to the people of Central America. The Frontline talks to Mexican artist Melissa Godoy Nieto about her latest exhibition paying tribute to these corals—and their most urgent threat.
The Frontline
Art & Culture
Ghanaian Artisanal Design, Rewoven
Three Ghanaian creatives are reimagining centuries-old cultural practices in new and sustainable ways.
Ethical Fashion
Black Liberation
Aja Barber on Replacing Your Shopping Addiction With Inspiration
Consumed, fashion journalist Aja Barber’s first book, comes out this week. The Frontline talks to her about its message, fast fashion, the Met Gala, and activism.
The Frontline
Ethical Fashion
All Who Wander
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an aerial view of the latest events in climate and culture—and how they all fit together.
The Overview
Defending Wild Rice
Manoomin, or wild rice, was granted legal status by the White Earth Nation in part because of the grain’s central place in Anishinaabe culture. Now, White Earth is filing a lawsuit on behalf of the grain in protest of the Line 3 pipeline, making it the first rights of nature case to ever enter tribal court.
Environmental Justice
Indigeneity
Future Moves
A new report from the World Bank estimates that more than 216 million people may migrate within their own countries by 2050 if we don’t act on climate. The Frontline breaks it down.
The Frontline
Climate Migration
The Tragedy of ‘The Activist’
In 2020, at least 227 environment and land defenders were killed. The Frontline explores how these devastating numbers continue to increase—and the issue with converting their work into the next reality TV series.
The Frontline
Changemakers
The Greening
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an aerial view of the latest events in climate and culture—and how they all fit together.
The Overview
An Undercurrent of Change
At Undercurrent, a new audiovisual event taking on the climate crisis in New York, over 40 musicians, artists, creatives, and nonprofits from across the world come together to ‘challenge inaction through inspiration.’
Art & Culture
Drowning in Disparity
The remnants of Hurricane Ida brought record-breaking rains to New York City. Dozens died in the region—many in basements. The Frontline assesses how the city’s housing crisis is making the climate crisis that much more deadly.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Who Thrives and Who Dies in America?
The Land of Milk and Honey is an ongoing project by stylist Alexander-Julian Gibbson and designer Shakeil Greeley that explores the nuances of American identity by photographing and interviewing immigrant families from across the country.
Climate Migration
Adapt or Perish
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an aerial view of the latest events in climate and culture—and how they all fit together.
The Overview
Revitalizing Yemeni Coffee
For centuries, until the colonial powers established coffee plantations in Africa and Southeast Asia, almost the entire global coffee supply came from Yemen. But Yemeni coffee farming has been on the decline since and today is threatened by conflict, climate change, and increased competition.
Anthropocene
Interconnected Problems Call for Interconnected Solutions
Dr. Beth Sawin, co-founder of Climate Interactive, shares her vision for how we might ‘multisolve’ our way to a more livable planet.
Changemakers
We All Deserve Some Help
The state of the world may be difficult to process at the moment, so The Frontline talks to an Indigenous psychologist who is no stranger to working with grief.
The Frontline
Deep Ecology
Body Work
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an aerial view of the latest events in climate and culture—and how they all fit together.
The Overview
The Environmental Cost of Filmmaking
From an excess of food waste to diesel-run generators, filmmaking in areas of natural beauty can cause irreparable harm to the same land it works so hard to encapsulate.
Art & Culture
No Time for Nihilism
Borgs are a newly-discovered linear chromosome that could help to control greenhouse gas emissions. But true adaptation requires humility as well as ingenuity.
Indigeneity
Deep Ecology
Field Notes
The Frontline is on the ground, witnessing the travesty of the unraveling climate crisis firsthand in Nicaragua, where the Miskito people are still struggling to rebuild nearly a year after Hurricanes Eta and Iota.
The Frontline
Indigeneity
Bonding Act
We are amalgamations. Just as our bodies are composed of millions of microbial species engaged in an elaborate, chemical circus, we are inseparably entangled with one another—a human super organism that makes one wonder where one body ends and another begins.
Art & Culture
In Circles
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an aerial view of the latest events in climate and culture—and how they all fit together.
The Overview
Crafting New Worlds
Artist Jazz Grant is finding fresh ways of communicating the most urgent social and environmental issues of our time using only a pair of scissors and a stack of old magazines.
Art & Culture
Rewriting the Ecological Imagination
The Chinese term Qi refers to the indiscriminate force that sustains all fauna and flora on Earth. It is one of 30 loanwords outlined in An Ecotopian Lexicon, a book that helps us reimagine the role of language in our fight against the climate crisis.
Anthropocene
Deep Ecology
Thin Air
Across the climate movement, there’s disagreement on how much we should invest in machine-based solutions—if at all. The Frontline explores this divide with direct air capture, one particular technology gaining steam on Capitol Hill.
The Frontline
Climate Solutions
Intelligent Design
An experimental fusion of architecture and ecology, Arcosanti was built on a bedrock of the best intentions: creativity, communal living, and reconnecting to nature. But what began as a beacon for those wanting an alternative to urban sprawl became a battleground between harmony and hubris.
Anthropocene
A New Hope
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an aerial view of the latest events in climate and culture—and how they all fit together.
The Overview
Practicing Ecosensibility
For a new exhibition, artist Zheng Bo leads a series of exercises to help visitors move beyond a human-centered perspective of the world. Can these practices teach us how to bond with other natural life forms?
Anthropocene
All Hands on Deck
The Frontline talks to climate leaders on how they’re processing the new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—and what advice they have for the rest of us.
The Frontline
Changemakers
Empowering Oregon’s Black Farmers
Black Oregon Land Trust is working to secure land access for the state’s Black farmers. Here, they explain what it means to birth this dream into reality.
Black Liberation
Congregation
After over a year spent social distancing and living in pods, proximity has never been so imperative—particularly in relation to the outdoors, which has become a sacred space for group gatherings.
Photography
Critical Degrees
The Frontline dives into the new assessment report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shows how the planet is already heating enough to cause harm.
The Frontline
Anthropocene
Taking Flight
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an aerial view of the latest events in climate and culture—and how they all fit together.
The Overview
Birds of a Feather
Flock Together is the birdwatching collective created by and for people of color. Here, cofounder Nadeem Perera speaks with fellow community members about the urgency of their mission.
Black Liberation
Environmental Justice
Disaster Justice
Meet Dr. Samantha Montano, a disasterologist—aka someone who studies disasters. She shares an excerpt from her newly released book, Disasterology, with The Frontline.
The Frontline
Anthropocene
Journeying Across The British Isles with Jamie Hawkesworth
The celebrated photographer and Atmos contributor has spent the last 13 years documenting the landscapes and people of his home country.
Photography
Art & Culture
A Pipeline of Abuse
Opponents to Line 3, a major crude oil pipeline being built in Minnesota, talk to The Frontline about the sexual violence these projects bring into their communities.
The Frontline
Indigeneity
Flight Patterns
Few phenomena are as majestic as the murmuration of starlings. When hundreds to thousands of these birds flock together, their movement appears to be of one mind, marking mutable matrices across the sky. Their secret? Each starling attends to seven others, ensuring even effort distribution and flawless form.
Photography
Set in Stone
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an aerial view of the latest events in climate and culture—and how they all fit together.
The Overview
Designing a Plastic-Free Future
As we close out plastic-free July, Parley for the Oceans founder Cyrill Gutsch and Suzanne Lee, founder of Biofabricate, get together to discuss what a world without plastic could look like—and what it will take to get us there.
Ocean Life
A Planetary Pulse Check
In a new paper published Tuesday, scientists raise alarm over the Earth’s worsening condition. The Frontline breaks down the paper’s findings—and the necessary policy changes to address our climate emergency.
The Frontline
Anthropocene
A Glimpse Inside Fashion’s Ethical Casting Agencies
The last few years have seen the rise of a number of specialized agencies looking to safeguard and advocate for the rights of their models. But guaranteeing just collaborations between talent and brands remains a struggle.
Ethical Fashion
The Desert’s Coolest Commune
In the arid deserts of southern Africa, tiny brown birds come together to build thatched-straw collectives.
Photography
Trapped in Flames
Incarcerated firefighters are on the frontlines every day battling wildfires across the U.S. The Frontline looks at the expansion of such programs across Western states—and the need to shift away from prison labor to prepare for climate disaster.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Stranger Than Fiction
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an aerial view of the latest events in climate and culture—and how they all fit together.
The Overview
Imagination, Transformed
The Frontline interviews climate justice leader and artist Favianna Rodriguez on the power of culture and why we need more creators of color to take on the climate crisis.
The Frontline
Art & Culture
To Our Relatives in the Water
Across the Pacific Northwest, many tribal nations see the salmon and orcas as relatives, but recent heat waves are challenging the ability for them to survive. The Frontline examines efforts to save these endangered species and their cultural significance.
The Frontline
Biodiversity
The Hive Mind
In the digital age, humanity’s behavior emulates a hive as never before: worker bees buzzing around the world, connected by common causes, survival resting on each other’s shoulders. As Ruth H. Hopkins writes, that could be our saving grace—or our downfall.
Deep Ecology
Indigeneity
Threading It Through
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an aerial view of the latest events in climate and culture—and how they all fit together.
The Overview
60 Seconds on Earth With Leah Thomas
As part of our new video series with climate leaders, The Frontline talks to Intersectional Environmentalist Founder Leah Thomas on her upcoming book—and 60 other things.
60 Seconds on Earth
The Frontline
TikTok for the Planet
Over the course of the pandemic, TikTok has become a burgeoning platform for young activists of color who are taking on the climate crisis.
Climate Solutions
Rising Temperatures and Death Tolls: A Heat Emergency at the Border
Every year, hundreds of migrants die trying to cross the border into the U.S. The Frontline explores how last month’s historic heat wave may have made a bad situation worse.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Braving the Elements
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an aerial view of the latest events in climate and culture—and how they all fit together.
The Overview
Let’s Criminalize Ecocide
Efforts to make ecocide the fifth international crime are gaining steam. The Frontline dives into the value of creating this new law, as well as its limitations.
The Frontline
Anthropocene
The Night Shift
Under the protective veil of the dark, pollinators like moths and bats take to the skies, visiting moonlit flowers that stay open and spill out their fragrance in the dusk. Photographer Gareth McConnell turns his lens on nature’s enchanting nighttime phenomenon.
Art & Culture
‘Patterns of Discrimination’: How Redlining Fueled the Heat Wave
Research is slowly uncovering all the ways redlining continues to leave its mark today. The Frontline dives into the inequities in who is harmed first and worst during events like last week’s historic heat wave.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
The Future Is Mutual
The pandemic showed us the value of mutual aid, but don’t be fooled. Mutual aid is not a trend—and it could be key to addressing the climate crisis.
Environmental Justice
Zuo Yuezi: Recovering From Gender Affirmation Surgery, Chinese American Style
A Chinese American woman learns just how inseparable rebirth, culture, spirituality, and trans identity are with each other — and within herself.
Queer Ecology
Deep Ecology
Redefining Democracy This Fourth of July
The Frontline talks to Nick Tilsen, president and CEO of NDN Collective, on the lies we tell ourselves every Independence Day. For many Indigenous people, the holiday is a painful reminder of all America stole from them.
The Frontline
Democracy
Mariposas Rebeldes: Growing Food Sovereignty for Queer Latine and Indigenous People in Atlanta
What started out as a much-needed communal space to discuss food, plants, and cultural identity became a hub where Indigenous and Latine people can deepen their knowledge about food autonomy and restore their ancestral relationships to the land.
Queer Ecology
Environmental Justice
A Climate Love Letter to Netflix’s ‘Sweet Tooth’
The new Netflix series follows a young boy who’s half-human, half-deer. The Frontline explores the show’s environmental messages and the power of youth.
The Frontline
Art & Culture
A Warning Sign
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an aerial view of the latest events in climate and culture—and how they all fit together.
The Overview
A Sacred Drop
Water is what connects all life on Earth. And yet, this sacred ingredient is facing a scarcity crisis—one that may define our lifetimes if we don’t act now.
Deep Ecology
Indigeneity
Mobile Homes and Hurricanes: The True Cost of ‘Affordable’ Housing
The Frontline looks at the first deaths of hurricane season—and how mobile home park residents are especially vulnerable. Researchers consider these families the third housing type as they own their home but rent the property, which becomes complicated when disaster strikes.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Jungle Retreat
In the tropical jungle of India’s state of Goa, SanQtuary Goa offers queer people a space to rest, commune, and deepen their connections to nature and ancestry. India recently overturned a colonial British law criminalizing homosexuality, and the sanctuary wishes to create new, joyful stories for the queer Goan community.
Photography
Queer Ecology
Costa Chica
This dry and tropical strip of the coast from Acapulco to Oaxaca is home to a community of kaleidoscopic origin. There are Afro-Mexicans descended from enslaved Africans, Indigenous Mesoamerican Mixtecos, the Indigenous Amuzgo and Chatino peoples, and mixed-race mestizos, all living together off the sea and the land.
Photography
Pearls in the Nacre
On the island of Puerto Rico, between the crashing waves of the Atlantic and the colorful walls of Old San Juan, sits La Perla, a seaside town with a history of community, dance, and resistance.
Photography
On Board
Sandy Alibo and Kuukua Eshun wanted to empower women to take up space in extreme sports, so they founded the first all-girls’ skate group in Ghana. The Skate Gal Club encourages women to hone their tricks and share their experiences.
Photography
Why Scientists Are Urging Us to Look at Managed Retreat
A group of researchers published an array of papers last week looking at the issue of forced climate relocation. The Frontline explores what this reality looks like in Kotlik, Alaska, where managed retreat is already underway.
The Frontline
Anthropocene
For All We Know
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an aerial view of the latest events in climate and culture—and how they all fit together.
The Overview
The Land is Liminal
Western colonization has violently imposed binary views of gender and sexuality upon the world, attempting to erase more expansive understandings of identity—like those of Indigenous peoples.
Queer Ecology
Indigeneity
There’s No Black Liberation Without Climate Reparations
This Juneteenth, The Frontline examines how governments and polluting interests can repair the damage they’ve caused to Black communities. National climate strategist Tamara Toles O’Laughlin makes the case for climate reparations.
The Frontline
Black Liberation
Mythos and Mycology
As humans start to pay more attention to them, fungi are changing how we see the story of life on our planet. Biologist Merlin Sheldrake weighs in on why mushrooms have always been main characters.
Deep Ecology
Fighting Line 3 From a Queer, Indigenous Perspective
As opposition to the Line 3 oil pipeline grows, The Frontline talks to Big Wind, a two-spirit water protector who’s putting their body on the line.
The Frontline
Queer Ecology
Pay it Forward
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an aerial view of the latest events in climate and culture—and how they all fit together.
The Overview
Is Digital Design the Answer to Fashion’s Waste Problem?
Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, the fashion industry has had to reimagine itself online, raising questions about what a digital-first model could mean for the environment.
Ethical Fashion
Queen P: Pattie Gonia on Drag and Identity in the Outdoors
Whether they’re hiking in heels or organizing on the trails, drag environmentalist Pattie Gonia is on a mission to bring inclusivity to the outdoors—proving that climate and queerness go hand in hand and that community makes a queen out of everyone.
Queer Ecology
‘The Kids Have Trauma’: The Miskito Are Not Ready for Hurricane Season
The Miskito of Nicaragua and Honduras are still recovering from Hurricanes Eta and Iota last year. The Frontline dives into their fears and lingering impacts as the region enters a new hurricane season.
The Frontline
Anthropocene
Paid in Blood
In 2017, police officers killed 10 rural workers in Pau D’Arco, Pará, Brazil. On January 26, 2021, a survivor—Fernando dos Santos Araújo—was found shot in his home. His story reveals a frightening pattern in Brazil where standing up to private interests often turns deadly. The land remains in dispute, but the workers argue it has cost them enough already. They’ve paid in blood.
The Frontline
Queer Ecology
Arm’s Length
What’s old can always be new again. Photographer Ethan Gulley takes upcycling to new heights in his latest project, born of lockdown boredom. And like the clothing, the shoot was stitched together by many hands—proving that not even quarantine can keep creatives apart from (safe) collaboration.
Ethical Fashion
Phototropism
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an aerial view of the latest events in climate and culture—and how they all fit together.
The Overview
Country Life YouTube: Relaxing into Nature
With many parts of the world still in lockdown, people have unearthed new ways of connecting to nature. Thousands have flocked to Country Life YouTube, where a new genre of content creators offers serene scenes of gardening and cooking that provide comfort and calm.
Deep Ecology
At George Floyd Square, a Greenhouse Offers Healing
A year after the murder of George Floyd, a greenhouse in Minneapolis is inviting the community to come together to grow food and flowers. The Frontline talks to some of the community organizers who made it happen.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
The Altered Destiny
The climate crisis is not only one of space—our physical environment—it’s also a crisis of time. Averting a catastrophic future means unearthing the past and protecting those most at risk in the present, honoring the ecologically conscious framework that lies deep within Black culture.
Black Liberation
Environmental Justice
‘Minari’ Reminds Us of Asian American Roots
The film by Lee Isaac Chung restores an overlooked part of Asian American history. It begs the question: Why do so few stories portray Asian Americans as caretakers of the land?
Art & Culture
Environmental Justice
What’s India’s COVID-19 Crisis Got to Do With Climate Activism?
The COVID-19 surge across India has killed hundreds of thousands. The country’s long-standing air pollution crisis may be playing a role. Local climate activists are calling for change.
Environmental Justice
Rachel Cargle and Leah Thomas Talk Black Climate Optimism
When it comes to the climate movement, joy and optimism often fall by the wayside. Contributing Editor Rachel Cargle and Intersectional Environmentalist Founder Leah Thomas discuss why that needs to change.
Black Liberation
Changemakers
Your Complete Guide to Biden on Climate
President Joe Biden has introduced a lot of policy for climate change, including reversing Trump-era rollbacks and introducing fresh legislation that could turn back the clock on a fragile environment. Here’s your guide to the first six months of Biden on climate.
Democracy
Care Needs to Be a Part of the Climate Conversation
The Frontline talks to Ai-jen Poo, cofounder and executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, about the pandemic, workers’ rights, and the lessons they offer to the climate movement.
The Frontline
Changemakers
Mirror Image
Art imitates life. As we mimic the miracles of nature, we repattern our relationship to the worldwide web that connects all things, blurring the boundaries between the beautiful and biological.
Ethical Fashion
Art & Culture
Transfiguration: Why Indigeneity is the Future
As parts of the world begin to emerge from the chrysalis of quarantine, Ruth H. Hopkins reflects on the paradigm shifts the pandemic has brought—and why decolonization is critical for the evolution of our species.
Deep Ecology
Indigeneity
Lizards, Snakes, and Bones: A Deadly Tale of Colonialism
On the Guadeloupe Islands, European colonization was behind the widespread extinction of snakes and lizards, a new study finds. The Frontline explores the lessons we can learn from this research.
The Frontline
Anthropocene
Giving Back
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an aerial view of the latest events in climate and culture—and how they all fit together.
The Overview
Traditional Chinese Medicine: Healing at Home
Health is, in a sense, a synonym for integration: It refers to totality and whether or not a system is in harmony or discord. It’s no wonder, then, that many of the world’s most time-honored medicinal practices, like the three included in our Get Well series, are rooted in holism, treating our individual systems in relation to the larger system that connects us—how we are integrated with nature.
Deep Ecology
Ethical Fashion
Bedouin Herbalism: Abundance in the Desert
Health is, in a sense, a synonym for integration: It refers to totality and whether or not a system is in harmony or discord. It’s no wonder, then, that many of the world’s most time-honored medicinal practices, like the three included in our Get Well series, are rooted in holism, treating our individual systems in relation to the larger system that connects us—how we are integrated with nature.
Deep Ecology
Making Waves Through Eco-Poetry
Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner talks about identity, poetry, and motherhood in this special edition of The Frontline. Asian Pacific American Heritage Month is here, so let’s hear from a Pacific Islander focused on protecting her homelands.
The Frontline
Ocean Life
The Israel-Palestine Violence Highlights War’s Environmental Injustices
All eyes are on the fighting between Israel and Palestine right now. The Frontline dives into the environmental injustices and costs that accompany such war and conflict.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Ayurveda: Wisdom of the Elements
Health is, in a sense, a synonym for integration: It refers to totality and whether or not a system is in harmony or discord. It’s no wonder, then, that many of the world’s most time-honored medicinal practices, like the three included in our Get Well series, are rooted in holism, treating our individual systems in relation to the larger system that connects us—how we are integrated with nature.
Deep Ecology
Mind Your Words
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an aerial view of the latest events in climate and culture—and how they all fit together.
The Overview
The Worst Time of Year Is Upon Us
California is in an awful drought, and summertime is rapidly approaching. The Frontline dives into the environmental justice aspects of wildfire season.
The Frontline
On a Move
In 1985, the Philadelphia police department bombed the headquarters of MOVE, killing 11 people and destroying 61 homes in the neighborhood. Thirty-six years later, Mike Africa Jr—a member of the organization’s founding family—reflects on the persecution his community has faced for a life lived in pursuit of liberation both for people and the planet.
Environmental Justice
Climate Tech (Alone) Won’t Save Us
Fueled by venture capital, a growing bubble of climate tech innovators and startups promise solutions to save the planet. We don’t need more “moonshot” climate technologies; the climate crisis is really one of collective power.
Climate Solutions
Loving Nature
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an aerial view of the latest events in climate and culture—and how they all fit together.
The Overview
How Rap Duo EARTHGANG Is Educating Kids On Land Conservation & Inner-City Gardens
The environmentally-conscious Atlanta rap duo are expanding their sustainability efforts beyond music and giving back to the Southwest Atlanta community.
Environmental Justice
Changemakers
The Aloha State Declares a Climate Emergency
Hawaii’s recent climate emergency declaration marks a first for the U.S. The Frontline explores what this could mean for the federal level and all of us living through this crisis.
The Frontline
Democracy
Family Trees
A lifetime devotee of forest ecology, Dr. Suzanne Simard’s research has forever changed the way that we understand forests from collections of individual trees to interconnected communities. Ahead of the release of her first book, she opens up about everything trees have taught her about systems, spirit, and what it means to be part of a living whole.
Photography
Art & Culture
What Dreams May Come
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an aerial view of the latest events in climate and culture—and how they all fit together.
The Overview
On Telling the Truth Unflinchingly: Climate Catastrophe and Colonialism
After a year apart, Esme Murdock writes about the ultimate truth that society needs to face in order to combat the climate crisis: how desperately and critically we need each other.
Environmental Justice
Resting on and for the Earth
So many of us are worker bees, trapped in a capitalist 9-to-5 grind mindset that leaves us sleep-deprived, exhausted, and unable to imagine. Nap bishop Tricia Hersey, founder of the Nap Ministry, sees rest as a radical act of resistance and decolonization—particularly for Black people, whose rest has been and continues to be disrupted by white supremacy. Hersey speaks with brontë velez, a founding member of Lead to Life, about how to envision a new way of living that centers rest and liberation.
Black Liberation
Deep Ecology
Birds of Paradise
For more than half a century, Dr Dee Boersma has worked to conserve penguin colonies across the world. But her career began in the Galápagos, studying a colony of penguins uniquely adapted to life on the unpredictable archipelago.
Biodiversity
Photography
The Storm
We have a hard road ahead of us if humanity is to survive. We will have to sacrifice, and some of us may be required to pay the ultimate price. However, even in our weakness, there is strength.
Indigeneity
Deep Ecology
There’s No Green New Deal Without Police Abolition
The Frontline dives into the myriad Green New Deal federal legislation introduced last week—and how developing such plans requires abolishing the police.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Echolocation
To celebrate Earth Month, Parley for the Oceans and Atmos team up for an ongoing eco-poetry series on the connection between the environment and the human experience. In “Echolocation,” poet Sally Bliumis-Dunn reflects on the power of communication between sea species.
Ocean Life
Art & Culture
Four Nature Photographers On How They Got ‘The Shot’
Atmos speaks to several wildlife photographers on the surreal moments—and otherworldly realizations—behind some of their favorite, and most viral, shots.
Photography
Biodiversity
Restore Our Earth
When we allow ourselves to dream, to imagine a different future, we can start to build it—a future in which oppressive systems are dismantled and new ones that honor humans and the planet thrive. For Earth Day this year, we teamed up with climate club Future Earth to ask a few of our heroes: What does restoring the Earth look like to you?
Changemakers
The Disease of Disconnect
In 1997, activist Julia Butterfly Hill protested deforestation by living atop a 180-foot-tall California redwood tree named Luna for 738 days. Over 20 years later, in a personal essay written exclusively for Atmos, Hill reflects on the fight that still lies ahead—and what’s missing from our connection to not just the Earth but one another.
Anthropocene
Deep Ecology
What Biden’s Earth Day Summit Needs to Accomplish
World leaders are coming together this week as part of President Joe Biden’s Earth Day Summit. If the president truly cares about environmental justice, he needs to listen to communities on the frontline of the crisis.
The Frontline
Democracy
Rebuilding a Hemp Ecosystem in the High Himalayas
An ancient relationship between rural communities and cannabis has long existed high in the Himalayas. Today, the rising popularity of hemp could revive this fast-disappearing cultural heritage—but only if legislation is designed with the local plants in mind.
Climate Solutions
Anthropocene
Introducing Hive
As we have faced a public health crisis, a global reckoning around race and colonization, political warfare, and a United States that has never felt so divided, it has been a year of attempting to answer a question that is at the heart of our latest issue, Hive: How do we work together?
The Overview
Cannabis Is Choking the Planet. It Doesn’t Have To
The Frontline is celebrating 4/20 by looking at sustainability in the cannabis industry, whose expansion in the U.S. may worsen greenhouse gas emissions if we’re not careful. BIPOC cannabis advocates can help the industry reconnect to the land in holistic ways.
The Frontline
Deep Ecology
The Estuary
To celebrate Earth Month, Parley for the Oceans and Atmos team up for an ongoing eco-poetry series on the connection between the environment and the human experience. In “The Estuary,” poet Vijay Seshadri examines our place on earth amidst the human and non-human happenings of nature.
Art & Culture
In the Ether
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an aerial view of the latest events in climate and culture—and how they all fit together.
The Overview
Meet Native Hawaiian Māhū Activist Hinaleimoana Kwai Kong Wong-Kalu
The Kapaemahu short film director is one of the most visible māhū women today. She explains why equating her Hawaiian third gender with Western terminology constitutes another kind of erasure.
Art & Culture
Queer Ecology
Let’s Not Forget What the DAPL Case Is Really About
The Dakota Access pipeline will continue operating after the Biden administration failed to shut it down. The Frontline delves into the future of the pipeline battle—and invites us to remember what’s really at stake here: tribal sovereignty.
The Frontline
Indigeneity
“Tristes Tropiques” Captures Devastating Ecocide In Brazil
A new photographic exhibition by Richard Mosse depicts ecocide across the Amazon using multispectral imaging like never before. In an interview with Atmos, Mosse explains how he managed to capture mass devastation in such detail and his thoughts on the potential power of art to make a difference.
Art & Culture
Photography
The ‘Doomsday’ Glacier May Be in More Trouble Than We Thought
A new study published in Science Advances offers first-ever data from beneath Thwaites Glacier. The Frontline explores what these findings reveal about future sea level rise projections.
The Frontline
Anthropocene
The Singularity
To celebrate Earth Month, Parley for the Oceans and Atmos team up for an ongoing eco-poetry series on the connection between the environment and the human experience. In “Singularity,” poet Marie Howe asks: Do you sometimes want to wake up to the singularity we once were?
Art & Culture
Follow the Light
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an aerial view of the latest events in climate and culture—and how they all fit together.
The Overview
A For Community, By Community Skatepark On Navajo Land
A new skatepark on Navajo lands exemplifies how interwoven access and community are to the climate movement. And how the simple joys—like skateboarding—can’t be left behind in the fight for equality and climate justice.
Environmental Justice
Indigeneity
Is Internet for All Actually Good for the Planet?
The Frontline explores President Joe Biden’s infrastructure plan and his proposal to expand internet access, but what does that mean for the planet? More importantly, what does that mean for the climate movement and global climate justice?
The Frontline
Democracy
Foraging for Wisdom with Story mfg.
With consumer concern for sustainability trending upward, tending to one’s wardrobe means sifting through glades of greenwashing. But as the founders of the sylvan-inspired slow fashion brand Story mfg. have learned, people and practices that align with your values are worth foraging for.
Ethical Fashion
‘An Unstoppable Force’: Memphis Gears Up to Stop a Proposed Oil Pipeline
The Byhalia Connection pipeline would run through a major aquifer, which is the city’s only drinking water source. The Frontline shares everything you need to know about the grassroots effort to stop the crude oil pipeline.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
God of Roots
To celebrate Earth Month, Parley for the Oceans and Atmos team up for an ongoing eco-poetry series on the connection between the environment and the human experience. In “God of Roots,” poet Ellen Bass writes of the power of the Earth at work—as if there is all the time in the world; that it’s up to humans to save all we can.
Art & Culture
A Fishing Crisis in Turkey
Centuries-old fishing traditions are facing extinction in Turkey. As industrial fishing expands, traditional fishermen are often pushed below the poverty line to hazardous conditions.
Anthropocene
Biodiversity
Diamonds in the Rough
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an aerial view of the latest events in climate and culture—and how they all fit together.
The Overview
A Love Letter to Black Birth Workers
Marlo D. David, PhD, writes a letter to Black midwives on the politics of reproductive justice and how Black birth workers possess the transformative power of cultivating the community frameworks necessary for intersecting justice movements, like sustainability and climate, within marginalized communities.
Black Liberation
Environmental Justice
How Art and Design Can Influence the Magical World of Climate Science
On International Transgender Day of Visibility, The Frontline interviews climate scientist and activist Dr. Mika Tosca on how she brings art into the science world.
The Frontline
Queer Ecology
Finally, UN Recognizes We Need Indigenous Peoples to Save Forests
The Frontline dives into a new report from the Food and Agriculture Organization analyzing over 300 studies to conclude we must better support Indigenous and tribal peoples in Latin America and the Caribbean if we want to stop deforestation.
The Frontline
Pandemic Alcohol Sales Have Soared. But What Does That Mean For The Planet?
Increased alcohol sales during the pandemic have led to a surge in residential waste. But where does all of it go? If your afternoon coffee has turned into a post-Zoom seltzer, you might want to refresh your recycling habits and check your excess.
Anthropocene
After the Rain
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an aerial view of the latest events in climate and culture—and how they all fit together.
The Overview
Tribal Advocates See Opportunity in ‘Historic’ Stimulus Package
The American Rescue Plan offers over $31 billion to tribal governments. The Frontline dives into how this funding can help tribes invest in clean energy, water infrastructure, and language preservation, which are all essential to preparing for the climate crisis.
The Frontline
India’s Desi Seed Savers Are Decolonizing Cotton
The privatization of the cotton seed market has left India’s desi (indigenous) species on the path to extinction. The farmer-led movements bringing back these native plants share a timely message: decolonizing cotton means learning from the rural lands and local hands where it naturally grows.
Climate Solutions
Anthropocene
The Year of Virtual Activism
In an attempt to look forward to COP26—and look backward to the year we’ve spent in lockdown—photographer and youth climate activist Pamela Elizarrarás Acitores uses images to tell a story of young people from around the world trying to save the planet for The Frontline.
The Frontline
How Justice Disappears: The Derek Chauvin Trial
Anyone who does the work of liberation knows how split the psyche becomes when we feel compelled to demand institutional accountability through the law by day, while working to dismantle the legal system by night. Interdisciplinary art studio The Bureau writes on the cultural and historical impact of the Derek Chauvin trial.
Black Liberation
Fractal Nature
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an aerial view of the latest events in climate and culture—and how they all fit together.
The Overview
Hit The Pandemic Wall? Here’s How To Scale It
There’s a difference between fatigue and burnout. As we surpass the pandemic anniversary, it’s helpful to decipher which we’ve experienced and how to push through.
Deep Ecology
From The Forest Floor To The Runway, Fungi Are Going Luxury
A new collaboration between Stella McCartney and Bolt Threads sees Mylo™—the vegan, sustainable, animal-free leather alternative made from mushrooms—go mainstream.
Ethical Fashion
Chevron, Violence, and Gentrification: The Bay Area Climate Threats to AAPI
The Asian Pacific Environmental Network in Oakland, California, is organizing immigrant and refugee communities in the fight for climate justice. The Frontline talks to Executive Director Miya Yoshitani about the relationship Asian American and Pacific Islander communities have to the land.
The Frontline
In NoLa, a Resilience Corps for Tomorrow’s Disasters
A city-level Resilience Corps in New Orleans could serve as a national model to dually combat the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate crisis. The Frontline explores the power of trusting and investing in communities.
The Frontline
Democracy
As the Crow Flies
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an aerial view of the latest events in climate and culture—and how they all fit together.
The Overview
Quantum Enlightenment
In order for science and the human race in general to advance, we must dispense with the limits we have imposed on ourselves.
Deep Ecology
Indigeneity
One Nation, Under Plant Kween: How Christopher Griffin Became Botanical Royalty
If owning more than a dozen houseplants is one too many, then you’ve never crossed paths with Instagram’s budding Plant Kween. It turns out 224 is just enough.
Changemakers
Queer Ecology
Women Run the Climate World. Just Ask Elizabeth Yeampierre
The Frontline interviews Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director of New York City’s UPROSE, about her journey as a woman in the climate movement and on the powerful role women play.
The Frontline
Urban Indians Turn to a Future Rooted in Rural Farming
In southern India, some tech professionals are seeking solace from the traffic-jammed streets of Bengaluru. They’re looking to farming collectives as a way to live sustainably.
The Frontline
Breakup Ballads Can Be About Climate Change, Too
For Tamara Lindeman—the singer-songwriter behind The Weather Station—songs about heartbreak and loss have just as much to do with climate change as they do an aching heart. The Canadian artist tells Atmos how music can be used to raise awareness about our warming world.
Earth Sounds
5 Ways Biden Could Improve Diversity Outdoors
President Joe Biden has put justice and equity at the heart of his climate plans, but how will that translate to our public lands and urban parks? The Frontline proposes five actions the Biden administration can take to make the outdoors more accessible to BIPOC communities.
The Frontline
A Black Bouquet
Photographer Schaun Champion’s portrait series A Black Bouquet commands us to unlearn the overdone stereotypes of Black people by incorporating the strength and delicacy of flowers.
Black Liberation
Art & Culture
Rachel Cargle Speaks on Learning and Educating About Environmental Racism
The Frontline speaks to writer and scholar Rachel Cargle on her journey toward environmental justice and how that affects her overall work to dismantle systemic racism.
The Frontline
‘It’s About Sacrificing’: Indigenous Youth Runners Call on Biden to Shut Down DAPL
In 2016, the Standing Rock movement went international after Indigenous youth ran from North Dakota to Washington, D.C. The fight continues—and running is at the heart of it. The Frontline explores the youth-led charge against the Dakota Access pipeline.
The Frontline
Black Tales Of The American West
Black Americans have largely been written out of history in the American west yet they’ve existed there for centuries. Photographer Johnnie Chatman’s series of self portraits set across the West retells the whitewashed tales of modern times.
Black Liberation
Art & Culture
Black Beauty: Finding Peace In Nature
Throughout history the media has painted Black narratives as monoliths of culture and identity. Yet, in reality, the Black experience is complex and diverse. Photographer Braylen Dion is breaking down Black stereotypes by bringing nature into human stories.
Black Liberation
Art & Culture
Incomplete Metamorphosis
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an aerial view of the latest events in climate and culture—and how they all fit together.
The Overview
What Does It Mean to Travel Purposefully?
An independent platform that connects travel with culture and creativity called Trippin’ is the latest Gen Z-led community to demand widespread change through a vibrant mix of data and content. Its report The Future of Travel gathers everything you need to know about traveling sustainably in one place.
Anthropocene
How Black Women Have Reimagined Nature On-Screen
For decades, Black women have been injecting ecology and climate change into pop culture. From Kasi Lemmons to Beyoncé, Black women are transforming how we consume environmental themes in the media. Dr. Chelsea Mikael Frazier takes charge in this special edition of The Frontline.
The Frontline
For Fashion’s Future, Neutrality Isn’t Enough
In recent years, fashion’s top labels have committed to neutralizing their carbon emissions. But neutrality, by way of carbon offsets or not, isn’t enough. So, what’s next for the future of fashion? Carbon negativity.
Ethical Fashion
Jobs and Pipelines: Key Takeaways from Deb Haaland’s Hearing
Rep. Deb Haaland testified before the Senate Tuesday as part of the process to become secretary of the Interior. The Frontline dives into what you need to know about the hearing if you missed it.
The Frontline
Deb Haaland’s Nomination Offers Hope to Tribal Pandemic Response
Interior secretary nominee Rep. Deb Haaland is scheduled to testify before the Senate for her confirmation on Tuesday. The Frontline explores what her appointment could mean for Indian Country’s COVID-19 response and more.
The Frontline
The Pandemic Made the Polar Vortex Over Texas That Much More Dangerous
The Frontline interviews disasterologist Dr. Samantha Montano about how we can prepare for the unexpected. Texas wasn’t built for extreme cold and snow, but climate change may mean more snow is in its future.
The Frontline
Agua: A Photographic Tribute To Water
The water cycle and the life cycle are one. And humans’ intrinsic connection to water runs deeper than our physical need. In her debut book, photographer Denisse Ariana Pérez explores the human form and our relationship with water.
Art & Culture
In the Dark
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an aerial view of the latest events in climate and culture—and how they all fit together.
The Overview
Trust Black Women, Follow Black Women
White men dominate the urban planning sector. If we’re to build equitable transportation, however, we need Black women. The Frontline invites Tamika Butler, a leader in this space, to write about how to create space for Black women to not flee but flourish in this sector.
The Frontline
Line 3 Opponents Want Biden to Listen Up
The new president has positioned himself as a climate leader, but that doesn’t mean anything to Indigenous people if it’s without action. The Frontline explores the Indigenous-led efforts to end the Line 3 oil pipeline set to cross through the Midwest.
The Frontline
2020 Was No Safer for Environmental Land Defenders
Around the world, fighting for basic human rights can put you in harm’s way. The Frontline takes a look at a recently released report that outlines just how dangerous 2020 was for environmental land defenders.
The Frontline
Kymon Palau Is TikTok’s Brightest #NativeFamily Star
In the vast and totally incongruent world of TikTok, film student Kymon Palau has managed to emerge as his own cultural star. His profile, prominent within the world of First Nation-themed hashtags, serves tea on American history alongside Native recipes in his signature droll, I-told-you(-so) humor.
Indigeneity
Frozen in Time
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an expansive look at the latest events in climate and culture—and how it all fits together.
The Overview
A Love Letter to Mother Earth
Valentine’s Day is around the corner, and our favorite lover is Mother Earth herself. The Frontline invites Atmos social editor Elie Gordon to write a love letter to the planet, as she shares the reality of being Black outdoors and how welcoming Mother Earth can be.
The Frontline
A Clarion Call to Environmental Consciousness
In this special edition of The Frontline, environmental leader Heather McTeer Toney writes about being a Black mother, the invaluable knowledge of enslaved Africans, and how the climate movement can succeed if it finally centers this wisdom.
The Frontline
#HS2Rebellion: Finding Community On The Frontlines
After protesting corporate destruction of the planet with Extinction Rebellion, activist and photographer Talia Woodin sought a more localized approach to her passions: joining the groups forming collective resistance to Britain’s biggest environmental threat High Speed Railway 2.
Anthropocene
Changemakers
Fossil Fuel Pollution Is Prematurely Killing Millions Every Year
A new study published in Environmental Research finds that more than 8 million people are dying prematurely each year due to air pollution connected to fossil fuels. Unlike other forms of air pollution, governmental leaders can actually do something about this. The Frontline breaks down this new research and what it may mean for global climate and health policy.
The Frontline
COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout Will Keep Failing Without Trust
Communities that live next door to the same polluting infrastructure damaging our planet are most at risk of dying from the coronavirus. Still, authorities are failing to give them the protection the vaccine provides. The Frontline explores what it’ll take for communities of color to receive—and accept—the vaccine.
The Frontline
Fashion’s Not-So Silver Lining
Clothing and face masks that claim to kill coronavirus and other “germs” have terrifying hidden risks.
Ethical Fashion
Anthropocene
Are You Listening?
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an expansive look at the latest events in climate and culture—and how it all fits together.
The Overview
Mary Annaïse Heglar on Why Climate Action Is ‘Limitless’
The Frontline invites climate writer Mary Annaïse Heglar to speak about being a Black woman in this space. Among her many words of advice is asking yourself: What can you do next?
The Frontline
Black Liberation
Congress Needs More Black and Brown Leaders
A new report from the League of Conservation Voters shows who our environmental leaders are in Congress. The Frontline explores how congressional members of color are leading the cause.
The Frontline
Orsola de Castro On The Joy Of Bringing Old Clothes Back To Life
Fashion Revolution cofounder Orsola de Castro wants you to love your clothes—not just for how they look but how they were made (and what you’ll do with them when you don’t want them anymore). Her debut book Loved Clothes Last redefines what it means to live a more stylish life.
Ethical Fashion
With 2021’s First Nor’easter Comes Climate Injustice
The first winter storm of the year could very well be something we see more and more of in our warming world. The Frontline takes a look at how these storms impact vulnerable populations as heavy flooding often follows perpetual snowfall.
The Frontline
The Climate Movement Has Always Been Black
Black History Month is here. A month is not nearly enough time to celebrate Black people and their leadership in the climate space, but we love an excuse to celebrate everything Black at The Frontline.
The Frontline
Black Liberation
This Is Not Your Goldmine. This Is Our Mess.
In an open letter to the fashion industry, OR Foundation cofounder Liz Ricketts insists there can be no sustainability revolution without justice throughout the global supply chain; the time for a circular economy is now.
Ethical Fashion
Anthropocene
Heaven on Earth
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an expansive look at the latest events in climate and culture—and how it all fits together.
The Overview
The Catholic Church is Learning to Listen to the Earth
Pope Francis is pushing the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics toward climate action—and looking to communities outside traditional centers of power to lead the way.
Deep Ecology
The Future of Food
In the final edition for Futures Week, The Frontline unpacks how screwed our current food system is and the ways it needs to evolve to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help keep America fed and healthy.
The Frontline
Climate Solutions
The Future of Buildings
As part of Futures Week, The Frontline is exploring the shift we’ll need to see within our homes and buildings. Gas is what largely feeds our heaters and stoves. If we want to protect the health and safety of our most vulnerable, however, they’ll need to go electric should we reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.
The Frontline
Climate Solutions
The Future of Transit
As part of Futures Week, The Frontline is looking at what the future of transit should look like—and what it’ll take to get there. With a new president, a decarbonized, car-free future may be more than just a pipedream.
The Frontline
Mending Time
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an expansive look at the latest events in climate and culture—and how it all fits together.
The Overview
RIP Keystone XL
The pipeline that died only to come back again may finally be dead for good. President Joe Biden signed an executive order Wednesday formalizing the end of Keystone XL. The Frontline dives into the real people who made this climate victory possible: Indigenous water protectors.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
This Is What A Traceable Fashion Brand Actually Looks Like
When a farmers’ protests in India hit headlines last year, their connection to the global fashion industry largely went unheard—a silence that speaks volumes about our connection to clothing and how much we know about who really pays the price for product. But Nishanth Chopra’s traceable Oshadi Collective is proving to be a template for change.
Ethical Fashion
Environmental Justice
‘An Unforgettable Year’: The Toll of Australia’s Black Summer
It’s been a year since Australia’s bushfire crisis drew international attention. Since then, the federal government has failed to take much action to address the root cause: the climate crisis. Advocates and scholars tell The Frontline they worry that Aboriginal communities will continue to pay the price.
The Frontline
Indigeneity
Finding Safety and Power in the Black Church
The Frontline is honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day by looking at the power of the Black church and the power of faith more generally in the climate movement. Senator-elect Raphael Warnock’s victory shows us just how strong that power remains.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Children of the Evolution
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an expansive look at the latest events in climate and culture—and how it all fits together.
The Overview
Reminder: The Roots Of Veganism Aren’t White
Veganism online perpetuates the idea that compassion towards animals goes hand in hand with health and wealth. And its current influencers are mostly white. But despite the word itself being coined just 77 years ago, its roots—that can’t be found on Instagram—go back much further to ancient Indian and west Asian cultures.
Environmental Justice
Forests Can’t Store Carbon If They’re Overheated
A new study shows that our world’s carbon sinks may become carbon sources in only a few decades as rising temperatures threaten the ability of biomes to effectively sequester carbon through photosynthesis.
The Frontline
Anthropocene
Rachael Wang On Why “Sustainable Stylists” Can’t Exist
After more than 10 years in the fashion industry, stylist and consultant Rachael Wang has learned a lot about the business of style. Chief among them? How to reconcile her personal morals with the primary function of her day job: to waste less while promoting the consumption of more, more, more during a climate (and fashion) crisis.
Ethical Fashion
A New Blueprint for the South
The Georgia Senate victories offer a clear blueprint for southern organizers to empower voters. The Frontline speaks to Lela Ali, the Georgia state adviser for Movement Voter Project, to learn about what made this victory happen—and what comes next.
The Frontline
Democracy
The Terror of White Privilege
On Wednesday, the historic terrorist attack on the Capitol laid bare white privilege for all to see. Climate activists—especially Indigenous water protectors—are rarely afforded the luxury of freedom these insurgents saw. The Frontline explores the terrifying power of white supremacy and its grip on our failed law enforcement system.
The Frontline
True Nature
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an expansive look at the latest events in climate and culture—and how it all fits together.
The Overview
The Seventh Direction
After looking above and below, Ruth H. Hopkins turns her attention inward for the latest edition of her series on Sacred Ecology—and explains why it’s imperative that all of humanity does the same at this critical turning point.
Deep Ecology
Indigeneity
The American Climate Revolution Is Here
With Democrats having a narrow majority of the Senate, all the pieces have fallen into place for President-elect Joe Biden’s climate vision to come to life. There’s plenty he can accomplish now, but whether he succeeds will depend largely on whether the Democratic Party can unify—and how determined Republicans remain to sabotage climate policy.
The Frontline
Democracy
Nature’s Blueprint
Via cyanotype printing, art director and photographer Namsa Leuba turns nature inside out—a digital dissection of matter and human thought via classical and modern photography.
Art & Culture
The Power of Climate in Georgia Victory
All eyes are on Georgia, where climate most definitely won. This year’s runoff election was nothing short of historic, and its impacts will be felt deeply within and outside the state. Mobilization by climate groups and Black voters helped contribute to the massive voter turnout the state witnessed.
The Frontline
Democracy
At Last, An Entire Institute For Queer Ecology
The Institute of Queer Ecology might largely exist online. But its principles—like using artistic research to uplift marginalized voices and finding environmental solutions on the periphery of the climate movement—prove, through a queer lens, that ecology is larger than life.
Queer Ecology
It’s Time To Treat Fossil Fuels as a Public Health Crisis
The city of Cambridge, Massachusetts is the first in the U.S. to display warning labels on gas pumps in the name of climate change. These labels come as an effort to reduce transportation emissions, the leading contributor to greenhouse gases in the U.S. and are one of the first steps the city is taking to address that.
The Frontline
Democracy
The Land Is Sinking
A new study finds that land subsidence, a phenomenon where land sinks due to groundwater depletion, may threaten more than a billion people by 2040. The climate crisis and exploitation of our water resources may further exacerbate an issue already forcing leaders to move entire cities and rethink agricultural practices.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
The American Monument
Photographer Jeremy Everett captures America’s abandoned marble quarries—defective monuments once used for monoliths and headstones that now sit empty, embedded into the earth as skeletons of forgotten landscapes and scenes of hollowed histories set in stone.
Photography
Anthropocene
An Ending, A Beginning
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an expansive look at the latest events in climate and culture—and how it all fits together.
The Overview
To Net-Zero & Beyond: What Atmos Editors Hope For 2021
Well beyond 2021, civilization will have differing recollections of what 2020 was. But the planet endured irrefutable wins and losses. Ahead of the new year, Atmos editors are reflecting on the present and the future—our favorite pandemic memories of nature and our hopes for the climate movement.
Anthropocene
Humus to Human
Humanity has had an inarguable impact on the earth beneath our feet—and yet even the name of our species derives from the same word as soil.
Photography
Nocturnal Evolution
Like most during the pandemic, photographer Alexandra Leese saw the impact humanity’s collective isolation had on the natural world—as a moment to survey our ecological footprints but also a chance to watch from afar nature’s ability to regenerate and restore.
Photography
Biodiversity
Seven Stories You Might’ve Missed in 2020
The year is wrapping up, so it’s a perfect time to look at some of the best environmental justice stories Atmos published this year. So many stories go up outside of The Frontline. Here are some of the best ones chosen by climate editor Yessenia Funes.
The Frontline
The Secret to Saving Asian Elephants? Oranges
In Sri Lanka, human-elephant conflict has disrupted farmers for generations. In some cases, people are killed. Now, a local conservation organization is looking to citrus as a solution. Bees and fences can’t stop elephants from attacking villages—but orange trees miraculously can.
Biodiversity
Climate Solutions
Going Viral
Virality just might be the word of 2020, speaking not only to the global pandemic but also to the transmogrification of social media into a modern-day agora, in which any given message, when multiplied, can radically change the cultural conversation.
Changemakers
Environmental Justice
The Women Defending the North Pole
The Arctic is among the most vulnerable places in the world. Rising temperatures are one threat, but so are extractive industries hoping to exploit its resources. The Frontline speaks to the Arctic Angels, a group bringing together young women from around the world under a common cause: to save the Arctic.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Gone Vintage: How To Build A Better Thrifting System
Much of the conversation around the ‘gentrification of thrift shopping’ misunderstands the sheer abundance of clothing today and the purpose of charity shops in our society.
Ethical Fashion
Out in the Cold
Houselessness is an everyday crisis. The pandemic, however, has highlighted just how vulnerable that population is. But extreme weather adds yet another threat. The Frontline dives into how the East Coast’s first snowstorm has further complicated the critical work of providing care to people experiencing houselessness.
The Frontline
The Environmental Justice Groups That Deserve a Spot on Your Gift List
As we enter the holiday season, we may be wondering what last-minute presents to give our loved ones that won’t wreck the planet. Well, have you considered doing a donation to an environmental justice group in their honor? Or asking friends to do that for you? The Frontline features some groups you may consider donating to this year.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Into The Well
Photographer Bharat Sikka reflects on the journey of water in India—its sounds, its smells, its colors, its pace—and how our lives revolve around it.
Photography
Participation Mystique
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an expansive look at the latest events in climate and culture—and how it all fits together.
The Overview
A Black Girl’s Guide To Foraging
For Dr. Fushcia Hoover, foraging has always been a means to reconnect to her upbringing. But, as she details in a definitive foraging guide for Black women, parsing through and collecting what nature has to offer is as spiritual as it is resourceful—an act of resilience and a way to reclaim her roots.
Black Liberation
Deep Ecology
My E-Bike And All the Places It Took Me
Getting outside helped climate editor Yessenia Funes navigate this strange year. Her bike gave her more access to green spaces and parks. More importantly, it saved her mental health.
The Frontline
A Bright, Green Future
This year showed us how much we need parks and public lands. However, the decisions leaders make in years to come will determine how much is exploited versus how much is protected. The Frontline explores why the future looks green.
The Frontline
Democracy
Toxic Waters
The pervasive poisoning of our world’s waters not only draws parallels to the toxicity of systemic racism; both further one another. An ocean explorer and the first Black woman to host a science series on television, Danni Washington, wants you to know that there is no remedying one without the other.
Environmental Justice
Ocean Life
Top Of The Food Chain
Amid increased poaching due to the pandemic, the women of Team Lioness are using their prowess to protect Kenyan wildlife that might otherwise threaten them, subverting ideas of predator and prey—and what it means to be at the top of the food chain.
Changemakers
When Nature Heals
Spending time outside has scientifically proven benefits to your physical and mental well-being. The Frontline talks to an Indigenous forest therapy guide who shares some of the magic she witnesses in nature, as well as her hopes for increasing access to green spaces for underserved communities.
The Frontline
Deep Ecology
Safe Passage
Over the last six years, more than 15,000 refugees have perished while traversing the Mediterranean Sea, seeking safety on foreign shores. Search-and-rescue operation SOS Mediterranée saves countless lives—but thanks to a pandemic and political standoffs, ships like the Ocean Viking are sitting empty at port.
Climate Migration
Democracy
The Real Winner This Year Is Nature
No person won in 2020. We’ve all lost something this year. However, in a way, nature did win. Despite wildfires and environmental degradation, nature managed to thrive as the pandemic shut down cities and industries. People finally found the value of the outdoors in a year when we were all stuck indoors. This edition of The Frontline crowns nature as this year’s winner.
The Frontline
The Opening
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an expansive look at the latest events in climate and culture—and how it all fits together.
The Overview
What We Build From the Ashes
We can’t let the never-ending flames of 2020 be the end. From their ashes, we can rebuild a new world. That’s what many advocates and experts are now demanding. This week’s final edition of The Frontline dives into the rare opportunity this year offers.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
A Wave of Change: Jamie Margolin and Jane Goodall
Over the last few years, youth activists have taken on the climate crisis as the cause of their lives, largely because it will determine the course of them. And yet, as these leaders and organizers tell their environmental heroes—the ones who paved the way and inspired them to fight in the first place—they can’t do it alone. Here, activist Jamie Margolin and primatologist Jane Goodall discuss the importance of forest conservation and the interconnection of species in the fight against climate change.
Changemakers
Beyond The Specter Of The Colossus
In the final of four essays, Atmos collaborates with interdisciplinary art and archival research studio The Bureau on “A Drop of Sun,” a series asking Black artists and writers to imagine Black futurity through rigorous exploration of abolition, radicalized environmentalism, and robust artistic expression. Here, scholar Mohamud Mohamed asks us to shift our perspectives on capitalism and realism outward, toward the endless possibilities of radical imagination.
Black Liberation
A Unity Forged in Fire
This year truly cemented a unity between the racial and environmental movements. Individuals have been working on bridging this divide for decades, but they finally saw major success in 2020. The Frontline features an interview with Monifa Bandele, who’s been advocating at this intersection for decades.
The Frontline
Black Liberation
I, Xingu, Am Dying
Eliane Brum writes from the perspective of the Xingu River, in Brazil, which faces imminent death as hydroelectric power plants and dams threaten natural and human life.
Anthropocene
Big Fires Everywhere
In the year everything burned, wildfires broke out around the globe. In some areas, they broke records. In others, they created states of emergencies. This edition of The Frontline explores the wildfires that erupted this year.
The Frontline
Anthropocene
Unwinding Time
During lockdown, photographer Vava Ribeiro set foot throughout a Hawaii temporarily void of human life but rich with natural landscapes to capture rare, primordial panoramas—before sunrise and after dark.
Photography
The Year Everything Burned
The world caught on fire this year—both literally and figuratively. We saw forests and homes burn as wildfires raged. We saw protesters set businesses ablaze, decrying a society that values money more than people. Racist systems the world has long run on are burning to the ground, too. The Frontline explores the flames that rage and what they mean moving into the new year.
The Frontline
Anthropocene
Climbing Mountains
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an expansive look at the latest events in climate and culture—and how it all fits together.
The Overview
A Wave of Change: Kevin J. Patel and Dr. Vandana Shiva
Over the last few years, youth activists have taken on the climate crisis as the cause of their lives, largely because it will determine the course of them. And yet, as these leaders and organizers tell their environmental heroes—the ones who paved the way and inspired them to fight in the first place—they can’t do it alone. Here, environmental activists Kevin J. Patel and Dr. Vandana Shiva discuss the power of youth, the true meaning behind community, and how the crises of today are interconnected.
Environmental Justice
Climate Solutions
Protesting Through a Pandemic
Not all environmental defenders get to receive an award. Instead, many others receive threats and violence, which have heightened under the COVID-19 pandemic. This edition of The Frontline explores the ways the virus is threatening environmental defenders around Latin America.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
The Canaries In The Gold Mine
A recent gold boom in Uganda has some of the country’s most vulnerable men, women, and even children scrambling to benefit—and at great personal risk. But Earthbeat, an unlikely nonprofit, is helping them create alternatives.
Anthropocene
Climate Solutions
Sea Change: Behind Bahama’s Plastic Ban
Kristal Ambrose is the woman behind Bahama’s ban on single-use plastics. Her work, however, is only getting started. In this edition of The Frontline, this Goldman Prize winner shares her story and where she’s focusing her energy next.
The Frontline
Changemakers
Fine Lines
Through panoramas and reflections on opposing natural landscapes, photographer Théo de Gueltzl and Ralph Cox trace horizons from the Swiss Alps to the Mediterranean Sea.
Photography
Guarding Ghana’s Coal-Free Future
Ghana has yet to welcome a coal plant. It came closer a few years ago, but Goldman Prize winner Chibeze Ezekiel wasn’t going to let that happen. In this edition of The Frontline, Ezekiel shares his story and work around environmental advocacy in Ghana.
The Frontline
Changemakers
Honoring Earth’s Defenders
The Goldman Prize award dates back more than 30 years. This year’s winners hail from all parts of the globe, but they’re all rooted in one common theme: the grassroots. The Frontline talks to award executive director Michael Sutton to learn about the responsibility that comes with awarding environmental defenders.
The Frontline
Changemakers
Hello
Whether you see them as cosmic coincidences or the unfolding of fate, a chain reaction of unlikely events led to you being here. Author Sasha Sagan—a consequence of the cosmos in and of herself, the daughter of acclaimed astronomer Carl Sagan—sheds light on what we know about how you got here and, more importantly, what we don’t know.
Deep Ecology
On The Road With Kojo & Yaya
In the third of four essays, Atmos collaborates with interdisciplinary art and archival research studio The Bureau on “A Drop of Sun,” a series asking Black artists and writers to imagine Black futurity through rigorous exploration of abolition, radicalized environmentalism, and robust artistic expression. Here, couple Kojo and Yaya speak with Fadumo Ali on what freedom looks like on the road—when home is where the heart is and sustainability is more than just a life hack.
Black Liberation
Queer Ecology
Saving the Sacred Place
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s 60th anniversary is coming up, but the people of the Gwich’in Nation have been protecting it for far longer. Welcome to The Frontline, where we’re exploring this historic relationship.
The Frontline
Democracy
A Wave of Change: Wanjiku Gatheru and Peggy Shepard
Over the last few years, youth activists have taken on the climate crisis as the cause of their lives, largely because it will determine the course of them. And yet, as these leaders and organizers tell their environmental heroes—the ones who paved the way and inspired them to fight in the first place—they can’t do it alone. Here, activists Wanjiku Gatheru and Peggy Shepard discuss environmental justice and the legacy of pollution.
Changemakers
Environmental Justice
America’s Roadless Wilderness
The Roadless Rule helps keep millions of acres of forest safe for Indigenous peoples and away from industry. In an Atmos exclusive, the Wilderness Society shares maps highlighting this law’s value. Welcome to The Frontline, your introduction to this protection.
The Frontline
Democracy
Grandmother Moon
For the latest edition of her series on Sacred Ecology, Ruth H. Hopkins turns her gaze skyward. With recent headlines about lunar settlement and extraction comes a vital question: Is history doomed to repeat itself with the colonization of the Moon?
Deep Ecology
How DVVSK Took Their Art From The Air Force To The Stage
For their joint project, “Anima,” photographer Daniel Jack Lyons and performance artist DVVSK illustrate the intensity and sensuality of what reconnecting with nature after a nationwide lockdown looks like.
Art & Culture
Queer Ecology
The Land’s First Caretakers
In order to save our public lands, we must first listen to their first caretakers. We’ll need Indigenous knowledge to protect the wild areas that remain. Welcome to The Frontline, where you’ll hear from Jonathan Ferrier, an Indigenous ethnobotanist.
The Frontline
Indigeneity
A Just Transition
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an expansive look at the latest events in climate and culture—and how it all fits together.
The Overview
No One Should Expect Less
The incoming administration’s record signals they’d take a moderate approach to the climate crisis. Advocates had hoped for more, but the incoming Biden-Harris White House is already disappointing. Welcome to The Frontline, where we’re learning about the team’s new senior staff members.
The Frontline
Democracy
A Mother’s Love
As the founder and executive director of GLITS—that’s Gays and Lesbians Living in a Transgender Society—Ceyenne Doroshow is here to bring sustainable and holistic care to LGBTQ sex workers through community empowerment, stable housing, health care, education, and advocacy. As a mother, she’s here to embrace you.
Queer Ecology
The Architect & The Sun: A Black Future
In the second of four essays, Atmos collaborates with interdisciplinary art and archival research studio The Bureau on “A Drop of Sun,” a series asking Black artists and writers to imagine Black futurity through rigorous exploration of abolition, radicalized environmentalism, and robust artistic expression. Here, author Malanda Jean-Claude imagines a world in which Black imagination is the faculty of freedom.
Black Liberation
The US Still Needs to Ban Fracking
President-elect Joe Biden has not committed to banning fracking. He’s been insistent that he won’t, but that doesn’t mean advocates will accept that. Welcome to The Frontline, where you’ll hear about efforts to get a ban passed.
The Frontline
Anthropocene
A Movement’s Vision for Biden’s America
The Sunrise Movement, popular for championing a Green New Deal, is now putting pressure on the incoming Biden-Harris administration to put climate first. Welcome to The Frontline, where we’re exploring these demands.
The Frontline
Democracy
Rest, Recover, Recharge
What comes next? First, some rest. Welcome to The Frontline, where we’re taking a pause and recharging.
The Frontline
On The Verge
A tipping point is a delicate state in which a seemingly minor change to a natural system can lead to a sudden and massive change in its fate, often resulting in positive feedback loops (where results feed causes, leading to amplified effects). A number of these tipping points exist today, in habitats that range from coral reefs to the Amazon Rainforest—microcosms of a world on the precipice of unprecedented change.
Anthropocene
How Do You Sleep?
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an expansive look at the latest events in climate and culture—and how it all fits together.
The Overview
As The Water Flows
Reclaiming ancestral knowledge has allowed photographer Evan Benally Atwood to explore their gender beyond colonization. For our latest issue, Atwood honors their family and femininity in the Diné tradition through a spirit-led relationship between themselves and their lens.
Queer Ecology
Indigeneity
An Energy Leader Wins an Election
DeAndrea Salvador is an energy justice champion. Now, she’s bringing that expertise to the North Carolina state Senate. Welcome to The Frontline, where we’re celebrating what her election win means for the state.
The Frontline
Changemakers
A Wave of Change: Xiuhtezcatl and Nick Tilsen
Over the last few years, youth activists have taken on the climate crisis as the cause of their lives, largely because it will determine the course of them. And yet, as these leaders and organizers tell their environmental heroes—the ones who paved the way and inspired them to fight in the first place—they can’t do it alone.
Changemakers
Indigeneity
Minnesota’s New Climate Justice Leaders
In Minnesota, newly elected legislators like state Sen. Lindsey Port might help stop an oil pipeline advocates have been fighting for years. Welcome to The Frontline, where you’ll get to hear from her.
The Frontline
Changemakers
California Is Coming for Polluters
In California, a clean energy—and clean air—future may be closer after a sea of local wins last week. Welcome to The Frontline, where we’re celebrating.
The Frontline
Changemakers
Abolitionist Poetics
In the first of four essays, Atmos collaborates with interdisciplinary art and archival research studio The Bureau on “A Drop of Sun,” a series asking Black artists and writers to imagine Black futurity through rigorous exploration of abolition, radicalized environmentalism, and robust artistic expression. Here, writer Devyn Springer imagines a world in which police forces and prisons are abolished.
Black Liberation
Justice Wins
Throughout all the local wins and losses, one thing was clear: Candidates can’t talk about climate change without centering justice. Welcome to The Frontline, where we’re breaking it down.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
The Ties That Bind
Western scientists are still catching up to the knowledge possessed and passed down by Indigenous peoples. With our world hanging on by a thread, Ruth H. Hopkins explains how its fate is inseparably intertwined with that of its original stewards—and the wisdom they hold.
Deep Ecology
Indigeneity
Nothing Ever Ends
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an expansive look at the latest events in climate and culture—and how it all fits together.
The Overview
The Illusion of the Latinx Vote
Latinx voters could’ve been a force for climate action this election—if only campaigns would’ve invested in understanding these diverse voters. Welcome to The Frontline, where we’re dispelling the myth of the Latinx vote.
The Frontline
Democracy
From Dust to Dust: Climate Change and Cemeteries
When we talk about the climate crisis, we often talk about it in the context of preserving our future—but what about our past? Here, public historian Valerie Wade unearths what we can learn about America’s race and class divides from the disproportionate impact of climate change on cemeteries.
Black Liberation
Environmental Justice
How Glaciers Connect Our Past To Our Future
Patricia Carr Morgan’s latest art exhibition “i love you don’t leave me” contextualizes the scope of climate change in moving ways. In an interview with Atmos, the Tucson-based artist shares what glaciers can tell us about our past and our future—and why climate change as a form of art is part of the fight (and the solution) against a warming world.
Art & Culture
Ocean Life
Puerto Rico’s Next Governor
In Puerto Rico, all eyes are on the next governor’s energy plans. After Hurricane Maria, Puerto Ricans need clean energy. Welcome to The Frontline, where we’re diving into this local election.
The Frontline
Democracy
The Next President Decides
The future of a number of projects hinges on this election. The next president will have the power to push forth on them—or reverse them altogether. Welcome to The Frontline, where every vote counts.
The Frontline
Democracy
Climate Disasters: The Ultimate Voter Suppression
Voting won’t be easy this week for those who are already living through climate disaster. Welcome to The Frontline, where you’ll hear from climate reporter Dharna Noor about this scary reality.
The Frontline
Democracy
Crowning Glory
For our latest issue, photographer Daniel Shea captured Alaska’s treasured Tongass during lockdown—now, the site of one of the biggest public lands rollbacks of our time, suffocating the lungs of the country.
Photography
What the Water Gave Us
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an expansive look at the latest events in climate and culture—and how it all fits together.
The Overview
A Sacred War at the Border
The border wall is threatening the sovereignty of tribal nations along the border. They won’t stand for it. Welcome to The Frontline, where we’re diving into this Indigenous-led resistance.
The Frontline
Climate Migration
Cliffside Formations
Where the land meets the sea, geology reveals itself as a convergent continuum of earth and air, water and wind, space and time. The seaside bluffs of Cornwall, dominated by their granite backbones and igneous rocks, embody this notion that nature never acts alone—much like the community that calls it home.
Ethical Fashion
Desperation and Determination at the Border
In a future where the border wall expands and temperatures rise, climate migrants will face even more danger. Welcome to The Frontline, where we’re discussing dystopian climate migration.
The Frontline
Climate Migration
Living Legacy
Black cowboys and cowgirls have been largely written out of American history—and yet, they have blazed a trail rich in stories of strength and solidarity with the land that leads all the way to today. Rachel Cargle speaks with those who have taken up the mantle of Black horsemanship and who are writing a new future by reclaiming the past.
Black Liberation
Free Like Our Ancestors
In the first edition of her column on Sacred Ecology, Ruth H. Hopkins explains why sustainable harvest practices and food sovereignty are not only key for survival, but a roadmap connecting the past and future.
Deep Ecology
The Supreme Court v. Trump’s Border Wall
Amy Coney Barrett’s addition to the Supreme Court makes it even harder for environmental groups to stop the border wall. Welcome to The Frontline, where we’re shining the spotlight on the Supreme Court.
The Frontline
Climate Migration
Turning Tides
Fashion is awash with harsh truths: floods of environmental impacts, an insatiable thirst for newness at odds with calls to produce less but better, and seasons that no longer serve current climate models. But changing tides make way for a surge of ideas—an opportunity to breathe life back into the discounted and discarded, and to turn what was once forgotten into something new.
Ethical Fashion
An Ecological Crime At The Border
The border wall involves destroying critical habitat for endangered species and sacred cultural lands. Welcome to The Frontline, where we’re talking about this ecological disaster.
The Frontline
Climate Migration
A Glacial Pace
No one knows fast like Maggie Rogers, whose music career came on like an avalanche, having gone from college graduation to playing sold-out shows at Radio City Music Hall seemingly overnight. Rather than racing further ahead, she has chosen to make her next music release a collection of past work: Notes from the Archive: Recordings 2011–2016. As she readies its release, she reflects on the unnatural pace at which artists are expected to create, what glaciers have to teach us about time, and how quarantine reminded her of what it is to be a human being.
Earth Sounds
Art & Culture
A Cascade Effect
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an expansive look at the latest events in climate and culture—and how it all fits together. This week’s edition serves as a special introduction to Atmos Volume 04: Cascade, coming October 26th.
The Overview
On Motherhood
Depending on how the next president addresses climate change, many people may be wondering if the world will be safe enough to birth little ones. Welcome to The Frontline, where we’re getting personal.
The Frontline
The Climate Case For Mail-In Voting
The future is mail-in voting. This simple change could be damn good for the planet. Welcome to The Frontline, where I’m making the climate case for vote-by-mail.
The Frontline
Democracy
Thin Ice
With critical ice loss causing rippling effects on its rich biodiversity, Antarctica is indisputably at the frontline of climate change. Two hundred years after humankind first sighted the continent, a campaign helmed by the world’s leading explorers and experts in ocean conservation is underway to create what would be the world’s largest ocean protection act in history.
Anthropocene
Democracy
Election 2020: Political Triage
The U.S. political system isn’t working for people of color. It also is failing us all on climate action. Welcome to The Frontline, where we’re talking straight facts.
The Frontline
Democracy
The Twilight of the Ethical Consumer
Like everyone else, I made some lifestyle changes during the pandemic. While others were perfecting their sourdough, I decided to stop being an Ethical Consumer.
Ethical Fashion
America’s First Climate Election
Climate change is now top of the mind for voters. In part, that’s thanks to the kids who have been hitting the streets. Welcome to The Frontline, where we’re getting into politics.
The Frontline
Democracy
What’s Love Got to Do With It?
Welcome to The Overview, a weekly newsletter in which Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh offers an expansive look at the latest events in climate and culture—and how it all fits together.
The Overview
Money Talks
This cycle of racism stretches far after climate-fueled disasters wreak havoc. It exists during recovery, too. Hurricane Maria showed us just how badly.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
An Unequal Unfolding
The history of colonialism, segregation, and development show why certain communities suffer disproportionately from the climate crisis today.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
Melting Point
We have lost approximately 400 billion tons of glacial ice per year since 1994—a loss so voluminous and profound that it can be difficult to fathom. So, let’s put it in perspective.
Anthropocene
Where Injustice Begins
Environmental injustice starts at the source of the climate crisis: fossil fuels. Their extraction and pollution threaten the health of communities of color.
The Frontline
Environmental Justice
