In his classroom at Lankenau High School, veteran teacher Matthew VanKouwenberg points out to his students the connection between average daily temperatures across Philadelphia and tree canopies, noting that the lack of tree cover can leave some neighborhoods — often poor, often majority-minority — overheated in summer. VanKouwenberg, who teaches chemistry and environmental science at
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By Nic Esposito After the credits rolled on Adam McKay’s new film “Don’t Look Up.”, I lay in bed for the next two hours, heart and mind racing as I tried to process the film. It could have been an allegory for the pandemic, plastic pollution or a number of other global crises that scientists
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When the remnants of Hurricane Ida arrived in the Philadelphia region last month, it brought with it the kinds of chaos we used to just hear about: flooding, property destruction, mudslides and at least one dude back flipping into the sewage pit formerly known as I-676 in Center City. “I definitely thought about the water
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I’m dying for a cup of coffee today. Not just a regular black cup, the kind I used to drink daily for decades. No, I want one of those towering concoctions with billowing clouds of milk and mountains of sugar that are topped off with swirls of whipped cream. A milkshake disguised as coffee. I’ve
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Here’s a nugget from The New York Times story “Extreme Summer,” published on July 20, 2021: “Summers in Boston have come to resemble 20th-century summers in New York. New York, similarly, has come to resemble Philadelphia, which in turn has become hotter than Washington, D.C., or Atlanta were only a few decades ago.” Climate change
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Alexandra Kroger, energy program director at The Energy Co-op, is hoping that Philadelphia’s biggest utility providers notice the work they are doing and get inspired. “As the demand for our renewable energy products becomes more apparent, PECO and PGW might see that as a market signal favoring renewable energy,” Kroger says. “We can’t speculate if
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San Francisco has its earthquakes and Miami has its hurricanes, but the disaster Philadelphia most often confronts is flooding. Flooding is the most common natural disaster in the country, with Pennsylvania experiencing the most flood occurrences of any of the 50 states. And climate change all but promises that the near future will be wetter,
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On a trip to the Meadows at FDR Park at the end of last summer, we got our feet wet. The Meadows is a repurposing of the recently closed golf course at the South Philadelphia park. What were once fairways are now green spaces for play, short-term art installations and homes for wildlife. We were
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From oil painting to storytelling, native Philadelphian Joan He has dedicated herself to creating art in all forms since childhood. Currently living between Old City and Fishtown He is getting ready to release her second novel, The Ones We’re Meant to Find, on May 4. In this work, she introduces her readers to “cli-fi”— a
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I was stunned twice when, in 2018, I read an essay in The New York Times entitled “A Forest of Ancient Trees, Poisoned by Rising Seas.” The author writes about the 400 and 500 year-old black gum trees along the Delaware Bay in South Jersey doomed by climate change, then proceeds to catalog reports from
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Amidst shots and descriptions of swirling hurricanes, raging fires, and dying ecosystems, the documentary Can We Cool The Planet? begins with the words of climate strategist Jane Long, “We can’t go back, there is no path backwards.” But what if there was? Philadelphia filmmakers Ben Kalina and Jen Schneider, and their team of collaborators from
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