News & Commentary

When You Poison Our Lands, You Poison Us

October 25, 2023 PerspectivesArizona, South DakotaHannah Throssell

The granddaughter of a Navajo uranium miner stands with the Standing Rock Sioux against DAPL.

After 43 Years, My Parents Finally Have Lead-Free Water

October 23, 2023 PerspectivesChicagoGina Ramirez

In Chicago, an environmental justice advocate recounts what it took to get the lead pipes dug up in her childhood home.

Looking for Climate Connections (and Berries) Through Traditional Indigenous Knowledge

October 5, 2023 PerspectivesMontanaDominique Nault

When trying to protect lands from the onslaught of climate change, start by asking the people who know those places and their wild inhabitants the best. 

Water Is Life—from Standing Rock to Oaxaca’s Mixtecan Highlands

September 18, 2023 PerspectivesMexico, West, South DakotaElybeth Sofia Alcantar

A geographer sees a familiar pattern of government-backed energy projects devastating Indigenous communities and violating tribal sovereignty.  

From Dams to DAPL, the Army Corps’ Culture of Disdain for Indigenous Communities Must End

September 13, 2023 PerspectivesUnited States, MidwestTroy Pretends Eagle

The prophesied “Seventh Generation” is here—demanding justice for tribes and protecting what they have left. 

Public Lands Are Not Neutral. We Must Grapple with Their Racist Roots.

February 2, 2023 PerspectivesUnited StatesCarolyn Ramírez

Green spaces should feel like everyone’s backyard.

Reflections of a Chicago Community Organizer: Water Justice and the Need to Act Now

September 14, 2022 PerspectivesChicagoOscar Sanchez

During a trip to a water conference, an environmental justice activist considers what it takes to support his community without letting go of the importance of healing.

What Pride Illuminates About Human Rights and Our Planet

June 1, 2022 PerspectivesUnited StatesNRDC

Four NRDC staffers consider the legal protections that changed their lives and how all rights, including those related to the environment, are intimately connected.

Climate Change at the Doctor’s Office

April 11, 2022 PerspectivesUnited StatesPrasanna Vankina, Teniope Adewumi-Gunn

Dr. Cheryl Holder helps her patients and fellow physicians find holistic solutions to coping with the intertwined impacts of sickness and climate change.

Four Poets Honor Chicago’s Hazel M. Johnson, the Mother of Environmental Justice

April 1, 2022 PerspectivesChicago

This National Poetry Month, four writers champion the legendary local activist who launched a movement while they continue to grapple with the work left to be done.

Five Indigenous Poets Explore Loss and Love of their Native Lands

November 1, 2021 PerspectivesUnited StatesCourtney Lindwall

From saguaros to sacred waters, the writers weave their personal relationships to the environment with the ancestral.

These Photographs Show How the Rising Sea Connects Us All

October 21, 2021 PerspectivesInternationalJeff Turrentine

In images both beautiful and disturbing, photographer Kadir van Lohuizen documents how sea level rise is altering coastlines—and lives—around the world.

They’re Spreading the Joy of Birding—and Making It More Inclusive

October 13, 2021 PerspectivesUnited StatesKeith Mulvihill

A birding podcast host, a science journalist, and a conservationist strive to share their passion with more BIPOC birders like themselves.

Living Among the Diesel Trucks: My Environmental Injustice Story

September 13, 2021 PerspectivesCaliforniaAndrea Guerra

To a college student who grew up surrounded by heavy truck traffic, warehouses, and commercial hubs in one of California’s most polluted communities, the push to electrify transportation is more than just urgent health policy—it’s personal.

In Chicago, Safe Water Is Still No Guarantee

July 30, 2021 PerspectivesChicagoKeith Mulvihill

“There are so many lead service lines in Chicago, but people aren’t talking about it,” says advocate Cheryl Watson. Now she and other frontline residents are changing the conversation.

From Unemployment to Staff Shortages, This Is What a K-Shaped Recovery Looks Like

July 6, 2021 PerspectivesUnited StatesMaudlyne Ihejirika

In Part Four of our “Pandemic at Work” series, two small-business owners, an office manager, and an undocumented meatpacking employee share where the last 15 months have left them.

Protesting like Your Life Depended on It

June 28, 2021 PerspectivesUnited StatesBrian Zabcik

A former ACT UP organizer explains how his AIDS activism in New York City—and his upbringing on a Texas farm—helped him become a better environmentalist.

Sowing the Seeds of Queer and Trans Liberation This Pride Month

June 24, 2021 PerspectivesUnited StatesTejal Mankad

NRDC senior social media manager Tejal Mankad dreams of a future with climate and gender justice.

Grandma’s Garden: A Place of Resistance, Abundance, and Black Environmental Memory

June 14, 2021 PerspectivesUnited StatesRasheena Fountain

My connection to the land cannot be erased—it grows with my remembrance of ancestors and my reimagining of boundaries.

Nobody Is Safe Until Everybody Is Safe

May 27, 2021 PerspectivesUnited StatesBora Chang

We must recognize the violence against Asian Americans as an outgrowth of structural racism in our society. And we cannot confront the former without taking down the latter.