Heather Smith
Sierra Club
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Past articles by Heather:
Who Had Good Climate Data in the 70s? Exxon, That’s Who.
Exxon didn’t just know about climate change. Exxon knew so much about climate change that, in the 1970s and '80s, Exxon’s internal predictions of how climate change would play out were as good or better than projections made by climatologists like NASA’s James Hansen, the scientist who first warned Congress about the threat of global warming in 1988. That’s the conclusion of research published… → Read More
How Does Carbon Capture Work?
We've been putting extra carbon in the air for centuries—here's how to take it out → Read More
The Spotted Owl and the College Student
The interspecies conversation that saved Pacific Northwest old growth → Read More
Early Voting Is a Form of Resistance
In Georgia, early voting for the 2020 presidential election began on October 12. The first day, so many people showed up to vote in Cobb County that people brought their own chairs. “I went from ‘yay love seeing all these people early voting’ to ‘I’ve been here over four hours, hungry and ready to go’” one Cobb County voter, Everlean Rutherford, posted on Twitter. She would ultimately wait nine… → Read More
5 Must-Read Novels for Your COVID Quarantine Book Club
These absorbing stories get you thinking more deeply about our troubled world → Read More
ICYMI: Selfie-Taking Fern & Tool-Using Pigs
A weekly environmental news roundup for busy people → Read More
The Kids Are on Climate Strike
Today, youth from around the world abandoned school and work to take to the streets and demand that adults treat the climate crisis with the seriousness that it deserves—specifically, with immediate action, even if that action results in less economic growth in the short-term (in the long-term, it's well-established that taking drastic action on climate change is about the closest thing there is… → Read More
Canada's First Nations Do Conservation Their Way
Indigenous Guardians protect lands through litigation, direct action, diplomacy → Read More
Climate Change Needs Romance
Aya de León, author of "Side Chick Nation," talks bodice rippers and hurricanes → Read More
The Green New Deal Is Out. Now What?
The Green New Deal is big, and vague, and that's exactly the point. → Read More
So WOTUS Is Legal. Now What?
Last month, the Obama-era Clean Water Rule—which set out to clarify once and for all that the Clean Water Act also protects seasonal streams, lakes, and wetlands—unexpectedly became the law of the land when a federal district court judge decided that the Trump administration had overstepped its bounds by suspending the rule without taking public comment first. Captree Island, Long Island, New… → Read More
Are States Trying to Stop Students From Voting?
It's harder than ever for college students to vote. Here's how to do it anyway. → Read More
Why Did Trump Pardon Two Arsonist Ranchers?
On Tuesday, President Trump pardoned Dwight L. Hammond and his son, Steven D. Hammond—two ranchers that very few Americans had ever heard of. “The Hammonds are multi-generation cattle ranchers in Oregon imprisoned in connection with a fire that leaked onto a small portion of neighboring public grazing land,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, wrote in a statement. A… → Read More
Why the EU Chose Bees Over Pesticides
The EU’s neonicotinoid ban is a recognition of the $$$ pollinators bring to the farm → Read More
Where Have All the Salmon Gone?
When the Klamath dams come out the Spring Chinook will thrive. If they can last that long. → Read More
Where Have All the Salmon Gone?
When the Klamath dams come out the Spring Chinook will thrive. If they can last that long. → Read More
Environmental News ICYMI 10-20-17
Mussel, oyster, and clam farts are contributing to climate change—but not as much as emissions from cows. Hywind, the world’s first floating wind farm, begins operation 16 miles off the coast of Scotland. The State Department issues a permit for the final piece of Enbridge’s Alberta Clipper oil pipeline, a segment of which crosses the U.S.-Canada border into North Dakota. Drue Pearce, Trump's… → Read More
Whales Like Us
Whales might have culture, and the brains to go with it → Read More
California in Flames, Again
The wildfires in Sonoma, Napa, and Santa Rosa are a sign that California needs to prepare for the fires of the future, not the ones that it's used to fighting. → Read More
Who's to Blame for Climate Change?
New research builds evidence against a handful of culprits → Read More