Climate & Planetary Futures
The Horizon of Survival
Where science, policy, and imagination converge to shape humanity’s response to a changing planet.
The Drought Economy: Can Small Towns Survive When Water Becomes Currency?
On the outskirts of a parched town in western Kansas, a hand-painted sign reads: “Water for Lease — Call Jim.”…
Cooling the Planet, Warming the Debate
Imagine dimming the sun just slightly — enough to cool the Earth by a degree or two. The idea sounds…
The Battery Belt: When Climate Tech Becomes Extractive Industry
In the Midwest, empty factories once built cars and appliances. Today, many of those same towns are luring battery plants…
The Corn Belt’s Carbon Brokers
On a humid July morning in central Iowa, farmer Tom Anderson kneels in his soybean field, pressing a spade into…
Gridlock or Green Grids? The Battle Over Transmission Lines
When politicians sign climate pledges, the targets look simple: 50 percent renewables by 2030, net-zero emissions by 2050. But goals…
The Lithium Rush: Rural Boomtowns on Borrowed Time
In the high desert of Nevada, just outside a ranching town of 800, the horizon is broken not by cattle…
Downscaling the Future: How Hyperlocal Climate Models Rewrite City Policy
Climate change often feels like a story told at the planetary scale: degrees of global warming, sea levels rising worldwide,…
Data Centers, Dry Wells: Rural America’s New Faustian Bargain
On the edge of a cornfield in central Iowa, steel skeletons rise where silos once stood. They are not barns…
Shade Is Infrastructure: Designing Cities to Survive Heat
This summer, Phoenix recorded 31 consecutive days above 110°F. In Delhi, rooftop temperatures climbed so high that tin-sheet housing warped….
When Climate Models and Local Knowledge Disagree
In a small fishing village on the Mekong Delta, elders will tell you that the tides are “acting strangely.” They…
The Water Wars Already Happening in America’s Heartland
The first thing you notice driving into Garden City, Kansas, isn’t the endless horizon or the golden sweep of wheat—it’s…
Transit Justice: The Missing Link in Climate Action
If we are serious about cutting greenhouse gas emissions, we must talk about cars. Not electric cars, not self-driving cars—cars,…