Opinionated collection of 52 articles, films, podcasts and other artefacts related to the climate crisis.
In August 2009, Duncan Porter visited the Rhône Glacier in Wallis, Switzerland, and took a selfie with his wife in front of it. Fifteen years later, in August 2025, he returned and took another selfie with his wife in front of the glacier. The viral post shows the glacier’s staggering retreat.
Others who have documented the glacier's retreat include Christian Åslund of Greenpeace and Neill Drake.
“ Ultimately, it is symptomatic of the larger injustice of the climate crisis, which is that the people who have done the least to cause it are the ones who will suffer the most from its impacts.” Cooled people “work mostly indoors, bathed in the soothing breeze of manufactured air.” Cooked people are those, who are delivery drivers, oil field workers, farmworkers, construction workers, …
In his opinion peace for The New York Times, Jeff Goodell, author of The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet, describes the divide between these two groups as “The New American Inequality: The Cooled vs. the Cooked.” However, this uneven suffering can certainly be extended to people outside the USA.
Alan Taylor of The Atlantic has shared a collection of photographs showcasing the wildfires raging in southern Europe.
“ Nearly all of Gaza’s trees are gone — either through the Israeli aerial and ground campaigns, or because Palestinians were forced to chop them down for heating or cooking. That deforestation, together with military earthworks that have compacted the soil, is raising the risk of long-term desertification.” Through the analysis of satellite imagery and on-the-ground reporting, Bloomberg reports on the devastating situation in Gaza for its people and environment, and for any future life in and around the region. The article is a sweeping indictment of all the consequences: “In the towns and cities, collapsing buildings have left at least 55 million metric tons of rubble […] and released toxic dust and smoke into the air.” “[W]aste water flows through streets and farmland. That mixes with heavy metals, including lead, mercury and cadmium, which have leaked from unexploded ordnance and other war remnants.” “[D]rug-resistant pathogens emerge from the polluted soil and unsanitary conditions, and toxic chemicals spread on the wind, in water, by migrating wildlife and the movement of people and vehicles.” The consequences are not confined to the region, with “about 84,000 cubic meters of sewage […] ending up in the Mediterranean Sea each day in July [2025].”
“ If we save the sea, we save our world.” Unlike Attenborough’s other films, which mostly celebrate the wonders of life’s diversity, Ocean (2025, 1 h 35 min) focuses on the devastating destruction of our world’s vital marine ecosystems. The film rightly addresses the main problem: overfishing and the fishing industry’s destructive techniques. The film advocates marine protected areas (MPAs), fishing techniques that do not involve discarding three-quarters of the catch, and highlights the importance of the ocean in binding carbon dioxide.
“ All the little air bubbles that are released are maybe hundreds or thousand years old, and they make just a little plop sound, and then they’re gone forever.” Sound artist Ludwig Berger (based in the Palatinate Forest-North Vosges Biosphere Reserve, Germany) wants us to listen to our surroundings: to the insects, the trees and the mud volcanoes. In his latest film, Crying Glacier (2023, 14 min), film director Lutz Stautner (from Cologne, Germany) documented Berger. Like so many others, the Morteratsch glacier in the Swiss Alps is dying. Berger’s sound recordings of the creaking, cracking and rippling are his way of preserving sounds that could soon disappear from this world forever. The shortfilm can watched in the Op-Docs section of the New York Times.
“ In economics, the Jevons paradox occurs when technological advancements make a resource more efficient to use (thereby reducing the amount needed for a single application); however, as the cost of using the resource drops, overall demand increases causing total resource consumption to rise.” This paradox is often referenced in the context of the climate crisis. It came into public discourse again at the beginning of 2025 when DeepSeek released their R1 model, which appeared to use far fewer computing resources than other models.
Former US president Jimmy Carter placed 32 solar pannels, a novel technology at that time, on the rooftop of The White House. Seven years later they were removed by Ronald Reagan. With Donald Trump now withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, many historic parallels can be seen.