Author Archives: Kahrin Deines

Medill reporters wrap up fall News21 stories as Obama picks green leaders

President-elect Barack Obama selected Nobel laureate Steven Chu to direct the Energy Department today as Medill News21 reporters wrap up their fall coverage. Chu, a physicist who heads the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, supports alternative energy fuels and research as a critical response to global warming. He faces a daunting job. National security risks from [...]

Obama’s victory sends thousands into streets with new hope

Nearly as peacefully as a leaf sinks to the ground, more than 100,000 people filed out of Grant Park in downtown Chicago last night. Some held their joy in rapt silence, seemingly dazed as they funneled through throngs along Michigan Avenue.  Others paused on their journey home, to let go their tongues and chant one [...]

Going green with an economy in the red

With the markets in the midst of a crisis that many are comparing to the Great Depression, some environmentalists are starting to worry that the go-green wave may lose its momentum in the face of more pressing economic concerns. From bloggers to scientists, a new speculative trend has now begun, with thinkers placing their bets [...]

Awakening to Sea Level Rise

By Kahrin Deines/Medill – Smith Island, MD Only one excited voice and the whirr of overhead fans broke the rapt silence of the open-air tabernacle where Smith Island’s annual “camp meeting” takes place.   Itinerant Methodist preacher Eric Clark was working his way – and his audience – into a fervor.  Between breaths and pauses to call [...]