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 [...]
Tag Archives: climate change
Medill reporters wrap up fall News21 stories as Obama picks green leaders
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 on [...]
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 for ‘Amens,’ his [...]
What happens in Alaska, won’t stay in Alaska
By Angela Nitzke/Medill
Humans won’t go extinct if the planet warms up a few degrees, surmised Richard, who sat next to me on my flight from Anchorage to Chicago. Probably true, but a lot could change that would influence the way we live our lives. And in Alaska, climate change is not a computer modeled prediction. [...]















