Jacques Leslie

Op-Ed: An epic victory in the battle for free-flowing rivers

Two decades ago, when the Klamath River basin was considered the most embattled watershed in the country, the idea of removing the river’s four hydroelectric dams was considered laughable. Yet on Thursday, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission…

How Ailing Strip Malls Could Be a Green Fix for U.S. Housing Crisis

The U.S. housing shortage is so severe that demand outstrips supply by a stunning 3.8 million homes⁠, according to Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored mortgage dealer. The shortage exacerbates homelessness, income inequality, and even climate…

Op-Ed: How heat pumps can help save Ukrainians from Putin and the rest of us from climate change

Heat pumps aren’t usually considered war-fighting materiel, but these heating-and-cooling appliances could be almost as crucial to the defense of Ukraine as antitank and antiaircraft missiles. Heat pumps are basically air conditioners that can also…

Climate Change Is Disrupting the Global Supply Chain Too

This story originally appeared on Yale Environment 360 and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The Covid pandemic has rightly received most of the blame for global supply chain upheavals in the past two years. But the less publicized impact of…

How Climate Change Is Disrupting the Global Supply Chain

The impact of the Covid pandemic on the global supply chain has been widely reported. But extreme weather, from floods to wildfires, is increasingly hammering ports, highways, and factories worldwide, and experts warn these climate-induced…

Op-Ed: Forget December’s snowstorms. California isn’t doing enough to address its hot, dry reality

As a forbiddingly deep drought reclaims its hold on California, the state’s record precipitation in October and December is already a distant memory, and the list of urgent water issues we face keeps getting longer. Forecasters predict little or no…

Old Climate Clues Shed New Light on History

This story originally appeared on Yale Environment 360 and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Joseph Manning, a Yale University professor of ancient history, likes to recall the moment when he was shown an advance copy of a scholarly paper…

Climate Clues from the Past Prompt a New Look at History

Joseph Manning, a Yale University professor of ancient history, likes to recall the moment when he was shown an advance copy of a scholarly paper that pinpointed the timing of major volcanic eruptions over the last 2,500 years. As he read the paper,…

As Warming and Drought Increase, A New Case for Ending Big Dams

As the hydroelectric dam industry tries to reposition itself as a climate change solution, more and more evidence shows that climate change actually undermines the case for hydro dams. Gone are the days when hydropower was considered the predominant…

On the Klamath, Dam Removal May Come Too Late to Save the Salmon

The removal of four obsolescent hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River in the U.S. Pacific Northwest, expected in 2023 or 2024, should have been an occasion for celebration, recognizing an underdog campaign that managed to set in motion the biggest…

Op-Ed: Leaving California

(Ned Macksoud) After more than four agreeable decades in California, my wife and I became climate migrants — highly privileged ones, to be sure — and moved to Vermont. Our life in Marin County had turned into a tightrope walk. (Eric Rorer) In 2014,…

Op-Ed: Newsom promises while the delta dies

(Los Angeles Times) The West Coast’s most important estuary is dying, and Gov. Gavin Newsom has hastened its demise. As he took office two years ago, Newsom promised to generate voluntary agreements among farmers, environmentalists and government…

Op-Ed: Listen up: A Republican says we have to breach four Snake River dams

(Ted S. Warren / Associated Press) For a conservative Republican, U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho did something extraordinary last month. By unveiling a proposal for a giant Pacific Northwest infrastructure overhaul that includes breaching four…

July 2000

[Photography] Untitled [Letters] Letters [Notebook] Natural selection [Harper’s Index] Harper’s index [Article] Running dry What happens when the world no longer has enough freshwater? [Article] World world How I learned to stop worrying and love the…

Op-Ed: Treat fossil fuels like nukes. Endorse a new nonproliferation treaty

( Los Angeles Times) The Los Angeles City Council is poised to endorse a call for a global Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. Approval could make Los Angeles the first U.S. city — New York is also in the running — to sign on to the treaty…

Op-Ed: A victory for salmon, two tribes and the Klamath River

(Los Angeles Times ) After an uphill two-decade-long struggle in one of the nation’s most contentious watersheds, campaigners in the Klamath River Basin moved to the brink of a momentous, well-deserved victory Tuesday. PacifiCorp, a Pacific Northwest…

Op-Ed: One water district is trying to make sure agriculture cleans up its own mess

(Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times) A Central California water board is poised to do something rare in American agriculture: It is trying to establish enforcement mechanisms — not just toothless regulations — to limit the use of farm…

Op-Ed: Warren Buffett can save the Klamath River Basin. Will he?

(Jeff Barnard / Associated Press ) It should not take pleas to Warren Buffett, the billionaire leader of the Berkshire Hathaway holding company, to save the wobbling deal to take down four obsolete dams on the Klamath River. But that is what the…

Op-Ed: This reform of Proposition 13 is needed now more than ever

(Jae C. Hong / Associated Press) Proposition 15, the November ballot measure that addresses California’s rickety property tax system, has been in the works for five years. Its creators could have had no advance knowledge of the coronavirus pandemic.…

Op-Ed: The White House wants to give farmworkers who put food on your table a dire pay cut

(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) The Trump administration has found a characteristically churlish way to thank the nation’s foreign guest farmworkers for performing arduous, dangerous work in the face of the coronavirus: It wants to lower their…