Contributing Writers

As President Biden convenes a major climate summit, we speak with two leading climate activists from Africa about the “climate debt” rich countries owe the Global South and the major emissions cuts still needed in order to avert the worst effects of the planetary emergency.

We look at the link between migration and the climate emergency, which studies have estimated could displace over 200 million people by 2050, including many in Central American countries such as Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. Last year, two hurricanes, Iota and Eta, devastated the region and forced thousands to flee north.

The White House convened a virtual summit on the climate crisis this week, with 40 leaders representing the world’s major economies pledging cuts to greenhouse gas emissions. President Joe Biden said the U.S. would cut its emissions by at least 50% below 2005 levels by the end of the decade — nearly double the target set by the Obama administration six years ago. Biden’s pledge fulfills “a basic requirement of the U.S.

Mourners gathered in Minnesota Thursday for the funeral of Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man who was shot dead by a white police officer during a traffic stop in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center. Daunte’s mother, Katie Wright, fought back tears as she remembered her son. “When he walked in the room, he lit up the room. He was a brother, a jokester, and he was loved by so many. He’s going to be so missed.” We air excerpts of Wright’s funeral service.

A Minnesota jury’s conviction of former police officer Derek Chauvin on three counts for murdering George Floyd does not go far enough in dismantling police brutality and state-sanctioned violence, says historian and author Khalil Gibran Muhammad. “We know that while the prosecution was performing in such a way to make the case that Derek Chauvin was a rogue actor, the truth is that policing should have been on trial in that case,” Muhammad says.

On Earth Day, we speak with two of the more than two dozen Indigenous authors of a new book that looks at the history of resistance against colonialism and capitalism and lays out a vision for the future to address the climate crisis.

We look at the state of the pandemic and vaccine rollout in the United States and around the world with Dr. Peter Hotez, co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. Dr. Hotez is part of a team at Baylor University that is working with a private Indian company to develop a low-cost COVID-19 vaccine. The task of developing a simple vaccine is “daunting,” Dr.

We go to Mumbai, India, for an update on the state of crisis in the country as COVID-19 cases surge and hospitals run out of oxygen. India recently recorded 315,000 new cases in a single day, the highest daily toll in any country since the start of the pandemic, but Prime Minister Narendra Modi has continued to hold large campaign rallies.

Authorities in Indianapolis say the mother of Brandon Hole, the former FedEx employee who shot and killed eight people at a company facility last Thursday, called police in 2020 to say her son might commit “suicide by cop,” prompting them to seize his pump-action shotgun. But officials say they did not push for Hole to have a hearing under Indiana’s “red flag” law, which allows police or courts to seize guns from people who show warning signs of violence.