Zahra Hirji: SEAL Award Winner 2021

A selection of this year’s best environmental journalism

Prevent Catastrophic Climate Change Or Keep Burning Coal? You Can’t Have Both

“Countries can either keep using coal at current levels or limit future warming to the 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) target of the Paris climate agreement. It’s impossible to do both. But this scientific reality has been an elephant in the room of high-level international climate negotiations for years — until now.”
Source: BuzzFeed News (Approx. 9 minutes)

“Enough Of Treating Nature Like A Toilet”: The UN Leader Is Fed Up With Climate Inaction

“We face a choice: Either we stop it or it stops us,” Guterres continued. “And it’s time to say enough — enough of brutalizing biodiversity, enough of killing ourselves with carbon, enough of treating nature like a toilet, enough of burning and drilling and mining our way deeper. We are digging our own graves.”
Source: BuzzFeed News (Approx. 3 minutes)

Congress Might Blow Its Biggest Opportunity To Tackle The Climate Crisis

“The two pieces of legislation under debate are the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the larger reconciliation package, also called the Build Back Better plan. The goal is to pass the two bills together. The Senate already passed the infrastructure plan in August, but the House then postponed a September vote on it because the reconciliation package was still up in the air.”
Source: BuzzFeed News (Approx. 6 minutes)

A Record-Breaking Heat Wave Sent Hundreds Of People To The Hospital In Washington And Oregon

“The record-shattering extreme heat we’re experiencing is just the latest example of our climate crisis and how it’s impacting human health now,” Jeff Duchin, a health officer for Public Health in Seattle and King County, Washington, said in a statement. “Climate change is a health emergency and reducing greenhouse gas emissions is literally a matter of life and death.”
Source: BuzzFeed News (Approx. 4 minutes)

The Texas Winter Storm And Power Outages Killed Hundreds More People Than The State Says

“Our analysis, reviewed by three independent experts, suggests that between 426 and 978 more people than expected died in Texas in the week ending February 20 alone. Our best estimate is that 702 people were killed by the storm that week. Even the lowest end of the range is almost three times the number officials have acknowledged. Neighboring states that were hit hard by the winter storm but did not experience the widespread power outages seen in Texas did not show a spike in deaths.”
Source: BuzzFeed News (Approx. 25minutes)

Read the SEAL Awards 2021 Environmental Journalism Award Announcement