Author: <span>Clifton Staples</span>

Including Everyone in the Conversation about the Climate Crisis

Everyone can feel that the days are getting warmer.  Everyone can see that the rains are falling faster and the ocean is rising higher. We all see that the climate is changing, but we don’t all know how to prepare.  Even if you had the motivation to do so, where …

Hope and Resilience in the Face of Climate Change: My Year at the Hudson River Estuary Program

When most people think of Climate Change, they imagine things like starving polar bears on thinning sea ice, or a wreck of debris after a major hurricane on the Gulf Coast.  This is certainly one aspect of the Climate Crisis.  However, there’s another more personal and immediate reality unfolding every …

Decoding the Language of the Flood: how terminology influences flood-risk perception

    It’s 2011 and we’re in Binghamton, New York. People here are mostly recovered from the massive flood of 2006 that displaced 20,000 people.  Foundations have been repaired, carpets replaced, and homes rebuilt.  Finally, people are feeling secure again. After all, the flood of 2006 was what’s known as …

A Dry Bathroom for a Dry Land

I duck under the tin roof of the cooking enclosure and my lungs immediately fill with smoke.  Gabby is explaining how they use the ash from the cooking fires in their newly installed dry bathrooms at the #131 Secondary School of San Miguel Suchixtepec.  We are 8,000 feet above sea …