James Pomerantz: Who cares how far along Iran is in building a functional nuclear weapon—they are way ahead of schedule in celebrating National Tree Planting Day. While we in the U.S. don’t observe Arbor Day until the last Friday in April, today is Iran’s national day to pick up a shovel and care for all things arboreal. In recognition of the holiday, here is a slide show of Iranian tree photographs from the archive of Magnum Photos: http://nyr.kr/Vv9fIn

(Source: newyorker.com)

Gary Marcus looks at “What Should We Be Worried About?”, a collection of essays by 150 top scientists and writers: “it may sound comforting to say that ‘the only thing we need to worry about is worry itself’ (as several contributors suggested), but anybody who has lived through Chernobyl or Fukushima knows otherwise… many of the essays are insightful, and bring attention to a wide range of challenges for which society is not yet adequately prepared…” http://nyr.kr/1084vun

In Beijing, we talk about air purifiers the way that teen-age boys talk about cars. More than once, I’ve gone into a friend’s apartment and put an admiring hand on a top-of-the-line, IQAir HealthPro, and said, “Niiiice.” (The cost? About nine hundred bucks per room.) At our house we have a lesser brand, and the following will sound like a joke, but I’m sorry to say it’s not: the filters for these machines are so expensive that we get ours under the table, through a connection that my wife has involving a stern Russian woman from Vladivostok. How she gets them, I don’t ask and she doesn’t tell…

Evan Osnos on the record-breaking air pollution in Beijing: http://nyr.kr/TVGfYl

Photograph by ChinaFotoPress/Getty.

Nina Berman: “This image is part of a project I’ve been doing on shale-gas drilling and fracking. The picture shows contaminated water from a kitchen faucet in Bradford County, Pennsylvania. The water is discolored and is bubbling methane. It’s undrinkable. Many people in shale-gas country have experienced contaminated drinking water following drilling and fracking operations. This so-called clean energy, billed by energy companies as an environmentally sound solution to heat trapping fossil fuels, is actually very dirty to obtain and transport. I like the purple nail polish and that the cup is plastic. In my mind, these elements speak to the connection between polluting energy and our own lifestyles, which are enabled through petroleum based products.”

Click-through for a slideshow looking at photographers and other visual artists who are challenging viewers to consider the dangers of inaction by capturing the effects of extreme weather and a warming world: http://nyr.kr/UCR7Jh

Scott Goldsmith: “This is a truck-driving class in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, at a technical school. This woman is on video, saying, ‘After I graduate from this class, I will not work for the gas companies after knowing what they do. This was my introduction to horizontal hydraulic fracturing, a.k.a. fracking. After doing extensive research on the subject, I was shocked to find out how horrible it was for our land, water and air. I was saddened by how the gas companies try to hide the damage they are doing not only to the environment but also to the communities they polarize… As fracking increases around the world, an increase in truck driving is one of many ways the extraction of natural gas from shale leads to extensive and growing climate change problem.”

Click-through for a slideshow looking at photographers and other visual artists who are challenging viewers to consider the dangers of inaction by capturing the effects of extreme weather and a warming world: http://nyr.kr/UCR7Jh

“Not even Superstorm Sandy has been able to grab our collective national attention long enough for anyone to think about taking serious action to combat global warming. ‘We’re going in precisely in the wrong direction,’ Elizabeth Kolbert says on this week’s Political Scene podcast. ‘[The Greenland ice sheet] is now melting at five times the rate it was in the nineteen-nineties. That has pretty significant implications for sea-level rise all over the world.’”

(Source: newyorker.com / The New Yorker)

Listen to the podcast of “No More Magical Thinking,” David Remnick’s Comment about the climate-change challenge President Obama faces in his second term.

In Comment this week, David Remnick urges President Obama to address climate change in his second term: http://nyr.kr/Z02fmg