Peter Dykstra: Journalists I’m thankful for

My third annual list of the over-achieving and under-thanked.

In 2020, I unintentionally started a tradition of celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday by thanking American environmental journalists and fellow travelers who deserve to be thanked.


Last year, I did a dozen more.

So here are the third annual Clean Dozen of men and women who do (or did) their jobs extraordinarily well.

Cynthia Barnett

Author of remarkable books about water in its most indelible forms: Rain, seashells, and water crises in the U.S., especially in her home state, Florida.

Rebecca Byerly 

A Force of Nature you’ve probably never heard of. A “backpack journalist” and ultramarathoner who’s traipsed through Libya and the Himalayas in search of stories about shrinking glaciers and the growing empowerment of women. This story about Kashmiri glaciers is a dozen years old, but you get the picture.

​Tom Henry 

Henry started warning about Lake Erie’s impending toxic algae crisis in 1993. It hit home for Henry’s Toledo Blade readership in 2014 when half a million people temporarily lost their drinking water source. I profiled him and several other prophets of eco-doom for Ensia in 2017.

Yasir Khan

So I cheated a little to include Khan, a Canadian national and Editor-in-Chief of the Thomson Reuters Foundation. They’re the charitable arm of a major news organization devoted to diversity in both staffing and content. Not bad for a former CNN intern of mine.

​Jay Letto 

Letto is the final third of a leadership triumvirate who guided the Society of Environmental Journalists through its successful first quarter century. If Beth Parke and Chris Bruggers, both now in well-deserved retirement, were interchangeably SEJ’s heroic Kirk and Spock, Letto continues to be its irascible Dr. Leonard McCoy, staging valuable annual conferences. May he continue to live long and (non-financially) prosper.

Michael Mann and Katharine Hayhoe

Ok, maybe not journalists, but these two have destroyed the myth that scientists working in politically contentious realms like climate science must not only avoid any discussion of the real world but be deadly dull about it. These two have led an overhaul of public science discussions, from social media and lecture halls to talkshows and courtrooms to book tours.

Miles O’Brien

The inevitable full disclosure is that O’Brien and I worked together on many a CNN project over the years and despite it all, remain good friends. His extraordinary talents in space, aviation, science, climate and environment reporting are on full display on marquee programs like Nova, Frontline, and NewsHour.

John Platt

Editor of The Revelator, a prolific news arm of the Center for Biological Diversity.

Sammy Roth and Ian James

I’m not sure which one is Batman and which one is Robin, but Roth and James have worked their way up the Western media food chain to superheroes on the water crisis. At the L.A. Times, they’ve reached ninja status on the I-Told-You-So scale.

Charles Seabrook 

Seabrook served for years as beat reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He wrote a Saturday column on Georgia wildlife for years more. His crowning achievement may have been a mostly-forgotten 1995 book, Red Clay, White Gold and Pink Cadillacs. Kaolin is the “white gold” at the heart of a ruthless billion-dollar mining industry in central Georgia.

I’m not just thankful for these people for their work and work ethic.

They make my list because they’re people I admire.

What journalists or science communicators are YOU thankful for? Let Peter know at pdykstra@ehn.org or @pdykstra.

Peter Dykstra is our weekend editor and columnist. His views do not necessarily represent those of Environmental Health News, The Daily Climate, or publisher Environmental Health Sciences.

In Alaska, tribal governments push for larger conservation role

Though the Copper River Valley has long offered this seemingly limitless supply of food, natural beauty, and reprieve, things are starting to change.

Senator Whitehouse & climate change

Senator Whitehouse puts climate change on budget committee’s agenda

For more than a decade, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse gave daily warnings about the mounting threat of climate change. Now he has a powerful new perch.
emissions climate migration disaster
Image by Myriams-Fotos from Pixabay

Looking for home in an overheating world: If emissions continue, will we all be migrants someday?

Where will we go to find safety from fire, floods, and extreme storms then? How long will those of us uprooted from our homes have to stay in evacuation sanctuaries? Will we ever find home again?

colorado river drought climate
Photo by Mike Newbry on Unsplash

The Grand Canyon and Colorado River Are in Crisis

As the planet warms, low snow is starving the Colorado River at its headwaters in the Rockies, and higher temperatures are pilfering more of it through evaporation.

Carbon dioxide is growing at near-record rate, NOAA reports

Despite rising awareness about global climate change and its devastating impacts, carbon dioxide levels keep treading in the wrong direction.

US deal could plug Turkmenistan’s colossal methane emissions

Turkmenistan was responsible for 184 “super-emitter” events in which the powerful greenhouse gas was released in 2022, the highest number in the world. One caused climate pollution equivalent to the rate of emissions from 67m cars.

SF recycled water drought
Photo by Jared Erondu on Unsplash

Beyond the yuck factor: Cities turn to ‘extreme’ water recycling

San Francisco is at the forefront of a movement to recycle wastewater from commercial buildings, homes, and neighborhoods and use it for toilets and landscaping. This decentralized approach, proponents say, will drive down demand in an era of increasing water scarcity.
drought climate crisis migration
Image by Penny from Pixabay

Climate crisis has stranded 600 million outside most livable environment

As conditions that best support life shift toward the poles, more than 600 million people are already living outside of a crucial “climate niche,” facing more extreme heat, rising food scarcity and higher death rates.
From our Newsroom
Supreme Court wetlands

Opinion: Supreme Court undoing 50 years’ worth of environmental progress

The Supreme Court has taken a brazen anti-regulatory turn. It’s our planet and health that will suffer.

healthcare sustainability

Reimagining healthcare to reduce pollution, tackle climate change and center justice

“We need to understand who is harmed by an economy that’s based on fossil fuels and toxic chemicals.”

plastic pollution

Recycling plastics “extremely problematic” due to toxic chemical additives: Report

Negotiations are underway for a global plastics treaty and parties differ on the role of recycling.

UN plastics treaty

Opinion: UN plastics treaty should prioritize health and climate change

Delegates should push for a treaty that takes a full-lifecycle approach to plastic pollution.

halliburton fracking

How the “Halliburton Loophole” lets fracking companies pollute water with no oversight

Fracking companies used 282 million pounds of hazardous chemicals that should have been regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act from 2014 to 2021.

President Joe Biden climate change

Op-ed: Biden’s Arctic drilling go-ahead illustrates the limits of democratic problem solving

President Biden continues to deploy conventional tactics against the highly unconventional threat of climate change.

Stay informed: sign up for The Daily Climate newsletter
Top news on climate impacts, solutions, politics, drivers. Delivered to your inbox week days.