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.

President Joe Biden climate change
President Joe Biden delivers remarks on his proposed budget for fiscal year 2024, Thursday, March 9, 2023, at the Finishing Trades Institute in Philadelphia. (Credit: White House Photo by Hannah Foslien)

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.

Howls of outrage met the Biden administration decision to allow Arctic oil drilling at the same time it pursues the most climate-friendly agenda of any American president. How can this conflict in priorities be explained?

Keep reading...Show less
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.
borneo coal energy climate
commons.wikimedia.org

US backs Indonesian oil refinery despite pledge to end fossil fuel finance

The US has been accused of "breaking" a key climate financing commitment by approving almost $100m in support for an overseas fossil fuel project.

spray bottle cara delevingne
Image by günther from Pixabay

Cara Delevingne advertises a face mist made from hydrogen production

The English model lent her face to Swedish energy company Vattenfall, using a beauty product designed to illustrate the cleanliness of its hydrogen production.
california urban drilling health

California bill would hit oil companies with $1 million penalty for health impacts

The first of its kind legislation holds companies liable for illness from urban drilling.

Biden admin launches $11B program to electrify rural America

The Agriculture Department is kicking off the awards process for nearly $11 billion in funding to electrify and decarbonize rural parts of the United States.

western wildfires oil companies climate
Photo by Thom Milkovic on Unsplash

Oil companies’ carbon led to vast wildfire damage, researchers find

The world’s top corporate carbon emitters are responsible for more than a third of the area burned by wildfires in the western United States and southwestern Canada since the 1980s, a new study says.

Private investment needed to ramp up climate adaptations in infrastructure: Report

A new report by the Canadian Climate Institute says private capital is needed to invest in climate adaptation infrastructure as extreme weather events like fires and floods become more acute by the year.

From our Newsroom
oil and gas wells pollution

What happens if the largest owner of oil and gas wells in the US goes bankrupt?

Diversified Energy’s liabilities exceed its assets, according to a new report, sparking concerns about whether taxpayers will wind up paying to plug its 70,000 wells.

Paul Ehrlich

Paul Ehrlich: A journey through science and politics

In his new book, the famous scientist reflects on an unparalleled career on our fascinating, ever-changing planet.

oil and gas california environmental justice

Will California’s new oil and gas laws protect people from toxic pollution?

California will soon have the largest oil drilling setbacks in the U.S. Experts say other states can learn from this move.

popular stories 2022

Our 5 most popular reads from 2022

A corpse, woodworking dangers, plastic titans ... revisit the stories that stuck with our readers this past year.

Pittsburgh environmental

What I learned reporting on environmental health in Pittsburgh in 2022

For a lot of people, 2022 felt like the first “normal” year since 2020. It didn’t for me.

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