As 2020 comes to a close, we're taking a look back at some of our best reporting on the environment.

The American landscape has become 48 times more toxic to insects since the 1990s, a shift largely fueled by rising use of neonicotinoid insecticides.

Banned in the EU, a sophisticated information war has kept these insecticides on the U.S. market. https://t.co/fQxUoqDJqr
Amid California's severe wildfires, grape growers in Sonoma County got exemptions to send in farmworkers who have few alternatives or options for support into fire evacuation zones. https://t.co/5ag87KQZ2H
With Trump's election, a small and previously marginalized group of toxics apologists suddenly took control over health and environmental regulations, ushering in higher profits for polluters and higher cancer rates for the American people. https://t.co/kGx4P35Cbi
Steven Donziger won a multibillion-dollar judgment against Chevron in Ecuador. The company sued him in New York — as of December, he has been under house arrest for over 500 days. https://t.co/JFctNRmd4f
After Canadian police raided a camp to defend the Coastal GasLink pipeline, protesters shut down ports, roads and railways from Vancouver to Saskatchewan, and a blockade set up by Indigenous-led protesters halted commuter rail between Montreal and Toronto. https://t.co/NWsJpPqZMs
Contractors working for the Trump administration blew apart a mountain on protected lands in southern Arizona to make way for the border wall along a tract of Sonoran Desert wilderness long celebrated as one of America’s great ecological treasures. https://t.co/r9yiebuLR0
Corporations are developing creative means to funnel millions of dollars to local law enforcement groups. This funding has often been paired with increasingly elaborate private security and propaganda operations. https://t.co/uCQnXy4nW6
“It’s money invested in maintaining the license to pollute.”

Since China’s policy change on scrap plastic, the U.S., Australia, and many wealthy European nations have been exporting their waste to other countries that are far less able to deal with it. https://t.co/VgN68IjEeb
A Message From the Future II: The Years of Repair

The pandemic exposed the cruelty of the system that got us into this crisis, but it also provided the inspiration to build a better world.

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1/“What would need to be true for you to….X”

Why is this the most powerful question you can ask when attempting to reach an agreement with another human being or organization?

A thread, co-written by @deanmbrody:


2/ First, “X” could be lots of things. Examples: What would need to be true for you to

- “Feel it's in our best interest for me to be CMO"
- “Feel that we’re in a good place as a company”
- “Feel that we’re on the same page”
- “Feel that we both got what we wanted from this deal

3/ Normally, we aren’t that direct. Example from startup/VC land:

Founders leave VC meetings thinking that every VC will invest, but they rarely do.

Worse over, the founders don’t know what they need to do in order to be fundable.

4/ So why should you ask the magic Q?

To get clarity.

You want to know where you stand, and what it takes to get what you want in a way that also gets them what they want.

It also holds them (mentally) accountable once the thing they need becomes true.

5/ Staying in the context of soliciting investors, the question is “what would need to be true for you to want to invest (or partner with us on this journey, etc)?”

Multiple responses to this question are likely to deliver a positive result.