Sustainability Now! September 27th: Fire and Ice on the Roof of the World, with Jonathan Mingle, Independent journalist and science writer

Sustainability Now! Sunday, 5-6 PM, September 27th, 2026

We’ve all heard about the terrible Himalayan flash flood that traveled nearly 100 km down the Lende Kholā and Trishuli̇̄ Kholā rivers on the Nepal-Chinese border, devastating towns and villages along the way, killing at least 1,250 people and leaving more than 5,000 missing in the two countries.  The causes remain under investigation, but climate change appears to have played a major role in the disaster.  Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Jonathan Mingle, an independent journalist and author whose reporting and writing is focused on the science and politics of climate change, energy, health, and technology.  In 2015, he published  Fire and Ice: Soot, Solidarity, and Survival on the Roof of the World, in which he reported about the shrinking glaciers across the Himalayas and California, the role of black carbon in that shrinkage and the impacts on the people and nature who live there.  More recently, he published an essay, Mountains are Coming Undone,” in The New York Times (August 29, 2026).

For a detailed analysis of the disaster, see: “Rapid warming in the Himalaya exacerbates geohazard cascades beyond adaptation limits,” (WWA scientific report No. 92) World Weather Attribution. DOI: 10.25560/136420.