Kerry Connelly

Direct mortal effects of climate change include heat waves, which have already caused thousands of human deaths by a combination of heat and humidity (wet-bulb temperature >35°C, such that the human body is physically unable to cool itself with perspiration). Intermediate causes of death (between direct and indirect) involve crop failures, droughts, flooding, extreme weather, wildfires, and rising seas. (source) TL;DR: It’s more likely than you might be willing to accept.

Oscar season always makes me think of my childhood, because one of the highlights of my youth was walking into the cool air of the movie theater, gorging myself on buttery popcorn and losing myself in the stories on the screen. I'm old enough to say I saw Grease and Saturday Night Fever as a double feature for a whopping five dollars.

When it comes to race, most White Americans are obsessed with two things: defending our own inherent goodness and maintaining our own comfort levels. Too often, this means white people assume that to be racist, one has to be openly hateful and willfully discriminatory-you know, a bad person. And we know we're good, Christian people, right? But you don't have to be wearing a white hood or shouting racial epithets to be complicit in America's racist history and its ongoing systemic inequality.