Rebecca Hersher
Rebecca Hersher (she/her) is a reporter on NPR's Science Desk, where she reports on outbreaks, natural disasters, and environmental and health research. Since coming to NPR in 2011, she has covered the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, embedded with the Afghan army after the American combat mission ended, and reported on floods and hurricanes in the U.S. She's also reported on research about puppies. Before her work on the Science Desk, she was a producer for NPR's Weekend All Things Considered in Los Angeles.
Hersher was part of the NPR team that won a Peabody award for coverage of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, and produced a story from Liberia that won an Edward R. Murrow award for use of sound. She was a finalist for the 2017 Daniel Schorr prize; a 2017 Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting fellow, reporting on sanitation in Haiti; and a 2015 NPR Above the Fray fellow, investigating the causes of the suicide epidemic in Greenland.
Prior to working at NPR, Hersher reported on biomedical research and pharmaceutical news for Nature Medicine.
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Cutting greenhouse gas emissions rapidly and immediately will save lives, livelihoods and ecosystems around the world, scientists say. And there are lots of ways to go about it. -
Climate change is making flooding and wind damage from hurricanes more common in the U.S. That means dangerous storms are getting more frequent, even though the total number of storms isn't changing.
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There is one number that the Environmental Protection Agency relies on to decide which climate policies to pursue. So why does that number assume the lives of richer people are worth more?
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Oil refineries release billions of pounds of pollution into waterways each year, according to regulatory data. NPR found that pollution is concentrated near places where people of color live.
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The connection between weather and climate change has never been clearer. And simultaneous extremes, such as hot and dry weather together, are particularly dangerous.
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Climate goals can feel distant. But climate change is happening right now. Speed up the benefits for taking action, psychologists say, if you want leaders and others to pay attention and act.
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This year's hurricane season got off to a very slow start. But it only takes one big storm to wreak havoc. And climate change makes such storms more likely.
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Scientists and forecasters are trying to figure out how to talk about the connection between climate change and severe weather. It could have big impacts on how people think about global warming.
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Delegates reached a last-minute deal to pay vulnerable countries for damages caused by climate change. But the final agreement does not put humanity on track to avoid catastrophic warming.
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Despite new agreements to limit methane emissions and beef up weather forecasts, vulnerable countries aren't getting any more help and the Earth is headed for catastrophic warming.
