Articles by Staff Writer Jake Bittle
Jake Bittle is a staff writer at Grist, covering climate change, energy, and natural disasters. He is the author of The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration. He is writing a book about Kern County, California, and is currently a New America fellow.
All Articles
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The elected officials making political hay from disasters
Hello everyone, and welcome back to State of Emergency. I’m Jake, and today we’re going to be talking about how a politician’s disaster response can influence voter attitudes and election outcomes. In July 2022, a storm dropped more than 14 inches of rain on Kentucky, sending flash floods rolling through the mountainous counties in the […]
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![FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell looks on during a House of Representatives hearing in July of 2023.]()
![FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell looks on during a House of Representatives hearing in July of 2023.]()
Biden’s FEMA director tried to fix the agency. Did she succeed?
In an exclusive interview, Biden FEMA chief Deanne Criswell discusses her attempts to create a “very different” disaster agency.
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![An Amazon Web Services data center situated near single-family homes in Stone Ridge, Virginia. Northern Virginia is the largest data center market in the world.]()
![An Amazon Web Services data center situated near single-family homes in Stone Ridge, Virginia. Northern Virginia is the largest data center market in the world.]()
Amazon says it’s going ‘water positive’ — but there’s a problem
The company’s pledge to conserve water at its data centers doesn’t account for the thirsty power plants that keep them running.
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Lessons from Houston’s Katrina response
Hello everyone, and welcome back to State of Emergency. I’m Jake Bittle, and today we’re going to be talking about the lasting political impact of one of the worst natural disasters in American history. When we talk about the impacts of climate change in the United States, and in particular the racial dimension of those […]
