NPR

Floods, Wildfires And Students On The Street: Climate Change In 2019

Climate change-linked floods, storms and wildfires battered countries across the world in 2019. We look at the five biggest threads of the year.
Led by Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg (center), young activists and their supporters rally for action on climate change on September 27, 2019 in Montreal, Canada. (Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images)

Climate change is hard to talk about. Disastrous but slow-moving, it often takes a backseat to gripping headlines like this year's historic impeachment.

Still, there are flash points — a storm, a speech by a teenager — that bring the issue into focus.

2019 began with massive flooding in the U.S. and ended with a toothless climate summit. But this past year also saw unprecedented global activism led by young people that has "shaken us all to our cores," says environmental journalist Zoë Schlanger.

What did 2019 mean for climate change? We look at the five biggest threads of the year: worldwide activism; a wave of extreme weather events from the Mississippi River to Mozambique; a series of major United Nations reports on

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