Author Archive

Robinson Meyer

Staff writer

Robinson Meyer
Robinson Meyer is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of the newsletter The Weekly Planet, and the co-founder of the COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic.
Ideas

The Final Pandemic Surge Is Crashing Over America

For the first time, the U.S. recorded 1 million COVID-19 cases in one week.

Ideas

The Fog of the Pandemic Is Returning

Millions of coronavirus tests may be happening without their results being made public.

Ideas

America Is Giving Up on the Pandemic

Businesses are reopening. Protests are erupting nationwide. But the virus isn’t done with us.

Ideas

The State and Federal Data on COVID-19 Testing Don’t Match Up

The CDC has quietly started releasing nationwide numbers. But they contradict what states themselves are reporting.

Ideas

There’s One Big Reason the U.S. Economy Can’t Safely Reopen

The country faces the same problem today that it did two months ago: There are not enough tests to contain the virus.

Ideas

A New Statistic Reveals Why America’s Coronavirus Numbers Are Flat

Few figures tell you anything useful about how COVID-19 has spread through the U.S. Here’s one that does.

Ideas

How the Coronavirus Became an American Catastrophe

The death and economic damage sweeping the United States could have been avoided—if only we had started testing for the virus sooner.

Threats

The US Has Tested Fewer than 5,000 People for the Coronavirus — and That's a Big Problem

By this point in its outbreak, South Korea had tested more than 100,000 people. The lack of data hurts U.S. government, corporate, and personal attempts to make decisions.

Threats

The Strongest Evidence Yet That America Is Botching Coronavirus Testing

“I don’t know what went wrong,” a former CDC chief told The Atlantic.

Ideas

Trump Isn’t a Climate Denier. He’s Worse.

Leaving the Paris Agreement and other efforts to slow the globe's transition from fossil fuels will ultimately undermine U.S. power.

Threats

Brazil's Bolsonaro Is Endangering the World

As a store of carbon, the Amazon is fundamental to the survival of every person. If destroyed or degraded, the giant rain forest is simply beyond humanity’s ability to get back.

Ideas

No One’s Going to Be Happy Giving Up Land to Fight Climate Change

Here are seven ways of understanding the IPCC’s newest climate warning.

Threats

No Climate Event in 2,000 Years Compares to What’s Happening Now

While parts of the world have warmed or cooled in the past, modern climate change is happening just about everywhere at the same time.

Ideas

The Next ‘South China Sea’ Is Covered in Ice

The State Department will soon have a permanent presence in Greenland for the first time since the 1950s.

Threats

Greenland Is Falling Apart

Its ice sheet, which holds enough water to raise sea level by 25 feet, may now be melting from the bottom.

Threats

Why Publish a Dire Federal Climate Report on Black Friday?

In a massive new report, federal scientists contradict President Trump and assert that climate change is an intensifying danger to the United States. Too bad it came out on a holiday.

Threats

Dire New UN Climate Report Lays Out a Way Ahead

The battle to prevent climate change has already been lost. But the battle to blunt its effects has just begun.

Threats

Shrugging Toward Doomsday

Experts warn that the world is now as dangerous as it was at the height of the Cold War. Many Americans already know it.

Threats

Trump’s Paris Decision Hurts More than the Climate

America’s withdrawal will leave the world hotter, more erratic, politically fractured, and facing toward Beijing.