OILPOCALYPSE: The growing oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico is captured in this image from NASA’s (MODIS) instrument aboard the Terra satellite. This natural-color image acquired April 29, 2010 shows a twisting patch of oil nearly 125 km (78 mi) wide. Approximately 4 million barrels (170 million gallons) were released overall. (NASA Earth Observatory/Jesse Allen/University of Wisconsin SSEC)
The headlines of 2010 were driven by fossil fuel disasters — involving the dangers of extraction or the biblical might of the climate they have polluted. Hundreds of thousands of people died in climate disasters, and hundreds of millions more affected by floods, droughts, storms, and wildfires. Below is a small selection of the most striking and iconic news photography of 2010, from the BP disaster to the Pakistan floods, from Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson.
Meanwhile, polluters successfully blocked enactment of climate policy or oil industry regulation in the United States, as the Obama administration advanced health care reform and other legislative priorities.
OILPOCALYPSE: In this aerial photo taken in the Gulf of Mexico more than 50 miles southeast of Venice on Louisiana’s tip, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig is seen burning Wednesday, April 21, 2010. Eleven men working on the platform were killed, and 17 others injured. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
OILPOCALYPSE: A bird is mired in oil on the beach at East Grand Terre Island along the Louisiana coast on Thursday, June 3, 2010. Crude oil flowed from a hole in the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico for three months after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and sank on April 20th, 2010. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)
SUDAN DROUGHT: Two-year-old Dhoal, a child suffering from severe malnutrition, is swarmed with flies as he cries on a bed at a local hospital in the southeast Sudanese town of Akobo on April 10, 2010. The population in Akobo and the surrounding counties in the Jonglei state in southern Sudan are suffering from the effects of a devastating drought and tribal conflict. Aid officials have called Akobo the “hungriest place on earth,†after a survey showed that 46 percent of children under five are malnourished. (ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images)
RUSSIA BURNING: As central Russia suffered through its hottest summer in thousands of years, hundreds of wildfires swept the countryside, causing billions in damage. Russians here try to stop a fire from spreading near the village Golovanovo, Ryazan region, on August 5, 2010. (NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA/AFP/Getty Images)
TENNESSEE FLOOD: Lighthouse Christian School teacher Heather Harrell reacts after finding her grandmother’s Bible in her classroom that was destroyed by the flood in Antioch, Tennessee on Monday, May 3, 2010. (AP Photo/The Tennessean, Shelley Mays)
EUROPE FLOODS: After months of heavy rainfall caused some of the worst floods Europe has seen in decades, farmers help a horse to jump into an amphibious vehicle in flooded Juliszew village in central Poland at Wisla river on May 24, 2010. (JANEK SKARZYNSKI/AFP/Getty Images)
PAKISTAN FLOODS: Starting in July and lasting for months, some of the worst flooding in Pakistan’s history took place – at one point nearly one fifth of the country was underwater. Here, Pakistani flood victim Mohammed Nawaz hangs onto a moving raft as he is rescued by the Pakistan Navy August 10, 2010 in Sukkur, Pakistan. (Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)
PAKISTAN FLOODS: Pakistani villagers raise hands to get food dropped from an army helicopter at a flood-hit area of Kot Addu, in central Pakistan on Saturday, Aug. 7, 2010. (AP Photo/Khalid Tanveer)
KILLING KANSAS: A farmer works in a field southwest of WaKeeney, Kansas with ominous clouds looming overhead on Sunday, June 20, 2010. Severe weather battered parts of northwest Kansas with heavy rain, wind, hail and isolated tornadoes. (AP Photo/The Hays Daily News, Steven Hausler)
HAITI CHOLERA: A woman with cholera symptoms waits for treatment at a public hospital in Limbe village near Cap Haitian, Haiti on Monday Nov. 22, 2010. Thousands of people have been hospitalized for cholera across Haiti with symptoms including serious diarrhea, vomiting and fever and at least 1,100 people have died. (AP photo/Emilio Morenatti)
GUATEMALA SINKHOLE: A tremendous sinkhole caused by the heavy rains of Tropical Storm Agatha in Guatemala City was estimated to be 30 meters wide and over 60 meters deep. As the sinkhole formed, it swallowed a clothing factory about three miles from the site of a similar sinkhole three years earlier. The clothing factory had closed only an hour before it plunged into the Earth. (REUTERS/Casa Presidencial)
OILPOCALYPSE: Crude oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill washes ashore in Orange Beach, Alabama, Saturday, June 12, 2010. (AP Photo/Dave Martin)
ISRAEL WILDFIRE: A firefighting aircraft flies over a forest fire on Mount Carmel caused by record heat and drought near the northern city of Haifa December 3, 2010. (REUTERS/Stringer)
SOUTHWEST CHINA FLOODS: Officials inspect a train on a bridge after passengers were evacuated near Guanghan in southwest China’s Sichuan province on August 19, 2010 an area hit hard by flooding that plagued China for weeks. The train traveling in southwestern China derailed after floods destroyed the bridge, plunging at least two carriages into a river, but all passengers were safe. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)
KATRINA PLUS FIVE: The Press Park housing projects, which were flooded during Hurricane Katrina five years ago, sit abandoned August 26, 2010 in New Orleans, Louisiana. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
NORTHWEST CHINA FLOODS: A man grieves at the site of a mud slide that swept away part of the town of Zhouqu in northwest China’s Gansu province on Thursday Aug. 12, 2010. (AP Photo)
KENYA DROUGHT: Stefano De Luigi, a VII Network for Le Monde Magazine photographer based in Italy, won the second prize in the Contemporary Issues Singles category of the World Press Photo Contest 2010 for this photograph of a giraffe killed by drought in northeast Kenya that experts say is the worst in the country since 1996. (REUTERS/Stefano De Luigi/VII Network/Le Monde Magazine)
GLACIAL RETREAT: Mount Everest’s East Rongbuk Glacier has lost some 350 vertical feet of ice between August 1921 and October 2008. (David Breashears, © National Geographic)
JORDAN DROUGHT: After six years of drought, measuring sticks are useless at the Ziglab Dam in Jordan, built to catch water flowing west into the Jordan River for irrigation. Its reservoir has shrunk to a fifth of capacity and hasn’t filled since 2003, forcing Jordan to ration water. (Paolo Pellegrin, Magnum © National Geographic)
WEATHER BOMB: Visible satellite image of the October 26, 2010 superstorm taken at 5:32pm EDT. At the time, Bigfork, Minnesota was reporting the lowest pressure ever recorded in a U.S. non-coastal storm, 955 mb. (NASA/GSFC)
CLIMATE CONFERENCE: Greenpeace activists wield a giant life preserver 50 feet in diameter, appealing to reaching consensus at the Cancun climate change summit, held in Mexico between Nov. 29 and Dec. 10. (Photo by Elizabeth Ruiz / Greenpeace)
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