A vehicle makes its way through a flooded street of Milford, Connecticut

Reuters

Beginning today I’m excited to introduce a new thing here at Grist: monthly themes!

As you may surmise, this is something that will happen every month. And every month has its own theme.

You can’t hum our themes. (At least I think.) But you’ll be able to see them play out each month in different aspects of our coverage, our posts, our tweets and Facebook postings, our chats, and everything else we do.

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Our theme for November is: What’s next for the climate? Now that we know who’ll be sitting in the White House and running Congress come 2013, and now that we’ve seen a devastating storm pummel our most populous city, it’s time to take stock.

We’ll have our own Grist team as well as smart observers and movement leaders weigh in on what’s going to happen — and what should be happening — as the Earth’s warming becomes an ever more tangible presence in our lives.

Think of it as our post-election hangover survival guide. In fact, that’s one of the pieces we’ve got in the works. Here’s a smattering of the other stuff we’ve got on tap:

  • Bill McKibben and other environmental leaders lay out their visions for the next year’s conversation around climate.
  • U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) explains his carbon-tax bill.
  • Alex Steffen will debut Carbon Zero, his vision for how the city of the future can solve today’s climate dilemmas.
  • Author Steven Johnson talks with us about his new Future Perfect and what the “peer progressive” movement has to offer the climate.
  • What sort of effect will the so-called fiscal cliff negotiations have on clean energy, green jobs, and the environment?

You can find all of our theme-related pieces here.

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We’ll do our best to pull together the strands of this theme and those to follow — and, this being Grist, to keep them funny wherever we can. As we do all this, we want to hear from you, of course. In comments below, or in email, by telepathy — whatever works for you! — tell us how you think we should approach this month’s theme, and what other themes you think we should be tackling in coming months.