Grist

To advance his climate agenda, President Biden has prioritized one scheme above all others: infrastructure subsidies. The massive spending packages his administration pushed through Congress over the past four years — the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act — provided an infusion of dollars for green energy developers to erect solar farms, geothermal plants, and new transmission lines to carry clean electricity into American homes.

Permitting reform is back. Is the latest deal worth it?

Maui County, HI

The one-story home 100 yards from Lāhainā Harbor where Tiare Lawrence grew up was a typical Hawaiʻi plantation home, a historic architectural style with a wide-hipped roof, a wooden light blue exterior, and a purple bougainvillea bush in the front yard. It’s where her grandmother grew up,...

A year after the worst wildfire in modern US history, the people of Maui try to heal

This story was originally published by Vox and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The Park Fire, a wildfire in Northern California spanning just over 400,000 acres, has rapidly become the fourth largest in the state’s history, prompting evacuations in four counties. The fire, which...

Wildfires will put even more pressure on the country’s housing crisis

Alaska State

Alaska’s permafrost is melting and revealing high levels of mercury that could threaten Alaska Native peoples. That’s according to a new study released earlier this month by the University of Southern California, analyzing sediment from melted permafrost along Alaska’s Yukon River. Researchers already knew that the Arctic...

Thawing Alaskan permafrost is unleashing more mercury, confirming scientists’ worst fears

Mississippi State

Jackson, MS

In the summer of 2015, officials in Jackson, Mississippi sent the state a series of water samples taken at different locations throughout the city’s public water system. Residents had complained for weeks about the low pressure in their taps, and the city wanted to test the distribution system to check for possible contamination. Sure enough, regulators in the Mississippi State Department of Health, or MSDH, identified elevated lead levels in the water supply. But rather than immediately informing the city about the public health risk, they sat on the data for half a year. Unwittingly, residents continued to drink toxic water.

Mississippi officials saw the Jackson water crisis coming — and did nothing

An estimated 880,000 abandoned oil and gas wells dot the United States. These orphaned wells, some of which were deserted as long as a century ago, can leak toxic oil and gas into the groundwater and air. They also emit methane, the planet-warming primary component of natural gas. In 2021, Congress appropriated $4.7 billion to help clean up the mess by giving states the money they need to seal the wells and remediate their surroundings. Over the last two years, the federal Department of Interior has doled out nearly $1 billion of this total. As of March, more than 7,700 wells have been remediated as a result.

States want to clean up leaky oil wells. Well-intentioned laws are getting in the way.

Colorado State

Louisville, CO

This story is part of State of Emergency, a Grist series exploring how climate disasters are impacting voting and politics, and is published with support from the CO2 Foundation. As the one-year anniversary of the 2021 Marshall Fire approached, Kyle Brown was serving as a city councilman in Louisville, Colorado,...

How the Marshall Fire sparked a political transformation in Colorado

Minnesota State

Vice President Kamala Harris has tapped Tim Walz, the Democratic governor of Minnesota, as her running mate following President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from the race last month. Walz’s recent comments about former President Donald Trump and Senator J.D. Vance, particularly his remarks about the opposition’s “weird” qualities, helped put the little-known progressive on the national map.

The climate vice president? What Tim Walz brings to the Harris ticket.

This story was originally published by Canary Media. The U.S. power grid is overburdened and under-resourced — and the Biden administration just announced a major investment aimed at helping solve those problems. The Department of Energy has offered $2.2 billion to eight projects across 18 states that could expand...

Biden administration announces more than $2 billion in grants to boost US power grid

This story is a collaboration between Grist and el Centro de Periodismo Investigativo. It was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism. Lee esta nota en español. Henry Morales woke up in the emergency room in Salinas, Puerto Rico, not knowing where he was. A doctor appeared beside him and gestured toward a dark-haired woman with a worried expression. “Do you know who this is?” he asked. Morales blinked, but didn’t answer. Words seemed to belong to some faraway place, and he was too tired to reach for them. “Who is this?” the doctor repeated. After a few minutes, Henry heard himself respond. “That is my wife,” he said.

‘Dulce’: How a sweet-smelling chemical upended life in Salinas, Puerto Rico

In Kingston, Jamaica, by secret ballot, an election was held earlier this month. The lands whose governance was at stake are vaster than any nation, and it’s possible the consequences of the vote will be felt for eons. More than half of the world’s ocean floor is under the jurisdiction of an intergovernmental body called the International Seabed Authority, or ISA. Its members have spent the last three decades in deliberations with a single purpose: crafting an international legal regime for a field of commercial activity that does not yet exist. Their mandate is to determine how — and whether — to allow the nations of the Earth to mine the sea.

Humans know very little about the deep sea. That may not stop us from mining it.

On Christmas Day, 1971, for the first time in Homo sapiens’ roughly 300,000 years of hobbling about, humanity’s demands on the Earth exceeded what the planet can provide in a year. That practice has continued, and worsened, for the last half century. Since the early 2000s, the nonprofit...

We’re in debt to the Earth. How can we repay it?

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Emily Standley Allard

In the realm of astrology, each zodiac sign brings its unique set of characteristics, strengths, and challenges to a relationship. While the concept of being "challenging" is subjective and can vary greatly from one individual to another, in this context, we'll define it as someone who more sensitive, needy or overwhelming. Certain zodiac signs are known for their intense, dominant, or challenging personality traits that might not mesh well with someone seeking a calmer, more relaxed, more nurturing connection. Here's an exploration of the zodiac signs that might pose a challenge for those who consider themselves more on the sensitive side or simply seek a less turbulent relationship.

5 Most Challenging Signs to Date or Have a Relationship With

In the mystical realm where astrology intersects with spiritual beliefs, certain zodiac signs are thought to possess inherent qualities that offer protection against malevolent entities and negative energies. This intriguing concept has roots in ancient astrology and cultural traditions worldwide, where the alignment of the stars at one's birth is believed to influence not only personality traits but also spiritual protection. This post delves into the 5 celestial shields of the zodiac, highlighting signs that are particularly noted for their protective aura against evil spirits.

5 Zodiac Signs That Possess a Protective Aura Against Evil Spirits

Pittsburgh, PA

This story was originally published by The 19th. Angela Girol has been teaching fourth grade in Pittsburgh for over two decades. Over the years she’s noticed a change at her school: It’s getting hotter. Some days temperatures reach 90 degrees Fahrenheit in her classroom which, like many on...

Extreme heat is making schools hotter — and learning harder

In 2019, construction began on a natural gas pipeline that would cut through the unceded homelands of the Wet’suwet’en Nation in western Canada. Wet’suwet’en land and water protectors were forbidden from coming near the construction area operated by Coastal Gaslink, owned by TC Energy. However, the project was met almost immediately with resistance and gained international attention due to the tribe’s use of traditional law. Under Wet’suwet’en law, the pipeline trespassed on Wet’suwet’en land. With no treaty signed with Canada or Britain, Wet’suwet’en argue that their laws are still applicable — a political status recognized by the Canadian supreme court — and they have the right to evict Coastal Gaslink, and its pipeline, from its homelands.

Canada’s first ‘prisoner of conscience’ is an Indigenous land defender

Wildfire smoke, which contains harmful particulate matter and toxic gases, is widely understood to be an acute threat to human health. As wildfires become more frequent and intense with worsening climate change, this knowledge has only become more widespread. This is particularly true for North Americans who have recently lived through some of the most devastating wildfire seasons in living memory — as in 2020, for example, when so much smoke blanketed the California Bay Area that it blocked out the sun and transformed the midday sky into a dull shade of orange.

The American West’s megafires are silencing birds

Simon Kitol’s 25-acre farm in western Kenya teems with maize, tomatoes, and beans, but also an invasive menace: Prosopis juliflora, better known as the mathenge plant. Its long roots steal water from his crops, and the shrub takes up valuable room for growing food. Kitol’s livestock also dine on the mathenge pods, which are loaded with sugar, causing even more problems.

This simple farming technique can capture carbon for thousands of years

Augusta, GA

As part of Grist and WABE’s yearlong collaboration to demystify the Georgia Public Service Commission, we hosted a Community Reporting Fellowship — a six-week training program in which fellows learned journalism skills and created a project about energy issues in their communities. Fellow Cassandra Loftlin, who lives in...

Voices of Vogtle: Four oral histories

Denver, CO

When Lois Brink’s kids were in elementary school, she remembers being struck by how uninviting their schoolyard was. She described it as “scorched earth” — little more than a dirt field coated in “I don’t know how many decades of weed retardant” and some aging play equipment. But Brink, a landscape architect and professor at the University of Colorado Denver, didn’t just see a problem. She saw fertile ground for a solution. Over the next dozen years, she helped lead a transformation of nearly 100 elementary school grounds across Denver into more vibrant, greener spaces, dubbed “Learning Landscapes.”

How greener schoolyards benefit kids — and the whole community

NewsBreak

Carbon credits are supposed to funnel money to poor countries. Do they?

Proponents of the voluntary carbon market say it’s a mechanism not only to advance sustainability goals, but also to funnel much-needed cash to some of the...

Carbon credits are supposed to funnel money to poor countries. Do they?

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