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Monitoring a ‘sea of trucks’ in Chicago
This coverage is made possible through a partnership between WBEZ and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization. Sign up for WBEZ newsletters to get local news you can trust. Earlier this month, Paulina Vaca stood at the corner of Pulaski Road and 41st Street, one of Chicago’s busiest intersections for...
Your guide to the 2024 UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues
This story is published as part of the Global Indigenous Affairs Desk, an Indigenous-led collaboration between Grist, High Country News, ICT, Mongabay, Native News Online, and APTN. In 2019, Makanalani Gomes stood on the slopes of Mauna Kea, the tallest mountain in Hawaiʻi, face-to-face with Honolulu riot police. For decades,...
Mexico City’s metro system is sinking fast. Yours could be next.
This story was originally published by WIRED and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. With its expanse of buildings and concrete, Mexico City may not look squishy — but it is. Ever since the Spanish conquistadors drained Lake Texcoco to make way for more urbanization, the land has been gradually compacting under the weight. It’s a phenomenon known as subsidence, and the result is grim: Mexico City is sinking up to 20 inches a year, unleashing havoc on its infrastructure.
The downballot races that could transform energy policy in Arizona and Nebraska
This story was originally published by Capital & Main. When it comes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and watershed protection, several downballot elections this year in a handful of states could have a major effect in the transition away from fossil fuel. The media tend to ignore such contests, which...
The lowly light bulb is the Biden administration’s latest climate-fighting tool
The Department of Energy, or DOE, announced Friday that it’s strengthening energy efficiency requirements for light bulbs in U.S. markets, in a move anticipated to save Americans $27 billion on their utility bills over 30 years. The DOE estimates that the new standards will prevent 70 million metric tons of carbon from being emitted over 30 years — equivalent to the annual emissions of 9 million homes.
A climate pledge verifier said it would allow more carbon offsets. Its staff revolted.
The world’s most prominent verification program for corporate climate pledges is reportedly in turmoil following its board of trustees’ unilateral decision this week to allow carbon offsets to count toward companies’ supply chain emissions reduction targets. In a letter to the board seen by Grist, dozens of...
How much do rich countries owe in climate aid? That’s the trillion-dollar question.
Last year’s United Nations climate conference in the United Arab Emirates ended on a surprising high note as the world’s countries endorsed a landmark agreement to transition away from fossil fuels. After weeks of tense negotiation, the conference produced a slew of unprecedented commitments to ramp up the deployment of renewables, adapt to climate disasters, and move away from the use of coal, oil, and gas.
DOJ thinks Enbridge Line 5 pipeline is trespassing on tribal lands
This coverage is made possible through a partnership with Grist and Interlochen Public Radio in Northern Michigan. Those involved in the Line 5 pipeline controversy have been waiting for the United States Department of Justice — and the Biden administration — to come forward with its opinion on a case that involves tribal sovereignty and foreign relations.
Biden’s environmental justice scorecard offers more questions than answers
Shortly after being elected president, Joe Biden made a sweeping promise on environmental justice: With a 2021 executive order, he vowed that a full 40 percent of the benefits of certain federal government climate and environmental investments would reach historically disadvantaged communities. This initiative, known as Justice40, was the centerpiece of the administration’s environmental justice efforts and was intended to compensate for both underinvestment and environmental harms that have disproportionately burdened communities of color throughout U.S. history.
Corporate climate plans are improving, but still ‘critically insufficient’
Despite minor improvements, major companies’ climate commitments remain “critically insufficient” to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), according to a new analysis. The 2024 Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor, a report by the European nonprofits Carbon Market Watch and NewClimate Institute, finds that many...
Georgia residents: Apply to our community reporting fellowship
Applications are now open for Grist’s first community reporting fellowship: a paid six-week remote program for Georgia residents to learn journalism principles and news reporting skills to help meet their communities’ information needs. The first cohort of four people will focus on creating journalism that informs people about...
Climate solutions, by the hundred
Hey there, Looking Forward fam. We are celebrating a milestone: Today marks the 100th issue of this here old newsletter. Over the past two-plus years, we’ve covered a huge range of climate solutions, from resilience hubs to solar grazing to the power of municipal budgets. We’ve answered some of your insightful questions. We even started a book club. And, of course, we have kept up a high level of enthusiasm for climate fiction drabbles.
EPA finalizes the nation’s first PFAS limits in drinking water
Some 70 years after they entered widespread chemical use, the federal government is finally regulating the so-called “forever chemicals” found in everything from nonstick cookware to menstrual products. The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday announced the nation’s first drinking water standards for six types of per- and polyfluoroalkyl...
The best coffee for the planet might not be coffee at all
This story was produced by Grist and co-published with Slate. When Henri Kunz was growing up in West Germany in the 1980s, he used to drink an instant coffee substitute called Caro, a blend of barley, chicory root, and rye roasted to approximate the deep color and invigorating flavor of real coffee. “We kids drank it,” Kunz remembered recently. “It had no caffeine, but it tasted like coffee.”
Bloomberg funds youth-led climate action in 100 cities worldwide
Young people have for generations signed their names in history’s ledger as agents of change. James Monroe and Alexander Hamilton celebrated their 25th birthdays during the Revolutionary War. Nearly two centuries later, college-age Black men and women mobilized for the rights they had been denied since the nation’s founding. The youth of today have seized the baton passed to them by their elders. They have raised their voices in urgent anger to demand action for the defining issue of their lives: the climate emergency.
The EPA’s first chemical plant rule in 20 years targets polluters in Louisiana and Texas
The chemical plants that dot the industrial corridors of Texas and Louisiana produce some of the most toxic pollution in the country. Companies like Celanese and Indorama Ventures emit ethylene oxide and 1,3-butadiene into the air of predominantly Black and Latino communities, day and night. At the start of his term running the EPA in 2021, Michael Regan pledged to tackle these emissions. On Tuesday, the agency announced a major step in that direction when it finalized a rule to cut thousands of tons of toxic emissions and require air monitoring at more than 200 chemical plants across the country.
Water from arsenic-laced wells could protect the Pine Ridge reservation from wildfires
With decades of experience, Reno Red Cloud knows more than anyone about water on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. As climate change makes fire season on the reservation — which covers more than 2 million acres — more dangerous, he sees a growing need for water to fight those fires.
Georgia’s Vogtle plant could herald the beginning — or end — of a new nuclear era
Few issues are as divisive among American environmentalists as nuclear energy. Concerns about nuclear waste storage and safety, particularly in the wake of the 1979 Three Mile Island reactor meltdown in Pennsylvania, helped spur the retirement of nuclear power plants across the country. Nuclear energy’s proponents, however, counter that nuclear power has historically been among the safest forms of power generation, and that the consistent carbon-free energy it generates makes it an essential tool in the fight against global warming.
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