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How ‘15-minute cities’ could save time, reduce emissions, and build community
There are few experiences more soul-sucking than sitting in traffic. According to NPR, the average American lost nearly an hour a week to traffic congestion in 2022. Drivers lose an additional 17 hours per year hunting for parking, USA Today reports — and in the same survey, 34 percent of U.S. drivers said they had given up on a trip because of parking problems.
Microsoft employees spent years fighting the tech giant’s oil ties. Now, they’re speaking out.
This story was produced by Grist and copublished with Drilled. For nearly a decade, Holly Alpine (née Beale) loved working at Microsoft. Shortly after finishing college, in July 2014, she landed a job there as a technical account manager. Less than four years later, Alpine was leading a program that invests in environmental projects in the communities where Microsoft’s data centers are located. She was also helping organize a worker-led sustainability group called the Sustainability Connected Community, which would grow to nearly 10,000 Microsoft employees worldwide by late 2023.
One way or another, new EPA rules will stop pollution from coal-fired emissions
A quarter of the annual greenhouse gas emissions in the United States come from electricity generation. The biggest polluters in the sector are the country’s coal-fired power plants — decades-old facilities that emit enormous quantities of carbon dioxide and other pollutants into the air. Federal regulators and policymakers have spent years coming up with a plan for minimizing emissions from fossil fuel-run power stations. The Environmental Protection Agency finally unveiled the results of that work last week: a historic suite of rules that aim to prevent 1.4 billion metric tons of carbon pollution by 2047, the equivalent of annual emissions from 328 million gas cars.
The surging demand for data is guzzling Virginia’s water
Every email you send has a home. Every uploaded file, web search, and social media post does, too. In massive buildings erected from miles of concrete, stacked servers hum with the electricity required to process and store every byte of information that modern lives rely on. In recent years, these...
Nature can’t run without parasites. What happens when they start to disappear?
Proof of Concept is a video series profiling the science and scientists behind some of the environment’s most unexpected research. When Chelsea Wood was a child, she would often collect Periwinkle snails on the shores of Long Island. “I used to pluck them off the rocks and put them...
Arizona wants to mine uranium near the Grand Canyon. Tribal nations are fighting back.
Earlier this year, Arizona lawmakers sued the Biden administration over the newly created Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni — Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument — arguing that the establishment of national monuments should be state matters and calling the move a “land grab.” Now, the Hopi, Havasupai, and Navajo Nation, whose ancestral lands overlap with the national monument, have intervened in the case and joined with the federal government to protect the area.
How the Miccosukee Tribe plans to stop oil drilling in the Everglades once and for all
This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Within a thicket of the Big Cypress National Preserve, established a half-century ago to protect the marshes and sloughs here that make up a vital part of the Florida Everglades, a series of wells extracts oil from more than two miles underground.
Texas inmates are being ‘cooked to death’ in extreme heat, complaint alleges
This story was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues. April signaled the beginning of blistering heat for much of Texas. And while the summer heat is...
The country’s first new aluminum smelter in 45 years could cut production emissions by 75%
Aluminum is a crucial raw ingredient in the fight against climate change. But to ensure the transition off fossil fuels is a clean one, the industry needs a serious makeover. A new federally funded “green smelter” could help make that happen. Making this remarkably versatile metal requires a...
Illinois passed a law to clean up coal ash 5 years ago. What’s taking so long?
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. Celeste Flores can tell you the good news about living in Waukegan, Illinois: The air is safer to breathe now. “Thankfully,...
The world’s garment workers are on the front lines of climate impacts
This story is published in partnership with The Fuller Project. As Nour feeds another half-finished pair of pants through her sewing machine, her arms begin to shake. Amid the whir of fans, her T-shirt sticks to her like skin. She fights to focus, knowing full well her target of up to 100 pieces an hour isn’t going to hit itself.
New documents show oil executives promoted natural gas as green — but knew it wasn’t
A congressional hearing on the fossil fuel industry’s “evolving efforts to avoid accountability for climate change” turned into a spectacle on Wednesday morning as lawmakers in Washington, D.C., grilled a panel of experts on wide-ranging — and often irrelevant — topics. The thousands of internal oil company documents released before the hearing, however, contained some bombshell findings.
After Lāhainā, Indigenous peoples call for independence
On the evening of August 8, hours after a wildfire ravaged West Maui, Maui County’s top emergency management official, Herman Andaya, texted his secretary to ask about the status of other fires across the island. “Still burning,” she replied. “Wow … Lol,” Andaya texted back. The...
This spring, DC-area students are planting native flowers — and activating ‘the solarpunk imagination’
Tending a garden is about as hands-on as climate solutions get. On a basic level, putting plants in the ground helps sequester carbon. Vegetation can reduce stress and tension for the humans around it, and it provides habitat and sustenance for pollinators and other wildlife. Gardens can provide spaces for education, and, of course, sources of food. But the act of designing and planting a green space serves another, more metaphorical purpose: It gives the gardener agency over a piece of the world and what they want it to look like — and a role in conveying of all those aforementioned benefits.
UN plastics treaty inches closer to reality as lobbyists tout plastics’ ‘massive societal benefits’
Negotiators wrapped up the fourth round of formal discussions over the United Nations’ global plastics treaty early on Tuesday morning, inching closer to a final agreement that’s intended to “end plastic pollution.”. Delegates made important progress on the treaty, the final version of which is due by...
EPA finally takes on abandoned coal ash ponds — but it might be too late
Last week, the EPA released a suite of long-awaited rules meant to cut down the carbon that the U.S. emits when generating electricity. The rules primarily target existing coal plants and new natural gas facilities, in many cases requiring dramatic emissions cuts that won’t be possible without an unprecedented deployment of carbon capture. (The new EPA proposals are part of an ongoing flurry of federal regulatory actions that must be issued by May 22 to minimize the possibility that they’ll be rolled back if Republican Donald Trump defeats President Joe Biden in November’s election.)
Have the world’s coral reefs already crossed a tipping point?
About a year ago, the seas got unusually hot, even by our current, overheated standards. Twelve months of broken records later, the oceans are still more feverish than climate models and normal fluctuations in global weather patterns can explain. When the seas turn into bathwater, it threatens the survival of...
The world agreed to create a climate reparations fund. Now comes the hard part.
After three decades of work, advocates for developing countries scored a major win at last year’s United Nations climate change conference in Dubai: World leaders unanimously agreed to set up a climate reparations fund. As the planet warms, the poorest nations are being hit hardest by drought, rising sea levels, hurricanes, and a slew of other climate impacts — even though these countries did the least to cause global warming, compared to their early-industrializing peers. Enter the so-called loss and damage fund, which is supposed to compensate them for the unavoidable effects of climate change. So far, the international community has pledged more than $650 million to the venture.
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