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Rural Georgia community battles railroad trying to take their land
This story was originally published by Capital B. After a year-long legal battle with a railroad company over their land, landowners in a rural, majority-Black town in Georgia may be forced to sell their homes. In an initial decision on April 1, a Georgia Public Service Commission officer approved a...
Drilling for oil on public land in the US is about to get more expensive
This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. On April 12, the Department of Interior released a new rule that will impose stricter financial requirements for oil and gas companies that operate on federal public land — the first such change since 1960.
The EPA is cracking down on PFAS — but not in fertilizer
On Friday, the Environmental Protection Agency designated two types of “forever chemicals” as hazardous substances under the federal Superfund law. The move will make it easier for the government to force the manufacturers of these chemicals, called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or pfas, to shoulder the costs of cleaning them out of the environment.
Taking Big Oil to court for ‘climate homicide’ isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds
A new legal theory suggests that oil companies could be taken to court for every kind of homicide in the United States, short of first-degree murder. The idea of “climate homicide” is getting attention in law schools and district attorney’s offices around the country. A paper published in Harvard Environmental Law Review last week argues that fossil fuel companies have been “killing members of the public at an accelerating rate.” It says that oil giants’ awareness that their pollution could have lethal consequences solidly fits within the definition of homicide, which, in its basic form, is causing death with a “culpable mental state.” In other words, the case can be made that oil companies knew what they were doing.
Pediatricians say climate conversations should be part of any doctor’s visit
The reality of climate change came home for Dr. Samantha Ahdoot one summer day in 2011 when her son was 9 years old. An assistant professor at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, Ahdoot and her family were living in Alexandria, when there was a heat wave. Morning temperatures hovered in the high 80s, and her son had to walk up a steep hill to get to his day camp.
At UN conference, Indigenous peoples say little has changed after promises made a decade ago
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 December, Catherine Murupaenga-Ikenn used a power tool to erase the words on a museum display of the Treaty of Waitangi, an 1840...
UN puts spotlight on attacks against Indigenous land defenders
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. When around 70,000 Indigenous Maasai were expelled from their lands in northern Tanzania in 2022, it didn’t happen in a vacuum. For years,...
Staggering quantities of energy transition metals are winding up in the garbage bin
To build all of the solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicle batteries, and other technologies necessary to fight climate change, we’re going to need a lot more metals. Mining those metals from the Earth creates damage and pollution that threaten ecosystems and communities. But there’s another potential source of the copper, nickel, aluminum, and rare-earth minerals needed to stabilize the climate: the mountain of electronic waste humanity discards each year.
At UN, Indigenous leaders fight for application of rights
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. Sometimes when a storm hits and the waves are high in the Straits of Mackinac, which connects Great Lakes Michigan and Huron, Whitney...
A new federal rule aims to protect miners from black lung disease
Silica dust, thrown into the air while mining, has contributed to a staggering rise in cases of progressive, incurable, and deadly black lung disease in America’s coal miners. The insidious particulate is particularly common in the seams of low quality coal found in central Appalachia, yet the Mine Safety Health Administration, or MSHA, has for decades pegged safe exposure levels at about twice what the government allows for every other occupation. On Tuesday, the agency finally announced an updated standard, outlining not only a new threshold for exposure, but increased on-the-job safety measures and medical surveillance to protect workers.
In a first, California cracks down on farms guzzling groundwater
In much of the United States, groundwater extraction is unregulated and unlimited. There are few rules governing who can pump water from underground aquifers or how much they can take. This lack of regulation has allowed farmers nationwide to empty aquifers of trillions of gallons of water for irrigation and livestock. Droughts fueled by climate change have exacerbated this trend by depleting rivers and reservoirs, increasing reliance on this dwindling groundwater.
Who’s afraid of a 300-mile transmission line that could help decarbonize the Southeast?
This story was produced by Grist and co-published with Verite News. When a winter storm knocked out Texas’ power grid in 2021, the scale of the devastation it wrought was exacerbated by a singular fact about the Lone Star State: It has its own electric grid, an “energy island” that has long been uniquely isolated from the rest of the country, with just four transmission lines linking it to neighboring states. When the storm hit, Texas was unable to transfer enough emergency power from other electricity markets to keep the lights on. The death toll was in the hundreds.
The world’s 4th coral bleaching event has officially arrived
As ocean water heats up, swaths of once-technicolor coral reefs have begun turning white, putting ecosystems across the globe at risk. Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the International Coral Reef Initiative announced on Monday that the world is undergoing its fourth global coral bleaching event, marking the second such occurrence in the last decade. According to Derek Manzello, coordinator of NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch program, scientists have documented significant coral bleaching across every major ocean since early last year.
FEMA is making an example of this Florida boomtown. Locals call it ‘revenge politics.’
When U.S. homeowners buy subsidized flood insurance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, they make a commitment to build back better after flood disasters, even if it costs them. FEMA’s notorious 50 percent rule stipulates that if a home in a flood zone suffers damages worth more than half its value, it must be torn down and rebuilt so it’s elevated above flood level. This can cost homeowners hundreds of thousands of dollars, but it prevents the American public from footing the bill for the repeated destruction of vulnerable homes — at least in theory.
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...
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