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Farmers who graze sheep under solar panels say it improves productivity. So why don’t we do it more?
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. As a flock of about 2,000 sheep graze between rows of solar panels, grazier Tony Inder wonders what all the fuss is about. “I’m not going to suggest it’s everyone’s cup of tea,” he says. “But as far as sheep grazing goes, solar is really good.”
The world is farming more seafood than it catches. Is that a good thing?
A new report from the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, or FAO, has found that more fish were farmed worldwide in 2022 than harvested from the wild, an apparent first. Last week, the FAO released its annual report on the state of aquaculture — which refers to the...
How hot weather can tamper with your words
Heat waves don’t just make you sweat — they can also mess with your brain. It’s been established that hot weather can result in lower scores on math tests and higher rates of aggression, ranging from mean-spirited behavior to violent crime. A small but growing body of research suggests it can also influence how people talk.
In Michigan: climate change, bird flu and dairy cows — and why ‘none of us saw this coming.’
This coverage is made possible through a partnership between IPR and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization. Earlier this month, Laurie Stanek shoveled hay to a group of young black-and-white Holstein cows, just a few among the roughly 200 cattle on her family dairy farm. Located in northern Michigan’s Antrim County, she has worked there for almost 50 years now.
Coming soon to a lake near you: Floating solar panels
A reservoir is many things: a source of drinking water, a playground for swimmers, a refuge for migrating birds. But if you ask solar-power enthusiasts, a reservoir is also not realizing its full potential. That open water could be covered with buoyant panels, a burgeoning technology known as floating photovoltaics, aka “floatovoltaics.” They could simultaneously gather energy from the sun and shade the water, reducing evaporation — an especially welcome bonus where droughts are getting worse.
What can you do with a degree in degrowth?
Hey there, fam. Today’s spotlight story is a collaboration with The Green Fix, a Europe-focused climate newsletter managed by Cass Hebron. Cass and I have been following each other’s work for a while now, and we teamed up to bring you this story about the world’s first master’s program in degrowth.
How the recycling symbol lost its meaning
It’s Earth Day 1990, and Meryl Streep walks into a bar. She’s distraught about the state of the environment. “It’s crazy what we’re doing. It’s very, very, very bad,” she says in ABC’s prime-time Earth Day special, letting out heavy sighs and listing jumbled statistics about deforestation and the hole in the ozone layer.
Biden’s border restrictions are stranding climate migrants in extreme heat
With much of the southwest baking under record temperatures, immigrants’ rights advocates worry President Joe Biden’s decision to effectively close the border to asylum seekers for the foreseeable future will endanger lives and further marginalize climate-displaced people seeking refuge in the U.S. Their concerns come as a heat...
A new report looks at major companies’ efforts to address plastic waste — and finds them lacking
Corporations churn out single-use plastic packaging by the truckload — disposable yogurt cups, takeout food containers, shopping bags, mailers, cling wrap, and more. These items comprise much of the 19 million metric tons of plastic waste that ends up in the environment each year. As such, many companies have made vague promises to address the plastic pollution crisis by increasing the recyclability of their packaging and reducing the amount of virgin material they use.
Real-time data show the air in Louisiana’s ‘Cancer Alley’ is even worse than expected
Since the 1980s, the 85-mile stretch of the Mississippi River that connects New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, has been known as “Cancer Alley.” The name stems from the fact that the area’s residents have a 95 percent greater chance of developing cancer than the average American. A big reason for this is the concentration of industrial facilities along the corridor — particularly petrochemical manufacturing plants, many of which emit ethylene oxide, an extremely potent toxin that is considered a carcinogen by the Environmental Protection Agency and has been linked to breast and lung cancers.
What is LaToya Ruby Frazier trying to show us?
In the winter of 2010, the photographer LaToya Ruby Frazier strapped knee pads over her leggings and pulled on a pair of Levi’s blue jeans. The denim brand had just opened a popup shop on Wooster Street in lower Manhattan to promote a new clothing line designed around the motif of the “urban pioneer.” For the site of its ad campaign, the company chose Braddock, Pennsylvania, aestheticizing the town’s post-industrial landscape in a series of images plastered across magazine pages and New York billboards, and making it appear as a place in motion with ample economic horizons for any working American. “Go Forth,” one ad instructed the viewer over a black and white image of a horse flanked by two denim-clad supermodels. It couldn’t be further from the truth.
A lack of data hampers efforts to fix racial disparities in utility cutoffs
Each year, nearly 1.3 million households across the country have their electricity shut off because they cannot pay their bill. Beyond risking the health, or even lives, of those who need that energy to power medical devices and inconveniencing people in myriad ways, losing power poses a grave threat during a heat wave or cold snap.
Heat waves are making restaurant kitchens unsafe. Workers are fighting back.
Last month, Oscar Hernández couldn’t sleep. The cook, who worked at a restaurant located inside of a Las Vegas casino, had found that after coming home from his shifts, his body would not properly cool down. The air conditioning at work had been broken for about four months....
How forecasts of bad weather can drive up your grocery bill
It’s no secret that a warming world will drive food prices higher, a phenomenon increasingly known as “heatflation.” What’s less known, but a growing area of interest among economists and scientists alike, is the role individual extreme weather events — blistering temperatures in Texas, a destructive tornado in Iowa — may have on what U.S. consumers pay at the supermarket.
Virginia has the biggest data center market in the world. Can it also decarbonize its grid?
This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. While short-lived, the denial came as a surprise. This March, Loudoun County, a suburb of Washington, D.C. in northern Virginia that is home to the greatest concentration of data centers in the world, made an unexpected move: It rejected a proposal to let a company build a bigger data center than existing zoning automatically allowed.
Cattle are a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Hawaiian seaweed could change that.
This story was originally published by Honolulu Civil Beat. Limu kohu is most traditionally destined for poke bowls, but the distinctive-tasting seaweed is now increasingly in demand for cattle to reduce the amount of methane they burp into the atmosphere. Parker Ranch cattle are among the first of Hawai’i’s livestock...
Why a new method of growing food on Mars matters more on Earth
The first thing Brazilian astrobiologist Rebeca Gonçalves remembers learning as a child was the order of the planets. Her uncle, an astrophysicist, also taught her all about the constellations dotting the night skies over Sao Paulo. “Ever since I was little, I have been in love with space,” she said.
A labor win at Georgia school bus factory shows a worker-led EV transition is possible
For nearly a century, a substantial portion of America’s iconic yellow school buses have been manufactured at a factory in Fort Valley, a town of 9,000 people surrounded by peach and pecan orchards in central Georgia. Carolyn Allen has worked at Blue Bird for 13 years, and she talks...
A new satellite could help solve one of our climate’s biggest mysteries: Clouds
Despite the fact that clouds envelop two-thirds of the planet at any given time, transport water on the wind, and shield the Earth from the sun, surprisingly little is known about how climate change affects them. Atmospheric scientists are not yet certain, for instance, whether rising temperatures will lead to more or fewer clouds, or make them better or worse at reflecting the heat of the sun.
A rare celebration of Indigenous Pacific cultures underscores the cost of climate change
More than 2,000 people are gathering in Hawaiʻi this week and next for the 13th Festival of Pacific Island Arts and Culture. It’s the largest gathering of Indigenous Pacific peoples in the world. And it comes at a critical time for the island region known as Oceania as sea levels, storms, and other climate effects threaten traditional ways of life and connections to land and sea.
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