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UN Expert on Climate Change and Human Rights Sees ‘Crucial and Urgent Demand’ To Clarify Governments’ Obligations
When scorching temperatures rocked the East Coast last month, heat-related emergency room visits in New York City soared 600 percent compared to average June figures. At the same time, heat took the lives of 1,300 Hajj pilgrims visiting Mecca. And in recent weeks, high temperatures have caused hundreds more deaths in Asia, Europe, Mexico and Egypt.
Sen. Britt of Alabama Confronted on Her Ties to ‘Big Oil’
Amalia Hochman isn’t from Alabama, but she’s willing to fight for it anyway. Hochman, an organizer with the Sunrise Movement, approached Alabama’s junior senator, Katie Britt, in the halls of the U.S. Congress in May, confronting the Republican with a question about contributions she’s accepted from the fossil fuel industry. The activist, who’d recognized Britt at a congressional hearing she’d been attending, filmed the interaction, which was posted to the youth-led climate group’s social media accounts on Monday.
Texas Leaders Worry That Bitcoin Mines Threaten to Crash the State Power Grid
GRANBURY, TEXAS — Cheryl Shadden cannot sleep. The 61-year-old nurse, who works at hospitals giving patients anesthesia, says she is kept up at night by the nonstop mechanical whir of fans spinning to cool tens of thousands of computers. Shadden lives in Granbury, Texas, about 40 miles southwest of...
Will the Nation’s First Heat Protection Standard Safeguard the Most Vulnerable Workers?
The Biden administration finally proposed federal heat protection standards last week, more than half a century after federal experts first outlined the need for such rules. The Nixon administration proposed detailed recommendations to safeguard workers in hot environments in 1972, a few years after Congress established the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH, tasked with research and training on heat illness, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, charged with enforcing standards.
Tourists Are Feeling the Heat—And Their Bodies May Not Be Able To Catch Up
Throughout June, six tourists died while visiting Greece during an unusually early summer heat wave. While these cases are still being investigated, authorities say that heat stress likely played a part in each of their deaths, as temperatures soared over 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Heat-related deaths are increasingly common with climate...
Peering Inside the Pandora’s Box of Oil and Gas Waste
In 1971, scientists gathered at a symposium to examine the practice of getting rid of oil and gas wastewater by injecting it into porous rock formations deep underground. Called injection wells, they are now widely used by the industry to dispose of the liquid byproducts when an oil or gas well is drilled, which can contain salts, metals and radioactive elements. At the conference, experts speculated about the long-term consequences for the earth and human health.
Average Global Temperature Has Warmed 1.5 Degrees Celsius Above Pre-industrial Levels for 12 Months in a Row
Last month wasn’t only the hottest June by far in the observed temperature record, but marked the first-ever 12-month stretch of the Earth’s average temperature exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius of temperature rise above the pre-industrial baseline against which human-caused warming is measured. “This is more than a statistical...
‘Not Caused by an Act of God’: In a Rare Court Action, an Oregon County Seeks to Hold Fossil Fuel Companies Accountable for Extreme Temperatures
Northwest Oregon had never seen anything like it. Over the course of three days in June 2021, Multnomah County—the Emerald State’s most populous county, which rests in the swayback along Oregon’s northern border—recorded highs of 108, 112 and 116 degrees Fahrenheit. Temperatures were so hot that...
New NOAA Initiative Will Provide $60 Million in Funding to Train Workers for Green Jobs
In American Samoa, sea level is rising at four times the global average. This increases the Pacific Ocean island’s risk of saltwater intrusion, which can contaminate freshwater supplies, a problem it currently faces. Vacancies in American Samoa’s only agency managing water—the American Samoa Power Authority—are leaving a shortage of...
As Hurricane Beryl Surged Toward Texas, Scientists Found Human-Driven Warming Intensified Its Wind and Rain
Climate heating caused by fossil fuel pollution supercharged Hurricane Beryl during its unusually early July push from the heart of the tropical Atlantic Ocean to the coast of Texas, scientists said Friday. Beryl maintained tropical storm force passing into the Gulf of Mexico and was strengthening Sunday as it approached...
Facing Climate Gentrification, an Historic African American Community Outside Charleston, S.C., Embraces Conservation
TEN MILE, S.C.—At high tide, the marsh alongside Seafood Road disappears under an inscrutable mirror of water. Then, as it drains, reeds resurface and begin to trace hundreds of paths through the marsh, etched by generations of subsistence fishing. Ten Mile’s community center looks over the water from red...
Vying for West Virginia Governor, an ‘All of the Above’ Democrat Faces Long Odds Against a Republican Fossil Fuel Booster
Based on their records and rhetoric, one candidate seeking to be the next governor of West Virginia supports a broad-based energy policy, from coal to renewables. And the other is laser-focused on fossil fuels. West Virginia electricity generation is still as much as 90 percent coal-powered even as coal mining...
Attacked on All Sides: Wading Birds Nest in New York’s Harbor Islands
For bird enthusiasts and average residents alike, the sight of wild, colorful migratory birds like the great egret or the black-crowned night heron, in a dense and loud city like New York is something to behold. Every spring, these wading birds migrate to the unoccupied islands along the city’s coast,...
Scientists Are Scrambling to Better Predict When and Why Hurricanes Like Beryl Rapidly Intensify
Hurricane Beryl has smashed records on its path of destruction from the Caribbean to the Gulf Coast. On Sunday, the tropical storm became the first Category 4 hurricane to ever form in the Atlantic Ocean in the month of June. By July 2, Beryl rapidly intensified with winds reaching 165 miles per hour at its peak, marking its transition to Category 5—and setting the record for the earliest Atlantic storm in history to reach this strength.
The Minnesota Dam That Partially Failed Is One of Nearly 200 Across the Upper Midwest in Similarly ‘Poor’ Condition
Minnesota’s century-old Rapidan Dam captured the national spotlight last week when its partial failure destroyed a home and prompted county officials to demolish an adjacent store. Yet it’s just one of hundreds of dams across the Upper Midwest in similar or worse condition, according to an analysis of federal data by Inside Climate News.
This Proxy Season, Companies’ Success Against Activist Investors Surged
Shareholder proposals are a critical tool for activist investors fighting climate change, allowing them to formally bring up issues like emissions goals during a company’s annual meeting by submitting them to a vote. This opaque process largely relies on lengthy exchanges of letters between the shareholders, companies and the...
In North Carolina, Eastern Hellbenders Are a Species of Concern, Threatened by the Vagaries of Climate Change
WATAUGA COUNTY, N.C.—Ben Dalton broke the glassy surface of the Watauga River, spit out his mouthpiece and gasped for breath. All morning, Dalton, a state wildlife biologist, and two other snorkelers had been scouring the river bed, trying to rescue as many eastern hellbenders as they could. So far,...
Q&A: How a Land Purchase Inspired by an Unfulfilled Promise Aims to Make People of Color Feel Welcome in the Wilderness
From our collaborating partner “Living on Earth,” public radio’s environmental news magazine, an interview by host Steve Curwood with Jade Stevens, president of the 40 Acre Conservation League. Green spaces tend to be harder to come by in communities of color, one of the many consequences of...
In Chile’s Southern Tip, a Bet on Hydrogen Worries Conservationists
The birds are like clouds in Bahía Lomas. Far off in the southern tip of South America, in the province of Tierra del Fuego, migration takes its highest form in this bay in the eastern mouth in the Straits of Magellan. Here, thousands of birds, like the Red Knot,...
Governors in the West Seek Profitability for Industrial and Natural Carbon Removal Projects
Should the West become a proving ground for fledging carbon capture technology, or bolster conservation and land management projects that naturally sequester carbon emissions?. “Both” was the conclusion several Western states reached last month when Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon released a “Decarbonizing the West” report, intended to foster bipartisan support for ways western states can shrink their carbon footprints. The report focused mainly on how western states can help pioneer industrial and natural methods of removing carbon from emissions and the atmosphere. But it made few mentions of how the region could ramp up its transition to renewable energy to reduce the carbon-loaded emissions warming the atmosphere.
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