There are no wind turbines on the Great Lakes — and it isn’t for lack of wind. This titanic network of interconnected freshwater lakes with a surface area larger than New England, New York, and New Jersey combined is theoretically ideal for wind farms. Winds sweeping across the lakes are...
The AI boom has plunged a small Pennsylvania town into chaos
“I don’t like to see anyone upset,” said Nick Farris of Provident Real Estate Advisors. He was sitting in the front of a crowd of roughly 150 inside Valley View High School’s auditorium in Archbald, a town of about 7,500, huddled between two mountain ranges in Pennsylvania’s Lackawanna Valley. Farris...
Big Oil has moved on from ‘greenwashing.’ Here’s the new playbook.
Remember when the fossil fuel industry couldn’t stop talking about climate change? In 2020, when oil prices plunged in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Big Oil promoted efforts to cut carbon emissions and trumpeted various energy “innovations”: transforming algae into fuel (Exxon Mobil), capturing carbon (Chevron), and producing green hydrogen...
Is your state becoming uninsurable? We have the latest data.
In recent years, as the United States has suffered a series of damaging climate disasters, experts have warned that the nation is headed toward a homeowner’s insurance crisis. Insurance companies dropped hundreds of thousands of customers who live in areas vulnerable to hurricanes and wildfires, and numerous small insurers have...
Why $4 gasoline is the tipping point for EVs
Gasoline prices continue ticking higher as the United States and Israel’s war with Iran continues. The national average now stands at $3.84 per gallon, nearly a dollar higher than at the start of the conflict. It’s also just shy of a tipping point that could push consumers toward electric vehicles. ...
Georgia farmers’ long wait for Helene relief is ending
Last week, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins visited Georgia to announce the release of more than $500 million to help farmers rebuild from 2024’s Hurricane Helene. The widespread agricultural and forestry devastation from Helene cost the state’s economy about $5.5 billion, including job losses and impacts to related...
How Ann Arbor, Michigan, is creating its own clean energy utility
When Krystal Steward started knocking on her neighbors’ doors in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 2021, to discuss energy efficiency and sustainability upgrades, she was met with a lot of blank stares. She was new to the issues herself, she said. But the longtime social worker kept at her new job...
The Supreme Court takes up a Guam munitions case with high stakes for CHamoru lands
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that could determine the future of a beach with cultural and ecological importance to the Indigenous CHamoru people of Guam. The case is an appeal from the U.S. Air Force, which wants to continue the open detonation of obsolete munitions...
Scientists race to decode data from Europe’s vanishing glaciers
High up in the Ötztal Alps, near the border of Austria and Italy, sprawls the closest thing you can get — scientifically, at least — to a time machine. For thousands of years, snow has fallen here and turned to ice, building layer upon layer of the Weißseespitze glacier and...
Is the world heating up faster than we thought?
For years, scientists have been keeping a wary eye on the massive system of currents that carry water and nutrients across the ocean from Greenland to Antarctica. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation plays a large part in stabilizing the global climate, but it appears to have been weakening in recent...