Four years ago, Harvard University moved a long-planned solar geoengineering project from Arizona to Sápmi, the homelands of Sámi peoples across what is now Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. The Sámi had no idea it was coming. “We did not know about the plans until we got alerted by the...
A “green backlash” helped conservatives win in Germany. What happens now?
In February, Germany held an election that had many echoes of the one America held in November. Voters were incensed with inflation — especially electricity prices, which surged 80 percent after Russia invaded Ukraine and never returned to normal. Right-wing parties channeled that fury toward the incumbent government’s green policies,...
Scientists just found a way to break through climate apathy
For much of the 20th century, winter brought an annual ritual to Princeton, New Jersey. Lake Carnegie froze solid, and skaters flocked to its glossy surface. These days, the ice is rarely thick enough to support anybody wearing skates, since Princeton’s winters have warmed about 4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1970....
At UN, mining groups tout protections for Indigenous people
This story is published through the Indigenous News Alliance. In mid-April, the Trump administration cleared the way for a controversial copper mine proposed for western Arizona. The mine would destroy parts of Chi’chil Biłdagoteel — known as “Oak Flat” in English — over the objections of the San Carlos Apache...
USAID cuts are hitting global conservation projects hard
On February 3, Elon Musk typed a now-notorious post to his social media platform X: “Spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could gone [sic] to some great parties. Did that instead.” The actions by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency that weekend set off a dizzying series of budget cuts...
Is Georgia Power quietly planning a massive buildout of fossil gas?
Georgia Power, which expects a boom in power demand from data centers, says it needs to get a lot more electricity online — fast. So what kind of power plants does the utility intend to rely on to accomplish this? It’s refusing to say, raising concerns that the state’s largest utility is trying...
Why hasn’t Trump taken down the government’s climate adaptation plans?
Deep in the bowels of .gov web addresses sits a site that houses the climate adaptation plans for more than two dozen federal agencies. They outline everything from the Smithsonian protecting the National Museum of American History from flooding to the Department of Defense “incorporat[ing] climate considerations into wargames.” The...
Trump promised to help Big Oil. Its revenues plummeted.
This story is part of a Grist package examining how President Trump’s first 100 days in office have reshaped climate and environmental policy in the U.S. President Donald Trump came into office promising to “drill, baby, drill” and, on day one, signed an executive order aimed at “Unleashing American Energy.”...
Trump radically remade the US food system in just 100 days
Despite its widespread perception, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is involved in much more than farming. The federal agency, established in 1862, is made up of 29 subagencies and offices and just last year was staffed by nearly 100,000 employees. It has an annual budget of hundreds of billions of...
Trump’s first 100 days shredded millions in funding for Indigenous peoples
When Native Hawaiian combat veteran Joseph Guzman-Simpliciano got back home to Hawaiʻi from Afghanistan and Iraq, he was shocked at how the burnt-out, abandoned cars lying by the side of the road on the west side of Oʻahu reminded him of the war zone he had just left. Joseph and...