Electric vehicles offer many opportunities to save money: on gas, on oil changes, on engine maintenance. But, it turns out, insurance isn’t one of them. In fact, the latest data shows that EVs typically cost $3,159 per year to insure — nearly $1,000 more than gas-powered cars. It’s an added...
Biden’s clean drinking water plan is being rebranded as MAHA
The Trump administration is promoting multibillion-dollar funding packages to help states and disadvantaged communities secure clean drinking water as part of its promise to “Make America Healthy Again.” There’s just one catch: The federal dollars were previously promised under a climate and infrastructure law passed by Congress during the Biden...
Why is this Trump official dead set on saving a failing California dam?
The Potter Valley Project, which dams Northern California’s Eel River, isn’t doing very much right now. Its reservoir is clogged with sediment, and drought often empties it out. The project once supported a hydroelectric power plant that could produce about 9 megawatts of electricity, which is about 1 percent of...
A simple — yet expensive — way to climate-proof the grid: Bury the power lines
Power lines across the country weren’t designed for a changing climate, with much of the nation’s grid built more than half a century ago. Today, stronger storms and heavier precipitation cause hundreds of outages a year, many because of trees falling on above-ground power lines. In northern Michigan, some utilities...
The fight to protect pollinators and people from the ‘pesticides that are everywhere’
Born and raised in Colorado, Cory Kreft began working on a honey farm at 15 years old. He returned to beekeeping after college, eventually buying the business from his former boss. But in 2021, his bees suddenly began dying. He lost 85 percent of his hives. The losses continued the...
US host cities made transit improvements a World Cup goooooooal
The latest addition to Seattle’s already impressive public transit system opened to great fanfare this spring when more than 200,000 people rode the Crosslake Connection light rail line. Its March 28 debut was second only to the parade that followed the Seahawks’ Super Bowl victory as Sound Transit’s busiest day...
70-foot wastewater geyser reflects New Mexico’s latest oilfield challenge
At first, he thought it was smoke. Jackie Onsurez was driving the bustling New Mexico highway between his home in Loving and nearby Carlsbad last Tuesday evening when he thought the smoke didn’t look right. As he pulled closer, he saw that the 70-foot plume was actually a roaring geyser...
The USDA canceled $300M in farm grants, citing fraud. Did it make up the evidence?
Leah Atwood was rattled. It was the tail end of March, and for days she and her colleagues at Agroecology Commons had been fielding dozens of emails alerting them to grant terminations targeting a $300 million U.S. Department of Agriculture program. One after another, within a single week, 49 of...
A first among major nations, India is industrializing with solar
A sea of solar panels is rapidly engulfing one of the world’s largest salt deserts. By 2029, nearly 60 million panels will cover 280 square miles of India’s Rann of Kutch, extending right up to the border with Pakistan. The Khavda solar park is set to be the world’s largest...
Ask a Climate Therapist: Is it still ‘catastrophizing’ if the threat is real?
Dear Leslie, A lot of my work in therapy for anxiety has focused on recognizing catastrophic thinking and assessing what is more realistic. How would you suggest adapting this for a world where reality itself is increasingly becoming more catastrophic, and science suggests things will get worse in the future? ...