Boom Supersonic wants to build the world’s first commercial supersonic airliner. Founded in 2014, the company set out to make air travel dramatically faster — up to twice the speed of today’s passenger jets — while also aiming for a smaller environmental footprint. For years, Boom has focused on developing...
Utilities in the Southeast may be overestimating the AI boom
This coverage is made possible through a partnership between Grist and WABE, Atlanta’s NPR station. As more and more data centers crop up throughout Georgia and the Southeast, a recent study finds they may need less energy than the industry and utilities have been predicting. That could have substantial implications...
What over a century of ice data can tell us about the Great Lakes’ future
Michigan researchers have gone back in time to get a picture of how ice cover on the Great Lakes has evolved since the late 19th century. Using historical temperature records from weather stations around the region, researchers improved their understanding of where ice might have formed and for how long...
Overshoot: The world is hitting point of no return on climate
The world is poised to overshoot the goal of limiting average global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as for the first time, a three-year period, ending in 2025, has breached the threshold. And climate scientists are predicting devastating consequences, just as the world’s governments appear to have lost their appetite...
Inside the historic effort to keep the Great Barrier Reef alive
“I just got a whiff,” said Peter Harrison, a marine scientist, as he leaned over the edge of the boat and pointed his flashlight into the dark water. “It’s really coming through now.” It was shortly after 10 p.m. on a cloudy December night, and Harrison, a coral researcher at...
The US government says it is falling short on its legal duties to tribal nations
As federal agencies manage millions of acres of land critical to climate adaptation, wildlife, and water supplies, a new government report finds that they are falling short of their legal responsibilities to tribal nations. “In treaties, tribes ceded millions of acres of their territories to the federal government in exchange...
The US lost $35B in clean energy projects last year
For more than a decade, the clean energy economy has been on a steep growth trajectory. Companies have poured billions of dollars into battery manufacturing, solar and wind generation, and electric vehicle plants in the U.S., as solar costs fell sharply and EV sales surged. That momentum is set to...
What happens when a neighborhood is built around a farm
Picture the bucolic little town of a fairy tale. At its core stand medieval buildings, a square where folks hawk their goods, and perhaps a well to provide water. Beyond the defensive wall radiate agricultural fields, where people toil to bring grains, fruits, and vegetables to market. Invert that for...
The UK quit coal. But is burning Louisiana’s trees any better?
Kathleen Watts’ flowers bloom much brighter now that the wind no longer blows black. Pulling weeds in the garden outside her redbrick house, she recalled when coal dust would sometimes drift through her quiet corner of northern England, a rolling patchwork of farms and villages under the shadow of what...
Billie Eilish, stolen land, and the climate cost of America’s dispossession
When Billie Eilish told Grammy audiences that “no one is illegal on stolen land,” she ignited a small firestorm that went beyond celebrity discourse, revealing deep fault lines in how America confronts its own history. Critics accused her of hypocrisy, pointing out that her multimillion-dollar Los Angeles home sits on...