President Donald Trump is considering allowing companies to lease more than 113 million acres of waters off Alaska for seabed mining. Alaska is the latest of several places Trump has sought to open to the fledging industry over the past year, including waters around American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern...
Vegan fine dining had a moment. Now it’s over.
When then 31-year-old Brazilian culinary student LetÃcia Dias walked into Eleven Madison Park on a Sunday evening last August, she had no idea a meal was about to change her life. A longtime vegan, it was her first time dining at the world-class New York City luxury restaurant, which in...
The Olympics are ditching PFAS waxes — and the ‘ridiculous’ speed they gave skiers
Tim Baucom has done this before. The Milan Cortina Games will be his third Olympics as a wax technician for the United States’ cross-country ski team, a job characterized by long flights schlepping tools and duffel bags of gear halfway around the world, and even longer days prepping skis. His...
The US doesn’t need to generate as much new electricity as you think
The conversation around energy use in the United States has become … electric. Everyone from President Donald Trump to the cohosts of Today show has been talking about the surging demand for, and rising costs of, electrons. Many people worry that utilities won’t be able to produce enough power. But...
Inside the polarizing plan to stash carbon in a California wetland
The Montezuma Wetlands drape across 1,800 acres of Solano County, California, where the Sacramento River empties into San Francisco Bay. Once drained and diked for farming and grazing, the marsh has been rehabilitated over the past two decades, and in 2020, tidal waters returned for the first time in a...
Why the future of meat production is in vats, not farms
I recently ate a pig that’s alive and well at a sanctuary in upstate New York. Her name is Dawn, and she donated a bit of fat, which a company called Mission Barns grows in bioreactors, then blends with plant-based ingredients to create pork products (like the meatballs above) that...
Japan’s unprecedented project could test the limits of deep-sea mining
The year 2010 was a reckoning for Japan’s economic security. On September 7, the Chinese fishing trawler Minjinyu 5179 refused an order by Japan’s coast guard to leave disputed waters near the Senkaku Islands, which are known in China as Diaoyu. The vessel then rammed two patrol boats, escalating a...
Turmoil at FEMA adds to the revolt against Kristi Noem
Kristi Noem faces intensifying public scrutiny over her leadership of the Department of Homeland Security. Criticism of the former South Dakota governor has focused on her handling of the killing of Alex Pretti by a federal immigration agent and her oversight of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The controversies have...
Trump’s ‘get-out-of-jail-free card’ for polluters faces its latest test in court
Last spring, the Environmental Protection Agency made a surprise announcement: President Donald Trump would consider giving some polluters exemptions from a handful of Clean Air Act rules. To get the ball rolling, all it would take was an email from a company making its case. The EPA set up a...
Visiting Oregon? You may soon have to pay a tax to protect its wildlife.
When Oregon’s short legislative session convenes in early February, conservation advocates will once again try to convince lawmakers to pass a major funding bill that could provide nearly $30 million annually to protect the state’s biodiversity. The 1% for Wildlife bill, sponsored by state representatives Ken Helm, a Democrat from...