As the executive director of the Living Independent Network Corp, Jeremy Maxand does what he can to help people who don’t drive get around in southern Idaho. As in most of rural America, public transit options are limited. The nonprofit organization, which serves those with disabilities, receives $100,000 annually from...
A trip down the road that will determine the fate of the Amazon
For much of his career, Carlos Santos’ job involved being stranded in the middle of the Amazon. Santos is a truck driver on the BR-319, a hazardous dirt highway in Brazil that cuts through a critical part of the rainforest. “You knew when you were going in,” he said of...
Juneau can’t stop the floods, but it’s learning to see them coming
Two years ago, John Lowrey woke to the roar of water surging into his home. The 65-year-old retiree and father of five rushed toward his basement just as a 3-foot wave slammed through the door, tearing it from its hinges. Water crashed through his bay windows, drowning the family’s piano...
The fate of the Endangered Species Act rests on 2 simple words
The Endangered Species Act has stood as a pillar of conservation in the United States since 1973, bringing animals like bald eagles, manatees, and humpback whales back from the brink of extinction. But now, the Trump administration has taken its boldest step yet in an effort to strip legal protections...
As Russia attacks Ukraine’s grid, solar offers a path to resilience
On a spring day earlier this year, 10 men stood on the rooftop of a door manufacturing facility in the central Ukrainian town of Bila Tserkva, surveying the rows of solar panels that surrounded them. Since Russia invaded in 2022, the town has endured repeated attacks, triggering mass power outages....
She governs a US territory. But she has no say in who mines its waters.
Lou Leon Guerrero, the governor of Guam, learned about the government’s plan to mine her people’s waters the same way everyone else did: by reading the news. It was November 12, and her advisor had sent her an article link — apparently, a journalist had inquired about it. She opened...
Gray whales are starving as the Arctic warms. Will the US protect them?
Several hundred scientists, government officials, and environmentalists gathered for an unusual two-day conference in Newport, Oregon, last week, entirely focused on a single species: gray whales. It was an urgent meeting. The number of gray whales along the U.S. West Coast has recently plummeted by the thousands, falling by half...
Yes, this summer really was as hot as you think it was
Let’s put this summer’s extraordinary heat in perspective. Last week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirmed what so many Americans suspected, that the heat has been extra unbearable lately: This meteorological summer, which runs from June through August, was the hottest on record for the contiguous U.S., beating the...
Trump topples the last pillar of Biden’s climate agenda
Coal is by far the dirtiest of the world’s major energy sources. It accounts for almost half of the cumulative global carbon emissions since the industrial era began — as much as oil and natural gas combined. And it generates much more carbon dioxide per unit of energy than either...
America’s air monitors are disappearing. So is your power to expose polluters.
Across much of the U.S., people have little way to know when the air they breathe turns dangerous. Over recent decades, federal funding for public air monitoring has declined, the number of monitors has fallen, and much of the remaining equipment is aging or located far from major polluters. Now,...