Two long years ago, it appeared that the much-anticipated American Climate Corps was finally happening. President Joe Biden had promised to build a green jobs workforce inspired by the Civilian Conservation Corps, one of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s most popular New Deal programs, ever since he was on the campaign trail....
A major agreement to protect the Amazon is falling apart after 20 years
Nearly 20 years ago, a Brazilian lobbying group for soy trading and processing companies signed onto a historic conservation deal known as the Amazon soy moratorium. The voluntary agreement prohibits members from buying soybeans grown on lands deforested after July 2008. Proponents of the deal say that it has been...
Trump’s EPA could limit its own ability to use new science to strengthen air pollution rules
Ethylene oxide was once considered an unremarkable pollutant. The colorless gas seeped from relatively few industrial facilities and commanded little public attention. All that changed in 2016, when the Environmental Protection Agency completed a study that found the chemical is 30 times more carcinogenic than previously thought. The agency then spent years...
Mobile homes already have huge utility bills. Congress may make it worse.
On Friday morning, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a bill that would get the Department of Energy out of the business of energy standards for mobile homes, also known as manufactured homes, and could set the efficiency requirements back decades. Advocates say the changes will streamline the regulatory process...
How Chevron played the long game in Venezuela
On Saturday, hours after U.S. forces in Caracas killed at least 80 people and kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Donald Trump sounded less like a wartime commander than a developer surveying a newly acquired property. The country’s future, he told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort, belonged to “very large United...
The Miccosukee Tribe blocked Alligator Alcatraz. Then Trump blocked a bill to return their land.
On Thursday, Republicans in the House failed to override President Donald Trump’s first two vetoes in office: a pipeline project that would bring safe drinking water to rural Colorado, and another that would return land to the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians in Florida. Their inability to block the president’s move...
How community solar turned a Superfund site into savings in Illinois
As someone who spent several years as a workers’ rights organizer, Fredy Amador is intimately familiar with the financial struggles people face in the current economy. Northern Illinois’ skyrocketing energy bills make the situation even tougher. Now, Amador has become an evangelist for something that can provide a modest measure of relief:...
How Chevron played the long game in Venezuela
On Saturday, hours after U.S. forces in Caracas killed at least 80 people and kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Donald Trump sounded less like a wartime commander than a developer surveying a newly acquired property. The country’s future, he told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort, belonged to “very large United...
Trump invaded Venezuela to restore an oil industry he helped destroy
The middle-of-the-night kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro shocked the world on Saturday. Military helicopters bombed Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, as U.S. special forces breached Maduro’s residence, captured him, and flew him to New York to stand trial on unproven charges of narcoterrorism. President Donald Trump has offered several justifications for...
In 2025, the US suffered a billion-dollar disaster every 10 days
Last year began with the costliest wildfires in American history, as a series of blazes tore across Los Angeles for nearly all of January. A parade of other catastrophes followed: severe storms across the southern and northeastern United States, tornadoes in the central states, drought and heat waves through the...