Category: Health

President Trump’s withdrawal of the U.S. from the global fight against climate change has gone further than almost anyone expected. During the first year of his second term in office, the president and his administration have cut foreign aid for climate resilience, pressured countries to delay crucial carbon tax agreements,...

Let’s establish some baselines.  Texas is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than Saudi Arabia or the global maritime industry. Its oil, gas, and petrochemical operations discharge tens of millions of pounds of toxic pollutants into the air each year, comprising almost one-fifth of such releases in the United States....

Shortly after launching a dramatic raid in which U.S. forces abducted Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro on Saturday, President Donald Trump justified the action with a promise to revive Venezuela’s moribund oil industry. The country has by far the largest claimed reserves of crude oil in the world, accounting for almost...

In Guatemala, outside the town of Jocotán, in a house hidden from the main road by a thin wall of vegetation, I met Elena, a slight 38-year-old with bright eyes and dark hair that was just starting to show the first hints of gray. Elena had seven kids whom she...

Combating climate change can feel particularly difficult these days. Countries, states, and municipalities across the globe are missing greenhouse emission reduction targets, and in the United States, President Donald Trump has rolled back key elements of his predecessor’s climate agenda.  Given the trajectory, it might be tempting for pro-climate policymakers...

As 2025 draws to a close, environmental advocates across the U.S. find themselves weighing a year marked by both setbacks and successes. Despite major environmental reversals taken by the Donald Trump administration, including loosening fossil fuel rules and weakening endangered-species safeguards, conservationists, lawmakers, and researchers still notched key wins at...

Four months have passed since a Louisiana oil facility burst apart, spewing a dense black sludge that drifted across homes, farms, and waterways as far as 50 miles away.  Since then, the U.S. Department of Justice and Louisiana environmental regulators have filed a sweeping lawsuit against Smitty’s Supply, the company that ran...

In his 15 years of farming full time, Quentin Connealy has weathered his share of storms — literally. The first major flood hit in 2011. Three more came in 2019. The waters rose again in 2024 and ruined about 20 percent of his crops. This past summer, he dealt with...

Wildfire smoke is an emerging nationwide crisis for the United States. Supercharged by climate change, blazes are swelling into monsters that consume vast landscapes and entire towns. A growing body of evidence reveals that these conflagrations are killing far more people than previously known, as smoke travels hundreds or even...