Power lines across the country weren’t designed for a changing climate, with much of the nation’s grid built more than half a century ago. Today, stronger storms and heavier precipitation cause hundreds of outages a year, many because of trees falling on above-ground power lines. In northern Michigan, some utilities...
The fight to protect pollinators and people from the ‘pesticides that are everywhere’
Born and raised in Colorado, Cory Kreft began working on a honey farm at 15 years old. He returned to beekeeping after college, eventually buying the business from his former boss. But in 2021, his bees suddenly began dying. He lost 85 percent of his hives. The losses continued the...
US host cities made transit improvements a World Cup goooooooal
The latest addition to Seattle’s already impressive public transit system opened to great fanfare this spring when more than 200,000 people rode the Crosslake Connection light rail line. Its March 28 debut was second only to the parade that followed the Seahawks’ Super Bowl victory as Sound Transit’s busiest day...
70-foot wastewater geyser reflects New Mexico’s latest oilfield challenge
At first, he thought it was smoke. Jackie Onsurez was driving the bustling New Mexico highway between his home in Loving and nearby Carlsbad last Tuesday evening when he thought the smoke didn’t look right. As he pulled closer, he saw that the 70-foot plume was actually a roaring geyser...
The USDA canceled $300M in farm grants, citing fraud. Did it make up the evidence?
Leah Atwood was rattled. It was the tail end of March, and for days she and her colleagues at Agroecology Commons had been fielding dozens of emails alerting them to grant terminations targeting a $300 million U.S. Department of Agriculture program. One after another, within a single week, 49 of...
A first among major nations, India is industrializing with solar
A sea of solar panels is rapidly engulfing one of the world’s largest salt deserts. By 2029, nearly 60 million panels will cover 280 square miles of India’s Rann of Kutch, extending right up to the border with Pakistan. The Khavda solar park is set to be the world’s largest...
Ask a Climate Therapist: Is it still ‘catastrophizing’ if the threat is real?
Dear Leslie, A lot of my work in therapy for anxiety has focused on recognizing catastrophic thinking and assessing what is more realistic. How would you suggest adapting this for a world where reality itself is increasingly becoming more catastrophic, and science suggests things will get worse in the future? ...
Pacific Islanders slowly recover from the strongest storm of the year
Katelynn Delos Reyes thought she knew what to expect when Typhoon Sinlaku slammed into Saipan last month. As a lifelong resident of the island, Delos Reyes had survived frequent storms, including Supertyphoon Yutu, the second-strongest in U.S. history. Eight years ago, Yutu’s 170-mph winds devastated her village in the southern...
The world’s largest data center was supposed to run on 100% natural gas. Utah’s Republican governor says ‘never.’
A sprawling, 40,000-acre data center planned for northern Utah has stirred up controversy across the state over the past month, partly because of the pollution it’s expected to contribute to a region that already struggles with smog. Officials with the quasi-governmental Military Installation Development Authority, or MIDA, which approved the...
Wildfire smoke engulfed their cities. Did it make their babies sick?
They never thought the fires would reach them. They lived in cities, after all, far from the parched, combustible wilderness. There’s the woman who never expected to have to grab her 1-year-old out of her bed in the middle of the night, shielding her soft head from a hailstorm of...