It was 4 a.m. on July 4 at Camp La Junta in Kerr County when Kolton Taylor woke up to the sound of screaming. The 12-year-old boy stepped out of bed and straight into knee-deep floodwaters from the nearby Guadalupe River. Before long, the water had already risen to his...
Trump and the energy industry are eager to power AI with fossil fuels
AI is “not my thing,” President Donald Trump admitted during a speech in Pittsburgh on Tuesday. However, the president said during his remarks at the Energy and Innovation Summit, his advisers had told him just how important energy was to the future of AI. “You need double the electric of what we have...
The race to build solar and wind in New York before Trump’s tax credit deadline
As negotiations over President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” came down to the wire in early July, renewable energy developers were holding their breath. Until the eleventh hour, it looked like Congress was ready to make good on Trump’s promise of “terminating” key subsidies for wind and solar virtually overnight. In...
Trump is fast-tracking new coal mines — even when they don’t make economic sense
It looked for a while like the coal mining era was over in the Clearfork Valley of East Tennessee, a pocket of mountainous land on the Kentucky border. A permit for a new mine hasn’t been issued since 2020, and the last mine in the region shuttered two years ago....
Standing Rock was an Indigenous-led movement. Why did Greenpeace take the fall?
Loading… The Kill Step By Alleen Brown July 18, 2025 In March 2025, a jury ordered the environmental giant Greenpeace to pay $666 million to the companies behind the Dakota Access pipeline. The companies argued that Greenpeace was responsible for protests near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation nearly a decade...
USDA abruptly cancels rural energy grant application window
For over two decades, Bruce Everly has been helping Indiana farmers apply for funding from the federal Rural Energy for America Program, which provides grants for solar, wind, energy-efficiency upgrades, grain dryers, biodigesters, and other projects in rural America. He’s seen it serve as an economic lifeline for small farmers,...
After deadly flash floods, a Texas town takes halting, painful steps toward recovery
By Wednesday, almost two weeks after the July 4 floods that devastated the Central Texas region that hugs the Guadalupe River, the rain had finally subsided long enough for rescue and recovery work to resume in earnest. Celbi Lucas was clearing debris alongside the many volunteers who have poured into...
How reducing the US military budget would also reduce emissions
The next time you’re on a flight worrying about destroying the planet, rest easy knowing that at least you’re not in a fighter jet. The airline industry is responsible for 2.5 percent of global CO2 emissions, but the world’s militaries are responsible for more than double that, at 5.5 percent. ...
Inside the movement to recognize nature as an artist
Have you ever listened to a recording of birdsong? Or ocean waves? The howling of wolves, or thunder and rain? If you have, did you ever wonder whether nature was getting any compensation for producing that acoustic art that found its way to your speakers? A number of musicians and...
This fuel is 50% plastic — and it’s slipping through a loophole in international waste law
Since 2019, the 191 countries that are party to an international agreement called the Basel Convention have agreed to classify mixed plastic trash as “hazardous waste.” This designation essentially bans the export of unsorted plastic waste from rich countries to poor countries and requires it to be disclosed in shipments...