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...
Why forcing people to go green can backfire
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...
Trump says he’ll unleash Venezuela’s oil. But who wants it?
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...
Despite Trump-era reversals, 2025 still saw environmental wins. Here are 7 worth noting.
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...
Louisiana town fights for relief after a billion-dollar oil disaster
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...
University of Nebraska is eliminating a key climate research department
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 a national crisis, and it’s worse than you think
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...
Report: Climate is central to truth and reconciliation for the Sámi in Finland
Earlier this month, the Finnish government released its Truth and Reconciliation report, which documents years of harm done to the country’s Indigenous Sámi people. Truth and Reconciliation Commissions have been emerging since the 1970s, with varying degrees of impact. South Africa’s 1998 Truth and Reconciliation Commission report, commissioned to address...
The Bad River Band is suing to protect its wild rice from an oil pipeline
Around August of each year, when temperatures swell in the Great Lakes region, wild rice — or manoomin in the Ojibwe language — begins to flower. Rice stalks can grow as high as 10 feet in the shallow waters, and to harvest, sticks and poles are used to knock seeds...
This Netflix holiday rom-com is secretly an environmentalist fantasy
At first glance, A Merry Little Ex-Mas looks like yet another holiday rom-com — a comforting, predictable love story done up in a tidy bow. Only in this case, that festive wrapper is made of green ribbon. Any environmentally minded viewers will quickly clock Ex-Mas as not just a corny...