In early July, as the torrential rain that unleashed deadly flash flooding in the Texas Hill Country started to abate, a Kerr County resident standing on a bridge filmed something floating toward him through the trees. It was a cream-colored, ranch-style house with black trim — so perfectly intact it...
The art of a plastics treaty: How sculptures, collages, and poetry have influenced global talks
Nearly every day since July 31, Benjamin Von Wong has been surrounding his 20-foot-tall art installation, “The Thinker’s Burden,” with a little more plastic trash. By Thursday, parts of it could be totally obscured beneath a mountain of garbage in front of the Palais des Nations in Geneva. Von Wong,...
Tribal nations scramble to save clean energy projects as federal support vanishes
Cody Two Bear, who is Standing Rock Sioux, served on his tribal council during the Dakota Access pipeline protests in 2017. Growing up in a community powered by coal, the experience was transformative. “I’ve seen the energy extraction that has placed a toll significantly on tribal nations when it comes...
Tracking sea turtles is a long, slow process that just might keep them alive
This coverage is made possible through a partnership between Grist and WABE, Atlanta’s NPR station. In the middle of a steamy July night on the Wassaw Island beach, near Savannah, Georgia, volunteer Gabi Steinbach plunged her arm shoulder-deep in the sand to reach a loggerhead sea turtle nest that hatched...
Offshore wind leasing is officially dead under Trump
Offshore wind leasing is effectively dead in the U.S. following a Trump administration order issued last week. Large swaths of U.S. waters that had been identified by federal agencies as ideal for offshore wind are no longer eligible for such developments under an Interior Department statement released last Wednesday. In the four-sentence statement,...
Amid federal PFAS rollbacks, New Jersey scores record $2B DuPont settlement
While the federal government is scaling back regulations on “forever chemicals,” New Jersey is holding polluters accountable, announcing a record-breaking $2 billion settlement with DuPont and several related companies with an $875 million payout and up to $1.2 billion in cleanup costs. The deal, which follows a two-month-long trial, is...
The global plastics crisis explained in 6 charts
Since plastic began to be mass-produced in the 1950s, the material has been building up in the environment and in people’s bodies. These six graphs illustrate just how bad the problem has gotten, and why delegates from more than 170 countries have committed to negotiating a global, legally binding treaty...
Energy projects across the country are in limbo after Trump’s ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’
When President Donald Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on July 4, he was in many ways delivering on a campaign promise: gutting the country’s signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA. The new budget law delivers deep cuts for programs like renewable energy, tree-planting, and...
As California burns, new research shows smoke is wildfire’s silent killer
Air quality alerts went into effect in 11 states this week, as wildfire smoke from Canada as well as Central California’s Gifford Fire — which has burned nearly 100,000 acres and is just 15 percent contained — spread across the United States. As the planet warms, such blazes are burning...
Food banks have long prevented emissions. Now they’re getting into the carbon credit business.
Eight to 10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions come from food wasted somewhere along its journey from farm to table. When that organic waste ends up in a landfill, it emits methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, as it slowly decomposes. Food banks can help prevent food waste from occurring...