Last month, forecasters watched with dread as Hurricane Melissa lumbered across the Atlantic Ocean, morphed into a monster, and took aim at the islands of the Caribbean. As predicted by the National Hurricane Center, landfall was catastrophic: While officials are still tallying the costs, both in lives lost and property...
As aid dries up in Kenya, millions are threatened by the climate-driven disease kala-azar
Longorot Epuu’s 8-year-old niece, his namesake, was sick. Epuu quickly recognized the signs of kala-azar, the “black fever,” while visiting his brother’s family in a neighboring village in Kenya’s vast, arid Turkana region in September of last year. The younger Longorot had a high fever and a swollen stomach, and...
They survived the hurricane. Their insurance company didn’t.
Jennifer and Dean Bye were just getting by before Hurricane Ida slammed into southern Louisiana in 2021. The couple own a house in a comfortable subdivision in Paulina, a town about an hour west of New Orleans, that they share with their three kids. They had their challenges before the...
Native Alaska villages were already on the front lines of climate change. Then a typhoon hit.
A week after Typhoon Halong passed through Japan in early October, its remnants crossed the Pacific and struck western Alaska. Nearly 50 Alaska Native communities across the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta near the Bering Sea were met with towering wind speeds, record storm surge, and widespread flooding. At least one person died,...
Teachers unions leverage contracts to fight climate change
In Illinois, the Chicago Teachers Union won a contract with the city’s schools to add solar panels on some buildings and clean energy career pathways for students, among other actions. In Minnesota, the Minneapolis Federation of Educators demanded that the district create a task force on environmental issues and provide...
Google Earth gets an AI chatbot to help chart the climate crisis
Google has come up with a way to better map Earth’s disasters, predict them, and be able to track which communities and ecosystems are going to be harmed. If you want to find out what’s straining the environment in your neck of the woods, all you have to do is ask....
Trump officials say Alaska is ‘open for business.’ So far, no one’s buying.
As Kristen Moreland waited for the livestream to buffer, her thoughts drifted to the years she’d devoted to defending Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the northeastern sweep of Alaska where the mountains give way to the coastal plain. On screen, the chatter of aides stilled as men in dark suits gathered...
‘A devastating global audit’ shows how climate change is undermining the health of millions
As world leaders prepare to meet for the 30th annual United Nations climate change conference, or COP30, in northern Brazil later this month, a new report has found that climate change is already killing millions of people every year. The “Countdown on Health and Climate Change,” which is compiled by...
For a struggling Iowa ranch, the government shutdown may be the last straw
Last June, record flooding swept through the rural town of Rock Valley, Iowa. As the wall of water began to overtake Chelsie Ver Mulm’s 10-acre plot of land, she rushed into action, rapidly evacuating her family’s gaggle of cows, sheep, chickens, pigs, horses, and goats to higher ground. When the...
This obscure Georgia election is about so much more than your power bill
This coverage is made possible through a partnership between Grist and WABE, Atlanta’s NPR station. Georgians are currently voting in rare off-year elections for two seats on the Public Service Commission, or PSC — the only statewide races on the ballot this year. More Democrats are expected to turn out...