My husband, friends, and I sat huddled at a faux-marble-topped table in the lobby of our Utah hotel, looking down at a Google Maps route pulled up on my iPhone. We pinched and scrolled the screen as the breakfast buffet crowd hummed around us. We were less than a week...
The fossil fuel industry is spending record amounts to keep California from regulating it
The fossil fuel industry isn’t just raking in record profits amid the war with Iran. In California, it’s also spending big to oppose climate and worker-safety legislation. According to analyses by a coalition of environmental groups called the Last Chance Alliance, oil and gas companies spent more than $17 million...
Offshore wind power projects are flailing, just when the East Coast needs them most
With congested, aging power lines and a densely developed landscape, the East Coast has few options for building large-scale renewable power. Meanwhile, the region’s electricity prices are rising, and states are falling behind their emissions goals. Offshore wind offered a unique opportunity to meet those challenges, experts say, but the...
US companies are on the cusp of big climate solutions. Thank the government.
The United States has never been one of the most ambitious countries when it comes to tackling climate change, but it has long maintained a program that funds innovative clean energy technology. This program is known as the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy, or ARPA-E, and over the past 15 years...
Living with drought has taught pastoralists lessons the world needs
Cattle are a central part of the identity of Andrew Msami’s Maasai community in northeast Tanzania. Herd size determines social position, and many people keep all their wealth in livestock, not banks. But in recent years, Msami and others have been forced to sell the animals and buy goats, which...
Tennessee helped usher in the nuclear age. It wants to lead the way again.
Luther “Sunny” Miller is nearly 80, but in his younger days, he worked at Aerojet, a rocket and missile manufacturer located quite literally in his backyard. He can’t prove it, but he worries that his thyroid and bladder problems, and his wife’s kidney disease, can be traced to the plant....
Even meteorologists are baffled by the Midwestern tornado season
Unprecedented. Record-breaking. Baffling. Experts are running out of ways to describe this year’s tornado season in the Midwest, which has unleashed more twisters on Illinois than any other place on Earth. So far, 207 cyclones and counting have touched down on the Prairie State, some of which have flipped homes,...
Trump ordered to release billions in climate grants meant for Black communities
Dominika Parry never stopped fighting for Jackson, Mississippi, residents even after the Trump administration terminated a multibillion-dollar program last year meant to help the Black city still reeling from a water crisis. For years, if water did flow out of Black households’ faucets in Jackson at all, it was often...
Firefighters sound alarm as US faces critical staffing shortage: ‘We don’t have enough people’
The U.S. has faced a critical shortage of firefighters at the Forest Service, or USFS, this summer as thousands of fires erupted across the country. Despite officials’ claims that the firefighting workforce was stronger than ever, the agency has failed to keep pace with escalating conditions and the catastrophic fires...
In a drier world, some infectious diseases are unexpectedly thriving
The world has become hotter and, in many places, drier than ever before in recorded history. Just this summer, as some U.S. states battle over rights to the Colorado River, major reservoirs are at historically-low levels. In Puerto Rico, extended drought has exacerbated an infrastructure crisis, leaving residents to suffer...