The newest, hottest power couple doesn’t live in Hollywood. It’s actually the marriage of solar panels and water reservoirs: Known as floating photovoltaics, or floatovoltaics, the devices bob on simple floats, generating power while providing shade that reduces evaporation. One primary advantage of the technology is that you don’t have...
This rural community fought one of the country’s biggest gas-powered data centers — and won
Lexi Shelhorse is a seventh-generation resident of Pittsylvania County, Virginia, where she grows hay on family farmland in Whittles, a rural community in the southern part of the state. She can trace her lineage back to Johann Barnett Shelhousen, a German immigrant who arrived during the United States Revolutionary War...
Boosted by Trump, banks resume their love affair with fossil fuels
For the first time since 2021 — the start of the Biden administration — banks have ramped up their financing of fossil fuel projects, a changing tide that reflects the Trump White House’s close ties to and energetic support for Big Oil. That’s based on the annual “Banking on Climate Chaos” report, which...
A majority of people around the world support a carbon tax — even if they’re paying it
People in affluent countries around the world are willing to tax themselves to address climate change and ease poverty. That idea defies conventional political wisdom, which typically holds that people hate taxes. It emerged in a survey of 40,680 people in 20 nations that found strong support for a carbon...
Want to try lab-grown salmon? The US just approved it.
For the first time ever, a lab-grown seafood company has met the United States Food and Drug Administration’s requirements for demonstrating the safety of a new cell-cultured product. Wildtype’s cultivated salmon is now for sale in Portland, Oregon. This marks the first time that lab-grown seafood (also known as “cultivated...
New York’s mayoral race could decide the city’s climate future
Six years ago, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio hosted a chaotic press conference in the lobby of Trump Tower to announce the city’s commitment to its version of the Green New Deal. The mayor, whose term ended in 2022, planned to achieve this through the Climate Mobilization Act,...
A new app details where your food comes from — and just how fragile the global food system really is
After founding the Better Planet Laboratory at the University of Colorado Boulder in 2021, Zia Mehrabi, one of a handful of scientists studying the intersection of food insecurity and climate change, soon found himself fielding a steady stream of calls from policymakers and peers. Everyone wanted more quantitative insight into...
Science says plastic bag bans really do work
When you outlaw or discourage the sale of plastic bags, fewer of them end up as litter on beaches. That’s the intuitive finding of a paper published Thursday in the journal Science, which involved an analysis of policies to restrict plastic bag use across the United States. The study authors...
Canada’s wildfire crisis is displacing First Nations at alarming rates
Since mid-May, wildfires across Canada have burned 9.6 million acres, prompting the evacuation of approximately 40,000 people. According to Indigenous Services Canada, a government ministry, more than half of those evacuees are from First Nations communities, and nearly 34 tribes in almost every province are affected. The sudden rush of...
In Georgia, a runoff looms for Democrats after primary results for public utility commission seat
This coverage is made possible through a partnership between Grist and WABE, Atlanta’s NPR station. The Democratic primary for the seat representing part of metro Atlanta on the Georgia Public Service Commission appears to be headed to a runoff. In the other competitive race in this week’s PSC primaries, Republican...