Last week, Illinois officials took possession of a 50-acre stretch of riverbed in Chicago’s shipping channel in a last-ditch effort to prevent an ecological disaster from reaching Lake Michigan. It is there, on a sliver of land where a coal-fired power plant once stood, that the state plans a last...
Solar apprenticeships give Virginia students a head start on clean energy
When Mason Taylor was getting ready to graduate from high school in 2022, he thought he would have to take an entry-level technician job with a company in Tennessee. Taylor grew up in the town of Dryden in rural Lee County, in the westernmost sliver of Virginia between Kentucky and...
Top winemaker ‘may have to leave its Spanish vineyards due to climate crisis’
A leading European winemaker has warned it may have to abandon its ancestral lands in Catalonia in 30 years’ time because climate change could make traditional growing areas too dry and hot. Familia Torres is already installing irrigation at its vineyards in Spain and California and is planting vines on land at...
The Kentucky tornadoes spur mounting anxiety over weather service warning systems
Sandra Anderson didn’t think the storm would be too bad. When her grandchildren asked if the dogs should be brought in, Anderson demurred, saying they’d be fine. But later that night, an alert on her phone warned her of a tornado tearing through her hometown of London, Kentucky. Seconds later,...
The weird way that penguin poop might be cooling Antarctica
In December 2022, Matthew Boyer hopped on an Argentine military plane to one of the more remote habitations on Earth: Marambio Station at the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, where the icy continent stretches toward South America. Months before that, Boyer had to ship expensive, delicate instruments that might get...
Moderate Republicans defended Biden’s climate law — then voted to repeal it
After days of intense political infighting between ultra-conservative and moderate Republicans, the House of Representatives voted along party lines on Thursday morning to approve a sweeping tax bill that seeks to eviscerate the heart of landmark climate legislation passed by Democrats just three years ago. The 2022 climate law on...
The Senate just voted to block California’s gas car ban
For nearly 60 years, California has enjoyed the ability to set its own standards governing air pollution from automobiles, as long as they’re more stringent than the federal government’s. This rule, written into the Clean Air Act, was meant to recognize the state’s longstanding leadership in regulating air emissions. The...
The US government stole the Black Hills. Now it’s clear-cutting them.
Driving into the Black Hills National Forest, as the road gains elevation, raindrops hitting the windshield slow down and start swirling in the air. It’s snowing in late April, a welcome sight in an area that’s been in a climate change-linked drought. Today, most visitors to the Black Hills will...
Who will benefit from melting glaciers?
The Tulsequah Glacier meanders down a broad valley in northwest British Columbia, 7 miles from the Alaska border. At the foot of the glacier sits a silty, gray lake, a reservoir of glacial runoff. The lake is vast, deeper than Seattle’s Space Needle is tall. But it didn’t exist a...
How the Washoe Tribe built a business to sustain a firewood bank that helps elders heat their homes
It’s a sun-splashed morning at the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California’s wood yard, a patch of land about the size of a football field, tucked in a valley about 20 miles east of Lake Tahoe’s south shore. Magpies, black-and-white birds with blue-tinted wings, land on stacks of lumber and...