This coverage is made possible through a partnership between Grist and WBEZ, a public radio station serving the Chicago metropolitan region. Chicago city leaders are set to consider a major overhaul in how and where polluting businesses are allowed to open, nearly two years after the city settled a civil...
The obscure policy that financed many of the last decade’s riskiest energy investments is back
Last week, Missouri governor Mike Kehoe signed into law a bill that packaged together dozens of reforms to utility regulations. Among them was a provision called “construction work in progress,” or CWIP, which allows power companies to bill their customers for the costs of building power plants during their construction...
Why the shipping industry’s new carbon tax is a big deal — and still not enough
Each year, all the cargo ships that crisscross the oceans carrying cars, building materials, food, and other goods emit about 3 percent of the world’s climate pollution. That’s about as much as the aviation sector Driving down those emissions is complicated. Unlike, say, electricity generation, which happens within a nation’s...
The unregulated link in a toxic supply chain
By January 2018, Vanessa Dominguez and her husband had been flirting with moving to a different neighborhood in El Paso, Texas, for a few years. Their daughter was enrolled in one of the best elementary schools in the county, but because the family lived just outside the district’s boundary, her...
¿Su comunidad está en riesgo? Cómo acceder a la información y contar historias sobre el EtO
Read this in English. Cómo surgió esta historia Cuando las reporteras de Grist comenzaron a hablar con defensores del medio ambiente sobre el óxido de etileno en 2023, escuchamos repetidamente que los almacenes eran una amenaza y que ni los reguladores ni los activistas comunitarios tenían idea de dónde estaban...
Is your community at risk? How to access data and tell stories about EtO
Lea esta nota en español. How this story came about When Grist reporters began talking to environmental advocates about ethylene oxide in 2023, we repeatedly heard that warehouses were a threat and that neither regulators nor community activists had any idea where they were. The advocates emphasized that, even as...
Meet the DJs spinning Earth Day into nightlife
The vision “In the nightlife industry, the majority of the crowd is very young. Our crowd is the future. So it’s great to have them all together and be able to raise some more awareness.” — Ruben Pariente Gromark of DJs for Climate Action The spotlight Next Tuesday, April 22,...
Logging doesn’t prevent wildfires, but Trump is trying it anyway
In an emergency directive issued late last week, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced her department’s plan to expand logging and timber production by 25 percent and, in the process, dismantle the half-century-old environmental review system that has blocked the federal government from finalizing major decisions concerning national...
The fix for parched western states: Recycled toilet water
If you were to drink improperly recycled toilet water, it could really hurt you — but probably not in the way you’re thinking. Advanced purification technology so thoroughly cleans wastewater of feces and other contaminants that it also strips out natural minerals, which the treatment facility then has to add...
‘People would die’: As summer approaches, Trump is jeopardizing funding for AC
The summer of 2021 was brutal for residents of the Pacific Northwest. Cities across the region from Portland, Oregon, to Quillayute, Washington, broke temperature records by several degrees. In Washington, as the searing heat wave settled over the state, 125 people died from heat-related illnesses such as strokes and heart...