For more than 30 years, the United Nations has helped support research positions at universities to delve into the most pressing issues facing humanity: climate change, sustainable development, peace, and human rights. Nearly 1,000 UNESCO chair positions have been established in universities across 120 countries. But only a handful of...
How a 1.3-mile stretch of street became a much-needed park space in Queens, New York
The spotlight During the COVID lockdowns of 2020, people in cities all over the world were desperate to get outside. As everything slowed down, residents and city governments organized to block off sections of some streets to cars, instead giving them over to pedestrians and leisure activities — a global...
California rolls on with electric trucks, despite Trump’s roadblocks
Wes Lowe uses so much Claritin that he started an Amazon subscription to avoid running out. His kids take two asthma medications. This reflects the normalcy of pollution in California’s San Joaquin Valley, where residents breathe some of the dirtiest air in the nation. Lowe lives about 20 miles outside...
How shrinking the EPA could make wildfire smoke even more dangerous
This coverage is made possible in part through a partnership with Grist and Interlochen Public Radio in northern Michigan. For weeks, smoke from Canadian wildfires has poured down into the United States, drifting clear across the Atlantic into Europe. Pulmonologist Vivek Balasubramaniam, a professor of pediatrics at the University of...
What one town learned by charging residents for every bag of trash
Until a few years ago, the town of Plympton, Massachusetts, was quite literally throwing away money. People were producing so much trash that it was threatening to put the municipal transfer station out of business. Under the town’s system, residents would buy a $240 sticker for their cars that allowed...
Firefighting foams contain toxic PFAS. Could soybeans be the answer?
Jeff King has served on the volunteer fire department in Corydon, Kentucky, for over 30 years. He is well aware of the dangers of the job — including one that may be hiding in the supplies he and his crew use to keep others safe. Many of the foams firefighters spray...
What will the rise of floating solar panels mean for wildlife?
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...