The U.S. Supreme Court last week ruled in favor of a controversial Utah railway project that critics say erodes the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, a bedrock of environmental law for the past half century. The case centered on a proposed 88-mile railway that would connect the oil fields of northeastern...
Trump officials open up millions of acres in Alaska to drilling and mining
Millions of acres of Alaska wilderness will lose federal protections and be exposed to drilling and mining in the Trump administration’s latest move to prioritize energy production over the shielding of the U.S.’s open spaces. Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, said on Monday that the government would reverse an order issued...
Indigenous land defenders face rising threats amid global push for critical minerals
Miguel Guimaraes, a Shipibo-Konibo leader, has spent his life protesting palm oil plantations and other agribusiness ventures exploiting the Amazon rainforest in his homeland of Peru. Last spring, as he attended a United Nations conference on protecting human rights defenders in Chile, masked men broke into his home, stole his...
Trump cuts hundreds of EPA grants, leaving cities on the hook for climate resiliency
This coverage is made possible through a partnership between Grist and WABE, Atlanta’s NPR station. Thomasville, Georgia, has a water problem. Its treatment system is far out of date, posing serious health and environmental risks. “We have wastewater infrastructure that is old,” said Sheryl Sealy, the assistant city manager for...
As Trump comes after research, Forest Service scientists keep working
The research and development team at the U.S. Forest Service employs about 1,500 people full-time, a small but mighty faction inside an agency that, until recently, was 35,000 strong. The research it conducts spans everything from managing visitors at recreation hotspots to understanding the pulse of life and land on the 193 million...
Hawaiʻi makes history as first state to charge tourists to save environment
Hawaiʻi has officially become the first U.S. state to enact a so-called “green fee” — a charge added onto hotel room stays and other short-term visits to help protect the local environment and address the growing impacts of climate change. Governor Josh Green signed the fee into law Tuesday after...
In her new book, ‘Kuleana,’ Sara Kehaulani Goo fights to keep her family’s land
Sara Kehaulani Goo’s journey to save her family’s land on Maui began in 2019 with an email she read at her kitchen table in Washington, D.C. “Sara, the Hāna property taxes went up 500%,” her dad wrote. “If we can’t find a way to pay, then the trust funds will...
Trump’s budget bill is on the verge of transforming how America eats
Early this month, after some equivocation, President Donald Trump briefly endorsed the idea to hike taxes on the wealthiest Americans in his budget proposal to Congress. Economists were quick to point out the meager impact a new millionaire tax bracket would have on the ultra-rich, particularly in the context of...
What’s likely to survive from Biden’s climate law? The controversial stuff.
Dig down about a mile or two in parts of the United States and you’ll start to see the remains of an ancient ocean. The shells of long dead sea creatures are compressed into white limestone, surrounding brine aquifers with a higher salt content than the Atlantic Ocean. Last summer,...
‘Chilling and dangerous’: Grassroots groups sue over Louisiana law that censors air quality data
For several years, Amy Stelly has been partnering with the Louisiana State University School of Public Health in New Orleans to monitor air quality next to the Claiborne Expressway, a busy highway that runs northwest of the city’s iconic French Quarter. At a community meeting in April, Stelly, who runs...