Last year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency gave this country’s nearly 200 remaining coal-fired power plants until 2027 to install or improve air quality monitoring devices on smokestacks to meet federal guidelines to cut hazardous pollutants including mercury, arsenic, lead, and particulate matter. But through executive action, President Donald Trump...
If you want to claim the solar tax credit, install now
For the last two decades, homeowners have been able to claim thousands of dollars in federal tax credits to help offset the high upfront costs of going solar. Things were supposed to stay that way through 2034. But, this week, the U.S. House of Representatives proposed abruptly ending the incentives...
After disasters, AmeriCorps was everywhere. What happens when it’s gone?
After devastating fires tore through Los Angeles in January, a crew of more than 300 young people showed up to help, many of them members of the national service program AmeriCorps. Among them was Julian Nava-Cortez, who traveled from northern California to assist survivors at a disaster recovery center near...
Ice roads are a lifeline for First Nations. As Canada warms, they’re disappearing.
It was the last night of February and a 4×4 truck vaulted down the 103-mile winter road to Cat Lake First Nation in northern Ontario, a road made entirely of ice and snow. Only the light of the stars and the red and white truck lights illuminated the dense, snow-dusted...
Trump’s USDA tried to erase climate data. This lawsuit forced it back online.
The United States Department of Agriculture says it will restore climate-related information on its websites, following a lawsuit filed earlier this year by agriculture and environmental groups that say farmers rely heavily on these critical resources to adapt to warming temperatures. In January, following President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the USDA’s...
The government just killed an essential way to assess climate risk
Nearly 30 billion-dollar storms rocked the United States last year. Thanks to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s disaster tracking database, we know that catastrophes are getting more expensive overall, and we’re seeing more of them crossing the 10-figure threshold. But the era of billion-dollar disasters is over, because the...
As temperatures rise, the US Corn Belt could see insurance claims soar
In the United States, farmers have access to federally subsidized crop insurance — a backstop that affords them some peace of mind in the face of extreme weather. When droughts, floods, or other natural disasters ruin a season’s harvest, farmers can rely on insurance policies that will pay out a certain...
Even your favorite YouTube creators are feeling the effects of federal cuts
The vision “I just see this flattening of imagination. And that to me is the most terrifying thing. A lack of imagination leads to a lack of problem-solving, a lack of critical thinking. And that is what’s at risk here.” — Emily Graslie, creator of The Brain Scoop The spotlight...
This snack company is trying to change the way you think about chocolate
When the food company Blue Stripes first began developing recipes in 2018, its CEO and co-founder, Oded Brenner, whirled through the company’s kitchen, tasting everything. Blue Stripes makes snacks out of every part of the cacao fruit — not just the beans, which are the essential ingredient in chocolate, but...
What Pope Leo means for global climate action and colonialism
On a sweltering January day in 2018, Pope Francis addressed 100,000 of the faithful in Puerto Maldonado, Peru, not far from where gold mining had ravaged an expanse of Amazon rainforest about the size of Colorado. “The native Amazonian peoples have probably never been so threatened on their own lands...