This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In Montana, wildfires are destroying ranchland, drought is killing fish, and heat is harming traditional tribal food sources like huckleberries. To the south, Utahns are inhaling a toxic concoction of tailpipe and smokestack emissions, made worse by …
In the summer of 2020, the liberal city council of Flagstaff, Arizona, passed a resolution to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030, tasking the city’s sustainability office with figuring out a plan to get there. The agency’s small team got to work gathering input from the community and modeling different options for reducing emissions. But the …
In 1942, when Mary Tanaka was 2 years old, the U.S. government arrested her father and took the rest of the Tanaka family from Juneau, Alaska, to the Minidoka prison camp in the desert of south-central Idaho. The United States had just entered World War II. The five members of the family spent the next …
Idaho’s ‘wind rush’ meets opposition outside a WWII prison camp Read More »
This story was originally published by The Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Anette Arjoon is not anti-oil. The marine conservationist calls the vast new oil fields off Guyana’s coast a “blessing” that will earn billions of dollars for one of the poorest countries in the Caribbean, even as …
‘We can’t eat a new road’: Fears over the true cost of Exxon’s oil bonanza in Guyana Read More »
It’s looking to be a hot summer for just about everyone in the United States. And there’s not much hope for rain to ease the heat. That’s according to the latest forecast from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s climate scientists, released Thursday. From June to August, unusually hot temperatures are expected across all 50 …
Summer forecast: Extreme heat with a chance of rolling blackouts Read More »
Humans have evolved to spend roughly a third of our lives sleeping. How we sleep impacts productivity, alertness, mood, hunger, energy, and other basic functions that comprise a huge chunk of the human experience. But we are not sleeping well. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 1 in 3 American adults don’t …
Study: Warming temperatures are eroding our ability to sleep Read More »
Northeastern Minnesota’s Iron Range has been a major mining hub since the 1860s. Nestled among thick forests and many of the state’s famed “10,000 lakes,” open-pit mines there produce low-grade iron ore that’s shipped to steel mills around the country. But for the last few decades, as the U.S. steel industry has waned and demand …
In Minnesota, the PolyMet mine pits renewable energy needs against tribes and the EPA Read More »
This story is reprinted with permission from Honolulu Civil Beat. In January, a remote island in the Federated States of Micronesia switched on its lights for the first time since before World War II, bringing electricity to 500 households by burning waste from its new coconut-processing facility. In a country where only one in three people …
Pacific Island nations want more renewable power. Climate financing may help. Read More »
A neck-and-neck Democratic primary race for Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District has yielded a probable winner: Summer Lee, the 34-year-old state representative who ran on a progressive platform of environmental, social, and economic justice. Lee’s opponent, the more moderate but still left-of-center Pittsburgh-based attorney Steve Irwin, ran an aggressive, well-funded campaign that frequently criticized Lee for …
Pennsylvania might really send an anti-fracking advocate to Congress Read More »
This story was published in partnership with The Counter. Every year, California dairy farms emit hundreds of thousands of tons of the potent greenhouse gas methane, which gets released when livestock operations pool manure in open-air lagoons. To put a lid on these emissions, the state is lavishing the industry with lucrative subsidies to capture …
Is California giving its methane digesters too much credit? Read More »