Grist
As the climate changes, cities scramble to find trees that will survive
Last fall, I invited a stranger into my yard. Manzanita, with its peeling red bark and delicate pitcher-shaped blossoms, thrives on the dry, rocky ridges of Northern California. The small, evergreen tree or shrub is famously drought-tolerant, with some varieties capable of enduring more than 200 days between waterings. And yet here I was, gently lowering an 18-inch variety named for botanist Howard McMinn into the damp soil of Tacoma, a city in Washington known for its towering Douglas firs, bigleaf maples, and an average of 152 rainy days per year.
How should Georgia elect key utility regulators? US Supreme Court is asked to weigh in.
This coverage is made possible through a partnership with WABE and Grist, a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. In a case that could impact other lawsuits on voting rights, Black voters who sued over Georgia’s elections for key utility regulators...
From Australia to the Arctic, young Indigenous changemakers speak out
This story is published as part of the Global Indigenous Affairs Desk, an Indigenous-led collaboration between Grist, High Country News, ICT, Mongabay, Native News Online, and APTN. More than 20 years ago, the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, or UNPFII, held its annual meeting with a focus on...
Indigenous advocates at the UN say the green transition is neither clean nor just
This story is published as part of the Global Indigenous Affairs Desk, an Indigenous-led collaboration between Grist, High Country News, ICT, Mongabay, Native News Online, and APTN. For years, Maureen Penjueli, who is Indigenous iTaukei from Fiji, has watched her home country survive devastating cyclones and flooding caused by unusually...
Biden’s ‘Solar for All’ awards $7B to bring affordable energy to low-income families
Clean energy, like so many commodities in this country, is neither distributed evenly nor equally. Disadvantaged communities have far fewer solar panels arrayed across their rooftops than areas with higher incomes. The federal government just took a major step toward crossing that chasm. On Monday, President Joe Biden announced the...
Acre by acre, the Prairie Band Potawatomi bought back their land
Last week, the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation began efforts to reestablish the only federal Indian reservation in Illinois, formally confirming the tribe’s governance over its land. The move could have wide-ranging impacts on matters ranging from criminal justice to climate and environmental jurisdiction. The Prairie Band Potawatomi have spent...
The American Climate Corps is now hiring
You can now apply to be one of the first members of the American Climate Corps. President Joe Biden declared that the program was open for applications on Monday with 273 jobs currently listed on the White House’s website, including coastal conservation in Florida, stream restoration in Montana, and forest management in the Sierra Nevada. The administration said the number of openings will soon reach 2,000, with positions spanning 36 states plus Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C.
Indigenous peoples rush to stop ‘false climate solutions’ ahead of next international climate meeting
This story is published as part of the Global Indigenous Affairs Desk, an Indigenous-led collaboration between Grist, High Country News, ICT, Mongabay, Native News Online, and APTN. For more than 20 years, Tom Goldtooth has listened to conversations about the negative impacts fossil fuels and carbon markets have on Indigenous...
A gigantic green energy transmission project will cut through Indigenous lands in the Southwest
This story is published as part of the Global Indigenous Affairs Desk, an Indigenous-led collaboration between Grist, High Country News, ICT, Mongabay, Native News Online, and APTN. Last week a United States federal judge rejected a request from Indigenous nations to stop SunZia, a $10 billion dollar wind transmission project...
California communities are fighting the last battery recycling plant in the West — and its toxic legacy
This story is being co-published with Public Health Watch. West of the Rockies, just one lead battery recycler remains in the United States. If your car battery conks out in downtown Seattle or the Sonoran desert, it will probably be hauled to Ecobat, a lead smelter half an hour east of downtown Los Angeles.
How to investigate toxic lead lurking in your community’s soil
Lead poisoning is often treated as if it’s a problem of the past. But its harmful legacy lingers today, particularly in the soil of urban centers across the United States. One in every two American children under the age of 6 tested between late 2018 and early 2020 had detectable levels of lead in their blood. Studies show soil exposure is a major reason.
Drilling for oil on public land in the US is about to get more expensive
This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. On April 12, the Department of Interior released a new rule that will impose stricter financial requirements for oil and gas companies that operate on federal public land — the first such change since 1960.
The EPA is cracking down on PFAS — but not in fertilizer
On Friday, the Environmental Protection Agency designated two types of “forever chemicals” as hazardous substances under the federal Superfund law. The move will make it easier for the government to force the manufacturers of these chemicals, called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or pfas, to shoulder the costs of cleaning them out of the environment.
Taking Big Oil to court for ‘climate homicide’ isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds
A new legal theory suggests that oil companies could be taken to court for every kind of homicide in the United States, short of first-degree murder. The idea of “climate homicide” is getting attention in law schools and district attorney’s offices around the country. A paper published in Harvard Environmental Law Review last week argues that fossil fuel companies have been “killing members of the public at an accelerating rate.” It says that oil giants’ awareness that their pollution could have lethal consequences solidly fits within the definition of homicide, which, in its basic form, is causing death with a “culpable mental state.” In other words, the case can be made that oil companies knew what they were doing.
Pediatricians say climate conversations should be part of any doctor’s visit
The reality of climate change came home for Dr. Samantha Ahdoot one summer day in 2011 when her son was 9 years old. An assistant professor at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, Ahdoot and her family were living in Alexandria, when there was a heat wave. Morning temperatures hovered in the high 80s, and her son had to walk up a steep hill to get to his day camp.
At UN conference, Indigenous peoples say little has changed after promises made a decade ago
This story is published as part of the Global Indigenous Affairs Desk, an Indigenous-led collaboration between Grist, High Country News, ICT, Mongabay, Native News Online, and APTN. In December, Catherine Murupaenga-Ikenn used a power tool to erase the words on a museum display of the Treaty of Waitangi, an 1840...
UN puts spotlight on attacks against Indigenous land defenders
This story is published as part of the Global Indigenous Affairs Desk, an Indigenous-led collaboration between Grist, High Country News, ICT, Mongabay, Native News Online, and APTN. When around 70,000 Indigenous Maasai were expelled from their lands in northern Tanzania in 2022, it didn’t happen in a vacuum. For years,...
Staggering quantities of energy transition metals are winding up in the garbage bin
To build all of the solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicle batteries, and other technologies necessary to fight climate change, we’re going to need a lot more metals. Mining those metals from the Earth creates damage and pollution that threaten ecosystems and communities. But there’s another potential source of the copper, nickel, aluminum, and rare-earth minerals needed to stabilize the climate: the mountain of electronic waste humanity discards each year.
At UN, Indigenous leaders fight for application of rights
This story is published as part of the Global Indigenous Affairs Desk, an Indigenous-led collaboration between Grist, High Country News, ICT, Mongabay, Native News Online, and APTN. Sometimes when a storm hits and the waves are high in the Straits of Mackinac, which connects Great Lakes Michigan and Huron, Whitney...
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