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Illinois passed a law to clean up coal ash 5 years ago. What’s taking so long?
This coverage is made possible through a partnership between WBEZ and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization. Sign up for WBEZ newsletters to get local news you can trust. Celeste Flores can tell you the good news about living in Waukegan, Illinois: The air is safer to breathe now. “Thankfully,...
The world’s garment workers are on the front lines of climate impacts
This story is published in partnership with The Fuller Project. As Nour feeds another half-finished pair of pants through her sewing machine, her arms begin to shake. Amid the whir of fans, her T-shirt sticks to her like skin. She fights to focus, knowing full well her target of up to 100 pieces an hour isn’t going to hit itself.
New documents show oil executives promoted natural gas as green — but knew it wasn’t
A congressional hearing on the fossil fuel industry’s “evolving efforts to avoid accountability for climate change” turned into a spectacle on Wednesday morning as lawmakers in Washington, D.C., grilled a panel of experts on wide-ranging — and often irrelevant — topics. The thousands of internal oil company documents released before the hearing, however, contained some bombshell findings.
After Lāhainā, Indigenous peoples call for independence
On the evening of August 8, hours after a wildfire ravaged West Maui, Maui County’s top emergency management official, Herman Andaya, texted his secretary to ask about the status of other fires across the island. “Still burning,” she replied. “Wow … Lol,” Andaya texted back. The...
This spring, DC-area students are planting native flowers — and activating ‘the solarpunk imagination’
Tending a garden is about as hands-on as climate solutions get. On a basic level, putting plants in the ground helps sequester carbon. Vegetation can reduce stress and tension for the humans around it, and it provides habitat and sustenance for pollinators and other wildlife. Gardens can provide spaces for education, and, of course, sources of food. But the act of designing and planting a green space serves another, more metaphorical purpose: It gives the gardener agency over a piece of the world and what they want it to look like — and a role in conveying of all those aforementioned benefits.
UN plastics treaty inches closer to reality as lobbyists tout plastics’ ‘massive societal benefits’
Negotiators wrapped up the fourth round of formal discussions over the United Nations’ global plastics treaty early on Tuesday morning, inching closer to a final agreement that’s intended to “end plastic pollution.”. Delegates made important progress on the treaty, the final version of which is due by...
What will it take to get companies to embrace reusable packaging?
For several months last year, patrons of a Seattle coffee shop called Tailwind Cafe had the option of ordering their Americanos and lattes in returnable metal to-go cups. Customers could simply borrow a cup from Tailwind, go on their way, and then at some point — perhaps a few hours later, perhaps on another day that week — return the cup to the shop, which would clean it and refill it for the next person. If it wasn’t returned within 14 days, the customer would be charged a $15 deposit, though even that was ultimately refundable if the cup was returned by the end of 45 days.
EPA finally takes on abandoned coal ash ponds — but it might be too late
Last week, the EPA released a suite of long-awaited rules meant to cut down the carbon that the U.S. emits when generating electricity. The rules primarily target existing coal plants and new natural gas facilities, in many cases requiring dramatic emissions cuts that won’t be possible without an unprecedented deployment of carbon capture. (The new EPA proposals are part of an ongoing flurry of federal regulatory actions that must be issued by May 22 to minimize the possibility that they’ll be rolled back if Republican Donald Trump defeats President Joe Biden in November’s election.)
The problem with forcing people back to the office? All the carbon emissions.
This story was produced by Grist and was co-published with Fast Company. When office workers stopped working in offices in 2020, trading their cubicles for living room couches during COVID-19 lockdowns, many began questioning those hours they had spent commuting to work. All those rushed mornings stuck in traffic could have been spent getting things done? Life was often lonely for those stuck in their homes, but people found something to appreciate when birdsong rang through the quiet streets. And the temporary dip in travel had the side effect of cutting global carbon emissions by 7 percent in 2020 — a blip of good news in an otherwise miserable year.
The world agreed to create a climate reparations fund. Now comes the hard part.
After three decades of work, advocates for developing countries scored a major win at last year’s United Nations climate change conference in Dubai: World leaders unanimously agreed to set up a climate reparations fund. As the planet warms, the poorest nations are being hit hardest by drought, rising sea levels, hurricanes, and a slew of other climate impacts — even though these countries did the least to cause global warming, compared to their early-industrializing peers. Enter the so-called loss and damage fund, which is supposed to compensate them for the unavoidable effects of climate change. So far, the international community has pledged more than $650 million to the venture.
US military bases teem with PFAS. There’s still no firm plan to clean them up.
In 2016, Tony Spaniola received a notice informing him that his family shouldn’t drink water drawn from the well at his lake home in Oscoda, Michigan. Over the course of several decades, the Air Force had showered thousands of gallons of firefighting foam onto the ground at Wurtsmith Air Force Base, which closed in 1993. Those chemicals eventually leached into the soil and began contaminating the groundwater.
A decade later, Flint’s water crisis continues
This story was originally published by Capital B. At the edge of Saginaw Street, a hand-painted sign is etched into a deserted storefront. “Please help, God. Clean-up Flint.”. Behind it, the block tells the story of a city 10 years removed from the start of one of the nation’s...
A water crisis in Mississippi turns into a fight against privatization
In the summer of 2022, heavy rainfall damaged a water treatment plant in the city of Jackson, Mississippi, precipitating a high-profile public health crisis. The Republican Governor Tate Reeves declared a state of emergency, as thousands of residents were told to boil their water before drinking it. For some, the pressure in their taps was so low that they couldn’t flush their toilets and were forced to rely on bottled water for weeks.
Indigenous leaders are risking their lives to speak at the UN
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 September, Nicaraguan state security forces arrived at Indigenous Miskitu leader Brooklyn Rivera’s home in Bilwi, on the North Caribbean coast. Pretending to...
Rivers are the West’s largest source of clean energy. What happens when drought strikes?
In Washington, a dozen dams dot the Columbia River — that mighty waterway carved through the state by a sequence of prehistoric superfloods. Between those dams and the hundreds of others that plug the rivers and tributaries that lace the region, including California and Nevada, the Western United States accounts for most of the hydroelectric energy the country generates from the waters flowing across its landscape. Washington alone captures more than a quarter of that; combined with Oregon and Idaho, the Pacific Northwest lays claim to well over two-fifths of America’s dam-derived electricity. So when a drought hits the region, the nation takes notice.
Republican attorneys general mount a new attack on the EPA’s use of civil rights law
For much of its 53-year history, the Environmental Protection Agency let civil rights complaints languish. From Flint, Michigan, to the industrial corridors of the Deep South, communities attempting to use federal civil rights law to clean up the pollution in their neighborhoods were largely met with years of silence as their cases piled up in the agency’s backlog. That changed in 2020, after a federal judge ruled that the EPA must conduct timely investigations of civil rights complaints, and staffers began looking into cases where they identified potential discrimination.
The more plastic companies make, the more they pollute
The more plastic a company makes, the more pollution it creates. That seemingly obvious, yet previously unproven, point, is the main takeaway from a first-of-its-kind study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. Researchers from a dozen universities around the world found that, for every 1 percent increase in the amount of plastic a company uses, there is an associated 1 percent increase in its contribution to global plastic litter.
On the agenda this Earth Day: A global treaty to end plastic pollution
Hey there, Looking Forward fam. Happy Earth Day (and Earth Week, and Earth Month) — a time of year when sustainability is elevated in the global consciousness, and my inbox is full of vaguely greenwashy PR pitches. Each April, I (and every other climate journalist) revisit the same debate:...
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