Samuel Alito Gained Up to $2.9m From Oil and Gas Assets Since Joining Supreme Court, Analysis Shows

The supreme court justice Samuel Alito attends an event organized by the US embassy to the Holy See in Rome, Italy, on 20 September 2025. Photograph: Vincenzo Livieri/Reuters

Critics argue US high court justice should recuse himself from upcoming fossil fuel firms’ climate accountability case

The supreme court justice Samuel Alito gained up to $2.9m from his fossil fuel interests between 2005 and 2024, a new review of financial disclosures shows.

The analysis from the non-profit advocacy group and judicial watchdog Court Accountability, shared exclusively with the Guardian, found that even at the lowest range of estimates, Alito gained almost $400,000 from his oil and gas interests since being tapped for the high court by George W Bush in 2005.

The findings come as the supreme court prepares to take up a case in which the oil companies Suncor Energy and Exxon asked the justices to find that federal law prevents subnational governments from filing lawsuits against fossil fuel producers for the climate-warming effects of their products.

The supreme court said this month it will hear oral arguments in the case on 5 October, the opening day of its new term. The Trump administration, which is siding with the oil companies, has asked for 10 minutes of argument time. Court Accountability and other groups have called for a Senate committee to investigate Alito, the sole supreme court justice with holdings in energy companies, and said he should recuse himself.

He and the court rejected those calls. 08-11-26

Juan Mancias, center, appears at a demonstration in front of the George R. Brown Convention Center ahead of Super Bowl Live events in Houston in 2017. Marie D. De Jesus / Houston Chronicle via Getty Images

The climate movement gave this Texas tribe millions and a global platform. No one checked its story.

In May of 2017, Juan Mancias became an overnight sensation in France. Standing over 6 feet tall with a mane of salt-and-pepper hair, a medicine wheel-emblazoned ribbon shirt, beaded belt, and feathered medallion bearing the seal of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, he was conspicuous on the streets of Paris, and he had a message: French banks were financing the desecration of sacred Native lands and burial sites. They were, he said, aiding in the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Indigenous people in Texas through their support of natural gas pipelines and export terminals.

“It’s the same thing for 500 years,” Mancias told Observatoire des Multinationales. “We were occupied by the Spanish, by the Mexicans, then by the Texans, then by the Americans. And now it’s the oil industry.”

Three months before Mancias arrived in France, the last camps at Standing Rock emptied. For nearly a year, thousands of Indigenous water protectors and environmental allies had gathered near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline, or DAPL. Oil was now flowing through DAPL, but activists and environmental organizations kept the momentum of the protests going. 08-13-26

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/indigenous/texas-carrizo-comecrudo-juan-mancias-climate-indigenous-identity/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to reporting on climate change.

California Officials Scrambled as Spring Wildfire Neared Former Nuclear Reactor Site, Emails Show

A firefighter faces a wall of flames as the Sandy Fire burns on May 19 in Simi Valley, Calif. Credit: Blake Fagan/AFP via Getty Images

As the Sandy Fire approached the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in May, state and local officials had to move quickly to assess how safe the air was amid radiation concerns as the fire burned a quarter mile from the contaminated area

As a wildfire in May approached the site of one of the worst nuclear meltdowns in U.S. history, state and local officials scrambled to respond to the blaze and to establish proper real-time radiation and air monitoring to protect Southern California families, internal emails show.

The 2,183-acre “Sandy Fire,” which began south of Simi Valley on the morning of May 18 and was active for nine days before being fully contained, did not result in any deaths or injuries.

One structure was destroyed in the blaze and two others burned. More than 33,000 people in the valley and nearby communities were placed under evacuation orders as plumes of smoke overtook the area.

The aftermath of Southern California’s first major wildfire of the season put residents on high alert again about the implications of a fire burning at the site of the former Santa Susana Field Laboratory, or SSFL. Memories of the massive 2018 Woolsey Fire reignited concerns that toxic contaminants from the site could spread throughout the region along with smoke and ash. 08-12-26

Charlotte Burks

Combining flood mitigation with wetland habitat restoration, “horizontal levees” could protect coastal cities and wildlife from rising seas.

Visitors to the Palo Alto Baylands Nature Preserve, captivated by gliding birds overhead and golden hills across the Bay waters, could be forgiven for failing to notice that the preserve is also home to the Bay’s newest levee.

Most levees look like steep, barren embankments or riprap-clad seawalls, designed to prevent flooding by adding extra feet of height. But this project, though it shares a name, is a different type of infrastructure altogether. Seeded with over 35 species of native plants, the site is a pilot for what’s known as a horizontal levee, or living levee, blending into the estuary’s natural scenery as it spreads its feet of added height over a longer area.

In stark contrast to a traditional levee, the Palo Alto Horizontal Levee Pilot Project’s natural appearance and gradual slope are designed to interact with Bay waters the same way natural estuaries do.

“When you look at levees that are along the bay front, a lot of times they’ve got really steep faces and big, huge rocks in front of them to protect them from wind waves,” explained Mark Lindley, lead engineer on the Palo Alto living levee. “By having this flat, gradual slope with really dense vegetation on it instead of having rock, the waves break on that slope like they do on a beach.” 08-11-26

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/solutions/a-new-type-of-levee-is-taking-root-in-northern-california/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to reporting on climate change.

A New Plan to Preserve Georgia’s Marshes: Give Them Space to Migrate

Alphonso Whitfield / WABE

Environmental protections usually only cover existing ecosystems. A group of conservationists wants the state to take a longer view.

Decades ago, in order to build up a solid foundation for I-95 through Southeast Georgia, construction crews dug some earth near the town of Midway, Georgia, about 50 miles south of Savannah, and left a deep pit. There’s now a public park in that spot, bounded by a tidal creek on one side and the leftover dredge pit on the other. Although the park is over 15 miles from the ocean, high tide washes up the creek twice a day. Lush marsh grass fills the space between solid ground and the creek, but it’s a different scene along the other bank, where the salt water has steadily eaten away at the land while depositing sediment in the basin. Now, what was once a deep pit is a shallow mud flat with little islands of marsh grass cropping up in the middle, naturally moving in now that the ground is suitable for it.

But the grasses halt abruptly where they reach the small, muddy cliff of the bank — shorn away sharply where the tide has battered it.

“If we walk that way, you’ll be able to see some of the, well, just plain erosion,” said Phil Odom, chairman of Liberty County’s Consolidated Planning Commission, on a recent afternoon. “This is how much it has collapsed. We’ve lost about six, eight feet right here.” 08-10-26

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/solutions/a-new-plan-to-preserve-georgia-marshes-give-them-space-to-migrate/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to reporting on climate change.

The Sea Life Making a Home in Offshore Wind Farms

Offshore wind farms can pose risks to birds and marine life. But their foundations also serve as artificial reefs, providing essential habitat for oysters, lobsters, seals, and other species.

Stepping through a sturdy metal hatch, technician Jelle Pennekamp entered the lowest level of an offshore wind turbine. He was now inside a huge, hollow tower supporting three 318-foot blades at Hollandse Kust Zuid, a 139-turbine wind farm a little more than 15 miles off the Dutch coast. Around him, the low hum of machinery echoed up and down the steel structure as seawater sloshed below. That’s when he realized: Something was alive down there.

Rising gracefully toward the surface was the unmistakably rotund form of a curious seal that had gained access to the structure from a water-replenishment hole at its base. Pennekamp hastily opened the camera app on his phone and started recording. The creature came into view, made a neat U-turn, then slipped back down in a series of undulating maneuvers.

Pennekamp, who contracts with a Norwegian maintenance company called Føn Energy Services, has inspected countless offshore wind turbines, probing around inside them or abseiling down their exteriors. He had heard rumors from colleagues that seals sometimes swim into turbines to hunt fish and other prey taking up shelter there. But he had never seen it himself until early March. “When stuff like that happens, it feels almost like a meant-to-be feeling,” he said. “You’re connected to the ocean.” 08-03-26

Nicholas Kamm / AFP via Getty Images

After an environmental group filed a complaint on behalf of two Montana residents, state regulators rescinded a crucial waiver.

The Bridger Pipeline Expansion project has been moving through the permitting process with unusual speed. If built, the $2 billion, 650-mile pipeline will run through Montana and Wyoming and is one of three proposed pipeline legs connecting oil sands in Alberta, Canada to the trading hub in Cushing, Oklahoma.

The project appears to be a priority for the Trump administration. The Bureau of Land Management announced that the pipeline will receive an expedited environmental review, and in late April, the administration granted the pipeline developer a cross-border permit to pass into the U.S. Permitting documents show the company, Bridger Pipeline Expansion, LLC, a subsidiary of Wyoming-based True Companies, hopes to break ground as soon as July 2027, pending state and federal approval.

But the project has hit a stumbling block. On July 22, the Montana Department of Environmental Quality, or DEQ, withdrew a waiver it had previously granted the pipeline.

The waiver allowed the company to omit certain financial information and baseline environmental data from its state permit application with DEQ. Pipeline construction cannot begin without this permit and final federal approval. 08-07-26

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/energy/in-montana-controversial-pipeline-hits-a-speed-bump/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to reporting on climate change.

In a First, Utah Got More Power From Solar Than Any Other Source

Rick Egan / The Salt Lake Tribune

The state used to run on coal, but now renewables are surging.

Utah’s solar generation eclipsed all other electricity sources for the first time ever in May, the culmination of a slow but steady years-long shift away from coal. Energy experts are calling it a win for the environment and the state’s economy.

Photovoltaic panels in Utah produced nearly 1 terawatt hour in May 2026. That represented nearly a third of all electricity generated in the state that month, according to data from Ember, a global energy think tank. Natural gas generated 32 percent, coal generated 28 percent, and wind 2 percent.

“The trend of more and more solar in Utah is wonderful news for air quality, it’s wonderful news for the climate, and it’s wonderful news for jobs and the economy,” said Dan Schroeder, a physics professor at Weber State University who regularly checks energy data.

Schroeder attributes the trend to several large solar farms coming online in recent years. The 2,500-acre Green River Energy Center in the central part of the state became operational this spring, and includes 400 megawatts of solar generation and 400 megawatts of battery storage. Excelsior Energy Capital’s Faraday Solar project in Utah County, the state’s second-largest county, started providing up to 685 megawatts for the Meta data center there last fall. The Elektron Solar Project, an 80-megawatt photovoltaic farm, began sending electricity to Salt Lake City, Park City, and Summit County in June 2024. 08-06-26

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/energy/utah-solar-power-coal-generation/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to reporting on climate change.

Michigan Winemakers Have a New Climate Worry: More Wildfire Smoke

Andy Fles, vineyard manager for Shady Lane Cellars in Suttons Bay, Michigan, shows off young muscat grapes in the “buckshot berry stage” of fruit development. Vivian La / IPR News

While “smoke taint” from last month’s hazy skies isn’t an immediate threat, grape growers say it comes on the heels of a growing season already fraught with climate extremes. When wildfire smoke blanketed northern Michigan skies last month, Kasey Wierzba thought the vineyard at Shady Lane Cellars in Suttons Bay looked like a different planet.

“That kind of pinky, peachy haze really was filtering through the whole vineyard. The visibility was really minimal,” said Wierzba, the general manager and executive winemaker at Shady Lane Cellars, a winery and vineyard that sits on the “little finger” of the state on Leelanau Peninsula, a region famous for its winemaking.

Wierzba also thought about how the pungent smoke might impact the grapes, something that the larger wine industry is becoming more familiar with as global warming increases the frequency and intensity of wildfires. Though she and other local grape growers were spared — the worst of the wildfires were burning far away in Canada and Minnesota, the smoke didn’t linger long, and it’s still early in the growing season — climate change could bring the threat closer to home in the future.

At stake is the state’s nearly $9 billion wine industry, which may have to adapt to the smoke’s effects on grapes, a challenge those in wine regions like the West Coast and Australia are already confronting. 08-05-26

Scott Olson / Getty Images via Inside Climate News

Smoky summers are becoming the new normal across the American West, forcing a generation of children to grow up indoors.

For generations, summer in Montana has meant long days outdoors. Children spent afternoons riding bicycles through quiet neighborhoods, swimming in lakes and rivers, hiking forest trails, and playing baseball past sunset. Families planned camping trips months in advance, double-checking that they had all the fishing, paddling, and tenting gear they needed to sleep in cool mountain air under clear skies.

Today, many parents instead check the Environmental Protection Agency’s Air Quality Index before deciding whether their children can play outside at all.

As wildfire season becomes longer and more severe across the American West, smoky skies have become an increasingly familiar part of summer. In Montana, where wildfire has always been part of the landscape, summer now includes days or even weeks when children are advised to stay indoors because the air outside is unhealthy. 08-01-26

An industrial complex seen from the air
The Twin Oaks coal plant in Bremond, Texas, will soon share the site with a massive solar-plus-storage project. Panamint Capita

Panamint Capital broke ground on a $1.7 billion solar and storage project at the Calvert coal mine. The mine and an adjacent coal plant will stay online.

Construction is underway on a $1.7 billion solar and battery storage project in Texas that will turn existing coal mining land into a hub of clean energy generation.

Panamint Capital announced last week that it broke ground on the 1.2-gigawatt Big Rooter Power solar farm in Bremond, about halfway between Dallas and Houston. The project will use some of the land and assets from the adjacent Twin Oaks coal-fired power plant and Calvert surface coal mine, both of which will continue operating.

Panamint’s clean energy project will be among the largest in the nation — and, the developer claims, the biggest solar array ever built at a brownfield site in North America.

“We believe deploying new capacity at existing energy sites is the clearest way to benefit communities, ratepayers, and the environment alike,” said Apolka Totth, CEO of Panamint, a Nevada-based investment firm.

The giant installation will further boost Texas’ thriving solar sector, which this year is expected to generate more electricity than coal in the Lone Star State. The renewable resource is helping meet the state’s energy demand from data centers, manufacturing facilities, and rising air-conditioning use amid more frequent and extreme hot weather. 08-02-26

Solar panels installed on the top level of the parking structure at the airport in Albuquerque, New Mexico. (City of Albuquerque via AP, File)

In just five years, solar, wind, and batteries overtook fossil fuels, keeping air conditioners running while slashing pollution.

It’s hot. Fans and air conditioners are humming in homes, offices, commercial buildings, and factories. July is the most electricity-intensive time of year in the U.S., and the grid is working hard to keep up.

In many places, high electricity demand equals high pollution. That used to be true in New Mexico, but the state’s electricity supply flipped from majority climate-warming fossil fuels to majority renewables in just five years. Spurred by an ambitious clean energy law called the Energy Transition Act, utilities have been busy building solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, and transmission lines. A major coal plant was retired and demolished. Solar panels proliferated on homes, schools, and businesses.

And even while New Mexico was building out its clean energy future, electricity prices remained cheaper than average.

A case study in cleaner electricity

New Mexico’s largest utility is the Public Service Company of New Mexico, or PNM. Only five years ago, most of PNM’s cooling needs were met by coal and gas, which made up 83% of its electricity generation in July 2021.

But the state’s abundant sunshine now provides much of the region’s electricity.

The golden line on the graph below shows grid-scale solar energy production in PNM’s territory every day for a week. The sun generated 41% of the total electricity the week of July 6, when I did this analysis. 07-31-26

These Psychedelic Images Reveal What Your Weather App Isn’t Telling You

Equipped with some fancy technologies, Grist goes on a journey across Portland, Oregon, to chart the nuances — and inequalities — of urban heat.

My weather app says it’s 80 degrees, but that’s a lie. I’m standing on a football field at Portland State University with professor Vivek Shandas, and we can feel intense heat radiating off the grass. Instead of being made of cellulose, these blades are plastic, because this field is artificial turf. Whereas natural vegetation has a cooling effect on a landscape — it “sweats” water vapor — this stuff absorbs and radiates the sun’s energy, making the ambient temperature especially uncomfortable.

Shandas, who’s founder and director of the Sustaining Urban Places Research Lab, can prove it. He hands me a Flir (forward-looking infrared) camera that I attach to my phone and control through an app. I point it at the ground and it gives me a color-coded view of the temperature at any given spot — approaching 150 degrees Fahrenheit in parts of the ground beneath my feet, compared to as low as 100 degrees in a patch of real grass in the sun next to it. (In the video below comparing the two, brighter oranges and yellows indicate higher temps, with purple showing lower readings.) We’re actually picking up significant differences even within the field: The darker greens are about 10 degrees hotter than white lines, which are bright enough to reflect some energy away — the same reason you feel cooler wearing lighter colors on a hot day. 07-30-26

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/extreme-heat/these-psychedelic-images-reveal-what-your-weather-app-isnt-telling-you/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to reporting on climate change.

It’s Official: Data Centers Are Slowing America’s Shift Away From Coal

Ulysse Bellier / AFP via Getty Images

New federal data shows that AI demand helped push U.S. power sector emissions up last year.

As tech companies have built hundreds of hyperscale data centers to power the artificial intelligence boom, they have triggered conflicting predictions over how these facilities will affect the nation’s power grid. Critics have argued that data centers will raise power bills and increase carbon emissions. Supporters claimed they could increase investment in infrastructure and clean energy, leading to lower prices and emissions.

We now have a clearer picture about at least one consequence of the data center boom, and it isn’t encouraging. A report released last week from the Energy Information Administration found that carbon emissions from the U.S. power sector rose by 4 percent last year — larger than the increase in the economy overall, where emissions only ticked up 2 percent. The agency attributes this rise to a 13 percent increase in coal power generation, partially driven by the proliferation of large-scale data centers.

The national increase in power sector emissions represents the reversal of a longstanding trend. Before the AI boom, U.S. power consumption had been flat for decades. Utilities, grid operators, and energy planners had assumed that pattern would continue, and many planned to retire their older and dirtier coal plants with the expectation that natural gas and renewables could replace them. Instead, electricity demand is rising much faster than anticipated. Data centers could make up more than 10 percent of U.S. electricity usage by 2030, and they operate around the clock, including when wind and solar farm output is low. That demand has extended the life of some aging coal plants. 07-29-26

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/energy/data-centers-electricity-power-coal-emissions-climate-report/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to reporting on climate change.

Here’s How Offshore Wind Helped New England Beat Record Heat

John Moore / Getty Images

The region has added dozens of turbines off the East Coast since last summer. They and other clean energy sources cut the need for oil power amid recent hot weather.

America’s offshore wind farms have already shown their ability to keep electricity flowing during brutal winter storms. Now, the clean energy resource has proved it can also bolster the grid during major heat waves.

Earlier this month, as dangerously hot and humid temperatures settled over the eastern United States, two wind projects near New England consistently delivered hundreds of megawatts to the grid as residents cranked up their air conditioners. The influx of wind reduced utilities’ reliance on dirty, expensive oil-burning peaker plants, which operate only when electricity demand is through the roof, according to the data firm Grid Status.

Analysts compared how the regional system performed during the July heat wave and a sweltering stretch in June 2025, before much of the current offshore wind capacity came online. Oil provided nearly 10 percent of the region’s total power supply during peak-demand conditions on July 2, 2026 — that period’s hottest day — down from nearly 15 percent at the highest point on June 24, 2025. That’s a drop of more than a gigawatt in oil-fueled generation between those two days.

Part of the decline was due to slightly weaker overall demand during the July 2 peak than during last year’s event. But Grid Status said that stronger generation from the region’s utility-scale offshore wind farms was a key factor. The projects are coming online despite repeated attempts by the Trump administration to block them. 07-26-26

This story was originally published by Canary Media

‘Climate hushing’ has Swept the Democratic Party. New Polling Suggests It’s a Mistake.

Viviane Moos / Corbis via Getty Images

Climate change might not be a top priority for voters, but keeping quiet about it might backfire.

A hush has fallen over the Democratic Party — a “climate hush,” to be precise. The phrase captures the push within the party to focus more on the high cost of living and less on the planetary crisis, in hopes of addressing a popular diagnosis of why Democrats lost the 2024 presidential election to Donald Trump. Since then, Democratic politicians have been mentioning the subject less on social media and in their press releases. Candidates in this summer’s primaries might have it in their platforms, but it’s the rare candidate who campaigns on it.

But a new report pushes back against the idea that talking about climate change could cause Democrats to lose votes. The 2035 Initiative, a climate policy research center at the University of California, Santa Barbara, released polling this month that suggests that emphasizing the issue could increase support for Democratic candidates. The release comes ahead of primaries for key states — including Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia — that could determine whether Democrats regain control over Congress.

“Our data shows pretty firmly that adding climate change to the mix is neutral to helpful from a political perspective,” said Matto Mildenberger, a political science professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who worked on the report. His team conducted two surveys this summer with roughly 3,500 total participants, weighted to represent the U.S. electorate with a mix of voters from across the political spectrum. He said it’s the first empirically rigorous evaluation of the “climate hush” hypothesis. 07-27-26

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/politics/climate-hushing-democrats-polling-primaries-voters/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to reporting on climate change.

As Climate Lawsuits Advance, the Oil Industry Enters ‘panic mode’

Portland residents fill a cooling center at the Oregon Convention Center during the June 2021 heat dome. Nathan Howard / Getty Images

Oil companies face new legal challenges, such as a recent suit for wrongful death, and older cases that are creeping toward trial.

Could the oil industry be held responsible for fueling the extreme heat that led to a woman’s death?

That’s the question at the heart of a novel lawsuit in Washington state. Misti Leon’s mother died from overheating during the hottest day in state history in June 2021, when temperatures climbed to 108 degrees Fahrenheit. Scientists said the unusual heat dome that descended on the Pacific Northwest would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change. So last year, Leon sued Exxon Mobil, BP, Chevron, Shell, and other oil majors for wrongful death, alleging that they had known for decades that fossil fuel emissions would lead to destructive consequences, but deceived the public about it, delaying action that could have prevented her mother’s death. An estimated 1,200 people in the region perished from the heat during that simmering week in June.

Earlier this month, a King County judge ruled against the oil companies’ motions to dismiss Leon’s lawsuit, allowing it to proceed toward trial. The ruling was a signal that this kind of case has merit, said Mike Meno, the communications director at the Center for Climate Integrity, a nonprofit supporting climate accountability cases. “It’s the latest type of legal liability that the oil companies are absolutely terrified of and are going to fight like hell to try to escape,” he said. 07-24-26

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/accountability/lawsuits-heatwave-wrongful-death-supreme-court/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to reporting on climate change.

Killing Trees to Save the Forest

Tristan Spinski / The Washington Post via Getty Images

The deadly experiment that could save the American elm

After more than a decade of nurturing, it had come time to infect this 28-acre grove of American elms with a disease that would almost certainly kill them. Dressed in hunter-green muck boots, grey pants, and a brown Nature Conservancy T-shirt, Gus Goodwin knelt down to give the first tree its shot. Using a bamboo stake marked at 12 inches as a gauge, he measured that far off the ground, held his drill at a slight downward angle, and pulled the trigger.

“We need to create a wound,” Goodwin, the conservancy’s director of science and technology advancement in Vermont, said as the tool began to whir. He bore an inch-deep hole into the tree, the bit sending shavings spiraling out behind it. Putting the drill aside, he took a blue pipette from his tool box and injected 2 teaspoons of a clear solution containing roughly 100,000 spores of the fungus that causes Dutch elm disease.

“That’s it,” he said. “Pretty simple.”

One by one, row by row, the plan was to stick nearly all of the 5,300 or so elms at the sprawling site in southern Vermont, save the few that received a squirt of water as a control. In the coming weeks, most of the trees would doubtlessly succumb to the pathogen that has already killed tens of millions of their ancestors and made Ulmus americana an endangered species. The ones that live, however, could help save the species. 07-23-26

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/solutions/the-deadly-experiment-that-could-save-the-american-elm/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to reporting on climate change.

Most Utahns Want to Protect Their National Monuments. Trump Had Other Plans.

Bethany Baker / The Salt Lake Tribune

Utah’s Republican politicians and the Trump administration said shrinking Bears Ears was what locals really wanted.

A majority of Utah’s residents opposed shrinking Bears Ears National Monument before President Donald Trump drastically slashed its size last week, according to multiple polls conducted over the past few years. Those findings contrast with statements from Utah’s political leaders who argued that the cuts reflected what Utahns want.

President Donald Trump signed two executive orders shrinking Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments by roughly 90 percent each. He announced the change flanked by members of Utah’s congressional delegation and Governor Spencer Cox, all of them Republicans. Trump’s proclamation said the move “will better align the use of these public lands with the public interest,” citing the region’s deposits of critical minerals such as copper, nickel, and uranium, among others.

On Monday, hundreds gathered outside the Governor’s Mansion in Salt Lake City to protest the cuts, part of efforts organized by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance across the state to pressure lawmakers. 07-22-26

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/politics/utah-national-monuments-trump-bears-ears-minerals/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to reporting on climate change.

Why the Iran War Hasn’t Caused a Global Oil Crisis — Yet

Ships remain anchored in May in the Strait of Hormuz near Larak Island, Iran. Majid Saeedi / Getty Images

The world has found ways to adapt without crude from the Strait of Hormuz. Experts say that won’t last.

When the Strait of Hormuz first closed at the start of the 2026 Iran war, the world braced for the “largest energy crisis in history.” Before the conflict began, almost 20 percent of the world’s traded oil passed through the narrow waterway between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. Iran’s blockade of the strait effectively erased 15 million barrels per day from circulation overnight.

Many experts and commentators predicted that the supply gap would have catastrophic consequences. Australia expected fuel rationing, the European airline industry warned of mass flight cancellations, and Goldman Sachs predicted widespread oil shortages. The International Monetary Fund warned of a potential global recession, and some traders worried that oil prices could hit $200 a barrel.

But a little over four months into the war, little of that has come to pass.

True, oil prices have gone up around the world, and there have been critical shortages of products such as cooking oil in some places, but rationing and recession have largely not arrived. Instead, a series of emergency measures have helped avoid the predicted crises: Oil exporters including the United States stepped in to fill the gap, either by drawing down strategic petroleum reserves or increasing production. Countries that were most reliant on fossil fuel imports from the Middle East took emergency conservation measures to reduce their demand. 07-21-26

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/energy/why-the-iran-war-hasnt-caused-a-global-oil-crisis-yet/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to reporting on climate change.

Rising Seas Magnify the Dangers of Coastal Georgia’s Industrial Past

Semona Holmes

The state’s first Superfund research center is looking into how climate change is resurfacing industrial pollution.

Just across the road from the waterfront in Brunswick, Semona Holmes lives in a house surrounded by fruit trees, potted flowers, a fish pond, and — when it rains or the tide is extra high — floodwater.

“If you can imagine this entire area here completely flooded,” she explained on her front porch on a recent afternoon. “The flooding would be — we would have like a river on our street.”

The floodwater has reached to her knees at times. Once, after a hurricane, her neighbor canoed down the block.

Improvements to the stormwater system have helped a bit in recent years. But Holmes’s concerns go beyond the inconvenience of an occasionally flooded street. She lives about half a mile from a former pesticide plant, which is now a toxic Superfund site — one of thousands of contaminated former industrial sites identified by the federal Environmental Protection Agency. Holmes is worried about what the floodwaters contain. 07-20-26

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/cities/rising-seas-magnify-the-dangers-of-coastal-georgias-industrial-past/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to reporting on climate change.

Americans Are Underestimating the Dangers of Extreme Heat

YSE Senior Research Scientist Jennifer Marlon breaks down what’s driving the perception gap between rising temperatures and public risk — and it’s not just lack of information.

Heat-related deaths in the U.S have surged more than 50% since 2000 as the climate warms and temperatures rise to record-breaking levels. This July alone, more than half of Americans were exposed to extreme temperatures as a heat dome descended across the country and the United Nations warned that a Super El Niño, which raises water temperatures in the Pacific, also will intensify temperatures. Yet, most Americans underestimate the dangers of extreme heat.

Across the U.S., only about 35% of Americans say they are moderately or very worried about extreme heat, according to a recent study by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. YSE News spoke with Jennifer Marlon, senior research scientist at the Yale School of the Environment, who co-led the study with YPCCC data scientist Nicolas Begotka ’22 that revealed a disconnect between heat risks and public concern. 07-17-26

Crabs being sorted in Maryland. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

The species faces many threats, including a reduction of underwater grasses that shelter young crabs, experts said.

A new report on the Chesapeake Bay’s signature blue crab has documented a steep, long-term decline in the crustacean’s population, raising concerns among environmental groups about the future of one of the region’s most important species.

Scientists aren’t sure exactly what’s behind the drop. The total number of blue crabs can fluctuate sharply, with population estimates varying by tens of millions — or even hundreds of millions — within just a few years. But experts said they’re concerned by what they’re seeing.

“It’s clear the bay’s most iconic species is under immense stress,” according to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, which was not involved in the assessment but whose scientists closely monitor its results.

There are numerous ways to gauge crab “abundance,” the term researchers use to denote the overall population or that of different subgroups, such as juveniles. Michael Wilberg, the assessment’s lead author, cited one overarching finding: In 2011, the bay had about 1.3 billion crabs. By 2023, that dropped to about 825 million, he said.

Habitat loss, especially the reduction of underwater grasses that shelter young crabs, may be playing a role, experts said. Changes in currents, winds and storms, pollution and runoff, and low oxygen “dead zones” caused by algae blooms, may all also contribute, experts said. 07-15-26

Featured image credit: Getty Images/Unsplash +

The number of CAFOs in the state increased 13% over the past six years.

The number of large, concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) in Iowa increased 13% over the past six years, according to a new report. It’s a mounting problem in a state that generates more than 100 million tons of manure annually, contributing to persistent water pollution and health problems.

The report, a mapping project from the Environmental Working Group (EWG), finds that Iowa has roughly 15,309 livestock farms that generate 107 million tons of manure each year — but more than one in four of the farms remain unmonitored by the state. A widely cited previous estimate of manure from Iowa’s largest farms using 2022 US Department of Agriculture data put the total at 55 million tons annually. However, EWG’s estimate included manure from smaller farms and as well as the increase in farms since the previous estimate, said Anne Schechinger, senior director for agriculture and climate research at EWG and co-author of the analysis.

Schechinger believes the report’s findings are significant because Iowa has been grappling with water quality issues and disproportionately high cancer rates, the second highest in the country.

“We know that nitrogen is in manure, Iowa has really serious nitrate issues in drinking water, and nitrate increases the risk of cancer,” she said. 07-15-26

Photo courtesy The Footprint Project

Small-scale solar microgrids for Appalachian communities could help keep communities warm and fed during future blackouts.

Nearly two years ago, Hurricane Helene knocked out power in Burnsville, North Carolina. Fire Chief Niles Howell had to use the station’s generator to keep everything running. Through the storm, and the devastating flooding that followed, the fire department provided a landing pad for helicopters, a base for search-and-rescue operations, and a field hospital to triage and treat the wounded.

But even in less trying times, Howell can’t risk another blackout. The station is a community hub for the small town, and Howell regularly worries about running out of fuel for the generator.

He can stop worrying. The fire department will soon install 40 kilowatt-hours of solar panels and double that amount of battery storage as part of a statewide microgrid project targeted at communities recovering from Helene.

“I love redundancy, because inevitably what you plan for will fail at some point in time, so the more avenues you have to keep things going, the better off you are,” Howell said. 07-14-26

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/energy/a-swarm-of-solar-bees-are-coming-to-western-north-carolina-community-hubs/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to reporting on climate change.

The Pentagon is Blocking More Than 150 Wind Projects Over Drone Fears

Anton Petrus / Getty Images

The Trump administration claims wind turbines pose a national security threat. The industry says it’s pure politics.

Wind turbines can confuse radar systems on ships and aircraft. Their massive rotating blades create a “blade flash” on radar screens, while their steel bases reflect electromagnetic waves, making it difficult to distinguish the turbines from aircraft or other objects. That’s a problem for the military, which relies on radar for threat detection and navigation. For over a decade, the Pentagon has used a permitting program to review proposed projects and mitigate the effects on radar. Wind developers are required to submit project proposals, address military requests, and in some cases pay to upgrade radar systems to tune out the turbines.

But now, in a world where small, deadly drones can zip through wind farms, the Pentagon says those upgrades may not be sufficient.

For almost a year, the Pentagon has effectively frozen the permitting process for at least 155 new wind projects in 24 states, citing drone concerns, according to research from the American Clean Power Association, an industry advocacy organization. As long as the freeze persists, developers say, no new wind projects can begin construction. The Pentagon has not revealed when or if it will resume approving new projects. 07-13-26

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/energy/pentagon_wind/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to reporting on climate change.

The Nation’s Biggest Public Utility Just Doubled Down on Coal, Gas, and Nuclear

Paul Harris / Getty Images

In a revised energy plan, the Tennessee Valley Authority follows Trump administration directives and shies away from solar and wind.

For the past four years, Angie Mummaw has been told the gas-fired electrical plant the Tennessee Valley Authority is building a few miles from her home in rural Tennessee was a necessary stop on its move away from coal. But recent directives from the Trump administration mean the coal-fired plant that was slated for closure is most likely staying – and so is the planned gas plant next door. She lives right down the road from both.

“To hear that they just decided to continue burning coal indefinitely was kind of a slap in the face,” said Mummaw, a resident of Cumberland County and an organizer for the environmental nonprofit Appalachian Voices.

But for America’s largest public utility, keeping fossil fuel-powered plants running might be the wave of the future.

The Tennessee Valley Authority is at a pivotal moment, one driven by new direction from above as the Trump administration eliminates renewable incentives, rearranges the utility’s leadership, and encourages extending the lives of coal- and gas-fired plants. As the utility plans its next quarter-century of energy production, those who run it insist they’re doing the best they can to meet the demands of the times, even as environmental organizations and community members protest its backtracking on the energy transition. 07-10-26

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/energy/the-nations-biggest-public-utility-just-doubled-down-on-coal-gas-and-nuclear/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to reporting on climate change.

How to Build a Highway in the Age of Climate Change

San Francisco Chronicle / Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images

A San Francisco Bay Area project is raising questions about what it will take to fortify highways against rising sea levels.

Between the view, the marshes, and the birds, Liat Meitzenheimer concedes the drive along California State Route 37 is scenic. Still, she avoids it for two reasons: congestion and flooding.

The highway, about half of which is two-lane, is often backed up with people commuting between affordable communities in Solano County to the east and jobs in pricier Sonoma and Marin counties to the west. It also is a regional link to Napa Valley and other destinations, much of it built on embankments, bridges, and causeways that span marshes precariously close to San Pablo Bay. That makes it prone to flooding, which has led to occasional closures.

“I don’t go that route whenever we have the potential of flooding, because I know how crazy it can get,” said Meitzenheimer, a retiree who lives in Vallejo, not far from the highway’s eastern terminus at Interstate 80.

These problems will worsen as the population grows and climate change brings more frequent and intense storms. Without adaptation measures, portions of the road are at risk of permanent inundation by 2050. 07-09-26

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/transportation/how-to-build-a-highway-in-the-age-of-climate-change/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to reporting on climate change.

The Plan to Make Climate Science Harder to Erase

Mark Wilson / Getty Images

As climate information disappears from federal websites, scientists are rebuilding it elsewhere.

When Rebecca Lindsey was fired from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration last February, the first thing she did was stew. Then she worried about what was going to happen to the website she and her team had built over the last decade and a half. Lindsey had long been the lead writer and editor, and more recently the program manager, of Climate.gov, a site that distilled the agency’s research on climate change into easy-to-understand, free resources for the public.

She was right to be concerned: Within a matter of months, the Trump administration had eliminated the rest of the staff supporting Climate.gov and shut down the website — ironically, to comply with an executive order calling for “restoring gold standard science.”

“I couldn’t stand the thought of it all being thrown away,” Lindsey said of the website, which had been used by teachers, community leaders, and policymakers. It had also given researchers in the government important insight into what everyday Americans needed to know about climate science and how to answer their questions effectively. Members of the former Climate.gov team met periodically to discuss what could be done to preserve the work. By the end of last summer, they’d decided to create an independent version of the site. It launched late last month with a new nongovernmental domain: Climate.us.

The intent behind Climate.us isn’t just to save what was on the Climate.gov website when it died, but to continue to update it with new visuals, explainers, features, and Q&As, making climate science relevant to people with resources that are vetted by scientists. “We just try to constantly take the pulse of what scientists say is valuable and important and needs to be talked about and explained,” Lindsey said. 07-07-26

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/solutions/scientists-saving-climate-information-government-websites/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to reporting on climate change.

Weather Service Scrambles in Hurricane Season After Trump Purge

Hurricane Milton in Sarasota, Florida. Lokman Vural Elibol/Anadolu/Getty Images

Donald Trump’s mass layoffs have dramatically reduced the number of staffers at the National Weather Service—and thus the amount of data it can collect.

Nearly a year after President Donald Trump’s mass government layoffs, the National Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association are still scrambling to replace scientists and collect missing data.

The NWS is hiring for hundreds of mostly entry-level positions, after the agency lost about 15 percent of its employees during Trump’s first year back in office, CBS News reported Monday.

Tom Fahy, legislative director of the National Weather Service Employees Organization, said that the agency had shed roughly 600 workers in 2025. Most of those employees were seasoned workers who accepted early retirement packages, while roughly 100 were probationary employees in their first year of work. Meanwhile, NOAA employed nearly 300 fewer meteorologists and hydrologists at the end of May than it did in January 2025, according to federal data reviewed by CBS News.

Former government scientists told CBS News that mass layoffs, which forced out experts, have undermined the research and forecasting conducted by these agencies. 07-06-26

Jun Zhang / Getty

The study used more than 40 years of data to map fluctuating PFAS levels across species in the region’s food chain

In the United States, PFAS chemicals are so ubiquitous — found in everything from frying pans to skincare — that nearly all of the country’s population likely has measurable levels of the so-called “forever chemicals” in their blood. It’s only in the last few decades that the public and scientists started untangling the health and ecological risks associated with some of the manufactured compounds, which earned their nickname because they don’t break down easily in the environment.

Now, new research from the University of Notre Dame has deepened our understanding of how PFAS can filter through ecosystems and move up the food chain to get to people.

The peer-reviewed study, published this spring in the Journal of Environmental Quality, focused on the Great Lakes. The researchers analyzed 42 years of studies and combined nearly 2,500 samples of algae, fish, birds, and other organisms, in what’s called a meta-analysis to identify trends in PFAS distribution.

PFAS have been linked to a range of health issues, and the chemicals have been identified in human tissue, including in the bloodstream, liver, kidneys, and lungs. Known health risks range from decreased fertility to a higher prevalence of certain cancers. People can be exposed to PFAS in several ways, including through the food they eat. 07-06-26

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/science/new-research-traces-how-forever-chemicals-move-through-great-lakes-into-people/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to reporting on climate change.

America’s Bald Eagles Thrive Due to Southeast Alaska’s Translocation Program

Seven-week-old eaglets aboard the M/V Surfbird in Southeast Alaska in 1981 get some fresh air as they perch atop their traveling crates.

As US celebrates 250th anniversary, the nation’s symbol of peace and strength owes its survival to Southeast Alaska’s bald eagles

Almost 200 years after the bald eagle was chosen as the emblem of the United States in 1782, the species was threatened with extinction due to DDT poisoning. The nation’s symbol owes its survival to a translocation program that captured young bald eagles in Southeast Alaska and flew them to New York and other Lower 48 states to initiate a repopulation program.

Biologist Rachel Carson’s 1962 book “Silent Spring” brought attention to the devastating impacts of DDT, sprayed widely in areas of the Lower 48 states during the 1950s and 1960s. The insecticide application resulted in mass die-offs of birds and other animals. Birds’ eggshells were too soft to nurture the chicks within. Bald eagles suffered overwhelming population losses of primarily nestling birds. Eggs were not hatching.

The book’s title “Silent Spring” refers to the sudden quiet caused by the deaths of birds whose songs normally filled the air with sound after winter. The dramatic losses of birds observed in backyards and farmlands prompted Carson to delve into the poisons used to eradicate insects. In a chapter titled “And No Birds Sing,” she reports on bald eagles, noting that nest failure trends in New Jersey and Pennsylvania “…may well make it necessary for us to find a new national emblem.”

Hope was on the horizon. DDT was banned in 1972. Within four years, officials in the State of New York believed the habitat could once again support a population of bald eagles. The birds live only in North America. 06-28-26

Leonardo Munoz / AFP via Getty Images

New research shows major lenders are accelerating their investment in Big Oil as the industry turns toward plastics, pesticides, and other petrochemicals.

For the past two years, more than a dozen major banks have been not only reneging on their climate commitments, they’ve been actively making the crisis worse.

In 2024 and 2025, during the leadup to President Donald Trump’s second inauguration, all six of the nation’s largest banks abandoned the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, a voluntary climate coalition, precipitating the Alliance’s complete shutdown in October. Since then, others including Royal Bank of Canada, Scotiabank, HSBC, NatWest, Santander, and JPMorgan Chase have either weakened or scrapped their decarbonization targets.

Now, new evidence shows banks are ramping up spending on fossil fuels. Beyond helping companies extract more oil and gas, they are bankrolling the industry’s pivot to plastics, fertilizers, and other petrochemical products.

Two reports released earlier this month illustrate the trend. An analysis from the Rainforest Action Network, or RAN, and other environmental groups found the world’s top 65 banks contributed $508 billion to companies expanding fossil fuel development in 2025. That’s a 27 percent increase since 2024, and more than any other year since at least 2016, based on the organization’s past analyses. 07-01-26

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/economics/banks-are-financing-the-fossil-fuel-industrys-next-growth-strategy/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to reporting on climate change.

Cow Manure Could Be the Next Data Center Fuel

Grist / Ryan Song / Unsplash

The manure-to-energy field has a new sales pitch. Critics warn it could mean even more factory farms.

At first glance, Lent Hill Dairy Farm in Steuben County, New York, looks like most other industrial dairies. There are red buildings that house some 4,000 cows, a staggering manure pit, and two gigantic dome-like structures that serve

as anaerobic co-digesters.

These giant machines break down manure and local food waste to produce biogas. This renewable natural gas, or RNG, is then typically transported for use as electricity, heating, and fuel. But at Lent Hill, the gas produced isn’t just heating homes or running tractors. It’s also powering an on-site cryptomine.

The operation, run by Pennsylvania-based Ag-Grid Energy, is the first of its kind in the country. The company claims the anaerobic digestion of manure and food waste could be a game-changer, not only in powering crypto, but data centers, which currently use 4.9 percent of the country’s electricity, a figure that could double by 2030.

“At the end of the day, our model is providing value to the rural area that we are in,” Rashi Akki, the founder and CEO of Ag-Grid Energy, told Sentient. 06-28-26

Bryan Steffy / Getty Images for People’s Action

As climate action stalls, the movement is finding new energy in local fights to stop polluting, power-hungry facilities.

Amid the many political casualties of 2025 — mass federal layoffs, shuttered agencies, and clean energy spending cuts — the passing of one of the last decade’s defining political projects went almost entirely unnoticed. On December 31, 2025, the Green New Deal Network, a coalition of climate, labor, and social justice organizations, officially died.

The coalition wasn’t intended to last forever, but its demise was sped up by the political mood that got President Donald Trump reelected in 2024, when the momentum that the movement had enjoyed under Joe Biden’s administration seemingly evaporated overnight. As Trump launched an all-out assault on environmental regulations and climate policies, the climate movement was left at a loss, unsure how to push for change with the public increasingly focused on other issues, like the cost of living, and a federal government hostile to its cause.

“The conditions under which the Green New Deal Network was founded have fundamentally changed,” the coalition’s site said, explaining its decision to fold. “The mission of climate, jobs, and justice is far from over — but the structure built to win a specific moment is no longer the right vehicle for what comes next.” 06-29-26

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/protest/climate-activists-data-centers-green-new-deal/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

Installing a Heat Pump Might Increase the Value of Your Home

A new report finds that mentioning all-electric heat pumps in real estate listings delivers a sales premium. But most agents don’t note the appliance

Would you pay more for a home with a heat pump?

You can bet I would.

I’d gladly fork over more money to bypass a gas or oil furnace, which — unlike an all-electric heat pump — spews toxic combustion by-products, runs the risk of poisoning my family with carbon monoxide, and contributes to climate change. And while heat pumps, which provide both heating and cooling, typically cost more upfront than conventional furnaces, they’re two to four times as efficient, and so could save me money in the long run.

Apparently, I’m not alone in prizing the comfort, safety, and economic benefits of these appliances.

Heat pumps give home values a boost, according to a new report by the nonprofit Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative, which studies consumer behaviors, interests, and concerns in the energy transition; 257, a customer-intelligence platform that profiles U.S. residential property characteristics for contractors, utilities, and others; and the trade group the National Association of Realtors. Their analysis showed that homeowners who install a heat pump can recoup up to a quarter of its cost just by mentioning it in real estate listings when they’re ready to sell.

While some homeowners may invest in a heat pump for its environmental bona fides, for most people, economics trumps all, said Scott Rosenberg, a co-founder and CEO of 257. “A homeowner who puts a garage on, redoes their bathroom, improves their kitchen, always thinks, ‘Am I going to get this value back?’” 06-22-26

Open Air Chicago

As extreme heat reshapes air quality, the network of 227 monitors is expected to help identify localized pollution hot spots.

Serap Erdal stopped at a light pole in Chicago’s Grant Park, pulled out her phone, and began pinching at the screen. Behind her, towering skyscrapers cut into a sunny blue sky as she scanned her palm-sized map of the city. The researcher barely noticed the hum of city buses, cars, and cyclists buzzing around her in the city’s busy downtown. She was working out what was in the cool summer air.

Fixed to the pole above her was one of the city’s new solar-powered air quality monitors. The tracker, encased in a metallic silver shell about the size of a tissue box, is part of the nation’s largest community air quality monitoring network. Today, the network has 277 air monitors across Chicago collecting air pollution data from every ward and community area, with an increased concentration in already-overburdened neighborhoods.

A bright green dot flashed on Erdal’s phone. She smiled.

“Currently, the air quality index at this location is 31,” said Erdal, a professor of environment and occupational health sciences at the University of Illinois Chicago. The reading puts the air quality in the city’s public park in the Environmental Protection Agency’s safest category, meaning it poses little to no risk to public health. “Because we have a clear day and it’s breezy, concentrations across the city are quite uniform,” she added. 06-25-26

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/equity/after-a-civil-rights-complaint-chicago-built-the-nations-largest-air-monitoring-network/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

Indigenous Cultural Practices Are a Climate Solution, Report Finds

Juan Carlos Cisneros / AFP via Getty Images

Indigenous lands are recognized as crucial for climate mitigation and resilience. New research shows their health is a direct result of the people who inhabit and steward them.

As the impacts of climate change continue to escalate, a growing number of climate scientists and policymakers cite Indigenous lands as a model for their rich biodiversity and effective carbon storage. But that recognition has not always translated into space for Indigenous leaders in climate negotiations, access to climate resilience funding, or enforcement of human rights standards.

That has been the case for decades. But the problems do not stop there. New research shows that approach overlooks the key role that Indigenous knowledge and culture can play in mitigating climate change. It also reveals a dangerous misconception that has taken hold in global climate discussions: the idea that Indigenous lands are so rich because they are remote or sparsely populated.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The health of Indigenous lands and their ability to store vast quantities of carbon stem from the stewardship of the people who inhabit them.

That’s the finding of research from Conservation International, which shows that traditional knowledge, community protocol, and Indigenous culture play a direct role in protecting forests, wildlife, and the environment. Sushma Shrestha, who is Indigenous Newar from Nepal and the study’s lead author, said the research comes at a critical time. 06-24-26

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/indigenous/indigenous-cultural-practices-are-a-climate-solution-report-finds/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

This Summer, the American Water Crisis Becomes Real

Photo-Illustration: Darrell Jackson; Getty Images

Concerns over water access are poised to consume summer in the US, as crises in Corpus Christi and across the Colorado River threaten to boil over.

Two high-profile water crises, juiced up by climate change and industrial overuse, are building in the US. From a city in Texas staring down a drought emergency to a decades-long political crisis coming to a head for the states that rely on the Colorado River, water issues in the West will take center stage this summer—and experts tell WIRED that other places should take notes and start planning ahead for their own future.

In February, following a winter of record-breaking heat, snowpack in various mountain ranges across the American West reached record lows. March came in even hotter, smashing records in states across the region.

“What happened in March was unprecedented, and stunning, and disturbing, and out of this world, frankly—we had temperatures the likes of which we have never seen and couldn’t have happened without human-caused climate change,” says Brad Udall, a senior water and climate researcher at Colorado State University’s Colorado Water Center. “We had a crummy snowpack that went from crummy to god-awful in three weeks.” 04-30-26

Members of the public pack into a meeting of the planning and zoning commission to discuss the Prometheus Hyperscale data center on May 27 in Evanston, Wyoming. Natalie Behring / Getty Images

As opposition mounts, some experts wonder how long AI infrastructure can steer clear of the partisanship that defines U.S. politics.

This month, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump, unveiled a set of sweeping recommendations to rein in rampant data center development, urging Texas lawmakers to aggressively regulate the tech industry in a state that has a reputation for welcoming new development with open arms. At the same time, New York Governor Kathy Hochul, the Democratic leader of a state known for regulatory restrictions, has declined to say whether she will sign a first-of-its-kind bill passed by her state legislature imposing a one-year moratorium on large-scale data centers.

Welcome to the weird world of data center politics, where the usual partisan scripts around energy and natural resources don’t apply — yet.

Facilities housing massive amounts of computing equipment are springing up across the U.S. to quench the tech industry’s unslakable thirst for artificial intelligence. These AI-ready data centers, which consume more energy than the traditional cloud-computing centers that already exist to host and store various aspects of modern digital life, have become a political flashpoint at lightning speed — reshaping local and state politics from coast to coast as Americans grapple with high energy costs, natural resource depletion, and the repercussions of megadevelopment. 06-22-26

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/politics/data-center-ai-bipartisan-backlash/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

Trump Strips Away Nixon-era Safeguards as Off-road Battle Heats Up in the Mojave Desert

Vehicles stage near the south entrance to Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area, in 2021.
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

President Trump recently took action that could pave the way for opening many more federal lands to recreational off-road enthusiasts. When I heard about it, I immediately thought of the battle over off-highway vehicle access in California’s Mojave Desert.

Earlier this year, a judge ordered the Bureau of Land Management to close roughly 2,000 miles of off highway vehicle trails in the western Mojave to reduce ongoing harm to the endangered desert tortoise, a keystone species of the local ecosystem whose numbers are in steep decline.

That court decision capped off a decades long legal fight led by environmental groups including the Center for Biological Diversity and the Desert Tortoise Council.

Under the ruling, which the BLM has appealed, the agency has roughly three years to redraw the network of Mojave off-road trails.

In the latest action, Trump has rescinded a pair of 1970s executive orders that directed federal land managers to minimize damage to wildlife and natural resources, as well as conflicts between off-roading and other types of recreational land use, when choosing where to locate OHV trails. 06-18-26

In this Jan. 4, 2025, file photo, solar panels are seen on the roof of a commercial building in West Los Angeles.
Daniel Slim/AFP via Getty Images, FILE

Solar and storage provided 90% of all new power added in the U.S.

The amount of solar power generated in the U.S. is continuing to grow despite efforts from the Trump administration to slow down the renewable energy sector, according to two reports released this week.

The U.S. has generated more power from solar compared to coal for the first time, according to a report by Ember, a think tank focused on the clean energy transition. In May 2026, solar supplied 12.8% of U.S. electricity, while coal supplied 12.2%, according to an analysis of official monthly and preliminary hourly generation data.

A record 45.5 terawatt-hours (TWh) of solar energy was generated in May 2026, exceeding the output from May 2025 by 17%, the think tank found. The record could be broken again in the upcoming summer months, as solar output typically peaks in June and July.

The amount of energy from coal generated in the U.S. has been nearly cut in half in the last five years, falling from 19.7% of total power generated in May 2021 to 12.2% last month. Production of coal power rose slightly in May 2026, to 43.4 Twh, but it remained 11% below May 2025 levels.

“Overtaking coal for the first month on record shows just how far solar has come, from a niche contributor to the third-largest and fastest-growing source of power in the U.S. electricity system,” Nicolas Fulghum, an Ember senior data analyst, said in a statement. 06-12-26

A Hilcorp installation in New Mexico in August 2025 Courtesy of Earthworks

It was before dawn on a Friday in January when a Gulfstream G600 with the burnt-orange Texas Longhorns logo on its tail landed at Dulles airport outside Washington, D.C. Its owner, a little-known oil billionaire named Jeffery Hildebrand, had been summoned to the White House.

By mid-afternoon he was in the East Room, just three seats from President Donald Trump, who had recently ordered the military raid that captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. Now Trump wanted Hildebrand and two dozen other energy executives to commit to investing $100 billion in Venezuela’s decrepit oil industry.

Many couched their enthusiasm with caveats. ExxonMobil’s CEO called Venezuela “uninvestable” without changes to its legal system. The head of ConocoPhillips wanted U.S. government financing.

But Hildebrand, a major Trump donor whose wife had been named ambassador to Costa Rica, had already seen how loyalty could be rewarded. Even though he had no notable operations outside the U.S., he hunched toward a microphone and said in a halting voice, “Hilcorp is fully committed and ready to go to rebuilding the infrastructure in Venezuela.”

“That’s good,” Trump said. “You’ll be very happy.” 06-16-26

Aric Crabb / Bay Area News Group via Getty Images

The federal funding is the latest twist in a decade-long saga to build a terminal in Oakland, California, that can export U.S. coal overseas.

When investor Phil Tagami first proposed building an export terminal in Oakland, California, more than a decade ago, he probably didn’t anticipate the firestorm of litigation and controversy that would follow, in a saga that has now spanned three presidential administrations. There were early rumors that the terminal would export coal, much to the consternation of local residents, but Tagami said in a newsletter that the naysayers were “misinformed.” It was all downhill from there.

Tagami and others entered into a development agreement with the city of Oakland in 2013 after the city decided to redevelop a defunct army base on the city’s west side. At the time, Tagami was adamant that the developers were interested in building an all-purpose bulk terminal and capturing some of the traffic that Oakland was losing to other West Coast ports. But two years later, Oakland residents and environmental groups had their suspicions confirmed when the Salt Lake Tribune reported that the developers had quietly entered into an agreement to use the terminal to ship coal from Utah to buyers overseas. The revelation sparked intense backlash in the progressive city, and the ensuing conflict has put both the developers and the city on the hook for million-dollar losses at various times, though litigation is ongoing. 06-15-26

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/energy/trump-oakland-coal-terminal-funding/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

What’s Driving Up Your Expenses? Many Americans Say Climate Change.

Photo of downed utility poles lying sideways across the street
Sean Rayford / Getty Images

Most Democrats and moderate Republicans agree that global warming is increasing the cost of living, a new survey shows.

For decades, American politicians have been slow to take on climate change and curb carbon dioxide emissions, under the assumption that doing so might pass along costs to their voters. Ironically, their failure to rein in fossil fuel emissions has yielded the same result: Expenses for everyday Americans have soared as a result of more extreme flooding, fires, and heat.

“What’s striking is that already, households are bearing serious costs,” said Kimberly Clausing, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. She co-authored a paper from earlier this year finding that families were paying between $400 and $900 more each year because of the effects of climate change, with the costs above $1,300 in the 10 percent hardest-hit counties, many of them found in Florida, Louisiana, Nebraska, Colorado, and California.

On Wednesday, the Commerce Department reported that the annual inflation rate reached 4.2 percent in May, the highest rate in three years. Though the war in Iran is mostly responsible for this recent increase, a surprising number of Americans are attributing the general economic pinch they’re feeling to the changing climate. Two-thirds of U.S. voters agree that global warming is affecting the cost of living to some degree, according to new survey data from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, including most Democrats and moderate Republicans. Of those two-thirds, a majority of them said that climate change was driving up what they pay for groceries, utility bills, and home insurance. 06-12-26

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/economics/household-expenses-climate-change-cost-of-living-inflation/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

What Federal Cuts to Science Funding Could Mean For the Great Lakes

A floating weather station buoy collects data on Lake Michigan. liveslow / Getty Images

Facing another round of cuts, NOAA-funded researchers worry about undermining public safety, the maritime economy, and health on the Great Lakes.

Some groups that do research and collect data on the Great Lakes are facing existential threats as the annual budgeting process for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration gets underway.

A proposed budget request from President Donald Trump would zero out programs that scientists say are the foundation of weather observations, water quality, maritime safety, and recreation on the Great Lakes. The president wants to cut NOAA’s budget by $1.3 billion, or one-third of current funding levels, to better match priorities related to halting climate research.

“The investment that we make pays off in terms of safer water, public safety, public health, as well as economic activity,” said Gregory Dick, director of the Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research, or CIGLR, a partnership between the University of Michigan and NOAA.

Researchers at CIGLR work closely with NOAA to conduct work on lake water levels, ice dynamics, and harmful algal blooms on Lake Erie. Data is used by state managers, fishers, boaters, and the regional shipping industry.

“That’s the kind of data that you want at your fingertips,” Dick said. “That’s what’s at risk with cuts like the ones we’re talking about.” 06-11-26

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/science/what-federal-cuts-to-science-funding-could-mean-for-the-great-lakes/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

For First Time, Americans are Getting More of Their Electricity From Solar Than Coal

chuyu / iStock / Getty Images

Solar provides more than twice the share of electricity it did five years ago.

Solar energy just provided more electricity in the United States than coal for the first time on record — marking a milestone for the rise of renewables in America.

While gas and nuclear plants still lead the country’s energy mix, solar contributed 12.8 percent of the nation’s electrons in May, according to an analysis of government data by Ember, an energy think tank. Coal, meanwhile, provided just 12.2 percent. Just five years ago, solar was less than half of its current levels and coal was at 20 percent.

“Overtaking coal for the first month on record shows just how far solar has come, from a niche contributor to the third-largest and fastest-growing source of power in the U.S. electricity system,” said Nicolas Fulghum, senior data analyst at Ember, in a press release. “From Texas to California, markets across the U.S. are betting on solar to meet rising power needs.”

The turnaround comes even as political headwinds have shifted against renewable energy.

Last summer, Congress passed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which rolled back enormous swaths of former President Joe Biden’s landmark climate change legislation, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. And President Donald Trump has actively sought to hinder renewable energy development, even offering to pay at least one oil company $1 billion to stop building its offshore wind projects. 06-10-26

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/solutions/for-first-time-americans-are-getting-more-of-their-electricity-from-solar-than-coal/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

Louisiana Lawmakers Rush to Support an Industry They ‘do not know a lot about’

Eric J. Shelton / Mississippi Today

A bill to boost a wood-pellet industry plagued by pollution violations sailed through the Legislature.

A bill aimed at increasing the number of wood pellet mills in Louisiana has sailed through the state’s Legislature — despite some lawmakers, including the bill’s sponsor, acknowledging they know little about the controversial industry.

State Representative Chuck Owen, a Republican from Vernon Parish in west Louisiana, said he proposed House Bill 670 in February shortly after learning about the industry, which exports about $1 billion worth of pellets from Louisiana each year. Nearly all the production comes from two British-owned mills in central and north Louisiana that emit large — and sometimes illegal — quantities of air pollutants linked to cancers and other serious illnesses.

Owen, whose district spans one of the state’s most timber-rich regions, said the goal of his bill is to make Louisiana a “premier location for wood pellet manufacturing.” 06-09-26

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/business/louisiana-wood-pellet-industry-biomass-pollution/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

Why Are So Many Democrats Going Quiet on Climate Change?

Brendan Hoffman / Getty Images

The common wisdom says it’s a losing issue. Evidence suggests it actually helps Democrats.

As the midterm elections approach, something strange has happened: Democratic politicians who once talked about climate change as the defining crisis of our time now barely mention it at all. The phrase has begun disappearing from their speeches, social media posts, and podcast appearances. The main exception is Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat who has given some version of his “Time to Wake Up” speech on the dangers of climate change more than 300 times over the past decade and a half. He’s accused “climate hushers” of pushing the party to stop talking about the overheating planet.

If you had to pinpoint the moment that “climate hushing” began, the 2024 presidential election would be the obvious contender. After President Donald Trump beat former Vice President Kamala Harris in all seven swing states, Democrats were left scrambling to figure out where they went wrong. One popular theory was that they were too busy harping on social justice and planetary problems at the expense of everyday concerns voters cared more about, like the rising cost of living. Whitehouse, however, sees global warming as a piece of that conversation, rather than a distraction from it.

“Climate change is right now raising costs for families across the country through higher property insurance premiums, grocery and electric bills, and health care expenses,” Whitehouse said in a statement to Grist. 06-08-26

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/politics/democrats-quiet-climate-change-autopsy-report/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

Your Local Park is Bringing in the Green (and by that, we mean money)

Georg Wendt / picture alliance via Getty Images

A new report finds that for every dollar invested in parks, cities reap $3 in economic benefits. Here’s how.

In an increasingly divided nation, Americans agree on at least two things. For one, politicians across the political spectrum are scrambling to get more housing built, which happens to be an accidentally powerful way to fight climate change. And two, Americans love their parks: A recent poll found that 88 percent of them visited one in the past year. Nearly 90 percent of people who voted for Kamala Harris, and 80 percent of those who voted for Donald Trump, consider these spaces critical infrastructure in their communities.

That alone should encourage elected officials to build as many of them as possible. But a new report finds another, potentially even more motivating, factor for American cities: For every dollar invested in parks and recreation, communities reap $3 in local economic benefits each year. “You really do get so much goodness out of them,” said Will Klein, director of parks research at the Trust for Public Land, which produced the report. “People are healthier, people connect with each other. They drive business activity, especially for small businesses.”

Parks aren’t as much about land as they are about people. In an increasingly commodified world, they’re one of the few remaining public places where folks can roam without the pressure of spending money. That makes them a critical kind of “third place,” somewhere to gather beyond the workplace and the home. Whereas people must pay a premium to use a gym, they can use a park or rec center for free. 06-05-26

No, Rolling Back These Environmental Rules Won’t Lower Your Grocery Bill

The Trump administration is dismantling two EPA rules, promising cheaper groceries for struggling families. Economists and former officials say it’ll only make things pricier.

Nearly six years ago, during Donald Trump’s first term in the White House, the president signed a piece of bipartisan legislation introduced to phase out the rampant use of hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, which are potent greenhouse gases commonly used in commercial cooling equipment in grocery stores and air-conditioning systems.

At the time, he praised the American Innovation and Manufacturing Act, created in line with an international agreement to tamp down widespread use of the “super pollutant,” as something that would benefit U.S. manufacturers working to produce alternative and less environmentally harmful refrigerants. The Environmental Protection Agency would then spend the next four years under former President Joe Biden working to implement a series of rules to help enforce the law, which set the goal of phasing out production and use of the pollutants by 85 percent by 2036.

Now, Trump has reversed his position. At a White House press conference last month, he announced the administration would be loosening two of the EPA’s refrigerant rules, delaying the deadline required for grocery stores and air-conditioning companies to begin reducing their use of hydrofluorocarbons, and exempting transport companies from repairing HFC leaks in refrigeration equipment. 06-04-26

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/economics/no-rolling-back-these-environmental-rules-wont-lower-your-grocery-bill/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

New York Backtracked on its Climate Goals. Here’s Why.

Protestors hold signs and a cutout of New York Governor Kathy Hochul at a protest against the governor’s efforts to weaken the state’s landmark climate law.
Photo by Erik McGregor / LightRocket via Getty Images

Lawmakers wanted to lead the energy transition, but Governor Kathy Hochul is worried about the cost of ditching natural gas.

Last week, New York became the first state in the country to weaken a mandatory climate law passed by its own legislature.

The change comes at the behest of Governor Kathy Hochul, a moderate Democrat who has often criticized climate action for increasing consumer costs. After months of backroom negotiation, the legislature reached a deal that weakens the 2019 law in several different ways — most notably by giving the state an additional decade to meet legally-required emissions targets.

The original law, one of the most ambitious in the U.S., required the Empire State to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent before 2030. (The state used its 1990 emissions as the baseline for comparison, per standards set by the United Nations.) Thanks to the law’s uniquely strict accounting rules, the only way for the state to meet this target was to shift away from natural gas, which provides most of the state’s electricity and almost all its heating fuel.

But as the 2020s progressed, New York failed to wean itself off of gas. The reason for that depends on who you ask. Some argue that President Donald Trump’s attacks on renewable energy have slowed the state’s progress, and others believe that state politicians have backed natural gas when they could have invested in more clean energy. Either way, the state fell way behind schedule, and it stood no chance of meeting its 2030 goal without dramatic action that would have taxed or banned consumption of fossil fuels. 06-03-26

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/politics/new-york-kathy-hochul-climate-law-clcpa-natural-gas-methane/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

Why is This Trump Official Dead Set on Saving a Failing California Dam?

An aerial view of the Potter Valley Project. Kyle Schwartz / CalTrout

Brooke Rollins’s latest culture war crusade threatens a delicate compromise between Potter Valley farmers and nearby tribes.

The Potter Valley Project, which dams Northern California’s Eel River, isn’t doing very much right now. Its reservoir is clogged with sediment, and drought often empties it out. The project once supported a hydroelectric power plant that could produce about 9 megawatts of electricity, which is about 1 percent of a typical fossil-fuel-fired plant, but it has not worked in years. Plus, some of its infrastructure may be at risk of collapsing during an earthquake.

Like thousands of other small dams across the U.S., it is now more trouble than it’s worth. That’s why the utility that owns the project, Pacific Gas and Electric, moved last year to demolish it and undam the river. PG&E has wanted to abandon the project for decades, but a final removal agreement required years of careful negotiation. The dam project currently supplies water to vineyards and cities in Sonoma County, and it’s the sole water source for the rural farm community of Potter Valley.

The final agreement was a delicate compromise: The Round Valley Indian Tribe, which has senior rights to water from the Eel, agreed to let some water flow from the river to farmers through a diversion tunnel, and the farmers agreed to accept about half the water they had received in past years when the reservoir was full. Supporters say that dam removal will restore natural water flow for vulnerable fish that have long inhabited the river.

But now, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins appears determined to blow up the deal. 06-02-26

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/politics/brooke-rollins-potter-valley-project-california-dams/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

US Host Cities Made Transit Improvements a World Cup Goooooooal

Courtesy of Sound Transit

From Seattle to Atlanta, host cities used the tournament to speed up rail and bus upgrades years in the making — while trying to avoid the mistakes of past World Cups.

The latest addition to Seattle’s already impressive public transit system opened to great fanfare this spring when more than 200,000 people rode the Crosslake Connection light rail line.

Its March 28 debut was second only to the parade that followed the Seahawks’ Super Bowl victory as Sound Transit’s busiest day ever. Trains now glide across Lake Washington on what is believed to be the world’s first electric rail line that spans a floating bridge, linking the city with Bellevue and Redmond, and doubling the frequency of stops in the heart of Emerald City.

Those same tracks will carry tens of thousands of fans downtown to Lumen Field for the six World Cup matches the city will host between June 15 and July 6. Kirk Hovenkotter, who leads the transit advocacy organization Transportation Choices Coalition, has no doubt that Seattle’s sustained commitment to public transit helped it become a host city.

This summer’s spotlight follows an earlier snub. When the World Cup came to the United States in 1994, Seattle hoped to host matches at Husky Stadium but came away empty-handed. 06-01-26

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/cities/world-cup-host-cities-bet-on-transit-improvements-that-outlast-the-tournament/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

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