An Alaskan Village Confronts Its Changing Climate: Rebuild or Relocate?

Damage to Kipnuk, seen on Oct. 12.17. Credit: Marc Lester/Anchorage Daily News, via Associated Press; Defense Visual Information Distribution Service, via Associated Press

After a devastating storm, the people who fled a remote coastal village face an existential question.

From the beige confines of Room 207 at the Aspen Suites Hotel on the outskirts of Anchorage, Maggie Paul and her daughter, Jamie, struggle to envision the future.

A little more than a month ago, the women were evacuated along with about 1,000 others from Kipnuk, their remote coastal village in western Alaska that was destroyed by the remnants of a typhoon. They were airlifted to safety; there are no roads to their community. Many landed in hotels about 500 miles away in Anchorage, which might as well be a different planet for all the ways the city differs from their tight-knit rural community.

It’s here the Pauls are wrestling with the kind of uncertainty facing more communities as the planet warms, weather grows more destructive and vulnerable places face repeated disasters.

Maggie Paul, 64, wants to return to Kipnuk and the way life used to be, before a series of floods and storms repeatedly bashed the village, with the most powerful blow yet landing on Oct. 12. However long it takes to put the decimated village back together, Ms. Paul said, “I will wait.”

Jamie Paul, 38, thinks the community’s only safe option is to move to higher ground, somewhere more protected. “The land is sinking,” she said, referring to the permafrost upon which the village was built and that is now buckling as rising temperatures cause it to thaw. “It’s not how it used to be.”

It’s a conundrum in search of clarity, with suspended lives in the balance. 12-05-25

Jeff Greenberg / Getty Images

The site removed the feature after real estate agents and some homeowners alleged that the scores appear arbitrary and hurt sales.

Zillow, the largest real estate listing site in the U.S., has removed a feature that allowed people to view a property’s exposure to the climate crisis, following complaints from the industry and some homeowners that it was hurting sales.

In September last year, the online real estate marketplace introduced a tool showing the individual risk of wildfire, flood, extreme heat, wind, and poor air quality for 1 million properties it lists, explaining that, “Climate risks are now a critical factor in home-buying decisions” for many Americans.

But Zillow has now deleted this climate index after complaints from real estate agents and some homeowners that the rankings appeared arbitrary, could not be challenged, and harmed house sales. The complaints included those from the California Regional Multiple Listing Service, which oversees a database of property data that Zillow relies upon.

Zillow said it remains committed to help Americans make informed decisions about properties, with listings now containing outbound links to the website of First Street, the nonprofit climate-risk quantifier that had provided the on-site tool to Zillow. 12-04-25

Tom Williams / CQ Roll Call via Getty Images

Analysts say electric vehicle adoption in the United States will continue to grow — but maybe not at the same pace as before.

Electric vehicle sales have cratered.

Across the country, dealers sold about 20 percent fewer used electric cars in October than in September and saw a staggering 50 percent drop for new ones, according to the latest data. No one was surprised. Congress voted in July to end the federal tax credits that helped consumers afford them on September 30, years before they were supposed to expire. That led to a rush of purchases before the deadline and a precipitous drop afterward.

The question now is whether this dip is a sign of a prolonged slump or a mere blip in an otherwise upward trajectory. While only time will tell, many analysts believe that electric vehicle adoption in the United States will continue to grow — albeit maybe not at the same pace seen before Congress killed the credits and automakers started second-guessing themselves.

“We’re definitely gonna see a slowdown,” said Stephanie Valdez Streaty, director of industry insights at Cox Automotive. Eliminating the federal credit of $7,500 on new EVs and $4,500 on used ones is certainly taking a toll. But the price of batteries, and thus cars, also continues to come down. Used models are becoming more of a bargain, too. 12-03-25

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro in August. Matthew Hatcher / AFP via Getty Images

Governor Josh Shapiro pulled out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in exchange for a budget. Critics say he “got rolled.”

Last month, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro withdrew from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI (pronounced “Reggie”), a cap-and-trade program that establishes a regional limit on carbon emissions from power plants located in the Northeast.

Here’s how RGGI works: Each year, credits allowing the power plants to emit a certain amount of carbon dioxide, up to the cap, are auctioned off. The proceeds from these auctions go to RGGI member states, which can reinvest them into clean energy and consumer affordability programs. Crucially, the emissions cap gradually lowers over time, theoretically ensuring that total emissions continue on a downward trend.

Pennsylvania is a giant within the program, because it has higher power sector emissions than all of the other RGGI states — Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and the District of Columbia — combined, so Shapiro’s exit sent shockwaves through the system. The Democrat withdrew from the program as part of a compromise to convince Republicans in the legislature to pass the state’s budget, which has been delayed since June, forcing schools and public transportation to dip into rainy day funds or take on debt to support services. 12-02-25

Dust blows over the Great Salt Lake. Trent Nelson / The Salt Lake Tribune

A new report lays out the case for action — instead of waiting for more data.

The dust blowing from the dry bed of the Great Salt Lake is creating a serious public health threat that policymakers and the scientific community are not taking seriously enough, two environmental nonprofits warn in a recent report.

The Great Salt Lake hit a record-low elevation in 2022 and teetered on the brink of ecological collapse. It put millions of migrating birds at risk, along with multi-million-dollar lake-based industries such as brine shrimp harvesting, mineral extraction and tourism. The lake only recovered after a few winters with above-average snowfall, but it sits dangerously close to sinking to another record-breaking low.

Around 800 square miles of lakebed sit exposed, baking and eroding into a massive threat to public health. Dust storms large and small have become a regular occurrence on the Wasatch Front, the urban region where most Utahns live. 12-01-25

Giving Thanks and Honoring Indigenous, Regenerative Farming Traditions

A Missouri turkey farmer reflects on his work with heritage birds and native ecosystems.

When I began raising turkeys, I thought I fully understood my responsibilities, like moving my flock from pasture to pasture, providing adequate water, feed, shelter, care, and protection for the birds while raising them for harvest. Eventually, other duties became apparent. Complicated ones, like balancing the production of heritage breed turkeys—our native North American livestock—while supporting and stewarding the native ecosystems on our farm in Northeast Missouri.

I am also responsible for providing the centerpiece of a very culturally loaded holiday meal. Thanksgiving is a day of mourning and protest for Indigenous nations on this continent, and for many non-Natives, it’s a faint story of gratitude covered with layers of interpretation and fraught historical context. It turns out that as a turkey farmer, I’m responsible for telling my own Thanksgiving story, through my birds.

The “traditional” Thanksgiving spread, including a bulging turkey, fat clouds of mashed potatoes, and glistening gobs of ruby-red canned cranberry sauce is a far cry from what any alleged first Thanksgiving meal resembled. Our modern Thanksgiving is also often a meal built on pure extraction of land, labor, and culture, a story we must actively redress through our choice of farming practices. 11-26-25

Sarah Dussault / MediaNews Group / The Mercury News via Getty Images

Cities and states are trying to ditch America’s most hated appliance. They’re running into challenges.

The push to ban gas-powered leaf blowers has gained an unlikely figurehead: Cate Blanchett, the Australian actress. “Leaf blowers need to be eradicated from the face of the Earth,” she said in an interview in March. Her complaints have gone viral on TikTok and other social media platforms. “It’s a metaphor for what’s wrong with us as a species,” Blanchett said. “We blow shit from one side of our lawn to the other side, and then the wind is just going to blow it back!”

Her complaints about leaf blowers — equal parts entertaining and earnest — stretch back nearly 20 years, and now the mood has caught up with her. Today, more than 200 local governments in the U.S. have restricted gas-powered lawn equipment or provided incentives to switch to quieter, less-polluting electric tools. The first bans date back to the 1970s, but the trend picked up after the pandemic lockdowns in 2020, when newly homebound workers discovered just how inescapable the whine of their neighbor’s leaf blower can be.

“With every year that passes, more and more communities across the country are taking action to address the shocking amount of pollution and noise from gas lawn equipment,” said Kirsten Schatz, clean air advocate at the Colorado Public Interest Research Group, called CoPIRG. 11-26-25

Lance King / Getty Images

The Trump administration’s proposed rollbacks open the door for more drilling, mining, and logging.

For more than 50 years, the Endangered Species Act has saved thousands of animals and plants from threats like poaching, habitat loss, and pollution. It brought bald eagles back from the brink of extinction, reestablished grizzly bear populations on public lands, and safeguarded the redwood forests that play host to dozens of vulnerable animals. In total, it has prevented the extinction of 99 percent of the species it has protected.

Last week, President Donald Trump announced that his administration is weakening or eliminating key provisions of the bedrock environmental law that protect vulnerable species from extractive activities like oil drilling.

This isn’t the first time Trump has gutted the Endangered Species Act, or ESA. Back in 2019, his administration changed the act to make it easier to remove a species from the list, and to allow economic factors to be considered when determining whether to list a new species. Many of those changes were reversed during Joe Biden’s presidency, but may now be overturned once again. The new rollbacks were announced by the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Department of the Interior’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 11-25-25

Sara Diggins / The Austin American-Statesman via Getty Images

There’s a way to reduce both the climate and water harms of data centers: build them in places with lots of wind and solar energy.

Data centers are notoriously thirsty. Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have found that, in 2023, the facilities consumed roughly 17 billion gallons of water for their operations in the U.S. alone. But that’s only a small part of the picture: A much, much larger share of data center water-intensity is indirect, a byproduct of the facilities’ enormous appetites for energy. That’s because most power plants themselves require huge amounts of water to operate. This off-site, indirect water consumption amounted to a whopping 211 billion gallons in the Berkeley lab’s 2023 tally — well over 10 times the direct on-site usage. As Silicon Valley continues to pour hundreds of billions of dollars into artificial intelligence and demand for data centers grows, these water needs are only going to grow in tandem.

However, new research from Cornell University shows that there’s a way to mitigate both the climate and water footprints of these facilities: build them in places with lots of wind and solar energy. “Location really matters,” said Fengqi You, an energy systems engineering professor at Cornell and co-author of the new study. Where companies choose to locate their data centers could alter their combined environmental footprints by a factor of up to 100. 11-24-25

A bald eagle sits on a branch while a seagull harasses it in Voyageurs National Park, Minnesota. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)

The Trump administration announced plans to roll back protections for plants and animals under the Endangered Species Act.

The Trump administration announced proposals Wednesday to roll back protections for plants and animals under the Endangered Species Act, a bedrock environmental law credited with rescuing the bald eagle, American alligator, peregrine falcon and numerous other species from extinction.

The proposed changes to the way the half-century-old law is enforced come as part of President Donald Trump’s effort to reduce regulatory red tape and expand U.S. fossil fuel production, which often occurs in the habitat of birds, insects and others animals at risk of vanishing.

The Interior Department said the Biden administration overreached when enacting its own protections for endangered species.

“This administration is restoring the Endangered Species Act to its original intent, protecting species through clear, consistent and lawful standards that also respect the livelihoods of Americans who depend on our land and resources,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement. “These revisions end years of legal confusion and regulatory overreach.”

The proposed rules “will ensure federal wildlife agencies get a truer picture of local environmental and economic conditions” when making decisions, said Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Arkansas), chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee. 11-21-25

Brandon Bell / Getty Images

Advocates say a recent settlement is a win in the fight to hold industrial ag giants accountable.

Shoppers have long sought ways to make more sustainable choices at the supermarket — and for good reason: Our food system is responsible for a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. The vast majority of emissions from agriculture come from raising cows on industrial farms in order to sell burgers, steak, and other beef products. Beef production results in two and a half times as many greenhouse gases as lamb, and almost nine times as many as chicken or fish; its carbon footprint relative to other sources of protein, like cheese, eggs, and tofu, is even higher.

If you want to have a lighter impact on the planet, you could try eating less beef. (Just try it!) Otherwise, a series of recent lawsuits intends make it easier for consumers to discern what’s sustainable and what’s greenwashing by challenging the world’s largest meat processors on their climate messaging.

Tyson, which produces 20 percent of beef, chicken, and pork in the United States, has agreed to drop claims that the company has a plan to achieve “net zero” emissions by 2050 and to stop referring to beef products as “climate smart” unless verified by an independent expert.

Tyson was sued in 2024 by the Environmental Working Group, or EWG, a nonprofit dedicated to public health and environmental issues. The group alleged that Tyson’s claims were false and misleading to consumers. (Nonprofit environmental law firm Earthjustice represented EWG in the case.) Tyson denied the allegations and agreed to settle the suit. 11-21-25

Maps of aquifers in Texas are displayed at an informational hearing in Austin in September. Aaron E. Martinez / The Austin American-Statesman via Getty Images

As fast-growing cities and suburbs scramble for new water sources, farmers in East Texas are turning to government regulation to keep their wells from running dry.

The farmers and ranchers who descended on City Hall in Jacksonville, Texas, had been told to “leave their pitchforks at the door.” While everyone ultimately arrived unarmed, the attendees of the June 19 board meeting of the Neches & Trinity Valleys Groundwater Conservation District were ready for a fight.

In the hallway outside the boardroom, wives tried to cool their husbands with handheld paper fans that flapped uselessly amid a sea of silver hair — stoic men with sweat-slicked brows beneath weathered cowboy hats, veterans’ insignia, and red MAGA ball caps. Near the chamber door, a uniformed officer stood sweating through his shirt, trying to enforce the fire marshal’s 150-person limit while the crowd swelled behind him. The sign-in table, barely visible through the crush, had already collected nearly 100 names — almost all were there to speak out against the water permits requested by two shadowy LLCs tied to hedge fund manager Kyle Bass and his investment group, Conservation Equity Management Partners.

The permit applications submitted by Bass’ Redtown Ranch Holdings LLC and Pine Bliss LLC collectively request permission to withdraw approximately 15 billion gallons of water annually from the Carrizo-Wilcox aquifer in East Texas, an amount residents fear will run their wells and farms dry. Without taking off their “Don’t Tread on Me” T-shirts, the citizens of six East Texas counties where Trump took around 80 percent of the vote last November are now turning to their state government to protect them from billionaires. 11-19-25

Urban Gleaners volunteers harvest grapes at Thimbleberry Collaborative Farm in Boring, Oregon. (Photo credit: Cait Brigham)

Amid escalating food costs and cuts to food assistance, collecting surplus food offers an age-old solution.

It was too much of a good thing that brought a dozen volunteers to Wild Roots Farm in Troutdale, Oregon, on a blue-sky day in the middle of August. As the sun rose over the farm’s 1.5 acres, the volunteers began to harvest surplus basil, tomatoes, and zucchini.

Each crop had its own unique reason for being left in the field. More basil had flourished than could be sold; the tomatoes showed minor blossom-end rot from summer rain; and the zucchini was, by restaurant standards, oversize. For the farmer, it would have been more work than it was worth to harvest.

Not so for the gleaners.

Urban Gleaners, a Portland-based nonprofit, hosts weekly harvests at this farm. It then makes the surplus produce—plus excess food collected from supermarkets, restaurants, universities, corporate campuses, and event sites—accessible to community members through 47 distribution points, including 24 free-food markets throughout the city.

“We want our free-food markets to feel like a normal shopping experience at a grocery store or farmers’ market,” said Katy Hill, who began working with Urban Gleaners as a volunteer almost four years ago and now serves as its communications and development manager. “We want to serve these people with dignity and give them the power of choice.”

Nineteen years since their founding, Urban Gleaners now rescues about 1.2 million pounds of food per year and serves around 8,500 people per week—all with just one warehouse, 14 employees, and roughly 100 volunteers. 11-18-25

Grist / Getty Images / USDA

Cash-strapped farmers, gaps in the public safety net, and food inspection backlogs that could reshape who eats what in the years to come.

In a dramatic twist of political defections and contentious concessions, the longest-ever federal shutdown came to a close late last Wednesday as Congress finally managed to agree upon a deal to reopen the government. Government agencies are now beginning to resume operations, employees are returning to work, and federal payments are beginning to flow once again.

Experts say, though, that the shutdown has left behind fractures on the nation’s food system that are only beginning to appear. These cracks will only widen with time as they join with all of the other major food and farming policy changes enacted by the Trump administration — which altogether are affecting who eats what, where that food comes from, and which communities get left behind.

“When agencies like the USDA or FDA halt or scale back operations there are ripple effects through the supply chain because of the effect on crop payments, insurance, inspections, and nutrition programs,” said Ginni Braich, a data scientist studying food insecurity and climate change at the University of Colorado, Boulder. “These, along with unpredictable policies, can erode public trust and market transparency, weaken these support systems, and increase vulnerabilities to shocks like disease outbreaks or extreme climate events.” 11-18-25

Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post via Getty Images

In Florida, a new pilot program teaches doulas how to prepare pregnant people for hurricanes, flooding, and extreme heat — addressing a growing climate and maternal health crisis.

In the days leading up to Hurricane Irma’s landfall in September 2017, Esther Louis made preparations to flee Florida with her husband and four children. The Category 4 Hurricane was expected to hit the Florida Keys and make it’s way up the state, posing a risk to millions of residents. One of those residents was a client of Louis’ who was nine months pregnant and living in a home that the Miami-based doula feared was in too poor of condition to withstand the storm.

As a doula, Louis was trained to provide holistic care to her client, anticipating all the factors that may affect her health. She worried about how the stress of an impending hurricane and evacuation could impact her client’s pregnancy. So she offered to escort her client and her family toward Georgia, where Louis was headed and where her client had relatives.

The caravan of two families departed together, inching their way in evacuation traffic to the Georgia border. What would have been an eight hour drive took 24 hours. “It was stressful,” Louis said. Her client started to experience Braxton Hicks contractions which can be caused by stress. At times they would switch drivers so she could provide emotional support to her client, who was worried about all that could go wrong on the drive. “Sometimes people go to the worst possible outcome but I’m like, ‘We’re going to get there, OK? We’re going to work it out.’” 11-16-25

Sharon Steinmann/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images

Metropolitan gardens and farms are extraordinarily powerful tools that can improve food security, lower temperatures, and create invaluable gathering spaces.

If you’ve spent any time on a roof, you know that it’s not especially pleasant up there — blazing in the summer, frigid and windy in the winter. Slap some solar panels up there, though, and the calculus changes: Shaded from gusts and excessive sunlight, crops can proliferate, a technique known as rooftop agrivoltaics. And because that hardware provides shade, evaporation is reduced, resulting in big water savings. Plus, all that greenery insulates the top floor, reducing energy costs.

Long held in opposition to one another, urban areas are embracing elements of the rural world as they try to produce more of their own food, in community gardens on the ground and agrivoltaics up above. In an increasingly chaotic climate, urban agriculture could improve food security, generate clean electricity, reduce local temperatures, provide refuges for pollinators, and improve mental and physical health for urbanites, among other benefits.

With relatively cheap investments in food production — especially if they’ve got empty lots sitting around — cities can solve a bunch of problems at once. Quezon City in the Philippines, for instance, has transformed unused land into more than 300 gardens and 10 farms, in the process training more than 4,000 urban farmers. Detroit is speckled with thousands of gardens and farms. In the Big Apple, the nonprofit Project Petals is turning vacant lots in under-resourced neighborhoods into oases. 11-14-25

Food Insecurity Predicted to Rise as New SNAP Work Requirements Take Effect

State agencies and aid recipients brace for delays in food assistance along with policy changes that are expected to kick millions off the program.

New work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) went into effect this weekend, and are expected to make millions ineligible for benefits during an already uncertain time.

Due to the government shutdown, November benefits have been delayed for many SNAP recipients. At the same time, states are implementing new work requirements included in the Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB), which will likely kick many off the program.

Following orders from two federal judges, the Trump administration said Monday it would use approximately $5 billion in contingency funds to partially fund SNAP benefits in November. It remains unclear how and when these benefits will be distributed. The full amount needed to cover benefits is estimated to be between $8 and $9 billion.

It could also take days for states to send benefits to recipients, anti-hunger advocates told Civil Eats. The amounts are also not yet determined, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey said in a statement shortly after the administration’s announcement. 11-03-25

AP Photo / Annika Hammerschlag

Efforts to expand deep-sea mining are alarming scientists and Indigenous leaders, who worry mining risks fisheries and food security.

The Trump administration is expanding its deep-sea mining ambitions to the region around the Marianas Trench in the western Pacific, and is nearly doubling the proposed seabed mining area around American Samoa from 18 million acres to 33 million acres, an area bigger than Peru.

The move disregards unified opposition from Indigenous leaders in American Samoa, who imposed a moratorium on seabed mining last year. Governor Pulaali’i Nikolao Pula has asked the Trump administration not to proceed without the territory’s consent, but the federal government plans to move forward with an environmental review. “Our fisheries are essential for food security, recreation and the perpetuation of our Samoan culture,” said Nathan Ilaoa, director of American Samoa’s Department of Marine & Wildlife Resources, last week in the Samoa News. Tuna makes up 99.5 percent of the territory’s exports. 11-12-25

Chen Mengtong / China News Service / VCG via Getty Images

Though the current political showdown is nearing an end, new research shows that government shutdowns leave polluting legacies.

It’s day 42 of the U.S. government shutdown, but an end is finally in sight. On Sunday night, the Senate voted to move forward with funding for the federal government through January 30. That vote, in which eight Democrats joined the vast majority of Senate Republicans, is expected to be followed by approval from the Republican majority in the House of Representatives and President Donald Trump. With many Democratic officials condemning the capitulation of their Senate colleagues, a revival of the shutdown is a distinct possibility after funding expires again next year.

One of the many adverse effects of the current shutdown is that, for weeks now, the nation’s top environmental cop has been off duty. While it’s too early to know the exact consequences of the dysfunction, analogous situations in the recent past indicate that polluters often increase their emissions during periods of relaxed enforcement. With such periods becoming regular features of the U.S. political process, the cumulative environmental fallout could be significant. 11-11-25

Joe Raedle / Getty Images

Talking about climate change may be politically radioactive, but adjusting to its effects is no longer optional

Last May, as blistering-hot weather broke records across South Florida and smoke from distant wildfires in Mexico turned the sky hazy, Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, signed legislation erasing most mentions of “climate change” from state law. “We’re restoring sanity in our approach to energy and rejecting the agenda of the radical green zealots,” he wrote on X.

Back then, it felt like just another Florida story, a fresh example of the culture war overriding reality. In hindsight, it was a preview of where the country was headed.

President Donald Trump’s second term has plunged the United States into “don’t say climate” politics. Even as horrific floods and fires unfolded around the country this year, Republicans in Congress reversed the country’s only climate plan. The administration has deleted “climate change” from hundreds of government webpages and dismissed facts about the warming planet as “brainless fear-mongering rhetoric.” Rather than pushing back, Democrats have been talking about climate change less since the 2024 election, emphasizing “cheap energy” instead.

Even if talking about climate change is politically radioactive, adapting to its effects is no longer optional. Florida tops some lists for the state most at risk from climate change, facing a combination of heat, drought, fires, flooding, and hurricanes. Miami Beach and towns in the Florida Keys have been raising their roads as the sea begins to rise. DeSantis has committed more than $1 billion to Resilient Florida, a grant program that helps local governments address some of these problems. 11-10-25

Sebnem Coskun / Anadolu via Getty Images

When humans manage to cut enough emissions and eventually reduce global temperatures, new research shows the Southern Ocean could kick warming back into gear.

Consider your morning cup of coffee. Your kettle’s heating element — or flame on a stove — warms up water that you infuse with beans and pour into a mug. Maybe you get busy and the cup of joe sits there for a while, releasing its heat into the atmosphere of the room, until it reaches equilibrium with the indoor temperature. In other words: It got cold.

Now consider that the expansive Southern Ocean, which wraps around Antarctica, could one day do much the same thing. Since the Industrial Revolution kicked off, humans have dialed up the kettle to its max, adding extraordinary amounts of heat into the atmosphere, more than 90 percent of which has been absorbed by the sea. (It’s also taken up a quarter of our CO2 emissions.) Under climate change, the Southern Ocean has been storing warmth which, like your morning jolt, can’t stay there forever, and will someday return to the atmosphere.

New modeling suggests that this “burp” of heat — the scientists called it that, by the way — could be abrupt. In a scenario where humanity eventually reduces its greenhouse gas emissions and then goes “net negative,” finding ways to remove those planet-warming pollutants from the atmosphere, global temperatures fall. But suddenly the Southern Ocean belches its accumulated heat, leading to a rate of planetary warming similar to what humanity is causing right now. And the thermal burping would continue for at least a century. 11-07-25

Natalia Lebedinskaia / Getty Images

Tuesday’s election results suggest energy costs may be moving the political needle in ways that other issues, like climate change, have not.

It has been a big week in energy news, with several resounding wins for efficiency advocates.

On Tuesday, voters in Georgia flipped two seats on the state’s Public Service Commission, which oversees utilities and sets rates. They installed a pair of Democrats on this little known, yet powerful, body for the first time in nearly two decades. Further north, Democratic gubernatorial candidates in Virginia and New Jersey handily won after making rising energy prices a centerpiece of their campaigns. The victories came just a few days after The New York Times reported that the Environmental Protection Agency is quietly reconsidering plans to eliminate the popular Energy Star program.

Taken together, these developments suggest that energy costs could be moving the political needle in ways that other issues, like climate change, have not. And, with next year’s midterms on the horizon, it’s an issue both political parties will increasingly have to grapple with.

“When the costs of climate change become evident, there’s a political necessity to find policy that works,” said Bob Inglis, a former Republican congressman who represented South Carolina and has become a leading conservative voice on climate change. “When people see them on their utility bills and they see them in their property tax bills, that’s when they start asking, is there any way to head this off?” 11-06-25

A set of glass doors that say Climate Action Lab
Many classes that meet UCSD’s climate literacy requirement are taught in the university’s Climate Action Lab. Olivia Sanchez/The Hechinger Report

University of California, San Diego, requires all students to learn about climate change, while other schools have added environmental sustainability requirements.

On a Thursday this fall, hundreds of students at the University of California, San Diego, were heading to classes that, at least on paper, seemed to have very little to do with their majors.

Hannah Jenny, an economics and math major, was on their way to a class on sustainable development. Angelica Pulido, a history major who aspires to work in the museum world, was getting ready for a course on gender and climate justice. Later that evening, others would show up for a lecture on economics of the environment, where they would learn how to calculate the answer to questions such as: “How many cents extra per gallon of gas are people willing to pay to protect seals from oil spills?”

Although most of these students don’t aspire to careers in climate science or advocacy, the university is betting that it’s just as important for them to understand the science and societal implications of climate change as it is for them to understand literature and history, even if they’re not planning to become writers or historians. UCSD is perhaps the first major public university in the country to require all undergraduate students to take a class on climate change to earn their degree. 11-05-25

Photo Credit: Canva Teams

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has issued a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) offering up to $100 million to refurbish and modernize existing coal-fired power plants. The funding follows the Department’s September announcement of a $625 million initiative aimed at revitalizing the coal industry by improving efficiency, reliability, and plant lifetimes.

“For years, the Biden and Obama administrations relentlessly targeted America’s coal industry and workers, resulting in the closure of reliable power plants and higher electricity costs,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright. “President Trump has ended the war on American coal and is restoring common-sense energy policies that put Americans first.”

According to DOE, the funding supports projects that:

Develop advanced wastewater management systems capable of cost-effective water recovery and byproducts;
Enable fuel switching between coal and natural gas without compromising performance; and
Deploy advanced co-firing systems designed to maximize gas-coal flexibility while minimizing efficiency penalties.

The initiative is part of President Trump’s executive orders on “Reinvigorating America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry” and “Strengthening the Reliability and Security of the United States Electric Grid.” 11-03-25

Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities / AP

As Typhoon Halong swept through western Alaska, it laid bare how centuries-old policies made Native villages particularly vulnerable to climate change.

A week after Typhoon Halong passed through Japan in early October, its remnants crossed the Pacific and struck western Alaska. Nearly 50 Alaska Native communities across the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta near the Bering Sea were met with towering wind speeds, record storm surge, and widespread flooding. At least one person died, and 1,500 adults and children, who were mostly Yup’ik, were displaced from the villages. Initial estimates have reported that the storm decimated 90 percent of homes in the coastal village of Kipnuk and 35 percent in Kwigillingok, which has also experienced toxic chemicals spilling into its freshwater supply.

“It’s going to take years to recover from the disaster,” said Senator Lisa Murkowski at the Alaska Federation of Natives’ annual convention last month. “After the floodwaters recede, and after the damage to the homes and the fish camp is calculated, there’s so much work that remains, and so much healing that is needed.”

State and federal resources are being mobilized to respond to the disaster. On October 22, alongside Governor Mike Dunleavy’s state emergency declaration and release of disaster relief funds, President Donald Trump authorized a federal emergency declaration and $25 million in funds for recovery and rebuilding efforts. State agencies such as the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management have also begun moving evacuees into long-term housing. 11-03-25

A Gwich’in hunter keeps an eye out for the Porcupine caribou herd just outside the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. Emily Sullivan / Gwich’in Steering Committee

Despite the administration’s enthusiasm for developing the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, oil companies have shown little interest – leaving the state to spend millions propping up the idea.

As Kristen Moreland waited for the livestream to buffer, her thoughts drifted to the years she’d devoted to defending Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the northeastern sweep of Alaska where the mountains give way to the coastal plain. On screen, the chatter of aides stilled as men in dark suits gathered behind a lectern. Then Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum announced plans to open the area, roughly the size of South Carolina, to drilling.

It marked another round in the decades-long tug-of-war over developing one of the country’s largest remaining protected areas — an effort that came to a head during President Donald Trump’s first term, and ground to a halt when President Joe Biden took office. Burgum also restored seven oil and gas leases that a state-funded corporation bid on during the final days of the first Trump administration, and that his successor later revoked.

Moreland, a Gwich’in leader and executive director of the tribal committee dedicated to protecting the Nation’s sacred coastal plain, sat stunned as the YouTube stream continued. The place she grew up — where generations have lived on the tundra alongside the caribou, weaving their history into the land — had been reduced to a line item on someone’s balance sheet. When Burgum said opening the Refuge would benefit northern communities, “it felt like a slap in the face,” she said. 10-31-25

Jessica McGowan / Getty Images

Behind the PSC race is a battle for political control of the state — and maybe the country.

Republicans see a risk of losing seats they’ve held for two decades and opening the door to further losses. Both parties are looking ahead to next year, when the governor’s office and a U.S. Senate seat are on the ballot, and see the PSC race as something of a bellwether. That all has Republicans showing some nerves.

Recently, some of Georgia’s top Republicans gathered in Forsyth County, about 40 minutes outside Atlanta, for a show of party unity and patriotism. Local and state officials stood on risers behind the podium while longtime Public Service Commissioner Bubba McDonald led the small crowd in a rendition of “God Bless the USA.”

During his time at Oklahoma’s oil and gas regulator, Danny Ray worked to contain pollution events known as purges. He left the agency after three years, fed up with what he described as regulators’ inability to stop these floods of toxic wastewater. Abigail Harrison

Salt water laced with cancer-causing chemicals, a byproduct of oil and gas drilling, is spewing from old wells. Experts warn of a pollution crisis spreading underground and threatening Oklahoma’s drinking water.

In January 2020, Danny Ray started a complicated job with the Oklahoma agency that regulates oil and gas. The petroleum engineer who’d spent more than 40 years in the oil fields had been hired to help address a spreading problem, one that state regulators did not fully understand.

The year prior, toxic water had poured out of the ground — thousands of gallons per day — for months near the small town of Kingfisher, spreading across acres of farmland, killing crops and trees.

Such pollution events were not new, but they were occurring with increasing frequency across the state. By the time Ray joined the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, the incidents had grown common enough to earn a nickname — purges.

When oil and gas are pumped from the ground, they come up with briny fluid called “produced water,” many times saltier than the sea and laden with chemicals, including some that cause cancer. Most of this toxic water is shot back underground using what are known as injection wells.

Wastewater injection had been happening in Oklahoma for 80 years, but something was driving the growing number of purges. Ray and his colleagues in the oil division set out to find the cause. As they scoured well records and years of data, they zeroed in on a significant clue: The purges were occurring near wells where companies were injecting oil field wastewater at excessively high pressure, high enough to crack rock deep underground and allow the waste to travel uncontrolled for miles. 10-29-25

Michael Nigro / Getty Images

Why some think a “lurid political shakedown” by President Trump will get a pipeline built off Rockaway Beach.

They don’t build many basements in Breezy Point anymore, but Ed Power’s got one. Breezy Point is a remote stretch of New York City along the coast of the Rockaway Peninsula, colloquially known as the “Irish Riviera.” A longtime firefighter who retired as a deputy chief, Power grew up in the neighborhood and raised his kids there. For decades, his basement caused no problems.

But over the last 15 years, it’s begun to flood regularly, the water line moving steadily higher. Breezy Point was decimated by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, but Power stuck it out and returned. “The only reason I’m here is because of the ocean. I can see it, I swim in it,” he said. “And the water continues to rise. Another Sandy and I’m out of here.”

Now Power sees a different threat to the beach: the Williams Company’s Northeastern Supply Enhancement, or NESE, pipeline, which has been revived and fast-tracked over the past few months. The pipeline would add to a 10,000-mile network that runs all the way to Texas, carrying fracked gas from Pennsylvania through New York Harbor and terminating off Rockaway Beach, where it will connect to an existing pipeline off the coast of Long Island.

“Everything about this is a horror,” said Power. Since 2018, the NESE pipeline proposal has been rejected three times because it failed to meet New York’s water quality standards. The state’s Department of Environmental Conservation, or DEC, warned that its construction would dredge up mercury, copper, and other decades-old contaminants dumped off the coast of the city, endangering marine life and the health of local swimmers. 10-28-25

City of Clyde, Texas

Drought is set to pose a greater risk to the $4 trillion municipal bond market than floods, hurricanes, and wildfires combined.

The city of Clyde sits about two hours west of Fort Worth on the plains of north Texas. It gets its water from a lake by the same name a few miles away. Starting in 2022, scorching weather caused its levels to drop further and further. Within a year, officials had declared a water conservation emergency and, on August 1 of last year, they raised the warning level again. That meant residents rationing their spigot use even more tightly, especially lawn irrigation. The restrictions weren’t, however, the worst news that day: The city also missed two debt payments.

Municipal bond defaults of any kind are extraordinarily rare, let alone those linked to a changing climate. But, with about 4,000 residents and an annual budget of under $10 million, Clyde has never had room to absorb surprises. So when poor financial planning collided with the prolonged dry spell, the city found itself stretched beyond its limits.

The drought meant that Clyde sold millions of gallons less water, even as it imported more of it from neighboring Abilene, at about $1,200 per day. Worse, as the ground dried, it cracked, destroying a sewer main and bursting another, quarter-million dollar, hole in the town budget. Within days of Clyde missing its payments, rating agency Standard & Poor’s slashed the city’s bond ratings, which limited its ability to borrow more money. Within weeks, officials had hiked taxes and water rates to help staunch the financial bleeding. 10-27-25

Sean Gallup / Getty Images

A new report shows that fossil fuel companies own less than 2 percent of renewable energy projects worldwide.

Every year, United Nations member states gather together at the Conference of the Parties, better known as COP, to negotiate international climate agreements and assess global progress toward emissions reduction. The 30th annual COP will begin November 7 in Belém, Brazil, a city of about 2.5 million on the edge of the Amazon. Depending on who you ask, COP is either the world’s best attempt to date at collective climate action or a massive forum for greenwashing: At last year’s COP29, the human rights NGO Global Witness found that oil and gas lobbyists significantly outnumbered negotiating officials from the 10 countries most threatened by climate change.

“We genuinely believe that COPs have been co-opted by the fossil fuel industry, to such an extent that we’re seeing thousands of lobbyists turn up each year,” said Patrick Galey, the head of fossil fuel investigations at Global Witness. “And they are not lobbying for green energy.”

One long-running argument for giving oil and gas companies a seat at the table at COP has been that, as the providers of the lion’s share of the world’s energy, they must be partners in global decarbonization. “Coalitions have to include the incumbent energy companies, and specifically the oil and gas companies,” Ernest Moniz, who was energy secretary under former president Barack Obama, told CNBC at COP28 in 2023. 10-24-25

Photo: Jennifer Allen

The 18.8 million visitors to North Carolina’s nine National Park Service sites in 2024 injected $2.3 billion into the state’s economy, second only to California’s $3.7 billion, finds a recent report. Of that $2.3 billion statewide, around 4.7 million visitors spent $732.2 million in the communities around the coast’s five National Park Service sites, according to “2024 National Park Visitor Spending Effects: Economic Contributions to Local Communities, States, and the Nation” made available to the public Sept. 25.

Park service officials release the annual report detailing what visitors paid the previous year on lodging, camping fees, restaurants, groceries, gas, local transportation, recreation industries and retail in gateway regions, which are the communities or areas that surround a site. An easy-to-use interactive online tool breaking down the report is on the website. With the ongoing government shutdown that began Oct. 1, and ongoing at the time of this publication, next year’s numbers will likely show a different story. Visit NC Executive Director Wit Tuttell told Coastal Review that the report “makes it clear that national parks, seashores, historic sites and trails enrich our state and local economies.” Visit NC is the state’s official destination marketing organization. The study looked at the Wright Brothers National Memorial, Fort Raleigh National Historic Site and Cape Hatteras National Seashore, all on the Outer Banks, Cape Lookout National Seashore in Carteret County, and Moores Creek National Battlefield in Pender County, and, in the western part of the state, Guilford Courthouse National Military Park, the Blue Ridge Parkway, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site. 10-23-25

Chemours’ thermal oxidizer is shown during construction in 2019. Photo: Chemours

Chemours’ air permit application to expand production at its Fayetteville Works plant excludes emissions data that should be disclosed to the public, environmental lawyers say. The company “improperly withheld vital emission data from the public” in its Aug. 14 application to the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Air Quality, according to a letter Southern Environmental Law Center attorneys sent the department last month.

“We urge the Department to require Chemours to re-submit its application with disclosed emissions data,” the Sept. 19 letter states. “North Carolina law clearly states that emission data cannot be kept secret.” Jess Loizeaux, Chemours’ communications leader, refuted that claim, writing in an email responding to a request for comment, “our permit application fully disclosed the projected emissions associated with the expansion.” “Certain details included in the application submitted to DAQ – such as production capacity, operating hours, and emissions factors – were redacted from the public version because they are considered confidential business information and, if made public, could harm our competitive position,” Loizeaux said. “Protecting confidential business information is standard practice and does not affect transparency regarding environmental impacts.” Attorneys for Chemours and its predecessor company DuPont made a similar argument earlier this year when they filed a court motion to keep under seal thousands of pages of documents they say include “non-public facts” that largely pertain to chemical production. 10-21-25

Turbine components for the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project — including towers, nacelles, and blades — arrived at the marine terminal in Portsmouth, Virginia, this month. Dominion Energy

Dominion Energy’s 2.6 GW project off Virginia’s coast is progressing fast. The utility has a new, more definitive target to plug into the grid: March 2026.

About 30 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach, Virginia, workers have been building America’s largest offshore wind farm at a breakneck pace. The project will start feeding power to the grid by March — the most definitive start date provided by its developer yet.

“First power will occur in Q1 of next year,” Dominion Energy spokesperson Jeremy Slayton told Canary Media. “And we are still on schedule to complete by late 2026.”

In an August earnings call, Dominion Energy CEO Robert Blue provided a vague window of a“early 2026” when asked when the 2.6-gigawatt Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, or CVOW, project would start generating renewable power for the energy-hungry state.

As of the end of September, Dominion had installed all 176 turbine foundations — “a big, important milestone,” per Slayton. That accomplishment involved pile-driving 98 foundations into the soft seabed during the five-month stretch when such work is permitted. Good weather helped the work move along quickly, as did the Atlantic Ocean’s unusually quiet hurricane season.

Speed is key when building wind projects under the eye of a president who has called turbines “ugly” and “terrible for tourism” — and who has followed up with attempts to dismantle the industry. 10-18-25

Grist / Sunrun

A pilot project in Maryland is using EVs to create a cleaner, more resilient, and more affordable energy supply.

Depending on whom you’re asking, renewable energy and electric vehicles will either destroy the grid or save it. The sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow, true enough, while a gas-fired power plant can generate electricity any time. That supposed precarity of renewables will get even shakier, critics argue, as Americans ditch conventional vehicles for electric ones, which will draw ever more power from an already strained grid.

Luckily, that’s not a realistic scenario because of what renewables and EVs have in common: giant batteries. Solar and wind farms are plugging into huge banks of them to store energy to use as needed, fixing their intermittency challenge. (Engineers are turning Earth itself into an even bigger battery.) And a growing number of cars with cords feature vehicle-to-grid technology, or V2G, also known as bidirectional charging. They can draw clean power when renewables are humming on the grid, and their owners get paid to send some back to a utility to meet growing demand — creating a vast distributed network that could make the electrical system more reliable, not less. Research has found that globally, less than a third of EV owners would have to opt into such a system to meet the rising need for energy storage. 10-17-25

Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images

The slogan may sound like a joke, but it’s part of a broader campaign to undermine public trust in climate action.

The phrase that has come to define the Trump administration’s message on climate change was born in Durham, New Hampshire, on December 16, 2023.

Flanked by flannel-clad supporters holding “Live free or die” signs, then-candidate Trump wished the crowd a Merry Christmas before launching into what he saw as the biggest faults of the current administration. He swung at President Biden himself (“crooked Joe”) and the state of the economy (“Bidenomics”). About 10 minutes in, he arrived at Biden’s climate policies, which he said were “wasting trillions of dollars on Green New Deal nonsense.”

But Trump wasn’t satisfied with his choice of insult, perhaps recognizing that echoing “Green New Deal” served to amplify his opponents’ pro-climate action rallying cry. So in front of the crowd, he began riffing on ways to undermine it in real time.

“They don’t know what they’re doing, but you’re going to be in the poor house to fund his big government Green New Deal, which is a socialist scam. And you know what? You have to be careful. It’s going to put us all in big trouble,” he said. “The Green New Deal that doesn’t work. It’s a Green New Scam. Let’s call it, from now on, the Green New Scam.

The crowd roared, shaking their signs in approval. “I do like that term, and I just came up with that one,” Trump said. “The Green New Scam. It will forever be known as the Green New Scam.” 10-16-25

An Amazon Web Services data center in northern Virginia. Nathan Howard / Getty Images

A coalition of 11 governors has threatened to withdraw from grid operator PJM.

On a quiet road in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, not far from the field where George Washington’s starving soldiers waited out the winter in 1778, sits the headquarters for PJM Interconnection, the largest electrical grid operator in the United States. Inside, operators wage war against inclement weather and power surges, ensuring that electricity is reliably delivered to 65 million customers across 13 states and the District of Columbia. The control board looks like something out of a disaster movie — covering the walls and stretching nearly from floor to ceiling — but, by design, it’s a pretty drama-free environment.

As the U.S. grapples with a surge in electricity demand, however, that may be changing.

In late September, governors from 11 of PJM’s member states banded together in Philadelphia to demand a greater role in the grid’s energy decisions, given rapidly rising costs faced by their constituents. Some even threatened to walk away from the 13-state grid altogether.

“We need states to have more of a say in how PJM operates,” said Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, who led the charge. “We need to move more quickly on energy-producing projects, and we’ve got to hold down costs. If PJM cannot do that, then Pennsylvania will look to go it alone.”

Pennsylvania is a net exporter of power and could, theoretically, pass a law forcing its generators to withdraw from the nonprofit and join a new grid operator, but that would require federal approval; plus, power generators would have to repay PJM for a mountain of payments the grid operator has already made. Shapiro’s bluster is more likely intended to force changes within PJM and secure a greater role for public officials in the grid they rely on. 10-15-25

An aerial view of Google’s New Albany data center campus in Central Ohio. Courtesy of Google

Local officials see millions of dollars in tax revenue, but more than 950 residents who signed ballot petitions fear endless noise, pollution and higher electric rates.

Early this year, Augusta Charter Township resident Travis Matts had seen a few headlines about the problems data centers caused in towns across the country. He thought the impacts on water, air and utility bills sounded awful, but it also seemed like a far-away issue.

Until it suddenly hit home in May.

That is when Matts learned, through his group of volunteers that cleans up area litter, that a data center was proposed for an 822-acre property largely in Augusta Township, a small farming community southeast of Ann Arbor. Township leadership fully supported it.

Matts and others responded by quickly forming a new residents group in opposition, and began collecting ballot initiative signatures to put a rezoning for the data center in front of voters. The debate consumed local politics and bitterly divided some residents in this town of about 8,000 people, leading to accusations of harassment and threats.

“It’s sad that we residents have to fight as hard as we do to keep these facilities out of our backyards, but if we don’t then who will?” he asked. “We’re taking it into our own hands.” 10-14-25

Lillian Suwanrumph/AFP via Getty Images

A new report says Earth has reached a dire milestone with the widespread death of warm-water coral reefs. But it’s not too late to save what remains.

Global temperature rise may feel like it’s gradual, but the changes it brings can turn out to be sudden, massive, and self-reinforcing. These changes are what scientists call tipping points. When a tipping point is reached, an Earth system abruptly and dramatically changes, often irreversibly, like the Amazon rainforest turning into a savanna — a point of no return that is already perilously close.

But today, a group of 160 scientists from 23 countries is announcing that the planet has already reached its first major tipping point: the widespread death of warm-water coral reefs. That’s due primarily to rapidly rising marine temperatures — the seas have absorbed 90 percent of the excess heat we’ve created — but also the acidification that comes from more atmospheric CO2 interacting with water. (This interferes with corals’ ability to build the protective skeletons that form the complex structure of a reef.) Since the late 1980s, ocean surface warming has quadrupled. Accordingly, in the last half century, half of the world’s live coral cover has disappeared.

“We’re no longer talking about future tipping points — there’s one happening right now,” Steve Smith, a research impact fellow at the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute and a coauthor of the report, told Grist. “Although our governments are used to planning for incremental, slow change, things do seem to be speeding up.” 10-12-25

Grist / Getty Images

A snapshot of Kodak’s history includes cameras, military contracts, and a legacy of environmental damage in the communities it is a part of.

Kodak is having a fashion moment.

A few weeks ago, a keychain-sized camera-slash-accessory based on a model from 1987 sold out in a day. In some markets, the company’s compact digital cameras have outsold those from Canon or Sony. Things are going so well, Kodak has even developed a popular streetwear brand with a storefront in Seoul, luring young people with bright colors and a fun, retro vibe. Not bad for a 133-year-old company that declared bankruptcy in 2012 and in August refuted reports that it may have to shut down again.

Inventor and entrepreneur George Eastman founded the Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester, New York, in 1888. Over the next century, the word Kodak — which George Eastman made up — essentially became synonymous with the act of taking pictures. It democratized photography with the affordable Brownie camera in 1900, then revolutionized it again in 1935 with Kodachrome, one of the first commercially successful color films. In 1975, a Kodak engineer invented the first digital camera — and by the end of that decade, the company was making billions of dollars per year.

But throughout much of the 20th century, Kodak was also, for all intents and purposes, a U.S. military contractor. Alongside its subsidiary Eastman Chemical, Kodak produced warplane lacquer, gas mask parts, and refined uranium for the Manhattan Project. 10-09-25

Costfoto / NurPhoto / Getty Images

Despite a U.S. retreat, solar and wind are overtaking fossil fuels globally, according to two new reports.

If you live in the U.S., you could be forgiven for thinking that renewable energy is on the outs. In July, Congress voted to rapidly phase out longstanding tax credit support for wind and solar power, and the Trump administration has taken seemingly every step in its power to halt the development of individual wind and solar projects — even as domestic electricity demand rises and new sources of electricity become more important than ever.

But even as clean energy deployment hit roadblocks in the U.S., the world overall set a new record for renewable energy investment over the first half of this year. Wind and solar power are meeting and even exceeding a global rise in energy demand. Indeed, electricity output from these sources is increasing faster than the world can use it, displacing some fossil fuel-generated power in the process. That’s according to a report published Tuesday by Ember, a global energy think tank, which mapped this year’s global power supply by analyzing monthly data from 88 countries that are responsible for more than 90 percent of global electricity demand.

“Overall — we’re talking globally — renewables overtook coal,” said Malgorzata Wiatros-Motyka, a senior electricity analyst at Ember and a co-author of the company’s report. “And I expect this to hold.” This year marks the first time that renewable energy sources have outpowered coal in the global energy mix. In fact, global use of fossil fuels for electricity actually declined slightly, compared to the same period in 2024. 10-09-25

Kena Betancur/VIEWpress/Corbis via Getty Images

With the agency no longer collecting emissions data from polluting companies, attention is turning to whether climate NGOs have the tools — and legal right — to fulfill this EPA function.

The Environmental Protection Agency announced earlier this month that it would stop making polluting companies report their greenhouse gas emissions to it, eliminating a crucial tool the U.S. uses to track emissions and form climate policy. Climate NGOs say their work could help plug some of the data gap, but they and other experts fear the EPA’s work can’t be fully matched.

“I don’t think this system can be fully replaced,” said Joseph Goffman, the former assistant administrator at the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation. “I think it could be approximated — but it’s going to take time.”

The Clean Air Act requires states to collect data on local pollution levels, which states then turn over to the federal government. For the past 15 years, the EPA has also collected data on carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases from sources around the country that emit over a certain threshold of emissions. This program is known as the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, or GHGRP, and “is really the backbone of the air quality reporting system in the United States,” said Kevin Gurney, a professor of atmospheric science at Northern Arizona University. 10-05-25

Tim O’Brien

To shield the forest and its communities from the next megafire, the Forest Service plans to burn it — intentionally.

A white-headed woodpecker stirs the dawn quiet, hammering at a patch of charred bark stretching 15 feet up the trunk of a ponderosa pine. The first streaks of sun light the tree’s green crown, sending beams across this grove of healthy conifers. The marks of the 2021 Dixie Fire are everywhere. Several blackened trees lie toppled among the pale blossoms of deer brush and the spikes of snow plants, their crimson faded to dusky coral.

Flames raged through neighboring forests, exploding the tops of trees, flinging sparks down the mountainside until, on August 4, 2021, the fire itself reached the valley below and Greenville, 90 miles north of Lake Oroville. It took less than 30 minutes to destroy a town of 1,000 residents. Yet this stand at Round Valley Reservoir survived.

Years earlier, U.S. Forest Service crews had removed the brush and smaller trees, reducing the most flammable vegetation. Then they set fires, burning what was left on the ground in slow-moving spurts of flame. When Dixie arrived, the same fire that melted cars and torched 800 homes hit this stand and dropped to the ground. Here Dixie was tame, a docile blaze meandering across the forest floor with only occasional licks up the trunks of trees, says Ryan Bauer, Plumas National Forest fuels manager for the past 18 years. 10-07-25

Ivan Pierre Aguirre / Grist

After a Grist investigation revealing exposure to the carcinogen ethylene oxide, El Paso residents confront troubling questions about their health.

When Cardinal Health, one of the largest medical device manufacturers in the country, hired Maria as an accountant in 2014, she was thrilled. It was her first job out of school, and she was excited about landing a coveted position at a multinational company. For the next year, she worked at the company’s warehouse in El Paso, where Cardinal received sterilized medical products that were eventually shipped to hospitals across the country.

When she eventually left the job for a position at a major accounting firm, she viewed her time at Cardinal fondly. Her co-workers had been kind and supportive, and she was grateful to the company for giving her a start. Over the next decade, as she moved to Seattle and climbed the corporate ladder at the firm, she had no idea that she had been exposed to ethylene oxide, a toxic chemical used to sterilize medical devices, while working at the Cardinal warehouse. 10-06-25

Sarah Reingewirtz / MediaNews Group / Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images

A recent report shows that state’s the Farm to School grant program has been effective at supporting economically disadvantaged farmers in the face of mounting federal cuts.

When Javier Zamora started his organic berry farm more than a decade ago, he was working with just an acre and a half of land in Monterey County, near California’s central coast. Today, he and his crew grow strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries, as well as vegetables and flowers, on more than 100 acres. Recently, Zamora participated in a farmers market hosted by a San Jose school that serves a largely Hispanic community.

At the event, Zamora found that he was not just bringing fresh produce to students, but introducing them to foods they’ve never tried before.

“They never get to see a brussels sprout or a purple potato and they definitely do not ever get to taste a French strawberry like Mara des Bois or a golden raspberry,” Zamora said. “So it makes me feel really, really nice to connect with those people.”

Making inroads with other communities outside of his farm is important to Zamora, who comes from a farming family in Mexico. That got a lot easier after purchasing a refrigerated van, with the help of a $150,000 grant from the California Department of Food and Agriculture, or CDFA. Now, he can deliver to clients as far as Sacramento, bringing his berries to school districts some three hours away. 10-03-25

Jay Elhard / National Park Service

National parks are melting, burning, and drying out. Rangers are being forced to take down signs explaining why.

This summer, national park employees and visitors were asked to do something highly unusual: report any signs that failed to make America look great. The effort, stemming from an executive order from President Donald Trump, has already resulted in the removal of signs about the horrors of slavery, massacres of Indigenous peoples, and the threat of climate change, even on lands directly in harm’s way.

Consider Acadia National Park in Maine. More intense storms and rising seas are accelerating erosion and killing native plants along its iconic coastline. Warmer temperatures are assisting the spread of an invasive insect that totally wiped out the park’s red pines. And yet earlier this month, park employees removed multiple signs explaining how climate change was contributing to these changes.

“Getting access to that information when you’re right there is a way to see with your own eyes what is going on,” said Chellie Pingree, a Democratic representative from Maine. The removed signs didn’t just educate visitors about environmental problems — they also outlined steps visitors could take to reduce their carbon emissions, such as taking a shuttle bus instead of a personal vehicle to visit popular park sites. 10-02-25

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

E-bike sales are booming, providing a sustainable form of transportation that also improves public health. Yet American cities remain committed to cars.

Last year, San Francisco voters did something exceedingly rare in car-crazy America: They closed two miles of a coastal highway to vehicles, creating a sprawling park for pedestrians, joggers, and cyclists. Of course, furious residents in the neighborhood bordering the erstwhile highway voted last month to recall their representative at City Hall for championing the transformation and, to their minds, creating a traffic nightmare on side streets — even though commute times in the area have grown by just a few minutes since the closure.

The battle in the City by the Bay is emblematic of the inflection point facing cities nationally. As more electric vehicles hit the road, the temptation is to invest heavily in the infrastructure — roads, highways, parking lots — that will preserve the status quo of prioritizing cars over people. Meanwhile, the e-bike market is skyrocketing — and, according to some studies, outpacing electric cars — providing an even more environmentally friendly travel option. The question now is: Do officials double down on deadly car-centric urban design, or do they rethink cities to encourage people to ditch four wheels for two? 10-01-25

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