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Cities Are Rethinking What Kinds of Trees They’re Planting
After a series of winter storms pummeled California this winter, thousands of trees across the state lost their grip on the earth and crashed down into power lines, homes, and highways. Sacramento alone lost more than 1,000 trees in less than a week. Stressed by years of drought, pests and extreme weather, urban trees are inREAD MORE
Can Kelp Farming Bring Back Shinnecock Bay?
For most of the Shinnecock Nation’s history, the waters off the eastern end of Long Island were a place of abundance. Expert fishermen, whalers and farmers, the Shinnecock people lived for centuries off the clams, striped bass, flounder, bluefish and fruit native to the area. Today, the area is best known as a playground for theREAD MORE
Fast Fashion Is an Environmental Catastrophe. Is Composting Your Clothes the Solution?
When Katie Lopes set out to create a women’s underwear brand, she wanted her products to be comfortable and hip — and eventually disappear into a pile of coffee grounds, eggshells and potato peels in her garden. “I was beginning to become more aware of the damage the fashion industry was doing to the planet, so itREAD MORE
A Stark View of Rising Seas in Georgia
The last few miles of U.S. Route 80 run through a stretch of marshland off the coast of Savannah, Georgia where floods routinely frustrate drivers. The floods weren’t always so frequent or severe, but in the century since Route 80 was designated a federal highway, local sea levels have risen around 9 inches, according to measurementsREAD MORE
Harvesting Gas From Cow Poop Sounds Like a Good Idea. What About the People Who Live Next to the ‘Manure Lagoons’?
On days when the air pollution is especially bad, a mother in Tulare County, California – where cows outnumber people two to one – forbids her children from going outside. The woman, who declined to be named for fear of reprisal from her neighbors in the dairy industry, said that nearly everyone in her family, includingREAD MORE
Teen Scientist Finds Low-Tech Way to Recycle Water
Shreya Ramachandran, 17, remembers witnessing California’s water crisis firsthand on a visit to Tulare County in 2014, when she was still a preteen. Tulare spans a large swath of farmland in California’s Central Valley, and at that time, locals were facing dire water shortages amid an ongoing drought made worse by climate change. “I was talkingREAD MORE
The Decades-Long Struggle to Protect Venice From Worsening Floods
The wind was stirring up the sea around Venice, Italy, threatening a high tide of more than 4 feet. Normally, that would be enough to inundate half the city, leaving tourists to trudge through knee-high floodwater in St. Mark’s Square. But this wasn’t a normal day. On this rainy Saturday in early October, for the firstREAD MORE