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New Heat Regulations Could Save Hundreds of Workers’ Lives. Do Employers Care?
Extreme heat — a phenomenon that is increasing in severity and frequency as the planet warms — is the deadliest weather related disaster, killing more than 5,600 people each year, according to some estimates. It attacks the elderly, the isolated, and workers — particularly those laboring outside. A farmworker in the United States is 35 timesREAD 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
“It Was Like Taking the Heart Out of the Body.”
Growing up in Rosemont, a once vibrant Black neighborhood on Baltimore’s West Side, Glenn Smith remembers “having everything you needed” — parks, markets and even a movie theater — within walking distance of the home he shared with his parents and seven siblings. “It was a Norman Rockwell existence,” he said. But in 1974, when SmithREAD MORE
The Climate Crisis Is Here. When Will TV Reflect Our Shifting Reality?
From hurricanes bearing down on Florida to megafires burning in the West, the climate crisis seems to be everywhere, all at once. But on TV and film screens, mentions of climate are far rarer. A study by the University of Southern California’s Media Impact lab examined more than 37,000 film and TV scripts that aired inREAD MORE
How Utah’s ‘Spiral Jetty’ Became a Barometer of the Climate Crisis
In 1972, just two years after it was completed, “Spiral Jetty” all but disappeared from view. Robert Smithson’s seminal earthwork was created at a time when the water levels of Utah’s Great Salt Lake were unusually low, making it easy to discern the sculpture’s vortex-like coil of black basalt rocks. But when heavy rain battered theREAD MORE
Is a Mass Timber Construction Boom Coming to America?
When it opens up to tenants later this month, the Ascent, a 25-story, $125 million luxury high-rise in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, will offer an array of swanky amenities, including an indoor dog track and spa, electric car chargers and a golf simulator. But that’s not what animates architect Jason Korb, whose firm designed the 259-unit structure. “ThisREAD MORE
Facebook’s New Ad Policies Make It Harder for Climate Groups to Counter Big Oil
Last month, Facebook removed certain interests from its Detailed Targeting advertising tool “that relate to topics people may perceive as sensitive.” Advertisers can no longer target people based on interests in causes or organizations related to “health, race or ethnicity, political affiliation, religion or sexual orientation.” The change was a response to concerns about online abuse—theREAD MORE
Can High-tech Methane Detectors Help the U.S. Reach Its Climate Goals?
To explain how high-tech aerial photography can help save the planet, research scientist Riley Duren refers to a map of Los Angeles, where a pixelated blue and green cloud hovers over a few city blocks. The plume resembles precipitation on a doppler radar map, but it is more insidious: it’s methane, a powerful heat-trapping gas, leakingREAD MORE
The United States Owes a Massive Climate Debt. One Way to Pay It: Let In Climate Migrants.
The United States has generated more heat-trapping carbon pollution than any other nation, but it has not felt the impact of climate change in equal measure. Poorer countries in warmer latitudes are enduring the most devastating droughts, heat waves and violent storms, and seeing more poverty, disease and mass migration as a result. By doing soREAD MORE
The Oil and Gas Industry Is In Denial About Its Own Demise
In one of his first acts as president, Joe Biden paused new oil and gas leases on federal lands and waters. Companies can still drill areas they had previously leased, and they can still lease state and private lands. They just can't stock up on new federal leases. In response to this order, the oil andREAD MORE
The Scariest Thing About Climate Change Isn’t the Weather—It’s Us
Last year saw a raft of unprecedented extreme-weather events — the biggest-ever California wildfire, the most named storms in the Atlantic, the costliest thunderstorm in U.S. history. Experts said these disasters both highlight the current toll of climate change and provide a grim preview of what’s to come. Last year also saw unprecedented attacks on U.S.READ MORE
Electric Cars Could Save California’s Power Grid
Climate change ramped up its attacks on California this year, serving up massive wildfires and blistering heat waves, which led to widespread power outages. To fight back, Governor Gavin Newsom took aim at heat-trapping carbon pollution from cars. In September, he signed an order to phase out the sale of new gas-powered cars in California byREAD MORE
No, Renewables Did Not Cause California’s Blackouts
Record heat across California last weekend spurred Golden Staters to blast their air conditioners. The strain on the power grid was so great that California’s grid operator started rationing electricity. For the first time since the 2001 electricity crisis, it imposed rolling blackouts, shutting down power to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses up and down theREAD MORE
Latino Voters Are Worried About Climate Change. They Could Swing the Election.
President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden are in a dead heat in Texas, a state that has swung Republican in every presidential election since 1976. If Biden pulls off the unthinkable and defeats Trump in Texas, it will be by mobilizing Latino voters. This fact could play into the ongoing debate in DemocraticREAD MORE
Armed With Eminent Domain, Pipeline Projects Continue During the Pandemic
Pipeline giant Kinder Morgan is cutting a 400-mile line across the middle of Texas, digging up vast swaths of private land for its planned Permian Highway Pipeline. The project is ceaseless, continuing through the coronavirus pandemic. Landowner Heath Frantzen said that dozens of workers have showed up to his ranch in Fredericksburg, even as public healthREAD MORE
The Fed Could Rescue Fossil Fuel Firms That Were Already In a Tailspin
In the normal course of business, healthy companies succeed and sickly companies fail. But the coronavirus has interrupted the normal course of business, putting even successful firms on life support as they struggle to pay for sidelined workers and shuttered storefronts. The government’s goal, in theory, should be to keep these companies alive without lending aREAD MORE
Trump’s War on Immigrants Is Making It Harder to Fight COVID-19
A prominent Asian virologist with longstanding ties to the United States was making plans to attend a conference here when he learned he couldn’t get a visa. It was the first time he had been blocked from visiting after decades of trips to collaborate with American researchers. And the timing couldn’t be worse. His expertise isREAD MORE
Coronavirus Shows How to Fight Lies About Climate Change
With both coronavirus and climate change, misconceptions abound. In each instance, people have downplayed the impact or blamed China, and many believe that news outlets are exaggerating the threat. But with coronavirus, news outlets and tech companies have done a much better job of quashing misinformation, experts say, which could provide lessons on how to fightREAD MORE
Progressives Forced a Conversation on Climate Change — and Pushed Trump to Change His Tune
The last few years have seen a stunning shift in the way Americans think about climate change, which has gone from a marginal concern—one scarcely mentioned in run-up to the 2016 election—to a leading issue. The primary reason is that progressive elected officials and activists have made a bold tactical shift in the way they approachREAD MORE
The Innovative Design of One of the World’s Largest Net-Zero Buildings
It is hard to build a net-zero building — one that produces more energy than it consumes — in the middle of a city. For one thing, nearby skyscrapers might block sunlight from reaching rooftop solar panels. For another, urban office buildings are cramped for space, and it generally isn’t possible to set up wind turbines on site. But MartineREAD MORE
Air Pollution Could Literally Cause You to Lose Your Hair
There is no question that air pollution poses a serious health danger. It exacerbates asthma, especially in children, and shortens lives. It’s also linked to diabetes, cognitive decline and birth defects, as well as heart disease and stroke. The contamination comes from multiple sources, including cars, trains, airplanes and power plants, which foul the air andREAD MORE
Scientists Use the Dark of Night to Generate Clean Energy
Scientist Aaswath Raman long has been keen on discovering new sources of clean energy by creating novel materials that can make use of heat and light. And lately, he has focused on developing better cooling systems, perhaps inspired by childhood summer visits to his grandparents in Mumbai, where the temperature can hover at 100 degrees FREAD MORE
Politics Is Literally Keeping Americans Up at Night
Two defining features of the Trump presidency are conflict and chaos. From the moment he took the oath of office, waves of criticism followed him wherever he went. Now, as the House begins to build a potential case for impeachment, political discourse will only become more strained, taking a toll on the American people. Take KimberlyREAD MORE
Months After a Coal Company’s Sudden Bankruptcy, Workers Are Still Struggling
If you ask her, Peggy Stanley can give you a rough running tally of the money that Blackjewel Mining owes her husband. First, there are the paychecks. One was supposed to be sent out mid-July, after the company filed for bankruptcy, but it never came. There’s also the one that was sent out in the middleREAD MORE
GE’s Investment Mistake Could Cost Billions
Last week, General Electric announced it would close a California gas plant 20 years ahead of schedule. The Inland Empire Energy Center in California, the company said, was “uneconomical to support further” in part because of outdated technology. But California’s aggressive clean energy goals and commitment to using renewable energy was also a key determinant in GE’sREAD MORE
The Climate Rebellion Inside Amazon
When Kathryn Dellinger moved to the Pacific Northwest five years ago to take a position at Amazon, she fretted over friends and relatives back home in Virginia as successive hurricanes tore apart coastal towns on the East Coast. But when wildfires ripped through Washington state last summer, filling the Seattle area with smoke, Dellinger had someoneREAD MORE
The Simple, yet Elusive, Key to Fighting the Climate Crisis
A new scientific report finds human behaviors are driving the extinction of non-human species at a rate so severe that the subsequent disappearance of life will soon be a threat to human health and prosperity. Habitat destruction on land, over-fishing in the seas and overconsumption across much of the globe, among other things, now threaten toREAD MORE
The Killer Argument for a Profoundly Dangerous Climate Fix
The UN Environment Assembly recently considered a proposal to research solar geoengineering, as it’s known, an outlandish scheme to cool the Earth by blanketing the heavens with aerosols — chemicals that would reflect a small measure of sunlight back into space, lowering the average global temperature. The measure failed, not because countries were wary of investigating geoengineering, butREAD MORE
Big Automakers Grudgingly Buy Into EVs. Oil Majors Still Lag Behind.
In just three years, many electric cars will sport the same sticker price as their gas-powered counterparts, according to a recent analysis. Electrification, as well as other advances like ride-sharing and driverless cars, will radically overhaul the transportation sector. The next decade will see sweeping changes to the way we get around, and everyone is copingREAD MORE
Everybody Wants EV Charging Stations. Nobody Wants to Build Them. (VIDEO)
This article is part of a series about barriers to the widespread adoption of electric cars. A driver planning to make the trek from Denver to Salt Lake City can look forward to an eight-hour trip across some of the most beautiful parts of the country, long stretches with nary a town in sight. The fastestREAD MORE
Consumers Don’t Know Jack About Electric Cars (VIDEO)
This article is part of a series about barriers to the widespread adoption of electric cars. The telephone should have been an instant hit. It revolutionized human communication overnight, and yet it took decades to catch on. AT&T president Theodore Vail blamed meager sales on public ignorance. No one knew how to use the phone, heREAD MORE
Car Companies Aren’t Even Trying to Sell Electric Cars (VIDEO)
This article is part of a series about barriers to the widespread adoption of electric cars. Head to a Ford dealership and ask about an F-150. You will be shown its features, invited on a test drive, and treated to a carefully practiced sales pitch detailing the truck’s strength, power and durability. Ask about an electricREAD MORE
Want to Stop Climate Change? Get Arrested. (VIDEO)
There is nothing particularly remarkable about the Dakota Access pipeline. Thousands of miles of pipelines stretch across the country, ferrying oil from drilling sites to ports and refineries. Each pipe threatens to leak, spurt and contaminate waterways, and they often do. The reason that Americans from Florida to Guam have heard about this particular pipeline hasREAD MORE
Once a Black Mecca, Africatown Has Been Hobbled by Pollution
It began as a beacon of freedom, founded by those aboard the last slave ship to reach the United States. For decades, it stood as a sanctuary of African culture, but today, the small community on the outskirts of Mobile, Alabama is struggling to stay alive. In the 1940s, industry moved to Africatown, as it’s called,READ MORE
Explaining Coral Bleaching, The Latest Disaster Destroying Our Oceans
See more at Fast Company. Mariya Pylayev produces videos for Nexus Media.READ MORE