Stories featured in

Fast Company Logo
San Giovanni solar array

Italy Is Fighting Energy Poverty — and Climate Change

San Giovanni a Teduccio is a working-class neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples, Italy. Once an industrial center, today it’s home to abandoned factories that sit in ruins by the sea. But the rooftop of a former orphanage points to new beginnings for the community. There, the sun shines onto the deep blue surface of 166READ MORE

Cameron Pass LNG

“It’s Absolutely a Sacrifice Zone.”

As an Indigenous fisherman from southern Louisiana, Travis Dardar knows what it’s like to have his home deemed unworthy of saving. Dardar grew up on Isle de Jean Charles, a small island in the marsh nearly washed away by storms, erosion and rising seas. In the early 2000s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers concluded thatREAD MORE

Daybreak

Can We Game Our Way Out of the Climate Crisis?

Europe is planting trees to offset its emissions but is swiftly hit with massive wildfires. The United States is investing in mining operations abroad to wean off its dependence on fossil fuels but harbors concerns about trading with an abusive government. Meanwhile, a coalition of countries from the Global South must decide whether to accept constructionREAD MORE

CWPP water volunteers

‘We’re Basically Condemning Them to Unhealthy Pregnancies.’

When Jamika Jones was pregnant with her son earlier this year, her mother worried about her drinking water from the tap. Jones lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where more than a third of the water service lines contain lead; when those pipes corrode, they can release the neurotoxin into the water flowing through them.  Lead exposure hasREAD MORE

Doulas as frontline climate workers

Doulas Are Frontline Climate Workers

As Hurricane Ian approached southern Florida in late September, Tifanny Burks got a call from a recent client.  A single mother of three, including an infant Burks had helped deliver, was facing eviction and scrambling to find a place to weather the storm.  Burks, who uses they/her pronouns, connected their client with lawyers who could helpREAD MORE

Solar panel installation

Can a Green Bank Help the US Meet Its Climate Goals?

Five years ago, when Clauditta Curson became a first-time homebuyer, she was shocked by the “astronomical” utility bills she received for her 1,200-square-foot house. The 60-year-old adult daycare aide in Hamden, Connecticut, turned to the Connecticut Green Bank (CBG), the oldest such bank in the country. The bank was financing solar panel installations with no upfrontREAD MORE

U.S. Route 40 Overpass Bridge (1978) over Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard at Mulberry Street, Baltimore, MD

“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

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 ad rules

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

climate change democracy authoritarianism

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

california evs power grid

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

california blackouts renewables

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

fossil fuel bailout

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

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

hair loss pollution

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

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

GE's Investment Mistake

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

Amazon Climate Nexus Media News

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

Looking up at trees

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

Dim Sun Nexus Media News

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

Automakers Electric Cars

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