On U.S. Public Lands, Can Biden Undo What Trump Has Wrought?
Early in the Trump presidency, Representative Jason Chaffetz of Utah introduced a bill to sell off more than 3 million acres of Western public land. The outcry from conservation groups,…
Despite Pledges to Cut Emissions, China Goes on a Coal Spree
China’s National People’s Congress meetings, which ended earlier this month, were shrouded in both a real and figurative haze about how strong its climate ambitions really are and how quickly…
Can the World’s Most Polluting Heavy Industries Decarbonize?
We know how to decarbonize energy production with renewable fuels and land transportation with electric vehicles. Blueprints for greening shipping and aircraft are being drawn up. But what about the…
Glasgow Disappointed, But It Inched the World Forward on Climate
The movie version of the final hours of the UN climate conference in Glasgow is surely already in storyboard. As India’s Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav prepares to use his veto…
For Low-Income Pittsburgh, Clean Air Remains an Elusive Goal
For well over a century, the Pittsburgh region was infamous for its industrial air pollution. Belching chimneys from coal and steel plants dimmed the light of the sun at times,…
Unequal Impact: Putting Justice at the Heart of the Climate Fight
Beverly Wright has been at the forefront of the environmental justice movement for more than 30 years, both as head of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice in New…
Solution or Band-Aid? Carbon Capture Projects Are Moving Ahead
This summer, the Norwegian company Northern Lights will be drilling a second well line into an aquifer some 8,500 feet below the seafloor, getting it ready to receive liquefied waste…
Bitcoin’s Intensive Energy Demands Are Sparking a Crypto Backlash
The first time Jackie Sawicky learned that a Bitcoin mining operation was coming to Corsicana, a rural Texas city 60 miles south of Dallas, was on April 27, when she…
As Enforcement Lags, Toxic Coal Ash Keeps Polluting U.S. Water
A few months ago, the New Castle Generating Station, an hour northwest of Pittsburgh, was named one of the most contaminated coal-fired power plant sites in the country. Polluted with…
A Golden Spike Would Mark the Earth’s Next Epoch: But Where?
At first glance, these nine sites scattered across the globe seem unremarkable. A peat bog in Poland’s Sudeten Mountains. Searsville Lake, in California, and Crawford Lake, in Ontario. A stretch…