Grist

As a row crop farmer in St. Joseph, Missouri, Joe Lau said he’s noticing more extreme weather these days.  Warmer seasons throughout the year. Quarter-inch predictions of rain stamped out by storms that bring 3 inches. Increased pressure from pests on his corn. He’s also noticed that spring is coming earlier.  The USA National Phenology Network shows that this year spring arrived three to five weeks earlier than the average between 1991 to 2020 in much of the central U.S. and two to three

On March 31, the U.S. Forest Service announced plans to move its headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Salt Lake City, Utah. It will also close or repurpose all nine of its regional offices, create 15 state offices, and shutter research and development facilities in more than 30 states. According to a news release, the plan is intended to make the agency more “nimble, efficient, [and] effective.” Forest Service leaders told staff on a call after the announcement that no changes will be made to

In a country characterized by antiquated systems for regulating how electricity is produced and transported to homes and businesses, one utility in Arizona may be the most outdated. In 1903, almost a decade before Arizona became a state, a group of landowners around Phoenix secured a federal loan for a dam on the Salt River. The dam collected water to irrigate farms and produce hydroelectric power to run irrigation pumps. The landowners created the Salt River Project Association to govern the op

In 2023, when Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, Iñupiaq, was mayor of Nuiqsut, a federally recognized village of 500 residents on Alaska’s North Slope Borough, a gas leak from a nearby oil operation left her community waiting for answers.  “It was only 8 miles from our village. We watched industry evacuate their personnel on ice roads in front of our community while we were left waiting for information about what was going on,” she said. “It was very concerning that through all the efforts we had p

María Pérez lost power for about three months after Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico in September 2017. Her home in Salinas, on the island’s southern coast, sits near a river. As the hurricane knocked out the island’s grid and sent rainwaters surging down from the mountains, Perez’s house flooded with a swirling mix of muddy water and animal feces, rising 3 feet high and warping the hallways. For the next three months, she went without power as she cleaned out the home and began the long

Every state in the West is expected to face an above-normal threat of wildfire this summer, according to the latest projections, released Wednesday by the National Interagency Coordination Center.  The government-run center publishes monthly reports predicting fire risk for the four months ahead, and the change since the March outlook is staggering. The agency denotes elevated risk in red on its maps, and the June forecast from March 2 showed a small swath of rouge in the Southwest. But,

The Endangered Species Act is the bedrock law that protects threatened plants and animals in the United States, and in the fifty years since it became law it has prevented thousands of resource-extraction projects — oil drilling, mining, and logging — from moving forward. The law is difficult to circumvent, but it does contain a key loophole. If the federal government wants to move forward with a project even though it will threaten an endangered species, it can convene a committee known as the

It’s not just easy to miss, but often downright hard to notice. A simple patch of greenery in a city may seem like a blip in the concrete jungle, but it’s an extremely powerful way to solve a bunch of problems at once: Studies have shown that green spaces improve urbanites’ mental health, make summers more bearable, and prevent flooding by soaking up stormwater.  When these plots are planned — as opposed to letting vacant lots grow wild, which is valuable in its own right — they become e

When George LaComb moved two years ago to a new high school in Orlando, Florida, he quickly noticed safety precautions that the football team at his previous, less affluent school never had.  There was a designated recovery room, staffed by a full-time athletic trainer, giant ice baths to cool overheated athletes and indoor facilities to practice if outside got too hot. At his old school in another part of Orlando, the football team relied on one makeshift ice bath and a cafeteria table

On an unseasonably warm January day, Duff Hallman’s goats and sheep wandered unhurried through the rocky hills of his ranch 30 miles south of San Angelo, Texas, unbothered by the long shadows that swept over the ground. The shadows fell from wind turbines towering 250 feet above, their blades spinning like clock hands over land that has been in Hallman’s family for four generations. From a shady spot in his backyard, Hallman can almost nod off watching them turn. “It slows your pace down a bit,”

Every year, the World Meteorological Organization, or WMO, tracks a set of key climate indicators — including the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the Earth’s temperature — to assess how global warming is progressing. In their latest report, released last Sunday, the authors decided to include a new measure: the Earth’s energy imbalance.  “Climate change is often discussed in terms of the change in the global mean surface temperature,” John Kennedy, lead author and sci

In Park City, Utah, skiers could find patches of grass poking through the slopes for much of the winter — a striking sign of a season that never really arrived. Now, after one of the warmest winters on record, much of the West is entering spring with snowpack at historic lows and an early heat wave that pushed temperatures into triple digits. These woes could be straight out of a climate fiction novel. But the West’s no good, very bad winter was alarmingly real. And, experts say, a worrisome

Frappuccino lovers, rejoice: Your plastic to-go cups are now “widely recyclable.” That’s according to an announcement made in February by Starbucks, the waste hauler WM (formerly known as Waste Management), and three recycling groups called The Recycling Partnership, GreenBlue, and Closed Loop Partners. In a press release, they said that more than 60 percent of U.S. households can now recycle cold to-go cups in their curbside recycling bins. This makes the cups eligible for one of GreenBlue’s

Against the backdrop of a looming global energy crisis, rising food insecurity, and the increased frequency and intensity of heat, hurricanes, and floods fueled by global warming, Florida’s governing bodies have had a consequential, but unsurprisingly counterproductive, month. At the beginning of March, the state legislature passed a bill blocking local governments from adopting or enforcing “net-zero” policies. The bill, which was sent to Ron DeSantis’ desk, is expected to be signed by the g

Harris Ranch Resort isn’t close to much. Residents of California’s major cities know it mainly as a rest stop about halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco on Interstate 5’s long run through the San Joaquin Valley. The sprawling stucco building has a Western-themed gift shop and a couple of good restaurants where travelers can enjoy regional specialties like tri-tip tacos and almond-smoked prime rib — perhaps while they charge their EV at one of the Tesla stat

Last summer, a group of officials from the Department of Energy gathered at the Idaho National Laboratory, a sprawling 890-square-mile complex in the eastern desert of Idaho where the U.S. government built its first rudimentary nuclear power plant in 1951 and continues to test cutting-edge technology. On the agenda that day: the future of nuclear energy in the Trump era. The meeting was convened by 31-year-old lawyer Seth Cohen. Just five years out of law school, Cohen brought no significant

At the Department of Agriculture’s research division, everyone knows there’s one word they should never say, according to Ethan Roberts. “The forbidden C-word” — climate. Roberts, union president at the National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research in Peoria, Illinois, has worked for the federal government for nearly a decade. In that time, the physical science technician has weathered several political administrations, including President Donald Trump’s first term. None compare to wh

California has managed a remarkable feat over the past twenty years. Even as its economy has grown to overtake Germany’s as the fourth-largest in the world, the state’s consumption of gasoline has declined by almost 15 percent, and consumption of petroleum diesel has fallen by around two-thirds. This has happened due to some of the world’s most aggressive climate policies, including a tax on carbon emissions and a strict requirement to adopt clean-burning fuels such as “renewable diesel” made fr

Last week, following attacks on critical energy and water facilities escalating, the Israeli-U.S. war in Iran entered a new stage. “Now the war on infrastructure has started,” said Kaveh Madani, a water researcher at the United Nations University and former deputy vice president of Iran.   On March 18, Israel struck the South Pars gas field in Iran, the largest natural gas field in the world. Iran is heavily dependent on South Pars for its energy supply; by some estimates, the field

When Thiago Campos bought the Mr. Fancy Pants Carwash business in Corpus Christi, Texas three years ago, he wasn’t thinking about drought. He was familiar with varnishes and waxes, and enjoyed figuring out which kind of soap would best remove local dirt.  “I’m a chemical engineer, Campos said. “I felt like the carwash matched my skill set.” But Mr. Fancy Pants, with its two locations, could soon face an existential crisis. Last week, Corpus Christi’s city manager announced that it