Stop Cutting Down Trees. Cities Need Birds to Eat Gross Bugs that Transmit Disease.
ideeone/Getty This story was originally published by CityLab and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. A grove of five or six mature trees, some of them rising more than 50 feet into the air, once grew on a lot abutting our East Boston yard. In the summer, they shaded the cluster of five townhouses that wrapped…
When Jacksonville Floods, the Rich Don’t Worry; the Poor Fight to Get Through
Bastiaan Slabbers/Zuma This story was originally published by CityLab and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Jacksonville’s Northside region was covered with swampland before the 1950s. The floodplain was home to some bait and tackle shops, commercial fisheries, and luxury waterfront homes, but all that changed as the fledgling city grew. Builders constructed middle-class white suburbs…
A Small Town in Pennsylvania Has Been Ripped Apart by a New Gas Plant
Fog shrouds the Lackawanna Energy Center construction site in Jessup, Pennsylvania.Jamie Smith Hopkins/Center for Public Integrity This story was originally published by the Center for Public Integrity in collaboration with StateImpact Pennsylvania. The biggest new natural-gas power plant in a state awash with them is taking shape on a mountain ridge overlooking the community it…
Will Washington State Pass the Nation’s First Carbon Tax?
Downtown Seattle, with Mt. Rainier.kanonsky/iStock/Getty Last November, some environmentalists in Washington state went to the polls hoping voters would back an initiative creating the nation’s first tax on carbon pollution. Initiative 732 went down to defeat as the country’s attention focused on Donald Trump’s shocking electoral college win. But now, one year later and buoyed…
Solar Geoengineering Could Prevent Massive Storms. It Could Also Backfire.
CIRA/Flickr This story was originally published by Wired and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Every country on Earth, save for cough one, has banded together to cut emissions and stop the runaway heating of our only home. That’s nearly 200 countries working to keep the global average temperature from climbing 2 degrees Celsius above pre-Industrial Revolution levels. Phenomenal.…
Study: Black People Are 75 Percent More Likely to Live Near Toxic Oil and Gas Facilities
A child plays in front of a public housing project which borders an oil refinery in West Port Arthur, Texas.LM Otero/AP Environmentalists have long contended that communities of color are disproportionately affected by pollution from the oil and gas industry, and a study released on Tuesday details the extent of the harm. According to Fumes Across…