This Isn’t Over Yet. The Keystone Pipeline Can Still Be Stopped.
Oliver Contreras/ZUMA The Nebraska Public Service Commission removed a major regulatory roadblock to the construction of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline on Monday. Though that might seem like the final judgement in the nine-year battle waged by the US environmental movement against it, nothing about the fate of the once-dead, then-revived pipeline has ever been certain. Even though the commission…
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…
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…