When the city of Berkeley, California passed the country’s first ban on the use of natural gas in new buildings in the summer of 2019, environmental advocates celebrated the move as an important precedent for other cities to follow. And follow they did: There are now at least 99 similar ordinances in place across the […]
This story is co-published with Indian Country Today and is part of The Human Cost of Conservation, a Grist series on Indigenous rights and protected areas. The rivers that run through the steep valleys and rocky cliffs of the Laponian Area are fed by crystalline alpine lakes and glacial streams. Many of the forests that tower over […]
The Atacama Trench in the Pacific Ocean off the coasts of Peru and Chile is one of the deepest places in the world, and researchers found that a globally banned toxin exists there — tens of thousands of feet below the ocean’s surface. The trench, which is 26,000 feet below sea level, is one of […]
Beyond daily reporting, Grist takes on ambitious multimedia projects, including our Temperature Check podcast that will debut its third season on Tuesday, April 25. Temperature Check is a podcast about the people leading climate action and climate solutions, featuring stories that show the pathways to a more sustainable, equitable future. This season, the theme is […]
Sterilizing medical equipment is essential for modern healthcare, but the process generates a substantial public health risk. The key culprit is the chemical ethylene oxide, which is both a highly effective fumigator and a potent carcinogen. The Environmental Protection Agency revealed the shocking extent of the pollutant’s toxicity in 2016, but it has not proposed […]
Almost half of all the water that flows through the Colorado River each year is consumed by just two states: Arizona and California. Over the past year, as the Biden administration has scrambled to respond to a decades-long drought that has sapped the river, these two states have known a reckoning is coming. In order […]
In the premier episode of Apple TV’s climate show, Extrapolations, it’s 2037 and Earth is in turmoil. Global temperatures have reached record highs. Wildfires rage on every continent. People lack clean drinking water, while a stone-faced billionaire hoards patents to life-saving desalination technology. People are understandably upset. Because it’s nearly a decade and a half […]
As the Biden administration has pushed the seven states that rely on the shrinking Colorado River to cut their water consumption, much of the pain has fallen on Arizona. The state is the river’s second-largest water user, but of the seven states it has the most junior rights to the waterway. For the past year, […]
Community advocates in the coalfields of central Appalachia and other places dependent upon fossil fuel production have long insisted that their towns cannot be left behind by the nation’s switch to renewable energy. The Biden administration has responded to such calls by working to ensure under-resourced communities benefit from this green transition. To help achieve […]
In February of 2022, Colombian human rights activists Teófilo Acuña and Jorge Tafur were assassinated in front of their friends and families after decades of working to protect small, rural communities from mining and land-grabbing. Their killers have not been brought to justice. Acuña and Tafur were just two of 401 human rights defenders killed […]