Robert Moses, the public official responsible for transforming much of New York City’s landscape in the 20th century, built East River Park in the 1930s. It’s a ramshackle stretch of land that sits on the other side of a six-lane highway...
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Temperatures over the Great Barrier Reef in December were the highest on record with “alarming” levels of heat that have put the ocean jewel on the verge of...
On Thursday, a federal judge threw out the Department of Interior’s decision to lease more than 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas production — the largest offshore auction in U.S. history. The sale, which came...
A Democratic president was in the White House. The Democratic Party held a majority of seats in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. But a single senator — a moderate Democrat from West Virginia — blocked the White House’s...
When McDonald’s opened its first net-zero restaurant in the U.K. last month, the backlash was swift. Despite a number of measures to boost the location’s sustainability — insulation made from sheep’s wool, on-site wind turbines and solar panels, and a biodiversity...
I like small towns. I grew up in the Hudson Valley of New York state, just beyond the reach of the commuter trains to Manhattan; spent 15 years in rural Colorado, living in a town with no traffic lights and a...
In less than a week in mid-December, two enormous storm systems plowed through the South, Midwest, and Great Plains, spawning 17 tornadoes and killing almost 100 people between them. The worst of the wreckage occurred in western Kentucky, where a tornado...
When undocumented migrants cross the U.S.–Mexico border into southern Arizona, they face a perilous journey through the Sonoran Desert, some of the most inhospitable terrain in North America. Summer temperatures in the region routinely top 100 degrees Fahrenheit and water sources...
This review contains spoilers for Don’t Look Up. I was lucky to attend a showing of Don’t Look Up, the latest cultural satire from director Adam McKay, with my good friend and former Grist colleague Amelia Urry. Amelia is studying for...
Last year, during the height of summer temperatures and under the eye of a Democratic governor, Virginia became the latest state to join a program to cut greenhouse gas emissions from coal, gas, and other power plants. Now, however, Republican Governor-elect...