Pu‘uloa, a coral-lined stretch of sand along the southern curve of O‘ahu, is a sacred place. To the native people of Hawaii, it is home to an ancestral shark goddess, the spot where humans first stepped foot on the island. To mainlanders, parts of it are known as Pearl Harbor, home to the only site […]
When Weatherly Oil and Gas filed for bankruptcy in February 2019, the company was walking away from several hundred Texas wells. Many hadn’t produced a drop of oil in years. Companies are legally required to “plug” wells that they’re no longer using to extract oil and gas by pouring concrete into all their openings and […]
Oscar Sanchez’s fight against a scrapyard set to be relocated to his Southeast Chicago neighborhood has taken quite the physical toll. He’s lost about 20 pounds in the past month. He is increasingly unable to sleep, speak, or think clearly. Sometimes it’s so bad he can’t remember what he said even five minutes ago. Sanchez knows […]
Want to get a job planting trees, restoring wetlands, or stopping wildfires before they start? If a new bill in Congress ends up passing, your job hunt might get a lot easier. Two Democrats, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and Representative Joe Neguse of Colorado, revived the 21st Century Conservation Corps Act last Friday. The […]
On Monday, as record-breaking below-freezing temperatures overcame the entire state of Texas, county officials told residents to run their faucets continuously to prevent their pipes from freezing. But by Wednesday, hundreds of thousands didn’t even have water to run. On Thursday, some hospitals even reported water shortages. As potable water reached dangerously low levels across […]
On Monday night, every patient that pediatrician Phillip Scott admitted to the Cook Children’s Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas, was suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning. Hundreds of miles south, in Houston, a woman and an 8-year-old girl were found dead on Tuesday from suspected carbon monoxide poisoning, with a man and 7-year-old boy from the […]
Earlier this week, with national attention focused on accountability for the pro-Trump rioters who stormed the capitol building in Washington, D.C., Ohio quietly became the 13th state since 2017 to legislate harsher penalties for trespassing on or otherwise interfering with energy and industrial infrastructure — a move that activists and civil liberties groups say is […]
A week has passed since the invasion of the Capitol by pro-Trump radicals, but a violation of that scale isn’t very quickly forgotten. As an American, one cannot help but feel a tacit sense of ownership of that building and the monuments that surround it. To see them so disrespected, especially by a seditious horde […]
This story was originally published by The Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The world may be barreling towards climate disaster but rapidly eliminating planet-heating emissions means global temperatures could stabilize within just a couple of decades, scientists say. For many years it was assumed that further global heating […]
President-elect Joe Biden announced his pick of Merrick Garland for attorney general on Thursday, a karmically apt promotion for the longtime U.S. Court of Appeals judge almost five years after his nomination to the Supreme Court by President Obama was derailed by Senate Republicans. Garland’s designated position as head of the Department of Justice may […]