This story is published in collaboration with Belt Magazine. On a warm morning in July of 2020, FBI agents and local sheriff’s deputies converged on a farmhouse just outside the tiny town of Glenford in central Ohio. They led away a blue-eyed man wearing a gray Carhartt T-shirt and baggy jeans. He was heavy around […]
Tag: Politics
If Build Back Better fails, federal climate policy may depend on Republican cooperation
Democrats are blowing the best shot they’ve had to pass a climate bill in a decade. That opportunity lies in the Build Back Better Act, or BBB, a sweeping “soft infrastructure” bill that contains about half a trillion dollars in climate funding. Democrats hoped they could pass the bill via the budget reconciliation process — […]
Is American democracy uniquely bad at tackling climate change?
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 preferred climate plan. No, this wasn’t 2021 — the year was 1993: Jurassic Park […]
Republicans could get behind a green jobs program. Just not this one.
The future of the Civilian Climate Corps is up in the air. In January, two weeks after taking office, President Joe Biden signed an executive order to create a jobs corps inspired by one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s most popular New Deal-era programs, the Civilian Conservation Corps. The original program, intended to help the […]
2021 cartoon recap: What happened to Biden’s climate policy plans?
This story is part of Grist’s 2021 Comic Recap — an illustrated look back on some of the year’s biggest climate stories. If you’ve been attempting to keep up with the status of President Biden’s big climate plans in 2021, you’re probably feeling pretty exhausted by now. Democrats’ ambitious policy proposals have undergone more twists […]
EPA cuts through the smog with the strongest-ever clean car standards
The Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, finalized new greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars and trucks produced through model year 2026 on Monday, a move that will cut carbon emissions and air pollution and lay some of the groundwork for a transition to electric vehicles. The new standards arrive on the heels of West Virginia […]
Build Back Better is stalled, and so are Biden’s ambitious climate plans
When the U.S. House of Representatives passed its version of President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better Act last month, momentum for the climate and social welfare package was strong. Democrats planned to pass the Senate version within several weeks, hand the bill back to the House for a final vote, and then send it to […]
Why California can’t fill a major gap in its climate strategy
In mid-September, beneath a smoky gray sky, California Governor Gavin Newsom stood at a podium in Sequoia National Park. Directly behind him, an entrance sign wrapped in fire-resistant foil resembled a chrome holy cross. After another summer of dangerous heat waves, wildfires, and drought, he was there to offer salvation for the scorched Golden State […]
The Biden administration said its drilling-lease spree in the Gulf was court-ordered. It wasn’t.
Last month, the Biden administration held the largest-ever auction of oil and gas drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico’s history, claiming it was obligated to hold the sale due to a court ruling that reversed Biden’s earlier pause on new drilling permits on public lands in the Gulf. But a memo filed in August, […]
Beyond reusing and recycling: How the US could actually reduce plastic production
A panel of experts last week made a simple, common-sense recommendation for dealing with the U.S.’s plastic pollution problem: Stop making so much plastic. “Not producing waste in the first place is the best thing you can do environmentally,” said Jenna Jambeck, a professor at the University of Georgia’s College of Engineering and a coauthor […]