Harm City

The quest for environmental justice and climate adaptation in Baltimore

Axed

How the U.S. Forest Service Depletes the Carbon Sink by Logging Mature Tree Stands

State of Denial

How Texas’ Environmental Regulators Enable Big Oil and Other Polluters

The Immortals

Greenhouse Gases That Live Forever

A class of highly potent and largely unregulated greenhouse gases released by the aluminum, chemical and electric power industries remain in the atmosphere for thousands of years. Once they are released, they are essentially permanent additions to the atmosphere. Simple measures like the use of best available emissions abatement technology and leak detection equipment could bring emissions of these “immortal” pollutants to near zero.

Something in the Water

California Regulators Say Growing Crops with Oil Wastewater is Safe – But They Don’t Really Know

In Kern County, California drillers need to inject a lot of water into their wells to get the oil out. It resurfaces contaminated with arsenic, uranium, underground toxins and chemicals used in extraction. Regulators say it’s safe to use that water on crops: every year 12.4 billion gallons of it gets used to irrigate California farmland.

We took a look at the science behind the claim in the series of stories below. We found scant evidence, conflicts of interest and potential dangers to an unsuspecting public. 

Our findings are vital to climate and energy policymaking, not only in California but in other states imitating the practice, and everywhere California’s agricultural output is consumed. 

Pipe Dreams

Is Carbon Capture a Climate Solution or a Dangerous Distraction?

Food Shocks

Climate Change and the Coming Famines

Climate change is projected to make farming more challenging in coming decades.  As the world’s population heads toward 10 billion,  that challenge will become yet more complicated.  Inside Climate News is investigating whether the global food system is prepared and if its biggest players are failing the world’s most vulnerable people.

Solar Opposites

A Standoff Over Renewable Energy in Rural America

Resistance to renewable energy is growing in farm country. Reporter Dan Gearino went to Williamsport, Ohio, to dig deep into a fight over a large solar project, getting to know the people on both sides. In a yearlong investigation, he explores what animates the conflict and why it has consequences far beyond the region’s borders.

Bag It

The Plastics Crisis

Plastic waste is ubiquitous, and micro-plastics are invading our bodies. The world is looking for solutions to a plastics problem that the United National says factors into a triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature loss and pollution. As the petrochemical industry faces a global backlash it also searches for ways to make more plastic. “Bag It” holds industry and government to account while probing the latest science on how micro-plastics harm humans and the environment.