In a canyon 40 miles north of downtown Los Angeles, a fire is smoldering. Unlike the forest fires that erupt every year in Southern California, this fire is 30 feet underground. It’s been spewing toxic gases for three years, with no end in sight.
By Dana Drugmand
Carbon dioxide and methane emissions from the world’s biggest fossil fuel producers have likely caused trillions of dollars in economic damages due to intensifying heatwaves over the last 30 years, according to new peer-reviewed research.
By Shannon Kelleher
Most mornings, Nathan Berwick rises well before dawn at his home in Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana, setting out on nearby Lake Charles in a small fishing boat to check his crab traps. If it’s not too hot and the water is calm, Berwick’s family occasionally joins him on the boat. His eleven-year-old daughter enjoys playing with baby crabs that fall from the traps as Berwick hauls them from the water.
On a recent hot August evening, residents of the tiny rural community of Universal, Indiana packed into a public meeting to barrage operators of a proposed fertilizer plant with an array of concerns about what risks the project may pose for their health and the surrounding environment.
By Grace van Deelen
Governments around the world are failing to effectively regulate and mitigate harmful emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas with a climate warming potential more than 25 times stronger than carbon dioxide, according to research published Friday.
By Shannon Kelleher
Industrial-sized livestock operations have long been known for contaminating the environment and mistreating animals. Now, amid growing government incentives to turn the manure generated at these operations into climate-friendly biofuels, there are mounting concerns that the efforts could make industrial farming bigger and more dangerous.
By Shannon Kelleher
Offshore oil and gas operations in the Gulf of Mexico are releasing far higher quantities of a potent greenhouse gas than regulators have estimated, according to a new study published Monday.
For decades, leading US farm leaders have likened efforts to rein in harmful climate change as attacks on agriculture itself, aligning with oil and gas industry groups to block policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
By Bill Walker
Like some other once-fringe environmental ideas, this one began in Berkeley: In 2019, the staunchly progressive university town across the bay from San Francisco became the first US city to ban natural gas hookups in most new buildings, citing the fossil fuel’s contribution to the climate crisis.
By Bill Walker
California produces far more food than any other US state, but we throw a lot of it away. Meanwhile, more than one in five Californians don’t always know where their next meal is coming from. Food insecurity is higher among Black and Latino households, and inflation is making the problem worse.