At a time when climate-related headlines often read like obituaries for our planet, Earth Day 2025 offered something rare – a reason for hope. Not the naïve optimism that suggests salvation is assured, but rather compelling evidence that we can make people act for good when we get the messaging right.
In the years after World War II, the smog in Los Angeles was so thick that at times people could see no farther than three blocks.
Despite efforts to limit emissions from power plants and oil refineries, the eye-burning, lung-choking blanket of smog remained. Then, in the 1950s, groundbreaking research by a biochemistry professor at the California Institute of Technology, Dr. Arie Haagen-Smit, determined that the main culprit was automobile exhaust.
By Carey Gillam
Farm groups were cheering moves announced this week by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that will alter protections for endangered species to allow for easier use of certain pesticides in agriculture.
By Julia Tilton / The Daily Yonder
Environmental justice efforts at the 10 US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regional offices have stopped and employees have been placed on administrative leave, per an announcement from EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin earlier this month. Former EPA employees involved with environmental justice work across the country say rural communities will suffer as a result.
“We cannot stand by and allow this to happen. We need to hold this administration accountable.”
By Dana Drugmand
American families will face increasing rates of environmental-related illnesses and premature deaths, including lung and cardiovascular diseases, due to the Trump administration’s sweeping rollbacks of air quality regulations, health professionals warn.
For decades, Mead, Nebraska, was a peaceful rural town—until toxins generated by the area ethanol plant poisoned Mead’s land, water, and air. Farm to Fuel, a short documentary, builds on investigative reporting by The New Lede, co-published with The Guardian, which exposed how the plant’s reckless disposal of pesticide-laced waste created an environmental disaster.
By Richard Mertens
Patsy Hopper dreamed of a home in the country with a garden and lots of trees. What she didn’t count on were the herbicides that would come drifting in, year after year, from the farmland around her, killing vegetables in her garden and wildflowers in the ditches and curling the leaves of the trees she had planted.
By Harshawn Ratanpal, KBIA
Prairie du Rocher, Ill. – On a cold winter day in Illinois, three little pigs are resting in a three-sided shed. They have plenty of space to trot around, as they do when Jennifer Duensing approaches. Those footsteps mean it’s feeding time. They squeal impatiently, waiting for their usual diet of organic feed, which sometimes includes vegetables like squash grown right here on the farm.
By Carey Gillam
US regulators on Wednesday said a food additive long linked to cancer will no longer be allowed in food and drugs that are ingested, a regulatory decision health advocates have demanded for years.
EWG
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