“What’s striking is that already, households are bearing serious costs,” said Kimberly Clausing, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. She co-authored a paper from earlier this year finding that families were paying between $400 and $900 more each year because of the effects of climate change, with the costs above $1,300 in the 10 percent hardest-hit counties, many of them found in Florida, Louisiana, Nebraska, Colorado, and California. 

On Wednesday, the Commerce Department reported that the annual inflation rate reached 4.2 percent in May, the highest rate in three years. Though the war in Iran is mostly responsible for this recent increase, a surprising number of Americans are attributing the general economic pinch they’re feeling to the changing climate. Two-thirds of U.S. voters agree that global warming is affecting the cost of living to some degree, according to new survey data from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, including most Democrats and moderate Republicans. Of those two-thirds, a majority of them said that climate change was driving up what they pay for groceries, utility bills, and home insurance.

Rising energy prices were at the top of people’s lists, a concern that some climate advocates are tapping into ahead of the midterm elections this November. On Monday, the LCV Victory Fund, a political action committee, announced that it will target “energy bill voters” with messages about how clean, affordable energy can trim their monthly expenses, and how Republicans have held back renewable power. That follows successes for Democrats in the off-year elections in 2025, where energy prices played a role in state races in Georgia, New Jersey, and Virginia.

There are many factors pushing up electricity prices, but in some parts of the country, efforts to revamp the electric grid to handle more extreme weather is the primary reason. In California, utilities are upgrading their infrastructure to reduce wildfire risk; in the Southeast, they are rebuilding after hurricanes and flooding and billing their customers for it. In Arizona, residents are cranking up the air conditioning during scorching heat and paying more for power simply because they’re using more AC.

Even Republican-leaning voters — 42 percent of conservative Republicans, and 57 percent of moderate ones — are linking their rising costs to global warming, according to the Yale survey. “It makes perfect sense that they would do so, given the results from our study, which show that the geographically rural areas are actually facing some of the highest costs,” Clausing said. From wildfires to hurricanes, rural areas are often facing the brunt of the damage. Her study found that the largest household costs occurred in parts of the West, the Gulf Coast, and Florida.

Utility bills, despite being a top political issue, are actually one of the smaller price-point impacts of climate change, according to Clausing’s research: Households are spending an average of about $35 more on electricity per year, compared with an extra $356 on homeowners’ insurance premiums, the biggest cost. Clausing, who owns a house in Portland, Oregon, said the insurance premium on her home skyrocketed from around $1,000 five years ago to about $2,200 today — an increase that her insurance company said was to help recoup the costs of wildfire damage in Oregon.

Another major category of costs in Clausing’s study was the health effects of climate change. As wildfire smoke grows more common, exposing people to harmful particulate matter, it’s leading to early deaths. The estimated economic damage of these premature deaths works out to $103 for every household in the United States each year. That’s not to mention the other ways climate change damages the public’s health, from lengthening allergy seasons to expanding the geographic spread of infectious diseases as temperatures warm, allowing ticks and mosquitoes to explore new territories. 

But it seems like many Americans haven’t made the connection: Only 35 percent of those in the Yale survey who agreed that climate change was driving up prices saw a link to higher health care costs. That’s because these health risks haven’t been adequately communicated to the public, said Anthony Leiserowitz, the director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. “Health is one of the most powerful ways we have of saying, ‘Actually, this affects our lives right here, right now. It’s already affecting the people and places and things that we love,’” he said.

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Though most of the respondents thought climate change made groceries more expensive, it’s hard to measure the effect of extreme weather on food costs, according to Catherine Wolfram, a co-author of the study and a professor of applied economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management. That’s mainly because the United States’ food supply comes from all over the world, mitigating the impact of, say, a drought in Brazil or a heat wave in the Great Plains. Still, other research has found that hot summers can lead to higher food prices, with more increases projected as the world warms. 

As the effects of global warming grow more extreme, it’s becoming clear that they’re posing a problem for the budgets of lower-income Americans. Clausing is studying ways to design policies that tackle climate change without burdening poor families, through rebates or other mechanisms that can offset costs. 

“I’m glad people are connecting the dots,” Clausing said. “I think, at the moment, if you pursue better climate policy, the benefits to households, for the country as a whole, would exceed the costs.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline What’s driving up your expenses? Many Americans say climate change. on Jun 12, 2026.

Terry has long seen great potential for a green space that would allow people to easily bike to Forest Park, the borough’s third largest park. He’s pursued this vision since 2011, advocating for a proposal, called QueensWay, to convert the 3.5 miles of idle railway into a 47-acre park.  

But some would rather the tracks, once the Rockaway Beach Branch of the Long Island Rail Road, become a subway line running north-south through New York’s largest borough. 

Andrew Lynch doesn’t see why it can’t be both. “When I saw this debate, I was like, ‘Man, none of you guys want to work together. Let me show you what’s up,’” Lynch told Grist. He wrote a blog post in 2016 outlining a project with rail service and green space. That led to the formation of QueensLink, a proposal to extend the subway’s M Train line and create 33 acres of parkland. 

All these years later, the two ideas remain at odds, a dispute that mirrors debates in other cities over how to repurpose such infrastructure — whether as transit, green space or some combination of the two. Nationwide, more than 25,000 miles of rail have been converted to recreational trails. The Atlanta Beltline is among the most prominent examples with its 22-mile loop of trails and parks, though plans to include light rail have stalled.

The debate in New York is happening even as the city continues expanding its subway system. It is spending $5.5 billion on the Interborough Express to connect Queens and Brooklyn, and $7.7 billion on phase two of Manhattan’s Second Avenue Subway. Queens, meanwhile, has shown steady growth since the pandemic, and residents make more commutes by car than those in any other borough. New York also has a history of ambitious rail-to-trail projects, including The High Line, and officials have spent more than a decade investing in equitable park access.

This long-running question now confronts Mayor Zohran Mamdani. While QueensWay’s first phase is expected to begin construction later this year, supporters of QueensLink are urging city and state officials not to foreclose the possibility of restoring rail service.

As an assemblyman representing parts of Queens, Mamdani expressed support for QueensLink in 2023. As mayor, however, he included $43 million for the QueensWay park project in his $124.7 billion annual budget. “The City remains committed to expanding green and open space across the boroughs and is actively exploring all available funding options to make that a reality,” a mayoral spokesperson told Grist.

Lynch said QueensLink supporters were “miffed” and “shocked” by that decision. A City Hall official told Grist the decision to finance the park does not preclude building the rail line as well.

Phase one of QueensWay, which would create a 5-acre linear park, is set to begin later this year. Phase Two, which would have added a 1.3 mile extension, was to be paid for with a $117 million grant from the federal Reconnecting Communities initiative, but Congress rescinded funding for that program when it passed the Big Beautiful Bill. 

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Mamdani’s staff recently told QueensLink supporters that the park project’s first phase is too far along to stop, according to Lynch, and said the administration will not rezone the land as park space. That preserves the possibility of also building the subway line, a point former Mayor Eric Adams’ administration made when it said one does not preclude the other. However, Lynch thinks the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, or MTA, which operates much of the region’s transit network, would balk at building a line on park land. 

Lynch said QueensLink is looking for Governor Kathy Hochul, who appoints the MTA’s board and plays a major role in drafting its budget, to support the project. Her office directed Grist to the MTA and New York City Hall for comment. 

The nonprofit Trust for Public Land has supported the park project since 2011. Tamar Renaud, its New York State director, said QueensWay will boost equity by eventually serving four of the 20 neighborhoods with the least amount of accessible park acreage. With 28 schools around the rail line, it would improve recreation for kids, while making the area more bikeable and walkable. “It was really about reconnecting communities that had been separated through these big infrastructure projects,” she said. 

QueensWay supporters see their project as more practical. A 2019 MTA report found that the QueensLink rail line would cost $8.1 billion, but the agency has since revised that to $5.9 billion and estimated it would serve 39,000 daily riders. “Reactivating the Rockaway Beach Branch with NYCT service has a high cost and serves a relatively modest number of riders,” the agency concluded. “This project would reduce auto usage and provide additional rail connections, but compared to other projects, the benefits are average for sustainability and resiliency.”

Advocates for the park project, on the other hand, put its cost at around $350 million. “I think we all recognize that after all these studies there wasn’t going to be a train,” Terry said.

Railway supporters argue the MTA’s cost estimate is high and its ridership estimate low. They hired the consulting firm Transportation Economics & Management Systems to evaluate the report; it placed the cost closer to $3.5 billion. A New York University report estimated it would serve around 75,000 daily riders; another found it would take 14,800 cars off the road each day. 

Eric Goldwyn, an expert on public transit project costs at the NYU Marron Institute, said QueensLink might not hugely boost ridership but that it would benefit operations by allowing busy trains on Queens Boulevard to run at a higher capacity. 

In Goldwyn’s view, QueensLink is the project that harmonizes rail and park. Like Lynch, he thinks the advancement of QueensWay would not be a good sign for QueensLink. “Once that first spade of dirt is turned over, the odds become… longer,” he said. “It’ll be harder and harder to envision QueensLink in the way that it’s been proposed.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline What is the best use for old railroad tracks? New Yorkers have opinions. on Jun 12, 2026.

Applause echoed through the halls of the Gage County courthouse. The county board had just approved new, more stringent wind energy regulations, and the overflow crowd of residents couldn’t contain themselves. 

Few in the crowded courthouse that day in September 2020 beamed brighter than Larry Allder. The Cortland-area resident helped lead the yearslong charge against wind energy’s looming expansion into the county. 

“It’s been a long road,” he told The Voice News after the vote.

Now six years later, another historically controversial energy source — nuclear power — could be coming. Last month, the Nebraska Public Power District, or NPPD, announced a list of four potential sites for a new nuclear power plant. Gage County, south of Lincoln on the border with Kansas, is on it. This time, though, Allder has no plans to mount an opposition.

“I think that’s a great idea. I like nuclear energy,” Allder said. “I think it’s the way of the future.”

Despite a legacy that often invokes fear, there are signs nuclear development won’t face the backlash that other energy sources, especially renewables, have generated for Nebraskans in recent years. “They were just trying to stick the wind turbines really close to my property, and I do not like wind energy,” Allder said. He considers the turbines to be “ugly.” More substantively, Allder thinks that wind and solar projects produce “very inefficient and very costly and very intermittent power.” Nuclear, however, he said, is “clean and it doesn’t take up much land space.”

Grist spoke with leaders in the four communities identified by NPPD — Beatrice, Sutherland, Norfolk, and Brownville— and most said their communities are open to a new nuclear project.

“I think the general consensus is still that we’re supportive of nuclear energy,” Madison County Commissioner Troy Uhlir said. “There’s definitely more people speaking up and saying, ‘No, not here,’ (but) it’s not overwhelming.”

Beatrice Mayor Bob Morgan said his community is excited to be in the top four site options.

In Sutherland, a few residents have voiced questions on safety, said Scott Meyer, chairman of the village board. Both Uhlir and Meyer believe those concerns can be calmed by education. 

“What I find pleasing and reinforcing is that there is a lot of support out there,” NPPD CEO Tom Kent told Grist. “Those communities are really interested in hosting and being a location for this kind of development, and Nebraska has always been a state that’s been very supportive of nuclear power.”

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Nationally, lawmakers in both parties have begun embracing nuclear power, as have everyday people like Allder. It also is being eyed by utilities, lured — amid growing demand for electricity — by its ability to generate large amounts of power without spewing climate-warming greenhouse gases.

Technological advancements offer another selling point. The next generation of nuclear power plants aims to solve problems the industry has historically grappled with, including their high costs, lengthy constructions, and safety concerns.

Proponents of nuclear say that advanced reactor plants like small modular reactors, or SMRs, could solve those problems that have long beset the industry. These reactors are also expected to be flexible, generating more or less power as needed, which can work well with renewables, said Joseph Giitter, a former senior executive at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. And the latest innovation wave has generated a massive amount of support from private tech companies and investors who are betting on nuclear as a solution for the spike in electricity demand from data centers. 

While projects involving new nuclear designs have started in Tennessee, Wyoming, and Washington, Nebraska is probably a decade away from seeing a new nuclear plant, which is why it’s important to start research now, Kent said. 

“When nuclear takes off, it’s going to take off quick. So we want to be ready to be in that first set of fast follower orders, right? Or we’ll miss the middle of the next decade,” he said.

NPPD was recently awarded over $27 million in cost-shared funding by the Department of Energy to apply for a federal permit needed to site a new nuclear plant. According to Kent, the funding will cover less than half of the application costs. In terms of designs, Kent says NPPD is considering designs similar to the small reactors being tested in Wyoming and Tennessee. But it remains to be seen whether this next generation of nuclear reactors can deliver what its proponents promise. 

The utility is also open to large-scale reactors, like the ones installed at Plant Vogtle in Georgia — a cautionary tale for Nebraska.

Georgia’s two new nuclear reactors started producing power in 2023 and 2024, 15 years after the utility applied for a license, according to the Associated Press. These reactors are more advanced than most operating in the U.S.. The project wrapped up years behind schedule and, at more than $30 billion, was over budget. In the end, the new reactors led to rate hikes for power customers, which fueled public backlash. 

Southern Company’s CEO, Chris Womack noted its subsidiary Georgia Power faced unique obstacles, including a nearly nonexistent workforce and supply chain, complications posed by the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan in 2011 and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, and the bankruptcy of the design contractor. 

But nuclear projects have historically run into significant delays and gone way over budget, said Edward Kee, CEO of Nuclear Economics Consulting Group. Large or small, these projects in the U.S. can be a gamble for utilities and their rate payers.

For context, NPPD’s Cooper Nuclear Station, which opened in 1974 and is the state’s only commercial nuclear plant in operation, cost about $313 million to build. Adjusted for inflation, that price tag translates to roughly $2.1 billion in today’s dollars. Omaha Public Power District’s now-retired Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station, which started operating in 1973, cost about $165 million to build. That would be roughly $1.2 billion today.

Sometimes, that gamble pays off, as happened in south Texas where, 20 years later, customers are experiencing lower power rates, Kee said. But in other cases, the projects never made it to completion. Since 2010, there have been at least 11 canceled commercial nuclear power reactor plans, according to the NRC. 

While new advanced reactors may minimize issues seen in Georgia, they too carry financial risks because they haven’t been tested, Giitter said. 

“The promise of the technology is there, but it hasn’t been proven yet,” Giitter said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Nuclear in my backyard: A Nebraska utility is skirting the public backlash that plagues wind and solar on Jun 12, 2026.

There are two major classes of mycorrhizal species. The ectomycorrhizal fungi grow as sheaths around a plant’s roots, especially conifer trees, whereas the arbuscular ones in this new paper penetrate them. Either way, these fungi act as an extension of the roots, helping them absorb more water and nutrients. “Just as a circulatory system moves resources through a body, these sort of microscopic fungal pipes are connected to plants,” Kiers said. 

In exchange, mycorrhizal species get energy in the form of carbon that the plants have drawn from the atmosphere. They help the plants grow to sequester still more carbon, a mutually beneficial partnership that benefits humans, too, as it keeps the planet from warming even further.

However, the density of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi isn’t uniform across the planet’s biomes. You might assume that it would be highest in tropical rainforests, but in fact grasslands account for 40 percent of the predicted global arbuscular biomass, the study found. That might be because herbaceous plants like grasses tend to allocate more carbon to their symbiotic fungi than trees do. You can’t see it, but grasslands have vast root systems, meaning there’s loads of hidden biomass. “Even if grasslands get burned above ground, that carbon tends to remain underground, and they can come back again, which is different than forests,” Kiers said.

Yet, Kiers added, just 5 percent of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal biodiversity hot spots lie in environmentally protected areas. The idea with these new maps is for scientists and policymakers to identify where fungi might be thriving, and protect them. That will simultaneously support plant life and biodiversity overall — all kinds of birds, insects, and herbivores depend on this vegetation, too — and capture still more carbon in the soil. (Some savannas, like Brazil’s cerrado, also store enormous amounts of carbon underground in peat, or dead plant material that resists decay and accumulates over centuries.)

At the other end of the spectrum, the study found that in areas with large-scale agriculture, fungal network densities are about 50 percent lower on average. That may be because synthetic fertilizers provide crops all the nutrients they need, easing their reliance on arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. Tillage also tears fungal networks apart at the end of a growing season. (Other research has found that tilling also disrupts soil’s ability to retain water.) “Maybe we can do better to have more fungal biomass in our agricultural systems, and in our terrestrial ecosystem as a whole, and capture more carbon dioxide,” said ecologist Smriti Pehim Limbu, who studies mycorrhizal fungi at Dartmouth College but wasn’t involved in the new paper.

Humanity has to feed itself, of course. But with this new data in hand, it can also take steps to protect these critical species hidden underground. “This map is for mycorrhizal fungi what the first detailed maps were for, I don’t know, ocean currents or river systems,” Kiers said. “Where you go from knowing a system exists to knowing where it is, how dense it is, and where it’s threatened.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline This unfathomably huge fungal network keeps Earth cool and green on Jun 11, 2026.

A proposed budget request from President Donald Trump would zero out programs that scientists say are the foundation of weather observations, water quality, maritime safety, and recreation on the Great Lakes. The president wants to cut NOAA’s budget by $1.3 billion, or one-third of current funding levels, to better match priorities related to halting climate research.

“The investment that we make pays off in terms of safer water, public safety, public health, as well as economic activity,” said Gregory Dick, director of the Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research, or CIGLR, a partnership between the University of Michigan and NOAA.

Researchers at CIGLR work closely with NOAA to conduct work on lake water levels, ice dynamics, and harmful algal blooms on Lake Erie. Data is used by state managers, fishers, boaters, and the regional shipping industry.

“That’s the kind of data that you want at your fingertips,” Dick said. “That’s what’s at risk with cuts like the ones we’re talking about.”

Beyond the potential loss of this data, Dick is worried about long-term research on how climate change is affecting the Great Lakes. Water levels are fluctuating and Dick said understanding those dynamics is important for future planning geared toward development projects and the economy.

Another at-risk program is the Great Lakes Observing System, or GLOS, a regional network that coordinates data collection on wave heights, water temperatures, ice, wind, and more. The network makes real-time data available to the public, and it’s often used by boaters, fishers, and other people who spend time in and on the lakes.

“If you want to visit a beach, if you want to take your dog and let it run in the lake, it’s really important to know beforehand if there’s a bloom there or dangerous surf conditions,” said Jennifer Boehme, CEO of GLOS. The system is one of 11 NOAA-funded observation networks across the country that maintain data from oceans and coasts.

In a memo released with the budget proposal, the White House said that “President Trump is committed to eliminating funding for the globalist climate agenda while unleashing American energy production.” The proposed NOAA budget will cut climate research and save taxpayer money, according to the memo.

NOAA programs focused on the Great Lakes are already adapting to cuts from the previous year. The Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab (which houses CIGLR), for example, lost about 40 percent of its staff last year after rounds of layoffs and early retirements, according to Dick.

GLOS is also in a more vulnerable position this year, Boehme said. The program is up for a contract renewal with NOAA, which happens every five years, and it still has yet to receive all of its appropriated funds from last year.

“Each lapse makes the next one worse, and rebuilding isn’t just a matter of writing another check. The relationships and the seasonal schedules that make the network function can take years to reconstruct,” she said.

Still, the president’s budget is more a signal of priorities than a binding mandate, said Alex Eastman, the Great Lakes program manager at the Northeast-Midwest Institute, a nonprofit policy research group. Appropriations are ultimately decided by Congress, which is currently in the middle of that process.

This year, the House Appropriations Committee passed a bill that would fund most NOAA programs at $1.3 billion more than the president’s budget proposal, ignoring his calls for steep cuts. The regional observation networks, including GLOS, would see an 18 percent increase in funding. Still, the bill is $300 million short of last year’s funding. The Senate hasn’t passed its version of the appropriations bill yet.

Congress ultimately funded these Great Lakes research programs last year after Trump proposed similar cuts, likely because lawmakers know the value they provide for the region and country, Eastman said.

“I do think that the more that Congress pushes back, the more the executive branch and the president will see that they’re not gaining anything by continuing to try to impose draconian cuts,” he said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline What federal cuts to science funding could mean for the Great Lakes on Jun 11, 2026.

Egereva, who is Indigenous Selkup from Russia, is co-chair of the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change, which represents Indigenous peoples’ perspectives at United Nations gatherings. Russian authorities arrested her and Leongardt on December 17, just weeks after Egereva returned from the COP30 climate conference. Leongardt, a former intern at the U.N. headquarters in Geneva, has spent her career working on educational programs for Indigenous peoples in Russia.

The two face accusations of participating in a terrorist group due to their past involvement in the Aborigen Forum, an informal network of Indigenous advocates that the Russian government shut down two years ago. But U.N. experts say they’re concerned the arrests are reprisals for participating in U.N. meetings and are part of a broader shift in Russia to crack down on civil society freedoms including Indigenous activism. 

“We urge your Excellency’s Government to immediately and unconditionally release Ms. Egereva and Ms. Leongardt from detention, to drop all charges against them as stemming from their peaceful human rights activities, and to ensure that they are able to continue their legitimate human rights work and their cooperation with the United Nations’ bodies and mechanisms without fear of intimidation or reprisals,” read the letter from the U.N. officials, who included the U.N. special rapporteurs for the environment, Indigenous peoples, and human rights in the context of climate change. 

Their letter, sent in April, was made public last week by the U.N. Russian officials do not appear to have responded. Egereva and Leongardt are expected to appear in court on Thursday in Moscow, where they could be sentenced to as long as two decades in prison. Their imprisonment has brought international condemnation, with more than 100 organizations calling for their release at April’s U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York City. 

Egereva in particular has been a fixture in international climate discussions and was arrested in December shortly after returning from COP where she spoke publicly on the importance of having more Indigenous women participate in climate talks. “Women are one of the most vulnerable groups within Indigenous peoples, so we are working to ensure that Indigenous women are included in all climate negotiations affecting their rights, and their interests, and their priorities,” she said at COP on November 21.

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Egereva was expected to be in Germany this week for the Bonn Climate Change Conference, where officials are preparing for another COP climate gathering this fall. Her incarceration prompted the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change to vote Tuesday to extend Egereva’s term, making her a third co-chair until her release. That unprecedented move was made in solidarity with her detainment, as typically there are only two co-chairs.

The U.N. officials wrote that since her arrest in December, Egereva has been denied regular phone calls and visits with her husband and children. “Over recent months, she has only been able to see her husband at three court hearings, during which Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia (FSIN) officers prohibited any personal communication or contact,” their letter said. 

The same officials are worried not only about the conditions that Egereva and Leongardt are enduring, but also the impact their detainment could have on U.N. participation. “We are concerned about the chilling effect on Indigenous advocacy, international cooperation and engagement with the United Nations, and human rights defenders’ work that their prosecution is prone to generate,” the letter states. 

Friends and colleagues of Egereva and Leongardt say that their work exemplified routine advocacy on behalf of Indigenous peoples and was not extremist or reflective of the “terrorism” allegations. 

“We want everyone to see that they are part of a huge network and that the work they’ve been doing is completely legitimate, completely within regular diplomatic channels,” said Kate Finn, a citizen of the Osage Nation and executive director of the Tallgrass Institute who has worked with Egereva at the U.N. “It’s being framed by the Russian government as terrorist activity, but it’s activity that Indigenous women do every day for the U.N. system these days.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline UN officials urge Russia to free Indigenous climate advocate on Jun 10, 2026.

While gas and nuclear plants still lead the country’s energy mix, solar contributed 12.8 percent of the nation’s electrons in May, according to an analysis of government data by Ember, an energy think tank. Coal, meanwhile, provided just 12.2 percent. Just five years ago, solar was less than half of its current levels and coal was at 20 percent. 

“Overtaking coal for the first month on record shows just how far solar has come, from a niche contributor to the third-largest and fastest-growing source of power in the U.S. electricity system,” said Nicolas Fulghum, senior data analyst at Ember, in a press release. “From Texas to California, markets across the U.S. are betting on solar to meet rising power needs.”

The turnaround comes even as political headwinds have shifted against renewable energy. 

Last summer, Congress passed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which rolled back enormous swaths of former President Joe Biden’s landmark climate change legislation, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. And President Donald Trump has actively sought to hinder renewable energy development, even offering to pay at least one oil company $1 billion to stop building its offshore wind projects. 

The latest electricity data comes the same month that the Trump administration announced $700 million in funding for investments in the coal industry. It included money for what would be the country’s first new coal-fired power plants in 13 years — sourced from funds previously dedicated to reducing the country’s dependence on fossil fuels, not deepening it. 

“Today we’re taking historic action to bring down the price of energy and the cost of living for all Americans with the power of clean, beautiful coal,” said Trump, who campaigned on the coal-friendly slogan ‘dig, baby, dig.” 

Ember’s analysis found that coal generation in May was actually up slightly from April, when it hit an all-time low. Its share of the grid will also likely tick up in the summer, as cooling needs peak. But the steady downward trend over the last several years suggests that even all the president’s men might not be able to put the coal industry back together again. 

“Spending $700 million to bail out the coal industry is like throwing a lifeline to a ship that has already sunk,” Lena Moffitt, executive director of the environmental group Evergreen Action, told the Associated Press. Rich Nolan, president and CEO of the National Mining Association disagreed, telling the AP that coal generation helps shield consumers from the impacts of volatile energy prices and supply challenges exacerbated by AI.

Regardless of what coal does, experts believe the solar market will continue its upward march. While installations dropped in 2025 compared to 2024, according to the Solar Energy Industry Association, it still accounted for more than half of all newly installed electricity capacity. Even MAGA influencers are promoting it. 

“We’re going to just keep seeing more and more renewables brought onto the grid,” said Patrick Drupp, director of climate policy at the Sierra Club. “That’s good for people’s wallets, it’s good for their health, it’s good for the planet.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline For first time, Americans are getting more of their electricity from solar than coal on Jun 10, 2026.

Over 57,000 pesticide products are currently registered for use in the United States, ranging from powerful chemicals used in conventional agriculture, to common insect repellents approved for use on children. Scientific evidence is accumulating that some of them are linked to illnesses ranging from cancer to Parkinson’s disease. 

But beginning in 2024, a powerful coalition of chemical manufacturers and industry groups launched a coordinated national effort to pass “immunity laws,” bills designed to shield companies from potential legal claims tied to harms from their pesticide products. Over the past three years alone, industry lobbyists attempted to pass pesticide immunity legislation in 15 different states.

The battle over ‘failure to warn’

At the center of the industry’s lobbying effort is a key legal question: What responsibility do pesticide companies have to warn users and consumers about potential health risks from their products? In many states, individuals can currently bring “failure to warn” claims if they believe a company withheld information about harms associated with a pesticide.

The chemical makers advocating for pesticide immunity laws argue that companies should be protected from those lawsuits as long as they use labels approved by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). But opponents say that standard is dangerously inadequate.

There are longstanding concerns about the EPA’s pesticide review process. For example, the official EPA labels for glyphosate still do not carry a cancer warning, despite mounting evidence that it may cause cancer and other groups like the World Health Organization calling it “probably carcinogenic.” 

“The science is pretty clear,” said Daniel Hinkle, the senior counsel for policy and state affairs at the American Association for Justice. “The evidence continues to accumulate, and the pesticide makers continue to lose in the courtroom.”

Meanwhile, a growing body of research links a broad range of health harms to commonly used pesticides, including neurodevelopmental impacts, respiratory problems and reduced IQ in children, health problems like liver and metabolic diseases, and cancer.

The pesticide lobbyist’s playbook

Several landmark court cases have found chemical makers responsible for illnesses like cancers and neurological diseases, resulting in billions of dollars in payments from pesticide makers. Bayer alone has paid over $11 billion in cancer settlements linked to its products. In response, the chemical industry has poured millions of dollars into lobbying for pesticide immunity laws at the state and federal levels, and in the courts. “It’s very clear that this is a coordinated campaign by the industry to absolve themselves of legal liability for health harms from these chemicals,” said Hinkle.

In the last three years, advocates fought against proposed immunity bills in 15 different states. While defeated in a dozen states, the bills passed in Georgia, North Dakota and Kentucky. “The states where these bills are passing have some of the highest cancer rates in the nation,” said Joy Reeves, the director of policy and strategic development at the Rachel Carson Council. “The reality now is, if you’re a farmer and get sick, you have fewer options to hold the pesticide companies accountable.”

Environmental and legal advocates say the campaign behind the pesticide immunity laws is both sophisticated and well-funded. Hinkle says a central driver of the effort is the Modern Ag Alliance (MAA), a lobbying and public relations group founded by Bayer, the maker of Roundup, in 2024. 

While many states do not make lobbying expenditures easy to track, those that do show huge sums are being spent on pesticide immunity legislation. According to public filings, MAA spent roughly $1.6M lobbying in Tennessee in 2025. Reporting by the Idaho Sun found that MAA was the top outside spender in Idaho politics that same year. 

What pesticide immunity could mean for families

As industry groups push for legal protections around pesticide injury, there are growing concerns about what these bills could mean for public health, accountability, and local input.

In 2012, on a warm July afternoon in Iowa, organic farmer Rob Faux was working in his poultry yard. He heard an airplane roar overhead, and then droplets began raining over him and his chickens and turkeys. A crop duster kept the sprayer on as it passed over Faux’s farm twice, covering them with fungicides and insecticides. 

Subsequently, Faux was diagnosed with cancer. Recent data shows that Iowa, which has one of the highest rates of pesticide use in the country — in 2025, 53 million pounds of pesticides were used in the state — also has the second-highest cancer rate in the nation.

Faux is now the communications manager and resident farm expert for the Pesticide Action & Agroecology Network (PAN). He says that many products that people use every day, from ant bait to mosquito repellent, will similarly fall under the scope of the new immunity laws. 

“If these laws pass, and someone sells a mosquito repellent for children that makes them sick, for example, these pesticide immunity bills will eliminate pathways for families to hold the makers accountable,” he said. 

He also points to the loss of local control as a key concern. “If I live in a town where the drinking water comes from a local lake, but pesticide applicators are using chemicals that are getting into the water, the community should be able to protect people,” he said. Many of the proposed immunity bills would prevent that, because local or state governments wouldn’t be allowed to set pesticide rules that are stricter than federal standards.

A pivotal moment in the pesticide immunity fight

These concerns brought together a broad coalition spanning left-leaning environmental advocates and members of the Make America Healthy Again network. Protestors gathered outside the Supreme Court for a rally the last week of April as the justices inside heard opening arguments in Monsanto v. Durnell. The closely-watched case could reshape the future of pesticide litigation nationwide.

The case centers on whether federal pesticide labeling laws and EPA labels override state-level failure-to-warn lawsuits. A ruling in Monsanto’s favor could dramatically weaken legal pathways for people alleging harm from pesticide exposure. “This is a case that is largely about states’ rights,” said Reeves. “It will affect states’ ability to regulate pesticides.”

Just a few days later, federal lawmakers overwhelmingly rejected an effort to insert pesticide immunity language into the Farm Bill. Seventy-three Republicans joined Democrats in opposing the pesticide immunity provision. 

“It was a pretty astounding defeat,” said Max Sano, a senior policy and coalitions associate with Beyond Pesticides who helps organize a national coalition of farmers, farmworkers, scientists, and advocacy groups. “But these bills are still popping up everywhere [on a state level], so we can’t afford to slow down.” His organization is currently monitoring newly proposed pesticide immunity legislation in 10 states.

The rise of a new pesticide reform movement

As momentum grows against pesticide immunity laws, Reeves described the current moment as “today’s Silent Spring movement,” referencing Rachel Carson’s landmark 1962 book that helped ignite the modern environmental movement. “Today, the pesticide reform movement is diverse,” Reeves said. “It’s cross-partisan. It’s far-reaching.” 

Advocates like Reeves, Sano, and Hinkle are taking a multi-pronged approach to fighting pesticide immunity laws: organizing national coalition calls, educating lawmakers, tracking bills across states, mobilizing grassroots campaigns, and coordinating legal and public awareness efforts.

And individuals can have a deep impact on the fight, too, Hinkle said. “It is incredibly important to be in communication with your lawmaker,” he said. “Every single call or email matters. Concerned constituents and grassroots organizing have really been the decisive forces in holding off this onslaught.”

Reeves echoes him, saying, “If you care about your family and your community, you should engage on this issue. It affects us all.”

The Rachel Carson Council (RCC), founded in 1965, is the national environmental organization envisioned by Rachel Carson to carry on her work after her death. We promote Carson’s ecological ethic that combines scientific concern for the environment and human health with a sense of wonder and reverence for all forms of life in order to build a more sustainable, just, and peaceful future. The Rachel Carson Council is a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The quiet push to shield pesticide makers from lawsuits on Jun 9, 2026.

The red zone on the map included Los Angeles Stadium — also known as SoFi Stadium — one of the venues for the World Cup, soccer’s marquee event, which begins on Thursday. Between June 12 and July 10, Los Angeles will host eight games and is expected to draw tens of thousands of fans and scores of players. 

As dry, hot, conditions persist, more fires are possible and smoke could once again loom over the stadium. The same risk exists for a number of the 15 other World Cup host cities. But, despite the documented health impacts of smoke exposure, FIFA, the international governing body for soccer, doesn’t appear to have a plan if the air quality deteriorates. 

“FIFA has basically almost done nothing,” said Nicholas Watanabe, a professor of sport and entertainment management at the University of South Carolina. “They are lagging behind even minor leagues in North America.”

The National Women’s Soccer League, or NWSL; the Canadian Football League; and the NCAA, which oversees college sports, all have at least some guidelines outlining what to do if the Air Quality Index reaches certain thresholds. Other leagues — from Major League Baseball to the Women’s National Basketball Association — have postponed games because of wildfire smoke, notably when plumes spread across Canada and North America in June 2023. 

The Air Quality Index, or AQI, a measure of common pollutants in the air, ranges from 0 to 300+, with “unhealthy” levels starting at 101 and “very unhealthy” and “hazardous” warnings after that. Experts say that wildfire smoke often causes spikes that could be harmful to both players and fans. “They might get a burning throat, a cough, and a headache,” said Mary Johnson, who researches environmental health at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Some groups can be particularly sensitive, including children, older individuals, and people with respiratory conditions such as asthma.

“Climate-related risks are assessed as part of overall tournament planning and managed in close coordination with host cities, stadium authorities, and national agencies,” FIFA wrote in a statement to Grist. It detailed extensive protocols related to extreme heat, including mandatory water breaks for players (fans, meanwhile, will not be permitted to bring refillable water bottles into stadiums) but didn’t mention air quality. It did mention a “tournament-wide preparedness exercise” for severe weather, without providing further details. The organization did not respond to follow-up questions and declined multiple interview requests.

For now, FIFA seems to be betting the air will stay clear. While that gamble could very well pay off, wildfire smoke has become an increasingly common feature of North American summers, raising questions about whether organizers are prepared for conditions that are no longer unusual. “It’s sort of ridiculous that the biggest sporting event in the world doesn’t have anything,” said Watanabe, about even a minimum AQI threshold for canceling matches. “We’re one bad Pacific Northwest wildfire away from some very big concerns.”

All indicators point to a dangerous 2026 fire season. The National Interagency Fire Center projects that, after a warm winter and with a potentially record-breaking El Niño incoming, large swaths of the West will be at an elevated risk of wildfire this summer. Canadian officials have made similar predictions. Because smoke can blow thousands of miles, it puts virtually all of FIFA’s sites at potential risk.

“There are very few places in North America that are immune to these effects,” said Dominik Kulakowski, a geographer who studies wildfires at Clark University. He noted that the warning time for smoke events can sometimes be as short as a matter of hours. “It would make sense for FIFA to think ahead and implement some air quality standards that would trigger some decisions about whether or not to play.”

John Quindry, a professor of physiology at the University of Montana, said that, although a lack of a plan likely doesn’t mean “putting people in early graves,” he does think organizers should be prepared. There are things FIFA could do to help mitigate risk from wildfire smoke, he said, ranging from playing at times of days when the air quality tends to be better to postponing or relocating matches. “You should have a decision tree and algorithm that’s baked into the process,” he said, comparing air quality events to thunder storms. “People certainly call games for lightning and nobody argues with it.”

When the AQI hits 101, the air is considered “unhealthy for sensitive groups” and the NWSL starts to add hydration breaks for players. At 180, which falls into the “unhealthy” range for everyone, the league starts to consider rescheduling games. Cancellation or postponement is mandatory above 200, when AQI is “very unhealthy.” The league did not respond to a request to confirm whether this policy, which The New York Times reported in 2023, remains current. But it aligns with guidelines from USA Soccer. The NFL’s 2022-2023 game operations manual also says the league “will be prepared to relocate a game if there is definitive evidence that the AQI will remain consistently above 200 for a significant period of time, including the day of the game being played in the affected stadium.” Once AQI passes 300, the NCAA requires that organizers move events indoors or cancel them.

Watanabe said that some of the World Cup venues are enclosed, with modern filtration systems that could help mitigate poor air quality. That includes Mercedes Benz stadium in Atlanta, a city that already experienced bad air quality due to wildfire smoke this year. But many others can’t be closed, including those in Los Angeles, Seattle, and Vancouver — all places historically prone to wildfire smoke. Grist reached out to local organizing committees and public health officials in host cities, the U.S. National Soccer Team Players Association, and the White House Task Force for the World Cup. Of the handful of responses, most redirected questions to FIFA. 

“There are no specific AQI levels that would automatically trigger suspension of FIFA events,” said James Garrow, a spokesperson for the public health department in Philadelphia, which is a 2026 World Cup site. Instead, he said, the city would monitor air quality and “consider possible recommendations.”

For FIFA, though, the issue is not simply whether wildfire smoke can affect health, but how to balance those risks against the logistical and financial demands of a multiweek global tournament. As Quindry put it: “There is a lot of money at stake.”

Whatever happens at this year’s World Cup, Kulakowski said it’s only a matter of time before FIFA and other sports leagues are going to have to reckon with a smoky future. “Having to think about smoke from wildfires and how that affects athletes, athletic ability, and sporting events is a new thing,” he said, but it’s becoming an increasingly common issue across North America, Europe, and elsewhere. “We’re seeing wildfires become a larger part of life.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The World Cup is one wildfire away from an air quality disaster on Jun 9, 2026.

State Representative Chuck Owen, a Republican from Vernon Parish in west Louisiana, said he proposed House Bill 670 in February shortly after learning about the industry, which exports about $1 billion worth of pellets from Louisiana each year. Nearly all the production comes from two British-owned mills in central and north Louisiana that emit large — and sometimes illegal — quantities of air pollutants linked to cancers and other serious illnesses. 

Owen, whose district spans one of the state’s most timber-rich regions, said the goal of his bill is to make Louisiana a “premier location for wood pellet manufacturing.” 

The legislation gives a state agency, Louisiana Economic Development, broad direction to develop new incentives for pellet manufacturers, potentially including new tax breaks, state-funded workforce training programs, and port upgrades tailored to the industry’s needs. It also instructs state regulators to streamline permitting for pellet mills and review environmental and public safety rules that “impose unnecessary burdens on this emerging industry.”

For Owen, talking during a meeting ahead of the vote, the rationale behind expanding pellet manufacturing is simple: “We have a lot of trees in Louisiana, and north of Bunkie, that’s about all we have,” he said, referring to a town in central Louisiana. “There’s a market craving wood pellets, and I think we should get further into it.” 

But when a fellow legislator asked him to describe one of the mills and “what exactly it produces,” Owen admitted he was only vaguely familiar with it. “I do not know a lot about it,” he said. “No, sir, I do not. I know they’ve had some struggle in recent years, but I know that they’re there.”

Despite that uncertainty, Louisiana’s House and Senate passed Owen’s measure unanimously. The bill is expected to be signed into law by Governor Jeff Landry, a Republican who has backed similar measures aimed at boosting industrial growth in the state. 

The British energy company Drax operates the two large pellet mills in Louisiana: one in Urania, a small town in the central part of the state, and another near Bastrop in the northeast corner. Together with a nearly identical Drax facility in Gloster, Mississippi, the mills churn out billions of wood pellets to meet demand in the United Kingdom for electricity generated by wood, what the industry markets as “sustainable biomass.” 

In the U.K. and several other European countries, wood pellets are classified as a renewable energy source, making the industry eligible for large subsidies typically given to solar and wind projects. While Drax promotes itself as a purveyor of green energy, communities in the Deep South that host the pellet mills pay a high cost from air pollution, dust and noise, said Kadin Love, a community organizer with the Dogwood Alliance, an environmental group in North Carolina opposed to wood pellet manufacturing. 

“This is an industry that doesn’t have a clean history,” Love said. “This bill opens doors to the industry that we might not be able to close.”

Drax has paid nearly $6 million in fines and settlements for hundreds of pollution violations in Louisiana and Mississippi over the past six years. Despite some facility upgrades aimed at reducing pollution, the company has continued to rack up violations.  

In Gloster, where Drax has operated the longest, several residents are suing the company over what they say is a decade of exposure to toxic chemicals, including formaldehyde, acrolein, and methanol. In the mostly Black, low-income town, about 40 miles north of the state Legislature in Baton Rouge, many people blame widespread health problems, including cancer and respiratory illnesses, on the mill’s pollutants.   

In a motion to dismiss the case, Drax’s lawyers argued that the lawsuit fails to show “particularized injury that is traceable to [the mill’s] conduct.”

When asked about Owen’s bill, Drax expressed gratitude to Louisiana lawmakers for supporting the industry but declined to address pollution concerns raised by Love and other critics. “We appreciate the engagement of lawmakers and our community partners in Louisiana,” a company spokesperson said in a statement. “We remain focused on operating responsibly and transparently, working constructively with regulators, and continuing to support jobs and economic activity in the communities where we operate across Louisiana.”

During the recent deliberations over Owen’s bill in the state House, none of the representatives mentioned concerns about pollution. Like Owen, most legislators were unfamiliar with the industry and asked only basic questions. 

“Are we talking about the wood pellets you put in the smoker, or do you build stuff with these wood pellets?” asked Representative Candace Newell, a Democrat from New Orleans. “What do they look like?”

The only expert testimony came from Scott Roe, a consultant who produced a feasibility study on pellet mills in Louisiana. Roe described pellet burning as “cleaner” than other fossil fuels and said the industry could eventually use technology that “releases nothing at all.”

“So, it’s clean-burning,” said Newell, who voted in favor of the bill. “You can’t build anything with it — just clean-burning clean energy.”

But several scientists say that’s far from the truth. Drax’s wood-fueled power station in rural England emitted more than 14 million tons of carbon dioxide in 2024, making it the largest single source of CO2 in the U.K., according to a report last year from the climate research group Ember. That amount is more than the combined emissions from the country’s six largest gas plants and more than four times the level of the U.K.’s last coal plant, which shut down in 2024. 

The most contentious discussions about the bill concerned the industry’s potential use of carbon capture and storage technology, or CCS, which allows emitters to inject carbon dioxide underground rather than release it into the atmosphere. Tax credits and other incentives are available to industries that integrate CCS into their operations, but a growing number of Louisiana legislators oppose the technology; several pending bills would restrict CCS projects amid concerns about health and safety risks at storage sites and along pipelines that transport the gas.

During the discussion over his bill in the state House, Owen sought to distance his bill from CCS, or the “C-word,” as he called it. 

Drax, however, has pledged heavy investment in CCS technology. In 2023, the company established a new office in Houston focused on pairing biomass with CCS projects across North America. “The U.S. Gulf Coast has emerged as a major hub for carbon capture and sequestration investment and technology, a key component of the company’s plans to expand clean electric generation from renewable resources,” Drax CEO Will Gardiner said at the time.

Some members of the Louisiana Legislature wanted assurances that the bill wouldn’t help Drax reach its CCS goals. Owen promised to kill his own bill if the Senate tried to insert language supporting the technology. 

“If, on the [Senate] side, they try to make it pro-carbon capture, will you pull it?” asked Representative Robby Carter, a Democrat from St. Helena Parish. 

“Pull it,” Owen responded.  

The Senate steered clear of the CCS debate and passed the bill with only a few minor wording changes on May 27.

The bill gained support largely because of its promises to boost the state’s struggling forest products sector. Several pulp and paper mills have shut down in Louisiana, leaving many small communities with few jobs and empty downtowns. Backers argued that the pellet industry could help fill that void. Low-grade pine once used for paper production can instead be made into pellets, creating a new market for Louisiana trees and potentially revitalizing the state’s forestry economy.

“What this bill is about is employing people,” Owen said during deliberations. 

But the three Drax mills each employ about 70 people, which is far fewer than the hundreds employed by many of the older mills. 

Louisiana has granted Drax generous tax breaks aimed at boosting employment. Through the state’s Industrial Tax Exemption Program, Drax has avoided paying about $75 million in property taxes that would otherwise support local school districts and local government operations, Verite News and Grist found in a review of estimates from Louisiana Economic Development. 

The industry’s growth looks uncertain as European countries are increasingly skeptical of the claim that burning wood is better for the environment than relying on other energy sources. The U.K. government recently decided the current subsidies for Drax would be cut in half next year. 

There have been other signs of trouble for the industry. Enviva, once the world’s largest wood pellet producer, filed for bankruptcy in 2024. Drax has also scaled back some of its North American expansion plans and recently shuttered its two Arkansas mills after only a few years in operation.

Love, from the Dogwood Alliance, said he was stunned that Louisiana’s legislators rushed to pass Owen’s bill unanimously despite having only a superficial understanding of the industry and without much, if any, consideration of the environmental and economic risks.

“If you’re making a state law that exclusively benefits one industry, I’d hope they’d do some homework on it,” Love said. “The fact that they’re not doing the due diligence of researching this industry is incredibly concerning.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Louisiana lawmakers rush to support an industry they ‘do not know a lot about’ on Jun 9, 2026.

If you had to pinpoint the moment that “climate hushing” began, the 2024 presidential election would be the obvious contender. After President Donald Trump beat former Vice President Kamala Harris in all seven swing states, Democrats were left scrambling to figure out where they went wrong. One popular theory was that they were too busy harping on social justice and planetary problems at the expense of everyday concerns voters cared more about, like the rising cost of living. Whitehouse, however, sees global warming as a piece of that conversation, rather than a distraction from it.

“Climate change is right now raising costs for families across the country through higher property insurance premiums, grocery and electric bills, and health care expenses,” Whitehouse said in a statement to Grist.

The idea that talking about climate change is a liability for Democrats has become conventional wisdom. Last year, the Democrat-aligned think tank Searchlight Institute issued the advice “Don’t say climate change.” A recent op-ed in The New York Times concluded, “When it comes to climate change, for now, it might be better to say nothing at all.” An early draft of the Democratic National Committee’s autopsy report of the 2024 election, released under pressure in May, posited that messages about climate change and shifting to green energy “created anxiety among workers in traditional industries worried about job losses.”

“It’s very zeitgeisty to assume right now that it’s really important not to talk about climate, or that Democrats have paid a political cost for talking about climate,” said Matto Mildenberger, a professor of political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. But there’s no hard evidence that discussing climate change hurts Democrats in elections, Mildenberger and other experts told Grist. If anything, it rewards candidates with a modest boost among voters, studies and surveys show. 

The basis for thinking that Democrats should avoid the subject comes from polls asking voters about their top priorities: Climate change ranks number 24 out of 25 when Americans are asked which issues will be very important to their vote, according to data from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication last year. That’s mainly because other concerns have risen in importance, with liberal Democrats more concerned about things like protecting democracy, government corruption, and the treatment of immigrants than before the 2024 election. It’s a logical leap, however, to assume that talking about climate change is a political liability simply because voters don’t name it as one of their top issues.

Some commentators argue that you can achieve climate action just by getting Democrats elected, regardless of whether they’re bringing it up. But deemphasizing climate change as part of their political platform could have long-term consequences: Without real discussion of it, you lose momentum for action and send a signal that it’s not important. “You actually need to have conversation and attention to an issue to slowly build the coalition and policy work necessary to address it,” Mildenberger said.

In effect, Democrats are ceding rhetorical ground to their opponents, he argues, even as polling shows that Trump’s agenda — blocking the construction of wind farms, scrubbing public information about global warming from government websites, and pulling the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement — is broadly unpopular. “All of this is, frankly, doing the service of the fossil fuel industry, ultimately, because it’s helping climate delay,” Mildenberger said.  

Whitehouse has argued that Democrats are “poll-chasing,” parroting what voters say they want to hear with bland, backward-looking messages. “Many Americans don’t believe Democrats are fighters,” Whitehouse said. “The best way to shed that label is to actually step into the arena and fight. Our climate messaging has long been terrible, but it would be malpractice to shy away from a fight with Central Casting villains (the fossil fuel industry climate denial fraud and dark money corruption operations) with such high stakes for the economic well-being of American families.” As people in the U.S. struggle with rising costs and surging gas prices, oil giants are raking in billions from the Iran war, a dissonance that Democrats could tap into.

Matt Burgess, an economist at the University of Wyoming who studies how to find common ground on the environment, agrees with the broader sentiment that Democrats alienated voters on cultural issues and lost sight of concerns around affordability, and that progressive messaging about climate change was a piece of that. But he said it’s wrong to assume that climate change is a losing issue. “There are lots of different lines of evidence that suggest that climate change as an issue overall helps the Democrats and hurts Republicans,” Burgess said. A study he co-authored in 2024 found that in a hypothetical world in which climate change hadn’t been an issue in the 2020 election, Republicans could have gained somewhere around a 3-percent swing in the popular vote, enough to hand the White House to Trump instead of Joe Biden.

“If you have any issue that moves the needle a little bit in your favor in a super-close election, it can make the difference between winning and losing,” Burgess said.

Exit polling suggests there’s little reason to believe that climate change was a problem for Democrats in 2024, as opposed to other issues playing a larger role. Swing voters considered “U.S. efforts to fight climate change” a reason to support Harris over Trump by 21 points, according to a survey of 5,000 voters from Navigator Research just before and after the election. Trump won by large margins on inflation, the economy, and immigration — concerns that were top-of-mind for voters. “The very simple version is, Trump winning those voters won the election,” said Bryan Bennett, who runs the independent consulting practice Loft Beck Strategies, advising Democrats and progressives, and who directed the post-election survey in his previous role at Navigator. 

Harris, in other words, didn’t lose because she mentioned climate change a few times, or even because Democrats passed climate policies under the Biden administration. Federal investments in infrastructure and manufacturing projects were, on a county level, linked to a very small improvement in the vote share for Harris, an analysis from the Center for American Progress found. If anything, the problem was that voters didn’t know enough about the federal government’s involvement to give the administration credit.

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Even if climate change is not an electoral problem for Democrats, they might have other reasons for staying quiet about it. The media ecosystem now is fractured, with many people getting their news from TikTok, YouTube, and podcasts as opposed to traditional news sources, meaning that it’s harder than ever for politicians to make their preferred narrative heard, Bennett said. In recent years, the Democratic Party has gotten more serious about “message discipline,” the practice of sticking with a central message, to try to cut through the noise.

“So much of the oxygen in the room is taken up by, ‘How do Democrats deal with, and how do progressives deal with, talking about the economy in a way that really meets voters where they are?’” Bennett said. “And I think that inherently detracts from basically every other issue, regardless of whether it’s a good thing to talk about or not.”

The Democratic politicians who are still mentioning climate change have tended to do so indirectly, arguing that clean energy is “cheap energy” and tying it to rising electricity bills. Polling suggests that voters have an appetite for more: Last fall, 41 percent of those surveyed by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication said they wanted political candidates to talk about efforts to reduce global warming more often, almost double the number who wanted to hear about it less. The trend of climate-hushing could stem from a misperception: Studies show that politicians and the public at large tend to vastly underestimate Americans’ appetite for taking action on climate change, from carbon taxes to expanding renewable energy. 

“We have this tension where, I think, empirically, talking about climate change provides a net benefit. It’s a very small net benefit, but it is a net benefit,” Mildenberger said. “But we have a discourse that somehow says that it’s this massive cost.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Why are so many Democrats going quiet on climate change? on Jun 8, 2026.

Tucked on farmland at the southern edge of Traverse City, Michigan, one program wants to solve some of these problems by letting aspiring farmers learn by doing.

The Great Lakes Incubator Farm attracts students from all over the country. Over the course of seven months, a three-student cohort learns about topics like pest management, how to drive a tractor, and what to include in a farm business plan.

“Nobody gets into farming for sane reasons, other than the sanity of knowing where your food comes from and just general health,” said Rachel Greenberg, a 33-year-old student farmer from Indianapolis. “The challenges are pretty never-ending.”

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Farm bankruptcies were up 46 percent last year, according to a National Farm Bureau report. As land prices have risen due to demand from developers, more than 50,000 acres of farmland have been lost in the last two decades, research has found.

Despite the headwinds, the student farmers said they’re driven by wanting to know where their food comes from, to contribute to local communities, and to teach others to do the same.

The farm training program — a project of the Grand Traverse Conservation District — has fewer economic pressures than running a farm business, Greenberg said. The fruits and vegetables that students grow will go to local residents who have already committed to buying the season’s produce, and leftovers will be donated to food-rescue operations. Unlike a traditional business, the goal isn’t to make a profit.

“The whole incubator idea is something you see a lot in the world of entrepreneurship, and it’s beautiful that somebody saw that and was like, ‘Why don’t we just do that with farming?’” Greenberg said.

Troy Saruna, 28, said at a time when climate change is driving more severe weather, he wants to better understand his impact on the natural world. Saruna worked in conservation around the country prior to the program and has no farming experience.

The training program focuses on teaching regenerative agriculture, a method of farming that focuses on soil health and reduces the amount of heat-trapping gases released into the atmosphere.

“Our food systems are just so inextricably tied to the health of the planet,” Saruna said. “I’m just really interested in striking up a new balance where I can understand, interpret, and just develop some new instincts in terms of feeding myself and having thriving communities that also support wildlife.”

Farmers with some experience also find the program helpful to more deeply develop their skills. Shanaya Holmes, 49, runs a small 4-acre farm in Alabama.

She’s looking to learn how to grow food in a different climate than the South and to improve her record-keeping — tracking what’s been planted, what soil was used, or how much money was spent on equipment.

“It’s a challenge to switch that button off to come inside and do bookwork, bookwork, bookwork when you’re so used to outside, outside, outside,” she said.

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Adam Brown, the farm’s manager and instructor, said the farmer training program is meant to be a stepping stone.

“It’s really built for anybody who can then filter out and work anywhere in the food system, either manage a farm, start their own business, or any rung of that ladder where people can just help out in the food system,” Brown said.

Brown, whose background is in ecology, wouldn’t have pursued farming himself if it wasn’t for a similar training program he did 15 years ago on the West Coast. 

“I can pay it forward, my lessons, and all the wisdom that I learned throughout my years of farming, and be a mentor to these other people, and I feel like it’s super important,” he said.

The training program, now in its second year, is one of the only of its kind in northern Michigan, according to data from Michigan State University. Around the country, there are roughly 100 similar programs, according to a group at Tufts University that coordinates a national network of training farms, though no comprehensive list exists.

The Great Lakes Incubator Farm relies mostly on a nearly $700,000 federal grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture aimed at supporting beginner farmers. That grant ends after the harvest season in October. Brown plans to reapply for USDA funding again this year but said he’s looking for backup options because of how competitive the grant program is.

In 2025, the USDA canceled $148 million in grants — including some in the beginner farmer program — to comply with President Donald Trump’s early executive orders targeting climate action, environmental justice, and diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Brown said that besides the USDA grant, there aren’t many large pools of money available that support efforts to train the next generation of farmers. (The Great Lakes Incubator Farm is also supported by some state grants.)

Lack of consistent funding is a big reason there aren’t more of these training programs, said Jon LaPorte, a farm business management educator for Michigan State University Extension, which put together a beginner farmer’s guide in partnership with the USDA last year.

“It’s almost like a double-edged sword that they’re trying to help people get started, but then they’ve got the same struggles of staying sustainable themselves,” he said.

That means even as the share of young people in farming grows, programs to support them might be harder to come by, LaPorte said. In Michigan, farmers under the age of 45 increased by about 20 percent between 2017 and 2022, according to the USDA’s census. Sustaining that growth will be a challenge, he said.

“Because of those hurdles, they don’t all stay in, and what we want to see is more of those people being able to stay in, having more farms, more diversity of farms,” LaPorte said. “More people involved in agriculture at that level is really, really important.”

Brown, the farm manager, said students in his training program learn that the growing season doesn’t always go smoothly — and challenges, like frost damage on plants, are just part of the job.

“This is a great space for failure too, right? Because there’s not a whole lot of risk here,” he said. “It’s a perfect, experimental type of atmosphere.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Becoming a farmer is hard. This Michigan program wants to help. on Jun 8, 2026.

“Today, we’re taking historic action to bring down the price of energy and the cost of living for all Americans with the power of clean, beautiful coal,” he said at a press conference on Thursday.

Trump is using the Defense Production Act, a Cold War-era statute used to accelerate American industrial output in times of national need, to provide grants to more than a dozen existing coal plants across the U.S., including facilities capable of exporting coal.

“As a result of the $700 million investment that I’m announcing today, we will protect 14 coal plants and 42 coalmines, a tremendous number, and build two new coal plants and one massive new export terminal,” Trump said.

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The funds will be used to bring a new coal export terminal online in Oakland, California, and to restart an existing facility in Maryland.

They will also keep online plants across 10 states: West Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Indiana, Tennessee, Arkansas, Arizona, Oklahoma, North Dakota, and Wisconsin. Each of those 10 states voted for Trump, the president boasted on Thursday. “We won them all,” he said.

The two new coal plants will be in Alaska and West Virginia.

Trump has long been a champion of reviving the United States’ ailing coal industry. Thursday’s White House event featured supportive governors and lawmakers from coal-rich states such as Wyoming and West Virginia.

In the past year, the Trump administration has doled out hundreds of millions of dollars to the coal industry, signed orders forcing ratepayers to pay extra for aging plants to stay open, and dismantled environmental rules that limit toxins from coal leaching into Americans’ shared air and water.

The administration’s attempts to provide a cuddly rebranding to coal have even extended to creating a new mascot with giant eyes, called Coalie, and gushing social media posts that include an image of a lump of coal wearing sunglasses as if it were on the TV show Love Island.

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“You’re not allowed to say ‘coal’ within the Trump administration unless it’s preceded by the words ‘clean, beautiful,’” Trump said on Thursday. “Complicates our life, but it’s good.”

Regardless of such terminology, coal is not clean. It is the most carbon-dense fossil fuel and therefore a leading cause of the climate crisis when burned. Coal also gives off tiny toxic particles that sicken miners and trigger widespread respiratory and heart health problems across the U.S. — research has estimated that as many as 460,000 deaths in the U.S. from 1999 to 2020 were attributable to air pollution from coal plants alone.

Environmental groups strongly criticized the administration’s latest aid for coal. “It is disgusting and reprehensible that the president of the United States is giving away our taxpayer dollars to deadly and expensive coal plants that will make Americans sicker and drive up electricity prices even more,” said Patrick Drupp, climate policy director of the Sierra Club.

“This handout betrays everything Donald Trump promised and only serves his big coal buddies who stroke his ego and hand him shiny trophies.”

Though Trump on Thursday claimed that his pro-coal actions will lower energy bills and that wind power is “the most expensive energy,” experts say coal plants are more expensive to build and operate than renewable power sources.

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Trump’s attempts to revive the coal industry, while at the same time seeking to stymie the rapid growth of clean energy such as solar and wind, have so far floundered. The number of people working in coal has declined by more than 90 percent in the past century, with more people now working in Waffle Houses across the U.S. than in coal.

U.S. coal production is currently less than half of what it was in 2008, with coal recently declining as both a fuel for electricity and as an input for manufacturing materials such as iron and steel. Cheap, abundant gas has helped displace coal from power grids, with even cheaper renewable energy also now taking off in the U.S. despite the administration’s efforts to kill it off.

“What’s next, a taxpayer bailout to build new phone booths?” said Kit Kennedy, a senior climate campaigner at the Natural Resources Defense Council, of the new round of support for coal. “This is going to mean higher bills and dirtier air. What a waste.

“Propping up coal billionaires with taxpayer money is one more way for the Trump administration to put polluters first and put the rest of us at risk.”

The coal industry applauded Trump’s new order, arguing that ramped-up coal production will help the U.S. meet a historic spike in electricity demand caused by the surging artificial intelligence sector.

“Coal generation shields consumers from the impacts of volatile energy prices and supply challenges,” said Rich Nolan, chief executive of the National Mining Association.

The Environmental Protection Agency also announced plans to change an Obama-era emissions reductions plan that would have shuttered the Dave Johnston Unit 3 power plant in Wyoming.

Trump railed against Obama and Joe Biden for working to scale back coal power.

“Under four years of Sleepy Joe Biden and the radical left Democrats in Congress, not a single permit was approved for a new coal mining project, but in over one year of our administration, we’ve already approved 76 permits for clean, beautiful coal,” Trump said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump uses wartime powers to dole out $700 million to ‘clean, beautiful’ coal on Jun 7, 2026.

More than 100 parcels included in a June 16 lease sale by the Bureau of Land Management encompass elk, pronghorn, and mule deer migration corridors that extend into southern Wyoming. Many sit in Moffat County, which bills itself as the “Elk Hunting Capital of the World” and relies on the pastime in part for its economic stability.

About two-thirds of the acreage in the 156,000-acre lease sale is just south of Dinosaur National Monument, a remote park that’s among the country’s over 40 certified International Dark Sky Places — areas with exceptionally dark night skies. Tourism officials in Moffat, who saw inquiries drop by more than half this spring, voiced concern that bright lights and truck traffic that accompany fossil fuel extraction could imperil this hard-won designation.

“Things like that could put that status in jeopardy,” said Tom Kleinschnitz, the county’s director of tourism. “In the long run, I think it’s important to keep these areas as pristine as possible.”

The record June lease sale contradicts the Bureau of Land Management’s stated strategy for the national monument, as well as the 2024 amendments to area plans for northwestern Colorado that strengthened habitat protections for ungulates like elk and deer and at-risk birds such as the Gunnison sage-grouse.

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Risks to big game and Dinosaur National Park are just a few examples of what’s at stake for the environment, the economy, and public health. A 2,360-line spreadsheet compiled by Denver-based nonprofit Rocky Mountain Wild enumerates 17 rare plants and endangered species whose habitat could be imperiled by fossil fuel exploration and extraction. 

These include the black-footed ferret, wolverine, boreal toad, and Colorado pikeminnow, and threatened plants such as the Colorado hookless cactus and Parachute penstemon. The lease sale includes acreage relied upon by other species such as the Columbian sharp-tailed grouse, greater sage-grouse, ferruginous hawk, and swift fox — all identified by state wildlife officers as being of special concern.

The June event is one of four large lease sales in Colorado since Congress passed and President Donald Trump signed a bill in 2025 that included provisions to encourage drilling on the nation’s public lands. This agenda lies in stark contrast to the pattern of leasing activity during President Joe Biden’s term — with just six sales in Colorado during his four years in office. Just several hundred acres were offered during that period.

The 2025  H.R. 1 legislation prioritized fossil fuel extraction over other uses such as recreation and conservation; mandated that federal officials hold a minimum of four lease sales each fiscal year in Alaska, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Nevada, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wyoming; shortened public comment times; and reduced the discretion land managers hold over whether to offer acreage for lease or not.

The law also decreased oil and gas royalty rates, making it cheaper to extract fossil fuels on public lands and reducing the share of profits from such natural resources to taxpayers. Colorado alone could lose $148 million in revenue from future production from about 81,000 acres that sold in 2026, according to an analysis by Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan watchdog organization.

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The push to lease tens of thousands of acres to oil and gas companies comes as bipartisan polling conducted as part of Colorado College’s State of the Rockies Project found a majority of voters in eight Western states want their congressional representatives to prioritize conservation over energy development on public lands.

About 21 million acres of public lands overseen by the Bureau of Land Management are leased for oil and gas development already, according to fiscal 2025 statistics on the agency’s website. Only 12 million of those acres are actually producing fossil fuels. 

This discrepancy underscores a concern of conservation groups that during the decade that energy companies hold federal oil and gas leases, the parcels by law cannot be managed for other uses such as sensitive habitat, wilderness character, or recreation.

“Folks need to understand the long-term impacts of a rush to lease so much public land,” said Peter Hart, legal director of the Wilderness Workshop, which works to conserve wildlife and the wilderness. 

“Once those leases are issued they are very hard to get rid of — they stay on the land for a long time, even if they aren’t developed.”

In response to issues raised in a 106-page comment letter filed March 13 by the Wilderness Workshop and 17 other organizations, the Bureau of Land Management wrote in an environmental assessment that it would conduct additional site-specific analysis of each parcel in the Colorado sale if a company files for a drilling permit. 

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The agency also pointed out repeatedly in its 646-page report that “risks are reduced through the careful review of drilling and completion plans for proposed wells by both the BLM” and Colorado’s Energy and Carbon Management Commission.

Federal officials removed four parcels and reduced a fifth, for a total of about 4,800 acres, from the initial sale offering, citing a recent decision by the Interior Board of Land Appeals. These parcels included habitat for the greater sage-grouse and Columbian sharp-tailed grouse as well as high priority habitat for big game. Numerous other parcels with similar characteristics remain in the sale.

The environmental assessment also noted that agency officials would apply stipulations to leases issued for sensitive parcels aimed at protecting animals, plants, cultural resources, and fish.

Even so, conservation groups that closely monitor what’s at stake in oil and gas lease sales said that federal land managers have significantly less leeway at the permitting stage to move oil and gas operations, add conditions of approval, or to cancel a lease altogether. Together with these limitations is an inability for these officials to remove parcels that were deferred from past sales because they included habitat for sensitive species.

“During the first Trump administration, there was a sale that was initially proposed to be much larger than this and the state Bureau of Land Management was able to use its discretion to defer parcels that were inappropriate because of greater sage-grouse conflicts,” said Alison Gallensky, a conservation geographer at Rocky Mountain Wild.

“Now, they are being forced to offer a much larger sale than that one turned out to be,” she added.

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Greater sage-grouse are very sensitive to oil and gas infrastructure — even if it’s moved farther away from their habitat — and intuitively sense a winged predator could land on such equipment. They won’t breed if they feel that they are in danger, Gallensky said.

In addition, provisions developed to protect the birds listed in the environmental analysis for the June lease sale, such as requiring an oil and gas company to build a pad farther away from nesting locations, relies on operators to follow through — something that the federal government isn’t always staffed to monitor, she said.

Acreage included in the June sale also marks the continuation of a trend that began with last year’s federal oil and gas lease sales in Colorado. Typically, such sales offer public lands to energy companies in more remote parts of the state. 

Yet in September, the agency leased a parcel near the Aurora Reservoir, which is bordered by a densely populated Denver suburb, for about $5.6 million. The acreage is part of the Lowry Ranch Comprehensive Area Plan — a more than 150-well project approved by state regulators and strongly opposed by nearby residents.

Many of the more than 340 individual comments the agency received for the June sale urged the agency not to lease similar parcels near the reservoir. Residents and conservation groups wrote that emissions from oil and gas development on this acreage would worsen pollution in an area that’s already out of compliance with federal air quality rules.

In addition, the agency estimated in its analysis for the June sale that several parcels listed in Weld County, home to the state’s largest and most productive oil field, could result in up to 150 wells. Emissions from these wells would worsen smog in a region that already fails to meet national standards, conservation groups wrote.

“BLM’s implication that this lease sale ‘would result in no emission increase’ or that emissions are not reasonably foreseeable enough to perform a conformity determination are thus entirely baseless,” said numerous organizations in the March 13 comment letter to the agency.

Federal officials responded in the environmental analysis that the agency would conduct a “project-specific emissions inventory” if companies file for drilling permits on the parcels after leasing them. Permit requests would include details such as how many wells are proposed, a drilling and completion schedule, and a list of the equipment to be used, allowing the agency to conduct a more thorough analysis, officials wrote.

In Moffat County, on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains where much of the acreage in the June oil and gas lease sale is concentrated, community representatives noted a need to balance pollution and environmental concerns with the economic reality that rising grocery and gas prices are hitting rural areas hard. Some residents in this sparsely populated region, where 80 percent of voters cast ballots for Trump in 2024, rely in part on royalties from drilling to make ends meet, said Kleinschnitz, the county’s director of tourism.

“Many people in outfitting have agricultural businesses, and hunting is incredibly important to keeping people on those landscapes,” he said. “And some of them make royalties from oil and gas and have benefited greatly from having those.”

Copyright Capital & Main 2026

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Federal agency to open tens of thousands of acres of Colorado wilderness to oil drilling  on Jun 6, 2026.

That alone should encourage elected officials to build as many of them as possible. But a new report finds another, potentially even more motivating, factor for American cities: For every dollar invested in parks and recreation, communities reap $3 in local economic benefits each year. “You really do get so much goodness out of them,” said Will Klein, director of parks research at the Trust for Public Land, which produced the report. “People are healthier, people connect with each other. They drive business activity, especially for small businesses.”

Parks aren’t as much about land as they are about people. In an increasingly commodified world, they’re one of the few remaining public places where folks can roam without the pressure of spending money. That makes them a critical kind of “third place,” somewhere to gather beyond the workplace and the home. Whereas people must pay a premium to use a gym, they can use a park or rec center for free.

This brings huge benefits, and cost savings, to public health. The new report notes that the United States spends $5.3 trillion annually on health care. Physical inactivity, which greatly increases the risk of chronic problems like cardiovascular disease, costs the country more than $200 billion a year. “Our polling this year showed that the most popular place in America in 2025 to run around and play and exercise are parks and public spaces, much more popular than private gyms,” Klein said. “That physical activity has real health and economic benefits, about $2,000 per person in health care savings each year.”

Parks boost mental health as well. Simply being among greenery boosts positive well-being, research has shown. Parks also foster social interaction and reduce loneliness, which is a public health crisis of its own. This kind of commerce-free third place is especially important for the elderly, who may be living on fixed incomes and can’t afford to frequent cafes and the like. “There’s movie nights in the park, concerts in the park,” Klein said. “Just playing on the playground, talking to neighbors, having barbecues — all that stuff allows people to afford that higher quality of life.”

Even though they exist outside of the frenzy of capitalism, parks provide major economic value. The crowds they attract, for example, filter into surrounding neighborhoods, buying food and drinks for picnics or perusing mom-and-pop shops and boutiques. Famous green spaces — New York City’s Central Park, Chicago’s Millennium Park, San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park and newly minted Sunset Dunes — attract tourists, too. The Trust for Public Land says that the Florida Gulf Coast Trail, the 420-mile greenway it’s helping develop, will bring $200 million in economic activity in Sarasota County alone by attracting bicyclists and other recreationists.

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Even if you own a home near a park but never visit it, you’re benefiting economically in a way. “People want to live near green spaces,” Klein said. “So you see increased property values, which supports a broader tax base, which can be reinvested into community benefits through the increased property tax revenue.”

The trick is ensuring everyone — not just those who can afford condos and single-family homes — can enjoy the aura of these jewels. While new housing developments might seem at odds with green spaces, the two can exist in harmony. Even if they’re crammed into the densest of cities, affordable complexes can incorporate pocket gardens, which have the added benefit of reducing increasingly unbearable urban temperatures. Some developers are even building communities around working farms, known as agrihoods, which bring yet another benefit of local food production.

Any additional green space will also help cities adapt to one of the stranger consequences of climate change: It’s raining a lot harder. City sewer systems were designed to handle the rainstorms of old, but are overwhelmed by the additional water falling today. By soaking up some of that liquid, parks help save money in two ways: They reduce the amount of water that a city has to pay to manage, and they help prevent the surrounding neighborhood from flooding, avoiding property damage. 

More so than ever before, then, the humble green space is a surprisingly powerful way to solve a bunch of problems at once — improving mental health, helping cities adapt to climate change, and supercharging economic activity. “Parks,” Klein said, “are actually one of these solutions hiding under the feet of all these local leaders.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Your local park is bringing in the green (and by that, we mean money) on Jun 5, 2026.

Just a few steps in, they came across an aging yellow birch tree covered in moss.

But it wasn’t just moss. James Hollinger, a retired computer scientist turned amateur lichen scientist, leaned closer and spotted a rare, spongy lichen that has been documented about a dozen times in the park. As far as he knows, it does not appear in any botanical guidebooks.

“So, we could, right here right now, come up with a common name for it,” Hollinger said excitedly, as fellow volunteer and lichenologist Laura Boggess unfolded her magnifying lens. Counting carefully, she found more than 17 other moss and lichen species on just one side of the tree. 

Every square foot of the Smokies teems with life that most visitors never notice: lichens clinging to bark, fungi hidden in fallen logs, and salamanders darting beneath damp leaves. Scientists and volunteers say paying attention to those small creatures — and returning often enough to notice when they change — has grown increasingly urgent as climate change alters the park’s ecosystems and federal agencies see deep cuts that threaten long-term monitoring and biodiversity research.

Hollinger, Boggess, and the others in the group call themselves the Gang of Retirees in Search of Life’s Diversity, or “GRISLD.” Not all are retired — Boggess is beginning a teaching job at Warren Wilson College in the fall — but they share a habit of spending hours moving deliberately through remote corners of the park, documenting species few people will ever see. Connected through a listserv and their keen interest in the Smokies’ rich biodiversity, the group quietly contributes to a long-running project called the all taxa biodiversity inventory, or ATBI, conducted in partnership with the park. 

“We’ll hike into these places that other researchers don’t have the resources, the funding to,” Hollinger said. “We watch all these things and keep an eye on how things are changing.”

The Smokies project is one of the oldest and longest-running all taxa biodiversity inventories in the country, one of several decades-long efforts to document biodiversity in dozens of ecological hotspots around the world. That work has taken on increasing urgency in the Great Smoky Mountains, the most biodiverse site in the national park system and a global hotspot for salamanders, fungi, mosses, and other less-studied forms of life.

The mountains’ varied elevations and countless microclimates may help some species survive a warming world by providing pockets of cooler habitat. But climate change is also reshaping the park in visible ways, from an increase in invasive insects and dying trees to more frequent floods, fires, and violent storms. The inventory is conducted with the park and managed by the nonprofit Discover Life in America, where Will Kuhn — one of the hikers threading through the wet forest that morning — leads scientific research.

“We’re up to over 22,000 species of everything that has been documented here in the Smokies,” Kuhn said. More than 1,000 of them documented since 1998 are new to science, a number believed to just scratch the surface.  “That is maybe a third to a quarter of the actual diversity here.” 

Finding a new species might seem like a rare joy, but it happens regularly, Kuhn says. Larger, charismatic species are well documented, but little ones, such as mites, mosses, and microscopic plankton-like rotifers are often understudied.

Much of the park’s biodiversity data is collected during spring and summer, when academic researchers tend to visit, Kuhn said. Volunteers are there year-round, however, tracking species that are active in colder months or, like many birds, pass through while migrating. “The park’s really known during that time of the year, but what about the things that are off-period?” Hollinger said, turning over a log as a red-cheeked salamander scampered into the wet leaves. 

Although the Park Service grants permits to academic researchers, its relationships with local nonprofits and tourism-dependent communities allow it to support ecological work it cannot manage on its own. Those organizations can also raise money in times of need, in one recent case helping to keep the park open while salaries were on pause during the 2025 government shutdown. 

“Ultimately, we’re able to spend money on things that benefit the park but that a federal agency just can’t do,” Kuhn said.

Retired biologist Paul Super coordinated research in the park for over two decades. He’s interested in lichens, mosses, insects, and other small creatures in part because of the way they hold moisture, keeping the mountain cool and foggy. If they die, the water cycle will change. 

“Regulating the moisture in these high elevation areas is pretty important because we’re at the top of the watershed, and everybody’s drinking water is downhill from here,” Super said.

In the decades he’s spent in the park, he’s seen long-term changes unfold. Warming temperatures are rippling through the food chain, making way for invasive parasites like the woolly adelgid. The tiny insect, which is native to Asia, has infested and killed thousands of the park’s hemlocks, a towering tree sometimes called the “redwood of the East.” Other pests have attacked Fraser firs, elms, and white and green ash trees that keep streams cool for temperature-sensitive aquatic species like the beloved brook trout.

The high-elevation ecosystems of the Smokies are “sky islands” –  isolated pockets of unique species that depend upon cooler, wetter conditions. When the climate warms, there’s nowhere else to go. Some may disappear before anyone even knows they’re there.

To Super, logging these species is about noticing the minute, day-to-day, month-to-month, year-to-year changes that become earth-shattering over time. “The visitor coming here for a day or a week is not going to notice things and know that this is not what it used to be,” he said.

Laura Boggess was born and raised in western North Carolina and drawn to science through a lifetime love of climbing the region’s remote cliffs. She considers these data-gathering trips a critical way to monitor the changing climate from the ground up. “The small ways, the paying attention, the naming of a species, which isn’t a small thing, but it’s like an accumulation of small, cooperative creation,” she said. “It is even more important as we enter into even more rapid change.”

There is so much to see in the park that it took the volunteers about two hours to go half a mile. Even as they left the trail and returned to the road, they found a rare parasitic fungus. The magnifying glass came out, and everyone slowly leaned in for a good look.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In the Smoky Mountains, a volunteer effort aims to document every species — before it’s too late on Jun 5, 2026.

Tests later confirmed her hunch. Bovine DNA had infiltrated drinking water supplies in rural Loganton, Pennsylvania — contamination her lawyers linked to Nicholas Meat and its practice of spreading liquefied animal waste on nearby fields.

That may not have surprised many of Leigey’s neighbors. Most of them were well aware of the desiccated animal parts occasionally strewn across local roads. Not many gave a second thought to trucks spraying a cocktail of blood, urine, water, and other slaughterhouse refuse over local farmland. But few wanted to accuse the company of wrongdoing, given that it employs over 425 people — about as many people in all of Loganton — and by some estimates processes 10 percent of the state’s beef.

Leigey, a single mother who works three jobs, decided she had to speak up, for herself, her family, and her neighbors. “I just want a simple life,” she said. “I don’t feel like I should have to be emotionally, mentally, financially, and physically exhausted because some millionaire wants to dump blood on fields because it’s a cheap way to dispose of it. It’s not right.”

A jury agreed and in December held the company liable for causing a nuisance and trespassing on neighboring properties by fouling their air and water. Leigey and three others who joined her in suing Nicholas Meat were awarded $145,000, a surprising victory in a state where lenient right-to-farm laws make such cases difficult to win.

Still, the verdict is not expected to change how operations like Nicholas Meat do business. There’s no compelling reason for them to.

Nicholas Meat is much smaller than giants like Tyson Foods, but it’s a big player in central Pennsylvania. What started in 1987 as a family business handling a couple dozen cattle each day bloomed over the decades into one of the county’s largest private employers. It slaughters about 1,000 cattle each day, according to the lawsuit, and has been the biggest business in a town so small it doesn’t have a traffic light. That makes the case against Nicholas Meat more than a neighborhood dispute. It illustrates how the economic pressures of industrial meat production can push environmental risks onto surrounding communities.

Across the state, waste from slaughterhouses, farms, and the like is routinely spread on fields as fertilizer. Spreading these “food processing residuals,” as the mixture is known, is legal, lightly regulated, and cheaper than transporting and treating the waste elsewhere. At least 900 farms and food-processing operations across the state participate in it. Many farms are eager to receive the waste as a more affordable way of fertilizing fields. “There is a place for it, especially as a replacement for synthetic fertilizers,” said Michael Kovach, president of the Pennsylvania Farmers Union.

The problem is scale. A small butcher, like the one Kovach works with, might kill and package a few dozen animals a day. Slaughterhouses handling hundreds or thousands generate waste at an entirely different level. The lawsuit estimated that Nicholas Meat produces at least 200,000 gallons a day, with the capacity to store 1 million gallons on-site and another 4.3 million elsewhere. Aside from mixing and aerating the slop, there is no treatment before disposal — something the state Department of Environmental Protection, or DEP, said is typical.

An aerial view of Nicholas Meats, as seen in 2005 and 2026, shows the operation’s growth. Google Earth / Grist

Nicholas Meat, which supplies supermarket chains like Giant and fast-food restaurants like Burger King, spreads and injects its waste on fields that Eugene Nicholas and his son, Doug, own or lease in Clinton County and across the county line in places like Antes Fort. Since the state considers it fertilizer, there is little oversight on how food processing residuals are applied.

“There’s nowhere that there’s a law or a regulation involved with the type of farming that we do,” Eugene Nicholas said during the trial. His son, Doug, now largely oversees the Loganton slaughterhouse. The Nicholases and their attorneys did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Pennsylvania does not require a permit to spread food processing residuals, which includes everything from potato skins and dairy waste to slaughterhouse remains. The practice is governed by guidelines published in 1994. They do little more than require farmers to outline details like how much could be used for various crops, and warn people not to dump it near waterways or drinking water sources. 

Regulators investigate complaints of unbearable odors or polluted runoff, but DEP records dating to 2013 show people near the slaughterhouse would often wait days for a response. “There is really no oversight by anyone except residents,” said Angela Harding, a Clinton County commissioner who represents the area. “We don’t necessarily know what the long-term ramifications of this process will be.”

The lawsuit states that Nicholas Meat began spraying its waste on fields after it reopened in 2010 after a fire. It estimated that it sprays 10 million to 13 million gallons of waste over “hundreds” of acres annually. Reports from a Clinton County Conservation District employee presented during the trial revealed that the company was “way over applying blood” to farmland and the practice was “continuous for 8-10 hours a day.” One farmer quoted in a report said he couldn’t drive a tractor on his fields because they were saturated with waste. Evidence presented during the trial showed the company sprayed on barren, wet, and even snowy fields, creating the risk of runoff that could pollute other locations.

Local geography and geology add to that danger, particularly for those who depend upon wells. Springs and sinkholes are common in central Pennsylvania, and the cracks and channels in the rocky soil make it easier for contaminants to flow into aquifers and wells, said Brandon Fleming, a groundwater specialist with the U.S. Geological Survey Pennsylvania Water Science Center. He was not involved in the trial.

A 2017 U.S. Geological Survey assessment of Clinton County groundwater, conducted to establish baseline conditions ahead of potential fracking, found that more than half of 54 private wells, including Leigey’s, contained fecal bacteria, including E. coli, which appeared in about 25 percent of them. The study did not determine the source of the contamination. But evidence and testimony presented at the trial revealed that Nicholas Meat knew sinkholes dotted the fields where it sprayed and injected waste. That bloody mixture would have flowed into them and could contaminate groundwater, a groundwater expert testified.

Bovine DNA from blood or tissue, along with human fecal markers, also were detected in water samples taken from three homes near disposal sites in Sugar Valley as part of the legal case against Nicholas. Such pollutants can cause gastrointestinal illnesses resembling food poisoning, including diarrhea and severe abdominal cramps.

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Meat processing waste can expose people to viruses, bacteria, parasites, and chemicals associated with health risks ranging from gastrointestinal illness to methemoglobinemia (sometimes called blue baby syndrome) and cancer. The threat can be compounded by cleaning agents and antimicrobial drugs often found in such refuse, said Christopher Heaney, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who was not involved in the trial.

Even exposure to airborne particles can cause or exacerbate respiratory problems like asthma, while persistent noxious odors — which Leanna Rockey, a retired nurse who sued the slaughterhouse alongside Leigey, described as “rotting flesh and blood” — can also lead to high blood pressure, stress, and other psychological impacts.

For those living near one of these sites, those impacts are part of daily life.

Leigey said her youngest daughter, Alaina, who is now 15, suffered debilitating headaches from the stench, something her neighbors described as often inescapable. It could get so bad that they’d seal themselves indoors despite the summer heat. Many neighbors stopped hanging their clothes out to dry years ago. For Rockey, it has meant investing in a water cooler and regularly hauling clothes to the laundromat so they aren’t stained by fouled water.

“We still don’t drink our water,” Rockey said. “I never dreamt in a million years my little piece of heaven would be turned into a dumping ground.”

The two-week trial lasted longer than most cases heard in Clinton County, which has just two judges. Craig P. Miller, who presided over the case, joked about Nicholas’ “team of 950 lawyers” from the high-powered firm of Fox Rothschild descending on the rural area. Leigey skipped work and her daughter missed school, and a handful of neighbors attended the trial to provide moral support. Much of the testimony focused on whether Nicholas Meat had a right to apply the waste. Jurors deliberated for several hours before returning a verdict that Nicholas’ attorneys appealed on May 5.

Even so, the victory may do little to change the underlying system. The $145,000 that jurors awarded will help cover what Leigey and her neighbors spent over the years on bottled water, laundromat visits, and new wells. But the jury did not award punitive damages, and nothing about the verdict requires the slaughterhouse to change how it operates despite the history of environmental violations revealed during the trial.

“There’s no disincentive for him to do this,” said Chris Nidel, Leigey’s lawyer. Based on the volume of waste produced, he estimated the company saves $4,500 an hour spreading it locally rather than hauling it to a wastewater facility. “They can make that money up in less than a week.”

But unless state regulators pursue an investigation or adopt new rules, accountability remains elusive. Cases like Leigey’s can be difficult to prove if defendants can create enough doubt by pointing to other possible sources of contamination — another farm, a leaky septic tank, or past agricultural use. These cases are usually “a catch-me-if-you-can situation,” said Dani Replogle, an attorney with Food & Water Watch who was not involved in the lawsuit.

The same pressures play out nationwide in a $161 billion beef industry built on processing vast numbers of animals at low cost to meet high demand. 

“The more animals you have in one location, the worse the environmental problems are going to be,” Replogle said. Stricter regulation is the only way to negate that, she said. “That is just not happening. There’s a really powerful lobby standing in the way of that.”

That pressure is reinforced locally. Nicholas Meat employs a significant share of the region’s population. Neighbors may be employees, relatives, or landowners connected to the operation, leaving communities tied to the facility responsible for the pollution. That leaves few people willing to complain.

Kovach, the president of the farmers’ union, believes the case reflects a broader shift in agriculture: Livestock production and processing have become concentrated in the hands of fewer, larger operators. “What we need is a lot fewer plants that can handle 600 to 1,000 [cattle] a day and more that can handle 100 a day,” he said.

Regardless of whether the industry makes that shift, state Representative Paul Friel said the rules need to change. He has introduced legislation to tighten oversight and hold polluters more accountable because some “bad actors” are turning “farm fields into unregulated landfills.”

“There has to be a distinction between normal farming practice and industrial waste disposal,” he said. “There’s not a path forward to manage this without legislation.”

In the months since Leigey won her civil suit, the air around her house has been crisp and fresh. The pungent smell of rotting flesh has waned, but that’s largely because Nicholas Meat is spreading its waste on other fields across the Sugar Valley of central Pennsylvania.

She spent around $10,000 having a deeper well dug in 2021, and although her water now runs clear, she worries how long it’ll stay that way. Her lawyer hopes the lawsuit might inspire others to take a stand and force the industry to change, but Leigey and her neighbors wonder whose well might be the next to run rank.

“Innocent people should not have to suffer for the greed of other people,” she said. “I’m still going to keep an eye on it. Sometimes bad habits are hard to break.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Blood in the well: One town’s fight against the slaughterhouse polluting it on Jun 4, 2026.

At the time, he praised the American Innovation and Manufacturing Act, created in line with an international agreement to tamp down widespread use of the “super pollutant,” as something that would benefit U.S. manufacturers working to produce alternative and less environmentally harmful refrigerants. The Environmental Protection Agency would then spend the next four years under former President Joe Biden working to implement a series of rules to help enforce the law, which set the goal of phasing out production and use of the pollutants by 85 percent by 2036.

Now, Trump has reversed his position. At a White House press conference last month, he announced the administration would be loosening two of the EPA’s refrigerant rules, delaying the deadline required for grocery stores and air-conditioning companies to begin reducing their use of hydrofluorocarbons, and exempting transport companies from repairing HFC leaks in refrigeration equipment. 

Flanked by EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin and a handful of the country’s biggest grocery chain executives, the president assailed both the rule and the very law he signed, promising Americans the move would have no environmental consequence and bring down supermarket bills. Trump estimated that U.S. businesses and families will save more than $2.4 billion under the new rule changes, while expressing his desire to get rid of the underlying law altogether.  

“Thanks to today’s reforms, the American people have lower grocery prices, cheaper transportation of goods, lower costs of air conditioning at no detriment to our country,” Trump said.

There’s just one problem — that’s just not true. Economists and former EPA officials say the rollbacks are more likely to raise prices than reduce them. Some industry groups warn the administration’s sudden turnabout would result in ramped up demand for equipment that use the most climate-damaging HFCs, which the sector had been steadily scaling back. Even Trump’s EPA has acknowledged in an internal assessment that the rule change could achieve the opposite of its stated goal — rather than lowering costs, the supply and demand dynamics it may create could elevate them. 

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“It just doesn’t add up. There’s just no plausible way in which relaxing these rules is going to generate any meaningful reduction in the costs of food people purchase,” said Chris Barrett, an economist at Cornell University. 

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Dollar data, which is widely considered the best breakdown of costs that go into an American consumer’s grocery bill, food retail, transport, storage, and energy costs together amount to roughly 20 percent. But refrigerants, according to Barrett, are not a meaningful slice of that share. “We’re talking about a maximum reduction of a percentage point in your grocery bill,” said Barrett, who added it’s much more likely to amount to a fraction of a percentage point. “For a consumer who’s spending $200 a week on groceries, maybe it will save you a dollar or two, at the maximum.” 

HFCs are incredibly powerful greenhouse gases that are primarily used as cooling agents in everything from supermarket freezers to slushie machines. Commercial systems using HFCs are prone to leaking, too — the EPA has estimated that U.S. supermarkets alone leak an average of 25 percent of their refrigerants every year. Though the super pollutants don’t stick around in the atmosphere for too long, their global warming potential is hundreds to thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide. 

The 2020 law signed by Trump initiated a gradual phaseout of production and use of HFCs in alignment with an international deal known as the Kigali Amendment. The result of years of negotiation by parties to the 1987 Montreal Protocol on ozone pollution, the Kigali Amendment aimed to prevent up to 0.5 degrees Celsius of added warming by the end of the century, which scientists warn will have enormous consequences for agriculture and the global food system. Though Trump did not send the deal to the Senate for approval during his first term, the U.S. formally ratified the amendment in 2022 under Biden. Inside Climate News reported that a recent EPA assessment estimated that loosening the national phaseout deadlines is likely to increase emissions by 68 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent by 2050.

Joseph Goffman, former assistant administrator of EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation during the Biden administration, suspects that Trump’s cost-savings messaging around the rollbacks are nothing more than a “gimmick” to appease disgruntled voters struggling with soaring inflation ahead of midterms. Part of what Trump and Zeldin are doing with these changes, he said, is “wanting to create some grocery-price theater.” 

The administration argues that alternative materials to high-global-warming-potential HFCs are not sufficiently available, making the deadlines set by the rules for the phaseout too aggressive and expensive for food companies — costs, they say, that will be passed down to consumers. But critics have countered that U.S. businesses have spent the last several years investing billions into new refrigerants, equipment, production lines, and staffing. Chemours and Honeywell have already developed alternative refrigerants sold domestically and worldwide. Groups like the Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute and the Alliance for Responsible Atmospheric Policy have also denounced the idea that the market needs more time. 

“We heard that argument, I would say, three years ago,” said Goffman. “It’s almost, by definition, arbitrary for the Trump EPA to say, ‘We’ll come along and make these changes,’ as if the EPA hadn’t already received a lot of information and worked through these issues.”

While several major supermarket chains and grocery trade groups have spoken out in support of the rule changes, the administration’s claim that savings will flow through to grocery consumers remains unsubstantiated. As they stand, the EPA’s rule amendments carry no mandates for grocers to lower their prices, and it is unclear whether companies would voluntarily use any presumed savings from the rollbacks to lower their prices, rather than relieving pressure on their own bottom lines.

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Food prices are shaped by many dynamics, but the dominant forces are demand and supply. Over the last few decades, food demand has only continued to grow, fueled by rising global populations, higher incomes, and urbanization. Supply has struggled to keep pace, and food prices have been climbing steadily as a result, punctuated by sharp spikes from recent shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran. 

But Barrett says the overwhelming persistent stressors behind steadily rising food inflation for most of the last six years has been extreme weather and climate-related shocks coupled with lagging productivity growth in food production. Americans are actively seeing this play out with skyrocketing beef prices nationwide, largely driven by persistent and prolonged droughts and heat waves that have decimated cattle herds and created severe supply shortages. “The evidence is very clear,” said Barrett. “Climate change is predictably driving the growth of supply down, and therefore driving prices up in due time.” 

By that logic, the administration’s rollback of the refrigerant rules, intended to mitigate planet-warming emissions, won’t, then, abate rising food inflation but stoke it.   

“So, if relaxing these rules aggravates climate change, and gives us more severe and more frequent episodes of extreme weather that hurts productivity in agriculture, we’re actually going to increase grocery prices down the road,” he said. “It just seems very hard to see how this administration is doing much to help relieve consumer food price inflation concerns.” 

“Who’s really benefiting from these empty promises?” he said. “We all need to start asking that question.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline No, rolling back these environmental rules won’t lower your grocery bill on Jun 4, 2026.

The change comes at the behest of Governor Kathy Hochul, a moderate Democrat who has often criticized climate action for increasing consumer costs. After months of backroom negotiation, the legislature reached a deal that weakens the 2019 law in several different ways — most notably by giving the state an additional decade to meet legally-required emissions targets.

The original law, one of the most ambitious in the U.S., required the Empire State to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent before 2030. (The state used its 1990 emissions as the baseline for comparison, per standards set by the United Nations.) Thanks to the law’s uniquely strict accounting rules, the only way for the state to meet this target was to shift away from natural gas, which provides most of the state’s electricity and almost all its heating fuel. 

But as the 2020s progressed, New York failed to wean itself off of gas. The reason for that depends on who you ask. Some argue that President Donald Trump’s attacks on renewable energy have slowed the state’s progress, and others believe that state politicians have backed natural gas when they could have invested in more clean energy. Either way, the state fell way behind schedule, and it stood no chance of meeting its 2030 goal without dramatic action that would have taxed or banned consumption of fossil fuels.

Besides delaying the 2030 deadline by 10 years, the deal will also change the law’s accounting to give less weight to natural gas, and it will slow the rollout of a cap-and-trade system, which would force polluters to bargain with each other to stay below a hard limit on total emissions. Hochul has defended these changes as an attempt to protect New Yorkers from rising costs, blaming Trump for the state’s slow progress. She has warned that meeting the state law’s ironclad emissions target — something a court ordered her to do last year — would require huge pollution taxes that would end up inflating utility bills and gasoline prices, imposing thousands of dollars on the average household. (The budget deal also includes language that would require the state to consider the impact of its climate regulations on household budgets.)

Legislators and climate activists who support the original climate law said Hochul pushed the changes without giving lawmakers a chance to discuss a path forward for climate action in the state.

“This really came out of nowhere, it was sprung on us, and it was difficult even to understand what was happening,” said Marcella Mitaynes, a progressive state assembly member who represents a swath of waterfront neighborhoods in Brooklyn with many working-class residents.

Some experts who study decarbonization in New York said that the state’s legally binding emissions target had become virtually impossible to hit given broader headwinds against a national or global transition away from fossil fuels.

“It was going to be really difficult to meet, because the economy wasn’t cooperating,” said Al McGartland, who served as the chief economist at the Environmental Protection Agency from 2005 to 2025. McGartland, an expert on carbon taxes, said that the change to the law is “not all bad because I think it does buy time to think this thing through carefully, and do it right.”

The biggest change is delay. The budget deal sets a new target of reducing the state’s emissions 60 percent by 2040, a number that the governor’s office says is far more achievable than the 40 percent originally required by 2030. It also delays the launch of a “cap-and-invest” system, which was supposed to launch last year, until 2028. This system would assess new fees to polluters such as power plants and oil terminals and would funnel that revenue toward climate projects such as electric-vehicle chargers and heat pumps. Many climate experts believe such systems are the most efficient way to nudge an economy away from fossil fuels, but Hochul had grown concerned that the system would raise gas prices and utility bills at a time when many consumers are already struggling with fuel prices. 

The deal also makes two important changes to the way the state counts its emissions. Under the old system, New York had to account for the climate pollution associated with extracting the fossil fuels that it imports from other states. For instance, when a natural gas field in Pennsylvania leaked planet-warming methane before piping the gas to New York, the latter state had to count those leaks as its own pollution, in addition to that caused by burning the fuel for energy. Most other states don’t do this. Once New York makes this change, it will reduce its apparent emissions by about 15 percent overnight — a result of the fact that the state imports most of its natural gas.

This dynamic was compounded by the fact that the state’s old accounting system also gave extra weight to methane, which is the second most common greenhouse gas after carbon. Methane warms the Earth about 80 times faster than carbon dioxide, but it disappears from the atmosphere after around 20 years. Most countries evaluate their greenhouse gas emissions by considering the warming that will take place over 100 years, but New York only considered 20 years of warming, which makes methane look much worse compared to carbon. 

The 20-year outlook benefited certain polluting sectors and disadvantaged others. Under the new system, for instance, the warming impact attributed to the state’s livestock industry and its landfills will fall by two-thirds. Unlike the accounting change for imported fuels, however, the change to a 100-year framework can be defended as ultimately more climate-conscious: The 100-year framework is the standard used by the United Nations climate secretariat that administers the Paris Agreement, and many climate scientists have criticized the state’s 20-year framework for distorting the true costs of warming. (The reason, in short: If you have a system that prioritizes methane over carbon, you may limit some warming in the short-term while baking in much more in the long run.)

But even with these changes, the state still won’t be on track to meet its original 2030 goal. That’s because it has made little progress on the biggest sources of carbon: cars, power plants, and residential buildings. 

Natural gas provides around 50 percent of the state’s electricity, and it is the heating fuel for almost all the big apartment buildings in New York City and its suburbs. In order to fully ditch fossil fuels, the state will have to convert all those buildings to electrical systems like heat pumps. And then it will still have to replace all its natural gas-fired power plants with emissions-free sources like wind and solar.

These are both very difficult tasks. For one thing, electrifying a place like New York is expensive. The cost of replacing gas boilers with electric heaters in a century-old apartment building can run into the tens of millions of dollars, and landlords have been struggling to find that money without bankrupting their tenants. The New York City Council has passed its own law, Local Law 97, that requires large buildings to make the switch by 2030 or face steep fines. But some building owners have said the fines might still be cheaper than the cost of making the switch.

The law’s 2030 target provides an powerful spur to decarbonization even if some buildings will struggle to meet the deadline, said John Foley, an executive vice president at First Service Project Management.

“The goals may be difficult to reach, but they’re important to have,” said Foley, whose firm handles construction projects for a large portfolio of multifamily buildings. He said that while new heat pump technology has made decarbonization easier for some buildings, meeting the Local Law 97 target will depend on the state’s grid.

“The solution seems to be going towards electrification a lot more, and in order for electrification to be the answer, then you have to produce energy in a cleaner way,” he said.

Finding clean sources of electricity to replace gas-fired power plants has also been an uphill battle. A new transmission line carrying clean power from hydropower dams in Canada down to New York City will come online this month, but it was delayed for years by litigation and environmental permitting. Two major offshore wind farms, Empire Wind and Sunrise Wind, will also come online this year, despite the Trump administration’s attempts to block them. But they will only displace a fraction of the state’s gas supply, and won’t provide much power in the summer when demand is highest. (Coastal winds tend to be calmest in the summer when the oceans are hot and there are fewer storms.) Plus, developers have shown little interest in building more offshore wind farms due to Trump’s opposition.

Some of the challenges, however, are of the state’s own making. The state made its own electricity grid much more polluting when it closed the Indian Point nuclear power plant in 2011 due to environmental concerns. After the plant closed, the state had to import more gas to make up the loss.

The borough of Brooklyn, where residents who live near seasonal power plants complain of asthma and respiratory conditions, shows just how difficult this transition is. The state has been trying for almost a decade to close the particularly dirty “peaker” gas plants that turn on to provide power during the hot summer months when electricity demand is highest and not enough power is available from other sources. But even once the new Hudson transmission line and Empire Wind come online, the state’s independent grid operator says New York City could still need those peaker plants to avoid blackouts come 2031. 

“To me, the heart of the climate law was really to invest in our communities and reverse this legacy of pollution,” said Mitaynes, the Brooklyn assembly member who represents residents who live near such peaker plants, like the Gowanus Generation Station. She said that the delayed cap-and-trade system would have funneled 35 percent of its revenue toward disadvantaged communities. That money could help address poor air quality and support the buildout of an offshore wind manufacturing facility on the waterfront. “This law really set us up as leaders, and [Hochul] has taken this opportunity to dismantle it,” she said.

Hochul spokesperson Ken Lovett said the changes are “commonsense reforms” and that the governor “remains committed” to climate action.

“Governor Hochul has made clear her top priority is keeping the lights on and costs down for all New Yorkers,” he told Grist.

The state is still making investments in decarbonization: One state agency is investing heavily in large batteries that could store clean energy and thereby replace some natural gas capacity, and another will purchase $100 million in new renewable power this year. The state budget also increased a tax credit for New York City landlords that electrify their buildings. The budget deal also ups the proportion of future cap-and-trade revenues that will go to disadvantaged areas.

But other than that, Hochul has shown little interest in a plan for the state’s transition off of gas. Indeed, she appears to have decided that the state will need gas for the long run. Last year she approved water permits for a new Trump-backed pipeline project that will carry natural gas from Pennsylvania to Queens. The pipeline endorsement was part of a deal to protect the Empire Wind project from Trump’s interference, but Trump’s Interior Department attempted to stop Empire Wind a few months later anyway.

The new gas pipeline broke ground in April at a ceremony in Brooklyn attended by Trump administration Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, and Environmental Protection Agency head Lee Zeldin. Hochul herself did not attend.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline New York backtracked on its climate goals. Here’s why. on Jun 3, 2026.

Standing before the Otoe County Board and a room of neighbors, Wynee Benedict ticked through a long list of concerns.

Do we have enough water for them? Who pays for their power? What if they create a heat island?

The source of Benedict’s worries: data centers. Since learning earlier this year that their county, south of Omaha and a little east of Lincoln, could become home to a new data center, Otoe residents have been abuzz with questions and concerns like Benedict’s, leading some residents to call for a temporary ban on the industry. 

That’s effectively what the board did last month, voting to suspend the permits needed for a new data center for up to a year, according to commissioner Chuck Cole. The pause is intended to give county officials more time to study how the developments fit into the county’s future plans and to update its regulations accordingly. 

Around the country, opposition to data centers is growing. The massive, resource-guzzling buildings needed to power artificial intelligence and our digital infrastructure have emerged as a galvanizing issue. Local governments from California to Maine have adopted or are considering temporary bans. And at least 14 states so far this year have weighed statewide moratoriums.  

Elsewhere in Nebraska, Madison County set requirements for data centers to get a special permit, which allows added oversight and public input. In Gage County, the planning and zoning commission will hold a hearing on a data center moratorium later this month.

And more will likely follow suit thanks to a recent change in state law forcing counties to make a decision on certain development projects within a specific amount of time, said Jon Cannon, executive director of Nebraska Association of County Officials. The goal, according to the bill’s supporters, was to prevent counties from needlessly delaying projects. But the law could have an unintended consequence. 

“I think that you’re likely to see a number of counties that say, ‘We need to get our regulations in order,’ and … they may put moratoriums on a lot of things, not just data centers,” Cannon said.

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Data centers are just the latest in a long line of controversial developments, like wind and solar, that counties in Nebraska and other states have grappled with. And much like those other developments, attitudes toward data centers could vary from county to county, Cannon said. He advises developers to communicate with residents in rural Nebraska early and transparently about large projects.

“When people are aware of something coming to town, because, ‘Oh, my neighbor told me that he just signed this big contract for a right of way’ — when people find out that way, they get very excited, and not in a good way,” Cannon said.

From an environmental standpoint, it’s hard to know how much data centers are impacting Nebraska. There’s no centralized information source for their location, ownership, and water usage. 

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But that is expected to change.

Lawmakers approved a bill this year aimed at increasing transparency. It requires data centers to annually report the names of their owners and developers, physical size, location, annual electricity demand, annual water usage, and any sales and use tax exemptions and incentives they receive. 

That information will likely be helpful to local officials, like those in Otoe County, as they weigh regulations.

Other Otoe County residents echoed the concerns expressed by Benedict, who referenced reporting by the Flatwater Free Press and Grist about a proposal by Google to build a massive new Nebraska data center. The proposed data center could require more than triple the electricity the entire city of Lincoln uses during the hottest months of the year, when electricity use spikes.

The proposal, detailed in documents shared at a private utility meeting in January, did not identify a specific location. However, Flatwater reported that a potential partner in the overall project — the Omaha-based private energy developer Tenaska — had optioned large chunks of land in southeast Nebraska, including Otoe and Gage counties. The news sparked discussions in both counties.

However, some residents who spoke at the Otoe County board meeting appeared to have different views on whether to temporarily ban data centers.

“We have said ‘no’ to a lot of things, almost a knee-jerk reaction. Maybe we need to say ‘yes’ to a few things,” resident Jim Nemec said at the meeting, adding that he understood the need for a temporary ban to study the issue. “But I also worry about the intention or impression it gives. Are we sending out the impression that business is closed here?”

In the end, Benedict is happy that the commission voted for the moratorium. Now, she and her neighbors are turning their attention to researching the consequences these developments may have. “We needed regulations on the books prior to a data center coming to this county,” Benedict said. “We don’t want to have to play catch-up and regulate something that’s already here.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Nebraskans are taking a hard look at data centers on Jun 3, 2026.