Cropland can easily be found time and again at the heart of the key concerns on the environment beat, whether climate, water, chemicals or, of course, land. The latest Reporter’s Toolbox shares a high-quality, mappable database that can serve up stories on more than 100 categories of crops, with numbers drawn from satellite imagery. Plus, a pro tip on using the data smartly.
A small Louisiana community, home to the descendants of formerly enslaved Black people, continues to fight for its freedom many decades later, this time from a potentially polluting technology. FEJ StoryLog contributor Yessenia Funes recounts her journey to this Cancer Alley community, where a grant from the Fund for Environmental Journalism helped her tell the story of residents challenging a multibillion-dollar carbon capture plant.
"As well as embracing ‘beautiful coal’, the president has set about obliterating clean energy projects"
"Tech companies’ use of PFAS gas at facilities may mean datacenters’ climate impact is worse than previously thought"
"Datacenters’ electricity demands have been accused of delaying the US’s transition to clean energy and requiring fossil fuel plants to stay online, while their high level of water consumption has also raised alarm. Now public health advocates fear another environmental problem could be linked to them – PFAS “forever chemical” pollution.
"Earth’s nastiest and costliest wildfires are blazing four times more often now than they did in the 1980s because of human-caused climate change and people moving closer to wildlands, a new study found."
"The Arctic is warming nearly four times faster than the rest of the planet and is one of the most rapidly changing places on Earth. And the United States’ approach to Arctic research has also begun shifting." "The Trump administration is emphasizing defense concerns instead of climate research in the rapidly warming Arctic region."
"Worsening sand and dust storms, wildfires intensified by record-setting winds, and increasingly severe hurricanes, derechos, short-lived convective storms, and other extreme weather events are impacting people’s lives, health and property around the world."
"For much of the 20th century, a sprawling complex in the desert of southeastern Washington state turned out most of the plutonium used in the nation’s nuclear arsenal, from the first atomic bomb to the arms race that fueled the Cold War. Now, after decades of planning and billions of dollars of investment, the site is turning liquid nuclear and chemical waste at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation into a much safer substance: glass."
"When faced with testimony that Zug Island’s EES Coke Battery is one of Michigan’s worst sulfur dioxide polluters, an attorney for the facility said Monday: “So what?” The DTE Energy-owned facility was “permitted to do so,” said Michael Hindelang, attorney for the utility and its subsidiaries that are defendants in the EPA’s Clean Air Act lawsuit over the emissions."
"The Trump administration has begun prioritizing the review of new, potentially hazardous chemicals used in data centers that public health advocates and environmental attorneys warn could endanger workers, communities and the environment."
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