Reading Time: 8 minutes Vertical farmers are bringing agriculture inside — and launching baby greens into outer space. But will political and marketplace realities bring vertical farming back down to earth?
Reading Time: 7 minutes For 40 years, the federal government has failed to protect the public from toxic chemicals. Last year, a bipartisan Congress passed a law to change that state of affairs. Public health advocates worry that the Trump administration is now undermining it.
Reading Time: 7 minutes Dominion Energy wants to build a $5.5 billion natural gas pipeline that will cross three states, including Virginia. As Virginians prepare to go to the polls this month, their vote may determine whether the utility giant gets its way.
Reading Time: 5 minutes While scientists say the US president’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change is disastrous, they also describe a cyclical pattern where, driven by greed, humanity periodically comes to the brink of catastrophe.
Reading Time: 2 minutes By turning his announcement of the decision to pull out of the Paris climate agreement into a spectacle, President Donald Trump needlessly (further) irked the countries that think climate change is real — i.e. all of them other than Syria.
Reading Time: 4 minutes Can a solar farm bloom in the devastation left by an abandoned strip mine? Developments in Kentucky are putting a new face on the energy future of Appalachia — even as the Trump administration looks to turn the clock back to the 19th century.
Reading Time: 9 minutes Second excerpt from Horsemen of the Apocalypse: The Men Who are Destroying Life on Earth and What It Means for Our Children
Reading Time: 7 minutes First part of an excerpt from Horsemen of the Apocalypse: The Men Who are Destroying Life on Earth and What It Means for Our Children (with an Introduction by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.).
Reading Time: 3 minutes A former EPA official involved in a controversial study of the health effects of Monsanto’s glyphosate is being taken to court by public interest advocates who want to know more about his ties to the company and the chemical industry.
Reading Time: 7 minutes Rivers are not affected by border walls. Instead, they are subject to complicated treaties between countries. One such deal involving the US and Mexico now has to be urgently renewed. President Trump’s tough talk against Mexico does not make things easier.
Reading Time: 10 minutes The Atlantic Coast Pipeline will enrich investors, but it may permanently scar the Appalachian Trail and jeopardize the health, safety and peace of mind of the region’s most vulnerable residents.
Reading Time: 22 minutes President Donald Trump has reversed Barack Obama’s decision on Keystone XL and given a green light to the construction of the controversial pipeline. The project would accomplish very little of what Trump promised but can cause a lot of problems.
Reading Time: 4 minutes As this powerful, colorful documentary makes clear, coral is not just an exoticism: it is part of the cycle of life on earth. When it’s gone, so, eventually, will we be. And it’s going fast.
Reading Time: 5 minutes If you really want your grandchildren to have a future, watch this film.
Reading Time: 10 minutes With draconian budget cuts, behavior causing committed staff to leave, and the passage of laws that would make it impossible for an agency to function under any administration, are Trump and Congress trying to destroy the Environmental Protection Agency?
Reading Time: 4 minutes Both China and the US are about to change course on how they produce energy. While the incoming Trump administration wants to refocus on fossil fuels, China is investing hundreds of billions of dollars into clean energy, which could give it a major competitive advantage down the road.
Reading Time: 3 minutes Activists suing to force the federal government to fight climate change want ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson (now Donald Trump’s choice for Secretary of State) to reveal when the fossil fuel industry knew of its effect on global warming — and what it did to hide it.
Reading Time: 2 minutes Trump has chosen Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, to be the next Secretary of State. Exxon, a quasi-state with its own foreign policy, has oil ambitions in the Arctic worth half a trillion dollars — ambitions a SofS can assist. Tillerson is one of several one-percenters who will shape policy in an administration made possible by working people struggling with severe economic hardship. Can they see the problem here?
Reading Time: 5 minutes Using a dubious strategy, a major law firm is trying to hamstring Greenpeace and other environmental groups on behalf of a paper manufacturer. If the ploy succeeds, it would have a chilling effect on free speech.
Reading Time: 4 minutes The protesters at Standing Rock have won a hard-fought victory. Many of them, however, don’t believe that this is the end already and are preparing for more problems. WhoWhatWhy is reporting from the ground.