Resilience
States and localities are having to adjust to a changing climate, establishing new policies, rules and guidelines relating to energy, land use and water rights, as well as responding to emergencies triggered by more intense storms, floods and wildfires.
The power often goes out in Eastport, Maine, due to storms. Now, the small city is developing solar and tidal power to fuel its own microgrid.
Hurricane Helene put rural Western North Carolina’s home-based child-care providers under an existential threat. The natural disaster exacerbated problems caused by years of insufficient funding and lack of support, causing many child-care providers to fear they won’t be able to start over.
State air regulators voted last week to update the Low Carbon Fuel Standard to aim to reduce carbon emissions of transportation fuels by 30 percent by 2030.
An initiative to cut a carbon tax out of the Washington Climate Commitment Act was soundly rejected by voters. Gov. Jay Inslee sees the margin of defeat as an important message.
Many of the environmentally-friendly upgrades that turn a home into an energy efficient one are cost-prohibitive for builders outside of luxury homes. As popularity for efficient housing grows, can Maryland find a way to bring down costs?
The Hawthorne Fire on Lamentation Mountain continues to spread. 127,000 gallons of water from next-door Silver Lake has been dumped on the fire so far.
Fear and confusion in the aftermath of disasters create fertile ground for misinformation. Social media and AI can amplify it, but there are ways to weather the storm.
Few homeowners are protected against flood damage. What can be done to reduce the burden of recovery on them and their communities?
State geologist Mark Myers hopes that hydrogen deposits in Alaska’s metamorphic rock could be enough to fuel the state’s energy industry. The idea comes from a well in Mali that has fueled one village since 2012.
The San Joaquin Valley, Calif., school district plans to buy about 20 Flex Farms, a self-contained system that circulates nutrient-rich water to as many as 288 plants, so that students can learn a new way to grow food.
Elevating buildings to avoid storm surges and flooding can increase the chance of survival for people and homes along the coast. But as hurricanes like Helene, and possibly Milton, continue to break records, building higher may not be enough.
Historic rainfall that devastated the Southeast was generated by conditions that still exist. What lessons can local governments in other parts of the country take from Helene?
The S.S. United States, which has been docked in South Philadelphia since the mid-1990s, will soon be retired and sunk into the Gulf of Mexico to act as the world’s largest artificial reef.
Dozens of jurisdictions are seeking damages from fossil fuel companies. Jeffrey B. Simon, an attorney representing Multnohmah County, Ore., talks about the ways science and precedent will influence the success of their cases.
A petroleum and chemical tank farm operator and a Louisiana environmental group are working together to install air monitors measuring emissions.
The Bureau of Land Management’s controversial plan updates preferred solar zones for the first time in 12 years and identifies nearly 12 million acres for available solar development in Nevada, more than any of the 11 other states included in the plan.
The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that California could lose up to 75 percent of its beaches in the next 75 years. The changes have sparked multimillion-dollar restoration projects and lawsuits along the state’s coast.
Tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act were designed to drive private-sector investments in clean energy. Where are investments and jobs landing?
Turning some of it into fuel, as a Michigan facility plans to do, is labeled as “recycling,” but it may be worse for the environment than dumping the waste into a landfill.
The oil major’s U.S. onshore wind energy business, based in Houston, is valued at about $2 billion and has interests in 10 wind farms across seven states.
The state’s Industrial Commission, made up of the governor, attorney general and agricultural commissioner, has approved a project to expand education about carbon dioxide capture and storage, which includes a newly debuted website.
Local governments have jurisdiction over the third-largest source of methane emissions: the decomposition of organic waste in municipal solid waste landfills.
Rainfall patterns are changing. What can local leaders do to curb the growing risks?
They face a unique long-term threat from global efforts to address climate change, strategies that will sharply reduce demand for fossil fuels. The best time to build a more resilient economy is before a crisis arrives.
The idea that the lakes’ bounty will quench the thirst of the western United States is an obstacle delaying the West’s inevitable reckoning with the unsustainable status quo.
While environmentalists say the new rules don’t do enough to protect groundwater, oil and gas operators are contesting stricter requirements for waste pits near wells.
San Francisco residents will vote in November on whether they want to permanently close two miles of coastline road from cars, which, if passed, will become a historic pedestrian project. But the city is deeply divided on the project’s impacts.
The state’s power grid produced abundant solar power during school hours this August and scarcity is primarily an issue after students have been dismissed for the day. But state Rep. Jared Patterson thinks a delayed start could have benefits.
In 2023 the state created the Texas Energy Fund to finance about 10 gigawatts of electric generation capacity in hopes of reducing strain on the ERCOT power grid. Regulators approved 17 companies to receive loans if their projects are viable.
As many as 450,000 barred owls could be killed across three Pacific Northwest states over the next 30 years to prevent the extinction of another type of owl. The program aims to kill less than 1 percent of the current barred owl population.
On Aug. 18 a slow-moving storm system brought remnants of Hurricane Ernesto to Connecticut and New York. Within 12 hours, the region saw two 1,000-year rainfalls just 35 miles apart. Experts say this will likely become more common.
