Illustration by Mia Torres

A black, electric-powered Nissan Leaf pulled up to a gas station — not to fuel up, of course. Matthew Metz, the founder of Coltura, a nonprofit trying to speed up the country’s shift away from gasoline, climbed out of his car with printed maps in hand, prepared to give me a tour.

Story by KATE YODER

The environmental disaster lurking beneath your neighborhood gas station

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It was a sunny spring day, and the Arco station in North Seattle looked like any other on a busy street corner, with cars fueling up and a line of bored people waiting to buy snacks and drinks inside the convenience store. Metz knows a lot about gas stations, and it changes what he sees. Looking around, he marveled at the risks that everyone was taking, even if they weren’t aware of it. “This is a hazardous materials facility,” he told me.

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Andrew  Aitchison / Getty Images

Making homes more efficient and more electric is critical to combating climate change. But the undertaking can be expensive and beyond the financial reach of many families. Help, however, is on the way.

Story by Tik Root

Electrifying your home is about to get a lot cheaper

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Residential energy use accounts for one-fifth of climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. President Biden’s landmark climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, takes aim at this issue by allocating $8.8 billion to home energy efficiency rebates primarily for at low- and moderate-income households. “For the federal government, this is the largest investment in history,” said Mark Kresowik, senior policy director at the nonprofit American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. 

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Illustration by Amelia Bates

It was the face that launched a thousand plastic straw bans. The video begins with a close up of the turtle’s head, its dark green, pebbled skin out of place against the stark-white boat deck.

Story by Harvin Bhathal

Did plastic straw bans work? Yes, but not in the way you’d think.

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Robinson’s hands approach, moving the pliers toward the turtle’s nostril. The tool clamps down on the edge of something — A barnacle? A worm? — barely visible within the dark tunnel. The creature squirms and dribbles blood as the pulling begins. A long, thin object begins to emerge, inch by excruciating inch. It was August 10, 2015, and marine conservation biologist Christine Figgener was collecting data for her Ph.D. a few miles off the coast of Guanacaste, Costa Rica. 

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Raul Arboleda / Getty Images

Cows are often described as climate change criminals because of how much planet-warming methane they burp.

Story by Max Graham

What would happen if the world cut meat and milk consumption in half?

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But there’s another problem with livestock farming that’s even worse for the climate and easier to overlook: To feed the world’s growing appetite for meat, corporations and ranchers are chopping down more forests and trampling more carbon-sequestering grasslands to make room for pastures and fields of hay. Ruminants, like cattle, sheep, and goats, need space to graze, and animal feed needs space to grow. The greenhouse gases unleashed by this mean food systems account for one-third of the world’s human-generated climate pollution.

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Owen Humphreys / Getty Images

As environmental challenges go, microfiber pollution has come from practically out of nowhere. It was only a decade or so ago that scientists first suspected our clothing, increasingly made of synthetic materials like polyester and nylon, might be major contributors to the global plastic problem.

Story by Saqib Rahim

How do you tackle microplastics? Start with your washing machine.

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Today a growing body of science suggests the tiny strands that slough off clothes are everywhere and in everything. By one estimate, they account for as much as one-third of all microplastics released to the ocean. They’ve been found on Mount Everest and in the Mariana Trench, along with tap water, plankton, shrimp guts, and our poo. Research has yet to establish just what this means for human and planetary health.

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Daniel Bockwoldt / Getty Images

For more than 100 million years, trees have dropped their leaves every fall, creating a protective layer of duff that provides cover for snails, bees, and butterflies. Decaying leaves fertilized the soil and gave nutrients back to the trees. Today, fallen leaves still provide a harvest festival of benefits — unless they get blasted into oblivion with a leaf blower.

Story by Kate Yoder

Hear that? It’s the sound of leaf blower bans.

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Across the United States, some 11 million leaf blowers roar into action every year, obliterating delicate debris with 200-mile-per-hour winds. Their distinctive, whining drone has been hard to escape. But restrictions on leaf blowers have been spreading across the country, permitting some lucky locales to experience the season as nature intended, at a humane decibel level. Outright bans on the gas-powered machines have recently taken effect in Washington, D.C.; Miami Beach, Florida; and Evanston, Illinois. 

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