Anything related to air quality, air pollution, or the atmosphere
Reporting on environmental stories often leads to the state legislature, where key material can be frustratingly hard to access. Whether that’s because the state is deliberately hiding information, has poor systems for sharing it or isn’t even tracking it, there are ways to get what you need. Four seasoned environment reporters offer tips, tricks and commiseration.
If you’re harboring serious doubts about the climate future but want to be prepared to cover it, the latest Reporter’s Toolbox offers up a seasonably ghoulish list of a dozen and a half great visualization sources to help tell the story. And lest it leave you spooked, remember, as the saying goes, everything will be OK in the end. And if it's not OK, it's not the end.
"Findings by the Environmental Investigation Agency point to a perceived loophole in the Montreal Protocol".
"Chicken farms housing millions of animals threaten a fragile ecology"
"On a drizzly day in May, Maria Payan walked along a country road in Somerset County, Maryland, near her home. On one side of the road was a white house with a peaked roof and an American flag flying from the porch; a ride-on toy tractor was parked by the front steps. On the other, a row of six long, windowless metal buildings housed tens of thousands of chickens. “Oh, the smell is so bad,” Payan said. “Can you imagine living with this every day?”
"The Environmental Protection Agency objected to an air quality permit issued to U.S. Steel's Clairton Coke Works, a move advocates say will protect Mon Valley residents from emissions of harmful air pollutants. The EPA filed the objection under the grounds that the permit — which was issued by the Allegheny County Health Department in November — did not comply with the Clean Air Act."
"Advocates and communities pushing for increased air pollution monitoring at industrial facilities are stretching the limits of long-standing emission control requirements that have largely stopped at smokestacks."
"When the wildfire smoke arrives, Harry Whitman has nowhere to go. “When there’s smoke or there’s a fire, they lock you in,” Whitman said. Whitman, president of the advocacy group Black Prisoners’ Caucus, is incarcerated at Airway Heights Corrections Center."
"A federal appeals court on Monday sided with the Biden administration against the state of Utah in a lawsuit over the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) “good neighbor” rule, which regulates the flow of air pollution across state lines."
"The Youngstown City Council approved a resolution on Wednesday night opposing an “advanced recycling” plant that would have used a process called pyrolysis to burn old tires to make steam for heating and cooling downtown buildings."
