Climate Point: Who are America's Climate Leaders?
A list of companies working to decrease their carbon dioxide emissions is getting bigger and a pair of pandas are headed for the National Zoo.
Welcome to Climate Point, your weekly guide to news about the climate, energy and the environment. I'm Dinah Voyles Pulver, a national correspondent with Paste BN's climate and environment team.
For customers and investors hoping to put their support behind companies working to reduce their carbon footprint, it's difficult to ascertain how much the companies are lowering their greenhouse gas emissions, writes Paste BN's Elizabeth Weise. To help answer that question, Paste BN partnered with Statista, a market research firm, to create the second annual America's Climate Leaders list.
The list offers an easy to comprehend, data driven list of companies that significantly reduced their carbon dioxide emissions between 2020 and 2022. The listing found a 16% increase in companies meeting the criteria. It includes U.S. based companies with more than $50 million in revenue that reported their carbon emissions. To qualify for the list, those companies must have reduced their carbon intensity by 3% per year.
"Evaluations of companies' climate impact require deep dives into multiple, sometimes conflicting metrics," Weise writes. "That's because there’s no U.S. requirement that companies disclose their emissions, though many do so voluntarily."
You can check out the list by searching for the state where the company is headquartered, a company's name or by industry sector.
In Texas, reporter Brandi Addison took a local look at the Texas companies on the list and found the state was third for companies endeavoring to cut emissions, behind California and New York.
Investigation: Coal 'cleanup' leaves residents exposed
An investigation by the Indy Star's Beth Bowman found a soil analysis for a utility's cleanup plan was flawed, leaving nearby residents exposed to potentially cancer-causing chemicals even while they believed the threat was being addressed.
“How the heck did this happen?” asked Mark Hutson, an advisor to the Pines community for several years as part of the Superfund process.
The investigation traced the flaw to a consultant with ties to the coal ash industry and "a history of dismissing the potentially harmful risks of the toxic waste," Bowman wrote. The struggle with coal ash, which was used extensively as construction fill in Pines, Indiana, dates back at least to the 1970s. Coal ash, the byproduct of burning coal to produce electricity, is the second-largest waste stream in the U.S. behind household garbage.
Other cleanups:
In New Mexico, the state will receive $18.9 million to analyze the extent of "forever chemicals" in water systems, and identify strategies to protect water sources, reports Adrian Hedden at the Carlsbad Current-Argus.
In Montana, reporter David Murray at the Great Falls Tribune writes that decades of arsenic and lead contamination from industrial waste are set to be removed after more than four decades of investigations and negotiations. On some lots in Black Eagle, the contamination is 10 times the EPA standard. The work is being paid for the Atlantic Richfield Company, a subsidiary of British Petroleum.
Whales in the news
Bored orcas? For four years the world has been fascinated by reports of killer whales ramming and sometimes sinking yachts and other vessels off the coast Spain, Portugal, France and Morocco.
Now a group of orca experts think they may have figured out why the whales were being such a nuisance and what could be done about it, writes Elizabeth Weise. What appeared to be "attacks" on hundreds of vessels since 2020 were probably the actions of a group of bored orcas, said cetacean expert Alexandre Zerbini.
A productive but deadly calving season
Whale enthusiasts celebrated the births of 19 critically endangered North Atlantic right whale calves off the Southeastern coast this year, but their family trees tell the complex story of how perilous life can be for these animals and their mothers and other family members.
Whale researchers and advocates say the whales could vanish in front of our eyes without urgent additional measures to save them, but the additional proposed safety measures remain mired in controversy and delays.
Passion for pandas
Great excitement greeted the news this week that China will send two adorable pandas back to the National Zoo. A detailed graphic by visual journalist Jennifer Borresen explains the diplomacy behind this announcement and the history of giant pandas visiting the United States.
The pandas – Bao Li and Qing Bao – are expected to arrive at the National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute by the end of the year. A photo gallery helped round out the panda coverage.
Another visual graphic this week helped explain what's happening with the melting Doomsday Glacier, which scientists say is melting faster thanks to the warming planet.
A third graphic illustration shows how a parade of planets will align in early June.
In other news, an analysis by the Coloradoan found 10 fossil fuel power plants contributed one-fifth of Colorado's emissions in 2020, while in Georgia a group documents migration of tropical mangroves northward along the coast.
Some of the stories below may require a subscription. Sign up and get access to all eNewspapers in the Paste BN Network. If someone forwarded you this email and you'd like to receive Climate Point in your inbox for free once a week, sign up here.