climate change
July 21, 2022 -
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) pushed for the new state budget to allocate millions of dollars to close hog farms, which are concentrated in environmental justice communities in the state's increasingly flood-prone east. But the Republican-controlled state legislature, where the industry is a powerful force, passed a budget without the funds — and Cooper signed it.
May 13, 2022 -
With almost 20 new natural gas projects slated to open this year alone in Louisiana and Texas, environmental health and justice activists in the region say the Biden administration's recent restoration of transparency provisions in the National Environmental Policy Act, rolled back by its predecessor, will provide a critical shield for them in their battle with the industry.
March 24, 2022 -
Despite the urgency of the climate crisis, electric utilities across the South — including Duke Energy, Florida Power & Light, and Dominion Energy — are working in concert with fossil fuel interests to promote policies that discourage consumers from installing rooftop solar systems. Will regulators let them get away with it?
December 16, 2021 -
In 2004, Southern Exposure, the print forerunner to Facing South, devoted an issue to examining just how natural so-called "natural disasters" are. The reporting and analysis resonate today as residents of Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, and Kentucky struggle to recover from a devastating December tornado outbreak — the impact of which was compounded by workplace policies that treated profits as more important than human lives.
October 28, 2021 -
Effective climate action should center the priorities of those first and most impacted, write Judy Anne Asman of the Just Transition Alliance and Jonathan Alingu of Central Florida Jobs With Justice. Their groups are leading a delegation of frontline workers and community organizers to participate inside and outside the upcoming 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland.
September 10, 2021 -
Hurricane Ida's devastation of Louisiana's electric grid and the deadly power outages that resulted show the risk that highly centralized generation systems present in an era of increasingly destructive climate change-driven weather events. Yet Entergy — a Fortune 500 company that's the main power provider for the hard-hit southeastern part of the state, including New Orleans — has fought plans to move toward cleaner community-based generation. Will Ida mark a turning point?
August 18, 2021 -
Warning that human activity continues to intensify global warming, the new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change also says the most dangerous effects can still be avoided if we act now. But the South's two worst climate-polluting electric utilities — Duke Energy and Southern Company — are dragging their feet with transition plans that don't do nearly enough to curb heat-trapping emissions.
