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This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The Trump administration has directly spent $2.7 billion of taxpayer money on its crusade against wind power while pouring $1.1 billion into boosting coal, which critics say is pushing up Americans’ bills. They say the moves are evidence that the president aims to serve […]

This story was originally published by Wired and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. This year’s El Niño is shaping up to be among the strongest on record, and it’s set to create chaotic weather around the world. A new study suggests that there could be a way to mitigate some of the impacts of future El Niños […]

The majority of endangered species listings over the years have involved habitat loss, from Chinook salmon to island foxes and many birds.

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. For a few weeks each summer, the Sebasticook River in Benton, Maine, is paved with flashing silver scales, so thick it seems you could almost walk across. The alewives have returned for their annual migration. On a mid-May weekend, […]

Jackie Barlow and Stewart Mitchell “We’re used to people saying ‘fuck no’ and doing it anyway.” These words were seemingly spoken by our very own Governor Gretchen Whitmer earlier this month, caught on a hot mic chatting with Oracle executive Clay Magouryk. The two were celebrating breaking ground on the controversial new AI data center […]

President Trump’s attacks on wind power could have a devastating effect on Minnesota. The state has four wind energy projects that could bring 1,200 construction jobs, 4,400 other jobs connected to the projects, and over $168 million in economic impacts to the state, the Minnesota Reformer reports, citing the progressive think tank North Star Policy Action. The Trump administration has stopped the Department of Defense from completing legally mandated national security reviews of proposed wind farms, basically halting their construction across the country. In total, over 250 such projects have been stalled, four of them in the Gopher State, with $1.6 billion in investments behind them. “Minnesota has spent decades building one of the strongest wind energy economies in the country, and the federal government is now actively dismantling that through a permitting process turned into an indefinite roadblock,” said Aaron Rosenthal, North Star Policy Action’s research director, to the Reformer.The St. Paul-based think tank’s report points out that the four wind projects would have a combined output of 1,119 megawatts, more than that of Xcel Energy’s Prairie Island nuclear power plant in the state. Minnesota has a mandate to have 100 percent carbon-free electricity in the state by 2040, and these wind projects would be a big step forward. Under President Biden, wind power got a big boost across the U.S., with the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act bringing billions of dollars of federal loans, tax credits, and grants. But Trump has a long-standing hatred of wind power going back to a bitter fight years ago against wind turbines built near his Turnberry golf resort in Scotland. On the first day of his second term as president, Trump signed an executive order freezing wind power permits both on- and off-shore. That lasted until June this year, when the administration abandoned its effort to defend the order in court. But Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said last year that he would have to personally approve any federal solar and wind permits, stalling national projects.  “We have not approved one windmill since I’ve been in office. And we’re going to keep it that way. My goal is to not let any windmill be built,” Trump said in March. To satisfy the president’s vendetta, the federal government has been buying out developers and companies seeking to build wind projects. Wind power is abundant in the U.S., especially in the Midwest, and doesn’t produce carbon emissions or pollution. The costs to set up wind farms are rapidly dropping, and it only takes 6 to 9 miles per hour—a gentle breeze—to get turbines to spin and generate electricity. But to the anti-green Trump administration, anything that isn’t oil and gas should be shut down, even if it means higher electricity bills. 

Researchers found that 6% catnip oil lotion was just as good at repelling mosquitoes as the main ingredient in widely used brands.