Carey L. Biron

The path to Minnesota's groundbreaking, new anti-pollution law began at a metal-shredding facility in Minneapolis before spreading its "toxic soup" along the banks of the Mississippi.

The factory, now shut, was once recognised as a source of lead, chromium and other pollution by state regulators - as well as by concerned locals such as Roxxanne O'Brien.

Biking into work across the Potomac River in Washington always provides a crisp, breezy entry into the city.

A few days after President Donald Trump declared a "crime emergency" in the District of Columbia and ordered a security crackdown, I saw an aluminium stepladder bouncing in the traffic on the bridge.

As President Donald Trump aims the might of the U.S. government at boosting data centre development, communities in the crosshairs are organising to have control over its local impact.

Trump unveiled an AI strategy last month aimed at achieving U.S. dominance by cutting regulation, speeding up permitting and making land available for proposed data centres and infrastructure.

As the U.S. marks the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, more than 180 current and former Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) staffers warn cuts and leadership failures at the agency could lead to another calamitous disaster response.

In August 2005, Katrina killed nearly 1,400 people and caused an inflation-adjusted $205 billion in damages to become the most destructive hurricane in U.S. history.

Surrounded by warm lights and deep-green crops growing in stacked, rotating carousels reaching towards the ceiling, Oren Falkowitz sets out a vision of the future of urban farming.

It is one of localized food production, using vacant buildings – strip malls, industrial buildings, even gas stations – to grow food near people instead of shipping it from afar.

When Kawika Riley surveys the beaches and forested hills of the Hawaiian islands, his eyes are drawn to a dangerous interloper: flammable invasive grasses.

Two years ago, such grasses fed devastating wildfires that tore through the island of Maui, killing more than 100 people and causing $5.5 billion in damage.

President Donald Trump has yet to announce a homelessness policy, but comments he made during the election about forcibly removing the homeless and relocating them to "tent cities" have advocates worried, especially amid reports of key funding cuts.

Trump's new administration takes over following a landmark Supreme Court ruling in June that made it easier for local officials to crack down on homelessness, even while dozens of cities have since moved in the opposite direction and sought to create new protections for the homeless.

After six decades, the coal-fired JH Campbell power plant on the shores of Lake Michigan was set to close in May, after years of moving workers into other jobs and letting local communities decide what to do with the land.

Then came an order from President Donald Trump's administration to keep the plant running, citing an energy emergency in the region brought about, in part, by the retirement of coal and gas power plants.

Fear for her father's health led Jazmin Moreno-Dominguez to Washington this month to push for a first-ever heat standard for U.S. workers.

Her father suffered a heat-induced stroke a decade ago, but he still needs his construction job in blistering Phoenix, Arizona temperatures, she said at the start of three weeks of public hearings.

The fast-rising energy demands of Big Tech are undermining the ambitious climate pledges that Apple, Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft have all made in recent years, according to a report from the nonprofit NewClimate Institute.

The research says the tech sector faces a "climate strategy crisis" as its data centres demand ever more electricity and water to power growing fields, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing.