Hear from a climate emergency reporter
Welcome back to The Planet You Save, a weekly newsletter on local and state climate action. I'm Taylor Kate Brown, and I'm watching New York's legislature rushing to the finish line with climate legislation up in the air.
One of the elements of this newsletter that's really important to me is showing what a different kind of climate reporting — especially focused on local responses to cut emissions — can look like. I've done this with my own interviews with local climate reporters but this week, as I'm taking a brief break, I'm happy to report you can hear two of them talk about it directly.
Covering Climate Now, a consortium of newsrooms focused on expanding climate coverage is hosting a Twitter space today at 3pm PT/6pm ET with LAist's Erin Stone and BridgeMichigan's Kelly House. Both are from non-profit newsrooms (LAist is associated with NPR member station KPCC in southern California) and both focus exclusively on their respective region.
Notably, Stone's job is not "environmental reporter" but "climate emergency reporter". I'm especially interested in hearing more about how this job title changes how she chooses stories.
If you can't make it then, these events are generally recorded at the same link. I'll also be pulling out some key thoughts from the talk in next week's newsletter.
You can also read some of Stone's and House's coverage from two very different parts of the country:
Can Michigan become a climate haven? Duluth is already planning.
Michigan climate plan calls for EV incentives, faster renewable transition
L.A Mayor Eric Garcetti unveiled an $11.8 billion-dollar budget proposal for the city. Just 0.5% of it — about $60 million — would go to climate-specific initiatives.
Regenerative Farm In SoCal Aims To Capture The Greenhouse Gases It Creates
Where I'll be:
If you happen to be in Napa Valley next week and if you happen to be interested in how wineries can take action on cutting their own emissions and be more energy efficient, I'll be moderating a panel on energy savings and efficiency on June 9, as part of the Napa THRIVES event series.
More local climate stories
"Some Jetsons' bus": Electric school bus bill sparks debate during N.J. Assembly session.
Los Angeles joins New York City in banning gas appliances in new homes, but the timeline is unclear
Montana's little-known, super-important to climate board is up for election, but criticized as a "retirement home for politicians"
A Superfund for climate: New York bill targets fossil fuel companies for climate damages.
Nearly a third of Hawaii’s single-family houses have rooftop solar panels — more than twice the percentage in California. The state has increased the use of renewable energy in large part by getting electric utilities to accept rooftop solar rather than fight it -- and subsidizing home batteries that can return power to the grid when it's most need.
New Mexico’s oil and gas industry spent thousands of dollars this year to block regulations intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from extraction operations across the state.