Water. Earth. Fire. Air.
A city in a water crisis, medieval gardens, wildfires, and air pollutants from coal-fired plants
Dear Reader,
Happy Hump Day! Here are the top stories on the world’s most pressing health and environmental disparities:
Best regards,
Alex Ip
Publisher and Editor
🍑 A SOUTHERN FLAIR
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — We Might All Pay for Corpus Christi’s Water Crisis (soft paywall) (Joe Pappalardo, Texas Monthly)
“The city kind of rested on its laurels,” said James Dodson, Corpus Christi’s water director during the pivotal Rhodes years. “There was an interim period when they thought everything was kosher, and they didn’t need to do much more. In the water business, you can’t do that. You’ve got to always be looking at the next development, the next source, the next project.”
CLYDE, N.C. — Hurricane Helene Killed His Wife and Destroyed His Mobile Home. New Tenants Are Now Renting the Same Flood-Prone Land. (Ren Larson, The Assembly)
But the program was developed with traditional homeowners in mind, and mobile homes, the country’s largest source of affordable housing, are often left out. Trailers, even when they become immovable and lifelong homes, aren’t typically considered real estate but instead personal property, like motorcycles and boats.
CAMERON PARISH, La. — Lawsuit adds to growing list of allegations that Cameron Parish LNG terminals are hurting seafood industry (Cheree Franco, Verite News)
“If you took a standard-sized dump truck and lined them up, it would be like 5 miles of dump trucks,” said Cooper Fournet, who is representing the plaintiffs in the suit.
🟠 TRACKING TRUMP
EPA eliminates rule that limits planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from power plants (Matthew Daly, The Associated Press)
The rules targeted by Trump’s EPA could prevent an estimated 30,000 deaths and save $275 billion each year they are in effect, according to an Associated Press examination last year that included the agency’s own prior assessments and a wide range of other research.
Even a partial dismantling of the rules would mean more pollutants such as smog, mercury and lead — and especially more tiny airborne particles that can lodge in lungs and cause health problems, the AP analysis found. It would also mean higher emissions of greenhouse gases, driving Earth’s warming to deadlier levels.
Read more: Court Strikes Down Trump Order to Keep an Aging Coal-Burning Plant Running (Claire Brown and Brad Plumer, The New York Times)
The Trump administration upended how we fight wildfires. Then came the West’s worst fire season in years. (Robert Chaney, Montana Free Press/Mountain Journal; Amy Alonzo, The Nevada Independent; Rachel Becker, CalMatters; Mike Koshmrl, WyoFile; Brooke Larsen, The Salt Lake Tribune; Olivia Prentzel, The Colorado Sun)
“Prescribed fire is never even going to scratch the surface of the number of acres that need to burn every year,” said Johanna Nosal, a forester who worked for the U.S. Forest Service in California, Colorado and Montana for 15 years before accepting a federal buyout in 2025.
“We’re putting these fires out, and sometimes we’re successful at it … but it’s just a year-to-year Band-Aid,” Nosal told The Nevada Independent. “And what eventually happens is you have a lack of resources and these weather periods that will create these huge blazes that no matter what you will do will keep spreading.”
Papa Johns, Propaganda and Putin: How a MAGA Influencer With Ties to Russia Became Trump’s Arctic Adviser (Heather Vogell, ProPublica)
Opining so broadly on foreign policy is “far beyond” the Arctic Research Commission’s scientific mandate, said Fran Ulmer, who served as commission chair for more than nine years before being replaced by Trump in 2020. “And certainly outside the bounds of what the U.S. Arctic Research Commission has done in the past.”
Wiping out measles impossible due to vaccine hesitancy in rich countries, says Gates (Jennifer Rigby, Reuters)
“There’s always that concern that if you have doubters in the U.S., that becomes a global thing,” he said. “But we haven’t seen an increase in vaccine hesitancy in the countries the foundation works in.”
Read more: Measles Outbreaks Are Forcing Parents of Immunocompromised Kids to Make Hard Choices (paywalled) (Emily Mullin, WIRED)
“He just wants to play and to do all the things that he sees other kids doing,” says Victoria Schiano, national community engagement coordinator for Little Lobbyists, a nonprofit that advocates for children with complex medical needs and disabilities.
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🗺️ WHAT ELSE WE'RE READING
KATHMANDU, Nepal — Nepal’s climate justice push after Bhote Koshi flood faces test of scientific evidence (Bidhya Rai, Nepal News)
Assistant Professor Dibas Shrestha of the [Central Department of Hydrology and Meteorology at Tribhuvan University] stated that adequate scientific studies on glacial floods are still pending in order to present fact-based arguments in international forums.
“Advocacy is one side of it,” he says. “While making a claim to the Loss and Damage Fund, it is necessary to strongly prove that the flood occurred due to climate change and caused loss equivalent to a specific amount, and that kind of detailed study is yet to be done.”
One in five black, Asian and minority ethnic NHS managers in England plan to quit amid racism, report finds (Denis Campbell, The Guardian)
“I am the only brown face at 99% of my meetings at strategic and policy level,” a black senior manager said. An Asian manager said: “There is a culture of nepotism. Although I believe I have the experiences, knowledge and ability to be promoted, the culture is too strong.”
Medieval mental health (Katherine Harvey, Aeon Magazine)
One of my favourite medieval images compares the mind to a bent bow which, although strong, cannot survive continual strain, so that ongoing ‘disputes in the household’ could ‘shorten a person’s years’. Just as we worry about stress, medieval people recognised that too much responsibility could make a person ill, with high-status men thought to be at particular risk.
In hydropowered Bhutan, solar starts to rise (Sara Hussein, AFP)
"Our plans are to develop about 5,000 megawatts," said Chhewang Rinzin, managing director of Druk Green Power Corporation, the country's generation utility.
Read more: Balcony solar could soon become legal in Australia. Here's how plug-in systems work (Romy Stephens, ABC News)
Energy Minister Chris Bowen said a third of Australians have solar on their roof, making the technology "more popular than the backyard pool".
"Now we're taking the next step, by looking at how even more Australians can take advantage of free, abundant sunshine to cut their energy bills — even if they don't have a roof.
BANJARBARU, Indonesia — The volunteers risking their lives to defuse Indonesia's wildfire 'carbon bombs' (paywall) (Gavin Butler and Ahmad Dhani, BBC)
"The worst thing here has been the smoke," says Fahrin Ramadhianto, a volunteer firefighter in South Kalimantan's Banjarbaru, one of the worst-hit areas.
"The smell is like decaying wood being burned – that's the characteristic smell of peat. And that peat contains decomposed wood and organic material from many different sources."
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