On everything from housing and education, to gas pipelines, asset managers and private equity firms have been snapping up essential infrastructure at an alarming pace. And now, they could be coming for your utility company.

BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, is trying to acquire Minnesota Power, a regional utility company that provides power to approximately 150,000 people in the state. If it succeeds, critics warn, there could be far-reaching consequences for the community, potentially driving up already-soaring utility costs and throwing a wrench in state decarbonization goals.

“There’s no requirement that they pursue this clean energy vision that the current executives in Minnesota Power have laid out,” Minnesota State Senator Jen McEwen told More Perfect Union. “We’re going into this sale on promises without any teeth in the guarantee that it’ll actually be carried forward.”

The “polluter pays” principle transformed the energy industry half a century ago. Now, as industrial agriculture drives climate breakdown, deforestation, and water scarcity, experts say it’s time to apply the same rule to our food systems—and make corporations, not consumers, bear the cost of the damage.

CAPE & ISLANDS – State officials with the Department of Energy and Environmental Affairs have announced that Nantucket County has moved into a state of critical drought, while significant

drought conditions continue throughout Cape Cod. 

The update mirrors declining trends in the Northeast and Southeast coastal regions, with the exception of Dukes County, where drought conditions are no longer present.  

An Interior Department memo is hampering wind and solar on public lands. It’s one of many federal actions slowing the build-out of cheap, clean energy.

The US government used to have American farmers’ backs, but that support has been dwindling for decades. New subsidies signal big changes for farmers.

Pennsylvania contains almost 83,000 miles of rivers and streams, ranging from small trickles to large rivers. These waterways are important because they provide water for people, farms, and industries; provide habitat for many kinds of wildlife and fish; and also provide us with great places to fish, swim, and boat.

As our landscape changes, it begins to have an impact on stream health. What we do on or to the land affects both the quantity (volume) and quality (pollutant levels) of the water in our streams and lakes. The land area through which any water moves, or drains, to reach a stream is called a watershed.

Drivers exposed to several types of life-threatening oil and gas waste are now asking the Department of Transportation to enforce regulations to protect them.

Sure, coal had a comeback in 2025. But the year also marked the first time Texas got more power from solar than from the increasingly expensive fossil.

It started with an order to restore climate funding for blue states, and ended today with yet another judge saying Trump can't halt offshore wind construction.

An unprecedented avian flu outbreak in Argentine Patagonia devastated a stable elephant seal colony, highlighting the rising threat of infectious disease to wildlife in a warming world.

In the spring of 2023, we returned to Península Valdés, a rugged coastal region in Argentine Patagonia, expecting to witness the familiar sights and sounds of southern elephant seals during their breeding season. These massive marine mammals, with males weighing up to 4,000 kilograms, gather in large colonies on the beaches to give birth, nurse their young, and mate. The air usually resonates with the cries of thousands of pups calling out to their mothers, the grunts and bellows of males competing for dominance, and the buzz of life thriving on the rocky shores.

Instead, we were met with an eerie silence and a devastating sight: beaches once bustling with thousands of seals were littered with hundreds of dead pups and adults. The usual cacophony had been replaced by the stench of decay, and the empty spaces where seals should have gathered were painfully obvious. This mass mortality event had unfolded over just a few weeks—a stark and sudden collapse that no one could have predicted with such speed and severity.

Communities can balance safety, cultural life, and ecological health by designing nighttime lighting that protects both people and the natural world.

The night sky—the silent dark between stars—is a living commons bridging Earth, life, and spirit. As the 13th‑century Zen master Eihei Dōgen taught in Keisei Sanshoku or “The Sound of the Streams, the Shape of the Mountains,” rivers, forests, mountains, and night are not mere backdrops but the body and speech of the Buddha—sacred, alive, and deserving reverence.

Imagine stepping outside on a clear night, looking up at the stars, only to find the heavens dimmed to a faint, featureless glow. Where once the Milky Way stretched across the sky, now only a handful of stars remain visible to the naked eye. This creeping veil is light pollution—the quiet theft of night’s natural darkness. It spills from streetlights, billboards, and high-rise windows, casting cities in a permanent, artificial twilight.

While it leaves no residue in air or water, its effects ripple through life on Earth, confusing migrating birds, misleading sea turtle hatchlings, and disorienting nocturnal animals. The same lights also negatively impact humans, disrupting sleep, altering hormone cycles, and affecting overall health. Also, access to natural darkness is not equally experienced: communities differ in how light—or the lack of it—shapes public safety, cultural life, and ecological exposure.

An airport made of bamboo? A tower reaching 20 metres high? For many years, bamboo has been mostly known as the favourite food of giant pandas, but a group of engineers say it’s time we took it seriously as a building material, too.

This week the Institution of Structural Engineers called for architects to be “bamboo-ready” as they published a manual for designing permanent buildings made of the material, in an effort to encourage low-carbon construction and position bamboo as a proper alternative to steel and concrete.

Bamboo has already been used for a number of boundary-pushing projects around the world.

BOSTON – Governor Maura Healey has filed reforms to implement a new streamlined process making it, according to the governor’s office, easier and faster to build homes and lower housing costs.

The reforms to the review process for housing development of the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act Office will make it faster, simpler, and more predictable while maintaining strong environmental protections, according to Healey’s office.

The reforms are set to take effect on January 30th.

Healey says review timelines will be shortened from years to just 30 days.

Wildfires in Chile's Ñuble and Biobío regions killed at least 18 people and forced over 50,000 to evacuate, highlighting the dangers of the worsening climate emergency.

On the heels of another historically hot year for Earth, disasters tied to the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency have yet again turned deadly, with wildfires in Chile’s Ñuble and Biobío regions killing at least 18 people—a figure that Chilean President Gabriel Boric said he expects to rise.

The South American leader on Sunday declared a “state of catastrophe” in the two regions, where ongoing wildfires have also forced more than 50,000 people to evacuate. The Associated Press reported that during a Sunday press conference in Concepción, Boric estimated that “certainly more than a thousand” homes had already been impacted in just Biobío.

Forests, especially old, undisturbed ones, not only contribute to replenishing our groundwater but also act as the first source of filtration for streams, ponds, and reservoirs.

150 million people in the United States have some of their drinking water filtered by forests. Forests, especially old, undisturbed ones, not only contribute to replenishing our groundwater but also act as the first source of filtration for streams, ponds, and reservoirs. Approximately 74 percent of all water in the U.S. is sourced from above-ground water sources. Prioritizing the protection of old-growth forests is an easy way to ensure that we continue to supply Americans with clean drinking water. 

I watched the late afternoon sun sparkle and dance across the water of a Rio Grande tributary in northern New Mexico. I marveled at the healing this small river has undergone. Today, the riverbed is reconnected to its floodplain and flowing in numerous interconnected channels and wetlands. But a few years ago, this view was dramatically different as this river was eroded six feet below its bank and there were no beavers in sight.

What Was Taken from Our Rivers

Prior to European colonization, North American rivers contained millions of beaver dams and large amounts of woody debris, such as large dead trees. Soon, however, people began to rapidly remove woody debris and beavers were indiscriminately trapped to provide for the European fur trade.  Prior to trapping, the North American beaver population was estimated to be around 400 million. It’s roughly 12 million today, and most experts believe beavers are functionally extinct, meaning they do not exist in numbers that result in ecosystem improvements. 

Ohio is letting the oil and gas industry put more toxic waste underground despite community concerns — even as the state defers to local opponents of of clean energy.

The Trump administration is continuing its all-out assault on public lands and waters in Alaska’s Arctic to maximize oil and gas drilling for the benefit of corporate polluters.

Earthjustice has spent decades fending off oil and gas drilling proposals in the region’s most sensitive landscapes to protect irreplaceable ecosystems, traditional ways of life, and our planet. By fighting to keep fossil fuels in the ground in Alaska and elsewhere, we are helping to rein in a worsening climate crisis that is warming the Arctic nearly four times faster than anywhere else. Alaska needs ways to power its economy that respect its lands and people – not this.

Now this work is more urgent than ever.