Category: Uncategorized

How EPA chief Zeldin became a cheerleader for “Drill baby drill”

By Rocky Kistner March 7, 2025

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin (Photo: Gage Skidmore from Surprise, Arizona, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Last year, Lee Zeldin was a washed-up former four-term congressman from Long Island who had lost the 2022 New York governor’s race to incumbent Kathy Hochul. A former member of the bipartisan House Climate Caucus, Zeldin ran a somewhat middle-of-the-road race to try to unseat the popular Democratic governor. So, when President Trump tapped Zeldin just after the election for Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator, some considered him to be a moderate choice. After all, he was in the House Climate Caucus, so how bad could he be?

Just after Trump announced he had picked him, Zeldin proclaimedhis intentions in a post on X (formerly Twitter). “We will restore U.S. energy dominance, revitalize our auto industry to bring back American jobs, and make the U.S. the global leader of AI,” he said. “We will do so while protecting access to clean air and water.”

In January, during his Senate EPA nomination hearings, Zeldin also expressed concern about the threat of climate change, stating the United States must act with “urgency” to address it. But that concern did not last long. 

A week after being confirmed as EPA administrator, Zeldin toldBreitbart News that predictions of climate change ending the world have “come and gone,” adding that the EPA would push for strong economic policies to make the United States “energy independent” and “aggressively pursue an agenda powering the Great American Comeback.” He made no mention of clean energy. 

Later in February, any hope for moderation was further dashed when Zeldin called for eliminating the agency’s 2009 “endangerment finding,” a critical scientific finding which enabled the agency to regulate carbon pollution under the Clean Air Act by determining that planet-warming gases pose a threat to public health and welfare. The new administrator also cut popular diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and social justice programs based on Trump’s executive orders.

This was not a surprise to members of Congress who know Zeldin’s record well. “I think, clearly, everybody likes clean air and clean water. My opposition to Lee Zeldin is founded on where he’s likely to be on a different issue: climate change,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said on the Senate floor last month. “In that context, I have nothing against Lee Zeldin personally, but the likelihood of him standing against that fossil fuel bulldozer that is coming at him is essentially zero.”

Just last week, Zeldin called for an investigation into the Biden administration’s handling of billions of dollars of green grants, citing unsubstantiated reports of waste, fraud and abuse and comparing it to “tossing gold bars off the Titanic.”Until that investigation is completed, he froze $20 billion in green grants, which could bankruptGreenhouse Gas Reduction Fund grantees, experts say.

The freeze is “going to be very devastating, especially for smaller businesses that really don’t have a lot of funding through which they can [wait] out months of not getting access to the money that was awarded to them,” Rachel Cleetus, senior policy director with Union of Concerned Scientists’ Climate and Energy program, told Utility Dive. “They will go bankrupt because they do not have a lot of cushion here, and they will obviously have to lay off people, and the benefits from the projects themselves for communities will not go forward.”

65 percent EPA cut may be a “low number”

Despite criticism from virtually all quarters about the devastating impacts of budget cuts, Zeldin has stood his ground, adopting the harsh rhetoric of his new boss. “The days of irresponsibly shoveling boat loads of cash to far-left activist groups in the name of environmental justice and climate equity are over,” Zeldin posted on X in a video last month. Zeldin also pledged to do his part to eviscerate the federal workforce by proposing to slash EPA’s budget by 65 percent, which would boot tens of thousands of employees into the streets, including staff who work on some of the most critical environmental health and safety issues across country.

Zeldin said that massive cuts are just a starting point. “I think that the EPA can save even more than 65 percent of our budget year over year,” Zeldin told Spectrum News late last month.

What would a 65-percent EPA budget reduction mean in real terms? Let’s look at the numbers. In fiscal year 2024, EPA’s budget was nearly $9.16 billion, slightly smaller than it was in FY1970, the year it was founded, in inflation-adjusted 2024 dollars. A 65-percent budget cut of its FY2024 budget would leave the agency with only $3.2 billion. Without a doubt, it would cripple the agency. 

Zeldin supports the assertion that environmental regulations are a hindrance to business. “Providing every American access to clean air, land, and water is a vital goal,” he posted on X, “but we can’t ever do it in a way that suffocates our economy.” 

In fact, studies show that the benefits of environmental safeguards far outweigh their costs. For example, studies show such major environmental laws as the Clean Air Act provide societal benefits that outweigh costs by 10 to one.

Zeldin’s call for draconian federal budget cuts and regressive environmental policies are nothing new for anyone who has followed his career closely. Judith Enck was EPA’s New York regional administrator when Zeldin served in the House. “If you are a fossil fuel company, a plastics company, a chemical company—you’ve got to be pretty happy with this appointment, but it’s going to be an environmental disaster for the rest of us,” Enck told Rolling Stone. “They want to weaken Clean Air Act regulations by removing the part of the law that requires the EPA to set health-based air quality standards.”

A quick look at Zeldin’s recent past illustrates Enck’s observations. Zeldin was a drill, baby, drill guy long before Trump picked him seemingly out of nowhere. The League of Conservation Voters gave him a paltry 14 percent lifetime voting score in 2022. And during his unsuccessful bid for New York governor in 2022, Zeldin ran on a plan to expand fossil fuel energy by overturning the state’s ban on fracking. He argued that the fracking ban former Gov. Andrew Cuomo put into place in 2014 was harming rural parts of the state.

“When I talk about reversing the state’s ban on the safe extraction of natural gas and approving new pipelines, that’s a lot of jobs, that’s a lot of revenue,” Zeldin told Politico days before the election. But Zeldin’s pro-fossil fuel message was a loser, and the oil and gas industry did not give him much support at the time. That, however, was about to change.

A magnet for fossil fuel support

After he lost the 2022 governor’s race, Zeldin focused on his consulting business, Zeldin Strategies, whose clients paid him well to represent their interests in a variety of conservative causes. According to his financial disclosure statement filed in January of this year, Zeldin made $775,000 in salary plus $1 million to $5 million in dividends from his consulting firm over the past two years. A chunk of that money—more than $120,000—came from writing opinion columns for a range of news outlets, including Fox News, Newsday, and the New York Post. Zeldin reported that the funding for these handsomely paid opinion pieces came from such fossil fuel-friendly PR firms as DCI Group and CSC Advisors. The Republican lobby shop CGCN paid him a whopping $25,000 for just one column in Real Clear Policy criticizing environmental, sustainable and governance (ESG) investing.

But Zeldin landed an even more lucrative connection to the fossil fuel industry via Texas oil and gas fracking magnate Tim Dunn, a major Trump campaign donor. According to Zeldin’s financial disclosure statement that cover his earnings since 2023, he received more than $140,000 from America First Works (AFW), a conservative political advocacy group that played a crucial role in drafting Trump’s executive orders. Zeldin currently sits on the AFW board as an emeritus member. AFW’s sister organization, America First Policy Institute, founded in 2021 by Dunn and other Trump advisors, appointed Zeldin chair of its China Policy Initiative last year.

A huge fossil fuel-industry booster, AFPI opposes government action on climate change and programs promoting clean energy. “The U.S. must resist build-nothing climate alarmists, who undermine our nation’s ability to replicate our economic and environmental success on the world stage,” one of AFPI’s energy essays asserts.

Dance with them that brung ya

Last year, AFPI founder Tim Dunn sold his lucrative Texas oil and gas company CrownRock to Occidental Petroleum for about $12 billion. Observers say that sale will make the Christian-right donor even more powerful in state and national politics.

“Money is power in Texas politics,” University of Houston professor Brandon Rottinghaus told the Texas Tribune. “Dunn’s already shown willingness to spend big to imprint his ideological religious beliefs on the GOP. With more money, he’s likely to pour gas on the fire.”

Getting rid of the EPA’s endangerment finding would definitely provide more gas, since Dunn is no fan of climate regulations. “It would be ideal if we could get rid of this ‘CO2 as a pollutant’ business,” Dunn said at a 2023 AFPI event, adding that a Trump presidency could use executive orders “to curb all this silliness about CO2 emissions.”

Lee Zeldin is no doubt paying attention to people like Tim Dunn. As they say in the Lone Star State, you gotta dance with them that brung ya. It’s clear Zeldin has perfected the Texas Two-Step. 

The author, Carlos Carabaña, in the field. For the story, his team worked more than seven months, obtained various confidential documents and archival video, took 10 field trips and interviewed 30 cancer patients and others.

For decades, inhabitants of Hidalgo near Mexico City have been poisoned by toxic chemicals and sewage contaminating the waters flowing toward the Endhó dam. Toxic sewage from Mexico City and industrial corridors created an environmental hell for Hidalgo residents over the past 40 years. Although the authorities knew that the water from their wells was contaminated, sickening the residents, they simply ignored them.

A team of more than a dozen journalists and videographers documented this powerful but neglected story for Mexico’s Channel N+ Focus. It was awarded Third Place, Outstanding Feature Story, Large, for the Society of Environmental Journalists’ 22nd Annual Awards for Reporting on the Environment. Judges called it a “strong production of this otherwise shockingly unknown story. Through excellent use of archival footage, previously unreleased documents and powerful, heartbreaking imagery, this story shone a light on and gave voice to people living in and imperiled by an atrociously polluted environment.”

SEJournal recently caught up with investigative reporter Carlos Carabaña of N+ Focus by email to talk about the award-winning project. Here is the conversation.

SEJournal: How did you get your winning story idea?

Carlos Carabaña: We were searching for stories about “huachicoleo de agua” (basically, people who steal and sell water) in Tula, Hidalgo, and a source told us about the Endhó Dam. So we went on a field trip to the area. After meeting and talking with some of the 15,000 residents who had been abandoned for decades by the government and local administration, we decided it was a story that needed to be told.

SEJournal: What was the biggest challenge in reporting the piece and how did you solve that challenge?

Carabaña: The biggest challenge was to decide which findings and stories to include in the piece and which ones to omit. The environment and health issues concerning the Endhó Dam have been going on for decades and have affected so many people; some findings, stories and problems had to be ruled out even though they were quite shocking.

Another challenge was trying to get a reaction from the authorities. We had several confidential documents that proved that the three levels of government knew about these problems, including the fact that seven water wells were poisoning the 15,000 residents. The authorities, who knew about it from a series of studies conducted in 2007, 2010 and 2018, simply ignored it as cancer deaths in the region tripled.

SEJournal: What most surprised you about your reporting?

Carlos Carabaña

Carabaña: Seven water wells that supply the communities of the Endhó Dam have been contaminated with heavy metals for decades because of sewage and waste from Mexico City, several industrial corridors and hospitals, a refinery and a thermoelectric plant. After several demonstrations and protests by residents of the Endhó Dam, the government built five water treatment plants. In 2019, the government held a big inauguration party and told the residents that they could finally drink from the wells; but the government handed over water treatment plants that were unfinished and nonoperational.

OK, so maybe the government didn’t give a damn about these 15,000 people. But, telling the residents that they could drink the water when they, the government, knew it was contaminated with heavy metals, … that’s evil.

SEJournal: How did you decide to tell the story and why?

Carabaña: After three field trips to the area and some key findings, we made a list of the core issues that affected the Endhó Dam: issues related to health, water, scarcity, poverty and so on. We then analyzed which were the best stories to convey each issue, determined how to present the key findings, and added background and context.

We are a TV channel and an on-demand platform, so we have to produce two different pieces: a five-minute video for the news program and a 15-minute video for the on-demand platform. Also, we wrote a story for our media internet outlet. We decided to do these three complementary pieces to reach the maximum audience and be able to tell the story in a proper way.

SEJournal: Does the issue covered in your story have a disproportionate impact on people of low income, or people with a particular ethnic or racial background? What efforts, if any, did you make to include perspectives of people who may feel that journalists have left them out of public conversation over the years?

Carabaña: Most of the 15,000 Endhó Dam residents have low incomes. It is the abandonment of an entire community: First, their lands were taken away, then their water was contaminated and finally they were left to die alone. An abandonment by the three levels of government and by administration after administration. Sewage and wastewater from Mexico City, several industrial corridors and hospitals, a refinery and a thermoelectric plant have created an environmental hell north of Tula.

This contamination reached the Endhó Dam’s drinking water wells, and for decades has poisoned, drop by drop, thousands of human beings. We tried to give the residents the space to tell their stories and we contributed with context, background and investigative findings about how this environmental hell was created.

SEJournal: What would you do differently now, if anything, in reporting or telling the story and why?

Carabaña: I would have increased the range of diseases to look for among the health problems of the area. Basically, with the help of a local organization and using the INAI platform (Mexican Freedom of Information Act), we searched federal files for statistics on cancer and respiratory diseases. I would have liked to search for more diseases and over a wider range of years.

SEJournal: What lessons have you learned from your story?

Carabaña: As we say in Spanish, “Piensa mal y acertarás” (or “Think the worst and you won’t be far wrong,” according to the Collins dictionary). As I said before, I can understand if government officials and agencies didn’t solve the problem of the contaminated drinking water due to budget problems or a lack of political power. But the government told the residents that the problem was solved when they knew that the water was still poisoning the community. That sounds like some kind of supervillain plot.

SEJournal: What practical advice would you give to other reporters pursuing similar projects, including any specific techniques or tools you used and could tell us more about?

Carabaña: Build a great team. In N+ Focus, our investigation bureau, journalists work for months alongside producers, and we make creative decisions together. From the start, we involve the product design area, so they can contribute to the research with ideas. In the bureau, we speak to each other about our investigations, so if someone has a source or an idea about how to access information, we contribute. We have great leaders who trust our work. Effort, analysis, trust in your partners, methodology and, the most important tool, patience.

SEJournal: Could you characterize the resources that went into producing your prize-winning reporting (estimated costs, i.e., legal, travel or other; or estimated hours spent by the team to produce)? Did you receive any grants or fellowships to support it?

Carabaña: This work was carried out over more than seven months. We obtained various confidential documents using transparency and source work tools. We analyzed the public agenda and databases, and went on 10 field trips to the affected area. To document the abandonment of the 15,000 residents by the various governments and administrations, we interviewed 30 cancer patients, other people affected and scientists. We also searched the archive of the television station and found journalistic reports — from the 1980s — on this contamination.

SEJournal: Is there anything else you would like to share about this story or environmental journalism that wasn’t captured above?

Carabaña: The importance of following up. The carrying out and publication of this investigation led the authorities to sit down again with the people affected, after having ignored them for almost three years. Resources were allocated to operationalize the water treatment plants that were delivered incomplete. Additionally, the working groups with the Ministry of the Environment and other authorities were resumed, in order to set up an environmental restoration program for the Endhó Dam. The new governor of Hidalgo, Julio Menchaca, promised to address the health problems of the residents.

Throughout 2023, we have continued to report on these political commitments: publishing stories about the deadlines, about the state of the projects and working groups, and asking politicians about specific deadlines. We plan to do so until all these commitments have been fulfilled.

Carlos Carabaña is an investigative reporter from Galicia, Spain. From 2012 to 2015, he lived in Berlin, where he worked on stories about migration issues and depopulation. Since 2015, he has been living in Latin America, based in Mexico, covering issues relating to environmentalism and climate change, human rights, politics and violence, with reporting in Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, Colombia and Guatemala. He was part of the research bureau of mexicopuntocom and El Universal. Since 2022, he has been working at Focus, the research bureau of N+.

* From the weekly news magazine SEJournal Online, Vol. 10, No. 8. Content from each new issue of SEJournal Online is available to the public via the SEJournal Online main page. Subscribe to the e-newsletter here. And see past issues of the SEJournal archived here.

A screenshot from the first-place winner of the large market feature story prize from the Society of Environmental Journalists’ 22nd Annual Awards for Reporting on the Environment, “What Do the Protectors of Congo’s Peatlands Get in Return?” by Ruth Maclean and Caleb Kabanda, with photography by Nanna Heitmann, for The New York Times.

Inside Story: The Battle To Protect Congo’s Vast Peatlands

One of the world’s largest carbon sinks has long been protected by local communities in the Congo forests. But invading logging operators threaten this invaluable natural resource. New York Times reporter Ruth Maclean and journalist Caleb Kabanda teamed up to craft an award-winning, in-depth story about peatlands, an important element of nature that experts say is critical in the battle against climate change.

Judges with the Society of Environmental Journalists annual awards program were greatly impressed with the story’s richly character-driven, cinematic narrative, its detailed reporting, character portrayals and strong aerial and video components. They awarded it first place for Outstanding Feature Story, Large, in SEJ’s 22nd Annual Awards for Reporting on the Environment.

SEJournal recently asked Maclean and Kabanda about the project by email. Here is the conversation, edited lightly for clarity and brevity.

SEJournal: How did you get your winning story idea?

Ruth Maclean

Maclean: The Congo Basin peatlands have been on my mind for a while but I had no idea what story I would find when I went there.

Kabanda: I was contacted by Ruth Maclean. She told me that she would like to come to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to report on the peatlands in the Congo Basin forests. She asked if I was available to work with her. I felt very excited because I found the idea and the story great, very interesting and very helpful to the whole planet, and to the whole of humanity. I had already heard about peatlands but didn’t know what they looked like. So, it was a great opportunity to visit the peatlands to witness with my own eyes what they look like and learn more about them. I made some phone calls and learned that no single journalist nor even DRC government officials have ever visited the Congo’s peatlands. Then, I told Ruth that her idea and story were fabulous because we would be the first journalists to report about it and get to witness what peatlands look like.

SEJournal: What was the biggest challenge in reporting the piece and how did you solve that challenge?

Maclean: Logistics and bureaucracy. I solved it with the help of the amazing Caleb Kabanda, my collaborator on the story.

Kabanda: The biggest challenges in reporting the series were getting permissions from the security services (the Congolese national intelligence agency that is the Congolese FBI) and accessibility. The peatlands are located in very remote areas, very far in deep Congo Basin forests, where you need to travel by plane, four-wheel-drive vehicle, speed boat, wooden boat and also travel long hours during the day and sometimes at night on foot under the rain in a deep jungle forest, crossing rivers, falling into mud, getting hurt sometimes by thorns and sometimes being stung by ants, in areas where there is no cellphone reception.

I got media accreditation to enable us to cover the story and I navigated the security services, explaining to them why it is important to inform the whole world about the importance of peatlands and forests to humanity, but also by gaining the trust of local communities, known as peatlands’ protectors, to talk to us, to explain to us what they know about peatlands and also take us to the peatlands. We convinced the local chiefs, along with local communities, that we want to spend much time with them. We want to see how they live and interact with peatlands. We want to learn from them what they know about peatlands. We want to learn what peatlands mean to them, what peatlands mean to the whole of humanity. After talking to them and explaining clearly what we came to do, they were convinced and open to telling us their stories and answering our questions. They allowed us to cover their daily activities in the peatlands, at home and more.

SEJournal: What most surprised you about your reporting?

Maclean: The desire of communities living around the peatlands to protect them for the world, despite having almost nothing themselves.

Kabanda: What personally surprised me is first, to see that the peatlands’ protectors (local communities living in remote forests around the peatlands) are well-informed about the role and the importance of peatlands and forests to the planet and to humanity. They explained to us how the forests and peatlands contribute to fighting against climate change. They showed us how peatlands and forests contribute to their daily living, in terms of feeding and treating their families. Second, I noticed that local communities are willing and managing to protect peatlands and forests but, unfortunately, they are very limited. They regret that polluters continue polluting the world and are demanding the peatlands’ protectors protect the forests and peatlands, but get nothing in return.

SEJournal: How did you decide to tell the story and why?

Maclean: In a long narrative with multimedia elements, because I was working with the incredible photographer Nanna Heitmann, had a brilliant editing team at The New York Times’ Headway, and because I encountered such great characters and was able to witness their struggle to protect the peatlands in person.

SEJournal: Does the issue covered in your story have disproportional impact on people of low income, or people with a particular ethnic or racial background? What efforts, if any, did you make to include perspectives of people who may feel that journalists have left them out of public conversation over the years?

Maclean: The whole story was focused on some of the poorest villages in the world. It was very important to listen to them and try to faithfully represent their perspectives.

SEJournal: What would you do differently now, if anything, in reporting or telling the story and why?

Caleb Kabanda

Maclean: There are so many angles I would have kept following, if only I had had more time.

SEJournal: What lessons have you learned from your story or project?

Maclean: To focus on people when doing environmental stories.

Kabanda: Peatlands and forests in the Congo Basin are in danger if no alternative measures are taken to protect them. Local communities survive from these peatlands and forests: Their main resources are forests and peatlands; they cut trees from the forests for firewood, making charcoal and planks. Local loggers and mainly international logging companies, conspiring with some corrupt individuals from the Congolese government, are badly and illegally exploiting timbers from the Congo forests. And most of the local communities earn their livings by fishing in peatlands, which poses a small-scale destruction threat to peatlands.

SEJournal: What practical advice would you give to other reporters pursuing similar projects, including any specific techniques or tools you used and could tell us more about?

Maclean: I would encourage other reporters to spend hours with their interviewees if possible and really try to listen.

Kabanda: For reporters intending to cover similar projects in the DRC and most of the African countries: Get legal permits/media accreditation for reporting. Get all required permissions, stamps and signatures from government and security services. Be positive in navigating local security services. Be patient in handling all the bureaucracies. Navigate local authorities and local communities to get their trust. Identify the best characters with good knowledge, well-informed about the area or the region. Get to know the customs of the local communities to facilitate good communication. Always remember to assess the security situation of the area of reporting. Work with a local professional fixer or local journalist who is professional in navigating any situation and who has a good array of contacts. With any obstacles, remain positive, patient and courageous.

SEJournal: Could you characterize the resources that went into producing your prizewinning reporting (estimated costs, i.e., legal, travel or other; or estimated hours spent by the team to produce)? Did you receive any grants or fellowships to support it?

Maclean: Two weeks on the ground, several more writing it up, thousands of dollars.

Kabanda: Reporting in DRC is very expensive. Media accreditation and a filming permit are extremely expensive. Plane tickets, car rental, boat rental and hotels are very expensive. Most of the infrastructure is almost dead. There are more bureaucracies and harassment from the security services, which always slows down the reporting.

SEJournal: Is there anything else you would like to share about this story or environmental journalism that wasn’t captured above?

Maclean: The Congo peatlands need and deserve much more attention.

Ruth Maclean is the West Africa bureau chief for The New York Times. Previously, she worked for The Guardian and The Times of London, reporting from Africa, Europe and Latin America for 15 years. She aims to provide nuanced coverage of the 25 countries she covers, with a focus on the people living in them.

Caleb Kabanda is a freelance journalist, camera operator, field producer, professional fixer and first aid responder for international reporters, filmmakers, movie stars and researchers. He is based in Goma in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo and has worked with reporters from the BBC, National Geographic, The Washington Post and many others.

Editor’s Note: View a video interview with Maclean about her prizewinning story below.]

SEJ Awards 2023: Outstanding Feature Story, Large from SEJ: Society of Env. Journalists on Vimeo.

* From the weekly news magazine SEJournal Online, Vol. 9, No. 30. Content from each new issue of SEJournal Online is available to the public via the SEJournal Online main page. Subscribe to the e-newsletter here. And see past issues of the SEJournal archived here.

Cover crops have been growing in popularity in recent years as a method of improving soil health, saving money, and both adapting to and mitigating the effects of climate change.

Government programs and private carbon credit programs are supporting farmers in planting cover crops after harvesting their cash crops, instead of leaving fields fallow. Many farmers find this saves them money in the form of reduced pesticide use, provides better soil for their cash crops and makes their fields resilient to extreme flooding.

Linus Rothermich has been farming mostly corn and soy in central Missouri’s Callaway County since the 1980s, but in recent years, heavy rains and bouts of extreme weather forced him to think differently about how to make his 900-acre farm more efficient. So, in an effort to address the worsening soil erosion that was damaging his fields, Rothermich started experimenting with no-till agriculture and cover crops. He planted a diverse mix of cover crops like rye and winter hairy vetch immediately after harvesting his main crops, allowing the cover crops to grow in fields that normally would be plowed up and then left fallow.

The results over just a few years have been amazing, Rothermich reports. Runoff and soil erosion have reduced drastically as the cover crops absorbed more moisture and held the soil in place. He soon noticed spots on his farm where the soil had improved markedly. Last summer, an agronomist who inspected his fields told him that based on his inspection of dozens of farms, he has the best soil in central Missouri. “That kind of made me sit up and go, ‘Okay, we’re making a difference,’” Rothermich says.

Experts say Rothermich’s experience is similar to that of many farmers in the Show Me State, with cover crops quickly gaining traction as a way to reduce runoff of farm chemicals and improve soil health. Research shows that cover crops deter weeds, control pests, increase biodiversity in the fields and bolster the ability of soil to absorb water, allowing farmers to reduce the amounts of pesticides and fertilizers they must purchase and apply to their crops.

That’s a helpful incentive for farmers who are squeezed by increasing fuel costs and extreme weather events. The amount of agricultural land employing cover crops has jumped 50% in a five-year period in the U.S., according to the 2017 Census of Agriculture report, as farmers realized the benefits of no-till and cover crop methods — which were popular with previous farming generations — and took advantage of government programs supporting this transition. Cover crops are also both an adaptation to climate change, and a way of slowing it — or mitigating its effects.

Rob Myers, director of the Center for Regenerative Agriculture at the University of Missouri, is right in the middle of this resurgence. The new center is working with government agencies, nonprofits and corporate partners to develop training programs for farmers across the state to increase the use of cover crops and sustainable agriculture technologies. Myers says there are currently about a million acres of farmland in Missouri under cover crop management, a number that he and other U.S. Department of Agriculture experts believe will expand substantially.

Click here to go to full story on AAAS’s How We Respond website.

As pastor of the New Northside Missionary Baptist Church in St. Louis, the Rev. Rodrick Burton has championed many causes for his church members. These include fighting violent crime to helping people struggling to pay their bills. But one cause stands out for the north St. Louis pastor: promoting clean and affordable renewable energy. Low-income communities and communities of color are disproportionately harmed by air pollution from burning fossil fuels and by the health risks of climate change.

As someone with family members who suffer from asthma, Rev. Burton long considered the advantages of solar energy, which does not produce air pollution or greenhouse gases. Six years ago, he took advantage of a state subsidy program that allowed him to install solar panels on his church and community center, which he says saves his congregation $3,000 a year in utility bills. That’s when Rev. Burton really got religion about solar energy.

“Let me be clear — climate change is a civil rights issue,” Rev. Burton wrote in an op-ed at the time. “ Low-income communities and communities of color — like the one I serve — are disproportionately harmed by the air pollution from coal-fired power plants, as well as by the heat and health risks due to climate change.”

He joined with environmental groups such as the Sierra Club that wanted to help share his message with a national audience, and he traveled to energy conferences around the country. In 2019, he hosted a summit in St. Louis along with other leaders from the Green the Churchmovement, a national organization of church leaders focused on environmental justice concerns. Groups like Washington University’s sustainability program helped support the conference. Rev. Burton began thinking up even bigger projects, ones that could provide jobs for his congregants and potentially transform abandoned areas of the city.

While solar installations in disadvantaged urban areas of St. Louis are still rare, across the Mississippi River in Illinois, solar is booming thanks to more supportive energy policies, according to solar installers. Last year, the EPA reached a consent decree in a major Superfund case in East St. Louis that included the construction of solar panels on contaminated property.

“St. Louis has many vacant properties,” Rev. Burton says. “We could make whole areas into solar farms. … Who wants to live next to an abandoned building? We could repurpose the land to create more sustainability projects.”

To finish reading the article on AAAS How We Respond website go to this link