Archive

(Butler Solar Facility in Butler, GA by Neil Wellons on Flickr)

“It’s like they wrote this for Georgia”

So says Marilyn Brown, a public policy professor at Georgia Tech, to reporter Molly Samuel about the potential climate bill deal brokered last week and now waiting-for-a-vote as lots of commentary builds up about the merits of what’s inside.

Welcome back to The Planet You Save May Be Your Own and thanks for being a paid subscriber — this is your bonus edition! As always, I'm open to feedback and suggestions about what you want to read and share. Thanks for making the newsletter happen — and please feel free to forward on to anyone who might be interested.

The resource:

Within the past week or two, Europe, Texas, Boston and the Pacific Northwest have all faced intense and deadly heat waves. But do these weather events have global warming's fingerprint on them?

The short answer: Yes and no, or at least some of them. Increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere means what we consider extreme will happen more often, and the extremes will get more extreme. Not every hot day can be traced back to global warming to but climate change supercharges these events, and makes more more common within each season.

Welcome back to The Planet You Save May Be Your Own. I’m Taylor Kate Brown and I’m in the middle of an exhausting move.

(A fake “for your consideration” ad by Clean Creatives drawing attention to PR & marketing firm Edelman’s work for oil compaines)

In the survey I did earlier this year, readers said they were interested in more Q&As, so when I found that advertising industry publication AdWeek had a sustainability editor covering everything from greenwashing claims to protests against oil and gas industry advertising coming from inside the industry, Kathryn Lundstrom went right to the top of my list of people to interview.

Welcome back to The Planet You Save May Be Your Own, your weekly newsletter on local and state climate action. I’m Taylor Kate Brown and I am now a person who “enjoys” reading SEC filings. Well, at least sometimes.

(The Rotunda, Maine State Capitol Building, by J. Stephen Conn on Flickr)

One of my superpowers and downfalls as a journalist is being way too interested in the how. It’s the first question I had when I read Maine had become first state to require their public funds to be divested from fossil fuel businesses by law. California’s legislature required divestment from coal several years ago, but Maine’s mandate is far more expansive.

Welcome back to The Planet You Save May Be Your Own, your weekly newsletter about local and state climate action. I'm Taylor Kate Brown and I get very worried when I see ERCOT in the news.

(Oil well in front of the Rockies by Jason on Flickr)

Here’s a headline that got my attention this week:

Welcome back to The Planet You Save May Be Your Own. I'm Taylor Kate Brown and summer completely snuck up on me.

(Screenshot of a Natural Allies digital ad)

This week I want to share a story I've been working on for quite some time.

Welcome back to The Planet You Save May Be Your Own. I’m Taylor Kate Brown and here is just one sign of summer.

(A vineyard in Napa County with a solar panel roof in the distance)

Well, it happened. For the first time since I relaunched this newsletter in September, I missed a week. Usually I’m pretty good at planning ahead, but a combination of work, life and even a small injury conspired against it.

Welcome back to The Planet You Save May Be Your Own. Paid subscribers receive a monthly bonus email where I share one climate resource and ways you may be able to use it — thank you for keeping the newsletter a part of my work week!

For June, we're going interactive:

Welcome back to The Planet You Save May Be Your Own, a weekly newsletter on local and state climate action. I'm Taylor Kate Brown and I'd like you to say hello to Beef.

(Beef, a very good boy, is watching me take a photo of his humans' new restaurant.)

What if you built a restaurant on trash?

Welcome back to The Planet You Save May Be Your Own, a weekly newsletter on local and state climate action. I’m Taylor Kate Brown.

I've been traveling for most of today, so in lieu of the normal newsletter, I wanted to highlight a few stories that have been popping up around the U.S.

(The edge of a fire scar from the 2020 LNU Complex fire over the Charles Krug Winery in St. Helena, California)

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.

Welcome to The Planet You Save, a weekly newsletter on local and state climate action. Paid subscribers receiving a monthly bonus email where I share one climate resource and ways you may be able to use it. Previous bonus emails included care and feeding of your new EV and the place to buy nothing.

For May, we're learning a slightly different way.

The resource

Welcome back to The Planet You Save May Be Your Own, a weekly newsletter on local and state climate action. I’m Taylor Kate Brown and I hope you get to take some sort of breather this long holiday weekend.

It’s primary season in California, so most of my mailbox is direct mail fliers from various political candidates. But earlier this week I got this fairly alarming item.

Welcome back to The Planet You Save May Be Your Own, a weekly newsletter on local and state climate action. I’m Taylor Kate Brown, and I hope you have a nice weekend.

Things are expensive right now, yes? Certainly in a dollars-and-cents-inflation way, but also in personal costs — parents exhausted for an under-5 vaccine, workers rebelling against going back to lengthy commutes for… what reason exactly? And the millions of family members mourning a million lives cut short.

Money and personal costs are always present in climate change discussions too: What scale of investment do we need in each solution? Where will money make the most difference? Who pays — and when?

Welcome back to The Planet You Save May Be Your Own, a weekly newsletter on local and state climate action. I’m Taylor Kate Brown and I wish you all charging parking spots free of clueless gas cars.

Thanks to the very prompt readers who answered my survey. It’s exceptionally short and will help me plan the future of this newsletter to be most useful to those who read it. I’m very proud that nearly half of my readership opens this newsletter each week, so I’d love to hear from more of you about what keeps you reading! I’ll keep it open for one more week.

Welcome to The Planet You Save May Be Your Own, a weekly newsletter on local climate action.

This newsletter only happens with your support, so consider signing up for a paid subscription here. Subscribers get a monthly bonus edition of a practical resource and some ideas on how to use it, plus help make this newsletter a reality.

I’ve just gotten back from a short break and traveling, so this week’s newsletter is all about the best stories I’ve seen this week. I’m also have a short reader survey for you as I plan stories for this summer. It’s only three quick questions and will help me decide how to spend my time making this newsletter more interesting and useful to you. Tell me more here.

Welcome back to The Planet You Save May Be Your Own, your weekly local climate change newsletter. I'm Taylor Kate Brown.

(Near Harrison, Montana by Kerry on Pexels)

As I'm traveling this week, I wanted to republish story about a new youth climate case scheduled for trial next year.

Thanks for being a paid subscriber! As a bonus, you're receiving a monthly email where I share one climate resource and ways you may be able to use it. For April, I've developed my own mini-guide for the care and feeding (electricity) of your first EV.

EVs are far past the point of being only for early-adopters. As I've written before, automakers are staking their companies on electric cars and trucks being fully mainstreamed. But there's shockingly little help at the point of sale for new EV owners to deal with the short-but-notable learning curve of powering your car with electricity. Somebody taught you how to pump gas, right?

Electric vehicles are an incomplete solution to greenhouse gas emissions, and there’s still tough conversations that need to happen about the resource extraction and recycling plans for car batteries.

Welcome back to The Planet You Save, your weekly newsletter on local climate action.

Today is an extra-special edition: I'm partnering with another writer to help you understand a key climate adaptation that seems counterintuitive: Settings fires to slow wildfires. If you got this email as a forward, you can sign up for this newsletter here.

(all photos in this story of a prescribed fire in early 2022 by Colleen Hagerty)

Welcome back to The Planet You Save, your weekly newsletter on local climate action. I’m Taylor Kate Brown and today, we’ve got maps.

(Before we jump in, a note: I'm aiming for 422 new subscribers by Earth Day (4/22). Help me out by sharing it with friends, family and anyone you've talked about climate change with. Thanks to everybody who keeps the conversation going, it makes a big difference.

And if you got this newsletter as a forward, sign up here to get weekly editions in your inbox.)

Welcome back to The Planet You Save, your weekly newsletter on local climate action. I'm Taylor Kate Brown and this week we're back in an East Coast state. Thanks to everyone who shares the newsletter — if you'd like to sign up to get it in your own inbox every Thursday, you can do so here.

The latest UN report on cutting greenhouse gas emissions is out. I’ve been dreading it.

Welcome back to The Planet You Save May Be Your Own. I'm Taylor Kate Brown.

Thanks to everyone who's recommended The Planet You Save to neighbors, friends and on social media. As always, sharing this newsletter with friends, family, even acquaintances is highly encouraged — it's the primary way this newsletter grows. They can sign up to get it each week here.

Thanks for being a paid subscriber! As a bonus, you're receiving a monthly email where I share one climate resource and ways you may be able to use it. For March, we're looking at a website that helps you understand what's in your retirement and other investments.

Do you know how your investments change the future you’ll retire into? It sounds a little dramatic, but with climate change, it’s not an exaggeration.

The impacts of global warming hold real risks for all kinds of businesses, so much so that the SEC may soon require companies traded on various stock exchanges to disclose both their emissions and the material risks to they'll likely face from climate change.

Welcome back to The Planet You Save May Be Your Own. I’m Taylor Kate Brown and this week we’re looking at where one state is in their attempt to get fossil fuels out of buildings.

(photo by Ryan Somna on Flickr)

This week’s edition is a republished story from Energy News Network about Massachusetts’ Commission on Clean Heat. But what’s “clean heat”? I’ve touched on some efforts by local and state governments to block gas hookups in new buildings.

Welcome back to the The Planet You Save May Be Your Own, a weekly newsletter about local climate change stories. I’m Taylor Kate Brown and today we’re going to a place where “one person’s trash is another’s treasure” is quite literal.

On my way to Urban Ore, a salvage and reuse store in Berkeley, a well-timed joke pulled in front of me on the highway: a box truck full of old lamps, metal and what appeared to be a vertical washer-dryer combo. A wood plank across the back of the truck kept the items from falling off. Was the truck on its way to the dump? Where would these items go?

I came across Urban Ore after Jamie Facciola, aka Furniture Cycle, shared one of their posts on Instagram. I’m fascinated by the gap between the vast quantities of stuff – new and old – that get thrown out and how many people can’t afford the same items. Salvage, thrift reuse, antiques, tag sales and consignment stores are all different ways of trying to even out both sides of this scale.

Welcome back to The Planet You Save, a weekly newsletter on local climate action. I'm Taylor Kate Brown and be thankful I skipped all the graphs I wanted to put in this newsletter.

It will be in the spring, likely April. The day will be cool and sunny and quite possibly Saturday. It might be this year.

On that day, you will see a headline that says something like this: "California's grid is powered for the first time entirely by renewable energy"

Welcome back to the The Planet You Save May Be Your Own, a weekly newsletter about local climate change stories from Taylor Kate Brown. This week we've got a enough transit info to pack an eight-lane highway.

How do we solve highway congestion long-term?

If you answered "widening highways," you're not alone. 64% of respondents in a recent survey of 600 Americans chose that answer.

Thanks for being a paid subscriber! As a bonus, you're receiving a monthly email where I share one climate resource and ways you may be able to use it.

For February, we're going for something a little closer to home: your local Buy Nothing or Freecycle group.

The resource

Welcome back to The Planet You Save May Be Your Own, a weekly newsletter on local climate action. I’m Taylor Kate Brown and I'm sharing the best local climate stories I've seen this week while I work on longer stories. If someone sent you this newsletter as a forward (thanks!) you can sign up to get it in your inbox here.

(If you're a regular reader and want to support this newsletter and keep it a part of my work week, [consider a paid subscription at any level](). I'll be sending out the Resource of the Month email on Monday, so sign up before then to get this bonus feature in your inbox.)

More local climate stories:

Welcome back to The Planet You Save May Be Your Own, a weekly newsletter on local climate action. I’m Taylor Kate Brown and we’re getting to our next location on two wheels today. If someone sent you this newsletter as a forward (thanks!) you can sign up to get it in your inbox here.

(If you’re a regular reader and want to support this newsletter and keep it a part of my work week, consider a paid subscription at any level.

*

Welcome back to The Planet You Save, a weekly newsletter on local climate action. I'm Taylor Kate Brown.

This week I'm republishing a story from Energy News Network about geothermal systems replacing gas-fired heating on a handful of college campuses.

It's a rethink of how they heat and cool their buildings, even in places with serious winters. Geothermal systems have also been proposed in on the level of small residential neighborhood districts.

My goal with this newsletter has always been sharing stories I'm not seeing broadly covered elsewhere, and republishing helps me do that faster than me starting from scratch. And don't worry, there's still the regular links section at the end.

Welcome back to The Planet You Save May Be Your Own, a weekly newsletter on local climate action. I’m Taylor Kate Brown and this week’s edition includes an rare look at an “electric stable”. If someone sent you this newsletter as a forward (thanks!) you can sign up to get it in your inbox here.

(Gas flaring in San Juan County, New Mexico by John Fowler on Flickr)

Truth and consequences

Thanks for being a paid subscriber! As a bonus, you're receiving a monthly email where I share one climate resource and ways you may be able to use it.

In this first month, I've selected something educational, but many of these will be more practical. For January, I'm sharing Project Drawdown's Climate Solutions 101 series.

The resource

Welcome back to The Planet You Save, a weekly newsletter on local climate action. I’m Taylor Kate Brown and these teenagers are saying no to building new gas stations in their town.

This week we’re returning to Back to Basics, a series where I answer your questions about climate jargon and facts you’re embarrassed to ask. Our first edition was on what qualifies as a greenhouse gas and how it fits into the broader category of pollution. Read it here. Today I’m tackling a common question with a far more complicated answer.

******

Welcome back to The Planet You Save, a weekly newsletter on local climate action. I’m Taylor Kate Brown and this week’s interviewee absolutely wants to talk to you about heat pumps.

If someone forwarded you this email, you sign up to get it in your inbox here.

(Palo Alto’s City Hall, with trees painted blue in 2018. For art, apparently.)

A brief prelude this week: If you’re a regular reader of The Planet You Save and want to support the work I’m doing, consider signing up for a paid subscription. Paid subscribers support the newsletter and ensure it’s a regular part of my work week. As a paid subscriber you’ll also get an additional Resource of the Month email where I share one good resource I’ve found on local climate action and some ideas about how to use it. All readers will continue to get the weekly Thursday newsletter.

Bonus: I’ve used Buttondown’s “pay what you want” feature to allow you to become a paid subscriber at any level. I suggest $6/month and am offering one free Reusable Media guide — a series of evergreen resources on navigating climate action in your community I’m working on right now — for anyone at or above that amount. You can do so here.

If you’d like to gift a subscription to someone else, email me for more details. And as always, one of the most powerful things you can do to support this newsletter is share it — forward it on to a friend, or spread the word on social media. Thanks!

****

Welcome back to The Planet You Save, a weekly newsletter on local climate action. I'm Taylor Kate Brown, wishing you a Happy New Year.

Observe: the unfussy, simple and very lonely subject. It's the only compost bin in my 30-unit apartment complex.

Every week or so, I grab our heavy-duty plastic countertop container, walk down a flight of stairs, past our garbage room, across the parking lot and to this bin, surreptitiously throwing food waste into a container that I suspect was placed there for landscapers that stop by every other week. Each time, I hope the bin isn’t overflowing; I haven’t been able to figure out when it’s picked up. It certainly isn’t on our normal trash schedule.

Welcome back to The Planet You Save, a weekly newsletter on local climate action. I'm Taylor Kate Brown and I hope you're having a good end to 2021.

This week, I'm sharing some recent & best-of-this-year local climate action stories. If this is your first newsletter, check out the archive to see what our regularly scheduled editions look like.

• "Our story was no longer that Boeing appeared to be poisoning Portland; it was that Boeing had said it was poisoning Portland four years in a row — and the EPA had ignored it." This ProPublica story about an apparent ecological disaster that never actually happened (and how ProPublica ended up reporting themselves out of a story) is a good example of checking data with additional reporting and paying attention to where regulators are not paying attention.

• Sammy Roth, among the best local/regional climate reporters working today, gives us some tough love on what to expect from efforts to slow climate change in 2022: "But as easy as it is to live and die with each day’s news — with every disappointing headline, frustrating tweet and panicked proclamation by the talking head on your TV screen — the story of climate change is long, as is the story of the pandemic."

• The top 6 ambitious state climate laws passed in 2021 and the top state legislative issues.

• The disaster we must make mundane — among my favorite climate essays by a non-climate writer this year.

• "The blob": When a warming Alaska imperils a decades-old pipeline infrastructure.

• The top three Planet You Save newsletters this year: The inaugural issue, what its like to travel across the country by train and what do these small-sounding numbers mean to you?

Welcome back to The Planet You Save, a weekly newsletter on local climate action. I'm Taylor Kate Brown and Merry Christmas to those who celebrate. The days are getting a little longer from here on out.

This week and next, I'll be sharing some good reading around the web on local climate stories. If this is your first newsletter, check out the archive to see what our regularly scheduled editions look like. This newsletter only grows through word of mouth, so thank you to everyone who shares it.

• Rivian will bring more EV jobs to Georgia, but the state lags on climate policy.

• From earlier this year: It's a "solar barn raising" in Virginia.

• One of the most dangerous chemical plants in America sits in one of West Virginia’s only majority-Black communities. How did this town become a "sacrifice zone"?

• Revealed: the Florida power company writing its own state legislation to slow rooftop solar.

• Salt Lake City to require all new city-funded buildings to be more "climate-friendly," in an attempt to make their buildings emissions free by 2023.

• Not in the immediate way of rising seas? Coastal groundwater flooding may still wreak havoc.

Welcome back to The Planet You Save, a weekly newsletter on local climate action. I'm Taylor Kate Brown and I want you to think about composting your anger.

(Photo by David Sorich on Flickr)

Plenty of states and utilities have set goals to make their electricity carbon-free, but last week, an unlikely candidate came forward. The board of Nebraska’s largest electric utility, Nebraska Public Power District, has voted to set a net-zero target for the state’s electricity by 2050.

Welcome back to The Planet You Save, a weekly newsletter on local climate action. I'm Taylor Kate Brown and I'm reading about the implication of America's fossil fuel export boom for those who live nearby. As a reminder, this newsletter grows entirely by word-of-mouth. You can forward on this email, share this edition on the web or subscribe here.

(Screenshot of the Probable Futures website)

Our world, and how we live in it, is going to change. That's always been true, but climate change makes the way we choose far more pressing. That's one of the underlying messages of Probable Futures, a website, platform and narrative project from a new group in partnership with the Woodwell Climate Research Center.

Connecticut —

Welcome back to The Planet You Save, your weekly Thursday newsletter on local climate action. I'm Taylor Kate Brown and as we approach the end of the year, I'm thinking about repair and reuse as a way to gift.

Photo by Will Barkoff on Unsplash

Bay Area, California —

Welcome back to The Planet You Save, a weekly newsletter on local climate action. I'm Taylor Kate Brown and the newsletter will be off next week. I hope you enjoy your favorite Thanksgiving side dish and share this newsletter with relatives and friends — many who are probably thinking about climate change action as well. As always you can sign up for the weekly edition here.

Photo by Felix Wöstmann on Unsplash

Bay Area, California —

Welcome back to The Planet You Save, a weekly newsletter on local climate action. I'm Taylor Kate Brown and thanks for reading - it's been encouraging to see so many people opening — and responding — to this work. I shared some of your responses to the train journey newsletter at the end of the newsletter. As always, consider forwarding an email you really liked to someone who's interested and sharing the sign up link.

Train vistas inside this email. Transit thinking too.

Bay Area, California —

Chicago, Illinois —

Welcome back to The Planet You Save. I'm and while I said the newsletter would be skipping a week because of travel, I started to see too many stories I wanted to share. I'm bringing you this slimmed down, links-only version while I'm on the road. See a climate story in your backyard? Reply to this email to tell me about it.

Providence, RI —

Welcome back to The Planet You Save May Be Your Own. I'm Taylor Kate Brown and when I get back to California, I'm certainly going to the combination Taco Bell-and-Pizza-Hut-AND-fast electric-vehicle charger but not for the food.

Two years ago, I asked the readers of the San Francisco Chronicle what questions they had about climate change, specifically in the Bay Area. But one reader went really local: they gave me their home address and asked if it would be underwater because of climate change.

This person's house was at nearly 1000 feet of elevation. Not even the direst uncertainties in the worst-of-the-worst case scenarios had the Pacific Ocean or Bay Area anywhere near their driveway. I wished desperately they had left their email address so I could tell them so — although arguably, I could have sent a letter.

Providence, RI —

Everybody loves a state legislature committee hearing, right?

Providence, RI —

Good morning and welcome back to The Planet You Save May Be Your Own.

It’s been a while, so let's quickly recap, I’m Taylor Kate Brown, journalist, Earth Day baby and until very recently, an employee of a great local newspaper. You signed up to this newsletter at some point in the past five years, and I’m happy to announce it’s back. More details on how & why in a bit.