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’s emissions fell 10 percent, more than the 7 percent drop worldwide, according to the calculations of the Rhodium Group. That’s better than the country’s reduction target set by the 2009 Copenhagen Accord, but still behind on its pledge under the Paris Agreement to cut emissions by 26 to 28 percent by 2025. Last year’s economic crash drove down emissions in every sector, but none more than transportation, where they fell almost 15 percent. Power plant emissions dropped 10 percent last year, driven largely by a 19 percent drop in carbon dioxide released by coal generation as the industry continues its death spiral.

Host Andrew Simon and guest Marshall Shepherd kick things off with thoughts on climate under the Biden administration and the inspiration behind Shepherd’s new book. Host Andrew Simon is Grist’s director of leadership programming and founding editor of the Grist 50, an annual list of emerging climate and justice leaders. He chairs the NASA Earth Science Advisory Committee and has previously served on NOAA’s Science Advisory Board. He has received numerous awards including the 2004 White House PECASE Award, the Captain Planet Foundation Protector of the Earth Award, the 2019 AGU Climate Communication Prize, the 2020 Mani L. Bhaumik Award for Public Engagement with Science and the 2018 AMS Helmut Landsberg Award.

n’t think your husband or his family would react super well to a history lesson delivered by you on why the modern practice of elaborate Christmas gift-giving is an inherently capitalist, anti-urbanist scheme. Because they’ve built a whole family tradition around a bountiful, gift-oriented Christmas, and family traditions are extremely hard to change. I wrote to Sarah Nichols, a relative of a Grist colleague, who implemented a very limited presents policy for Christmas for her nuclear family this year: The kids’ gifts would just come from her and her husband, not from the extended relatives. I tried not to assume that they loved giving tons of gifts, even if that’s what they’d done in the past,” she responded, noting that there may be relatives

There are at least six high-profile projects in Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming that combined could divert more than 300,000 acre-feet of water from the beleaguered Colorado River. The headwaters of the river and the main source of water lie in the upper basin, which includes Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico. As a result, lower basin states such as California and Arizona have benefitted from the “bonus water” that upper basin states have left in the river. While the lower basin states have agreed to cut between 400,000 and 600,000 acre-feet of water depending on how low water levels get at Lake Mead — which sits on Nevada’s border with Arizona — the upper basin has made no such promise.