Inside Climate News Audio

Go behind the scenes with managing editor Jamie Smith Hopkins and reporter Anika Jane Beamer as they explain why no one knows what happens to 110 billion pounds of manure produced in Iowa every year. Iowa raises about 23 million hogs each year. That many animals produce a lot of manure — some 110 billion pounds of it — but no one keeps track of where it goes. That’s a problem. Most manure from Iow...

Go behind the scenes with executive editor Vernon Loeb and climate science reporter Bob Berwyn as they break down the key outcomes of COP30. COP30 has wound down in Belém, Brazil – the U.N. climate change conference marked this year by Indigenous rights demonstrations, an actual fire, and not a lot of movement on global climate action. Before leaving Belém, Bob explains what happened at COP30, bot...

Go behind the scenes with executive editor Vernon Loeb and climate science reporter Bob Berwyn as they explain the key issues setting the agenda at this year’s U.N. climate change conference. COP30 is underway in Belém, Brazil, where nearly 200 countries have gathered for high-stakes global climate negotiations. Notably absent is the United States. President Donald Trump, who called climate change...

Go behind the scenes with executive editor Vernon Loeb and New York City reporter Lauren Dalban as they discuss what Mamdani’s election signals for climate issues in the Big Apple. Climate activists celebrated Tuesday night as assemblymember Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City. Mamdani, a previously obscure politician who rose to power through an unrelenting campaign for affordabilit...

Go behind the scenes with executive editor Vernon Loeb and reporter Katie Surma as they discuss how scientists are using AI to understand sperm whale communications, a discovery that could upend the way we interact with them. What separates humans from other species? The answer to that question may no longer be language. With the help of artificial intelligence, robotics and new recording technolo...

Go behind the scenes with executive editor Vernon Loeb and renewables reporter Dan Gearino as they discuss how Virginia has become the data center capital of the world. Virginia, especially Northern Virginia, leads the world in data center development, far outpacing other top markets like Beijing. How did this come to be? Watch as Dan explains the history of this top data center boom town, the ris...

In October 2007, ICN opened its doors with a two-person team and a little bit of pilot funding. The day the website launched, it had 102 visitors: the second day, just 53. Today, the newsroom looks different: ICN has grown from a staff of two people to 40, and from only 100 readers to reaching many millions. Once just a small office in Brooklyn, ICN has opened reporting hubs in regions across the...

Go behind the scenes with executive editor Vernon Loeb and North Carolina reporter Lisa Sorg as they discuss a never-ending fight over forever chemicals in NC drinking water. Environmentalists have been fighting for over a decade to get PFAS out of the Cape Fear River in eastern North Carolina. The insidious chemicals have eluded traditional water treatment systems and flowed through the taps of h...

Go behind the scenes with executive editor Vernon Loeb and reporter Katie Surma as they discuss the violent crackdown on environmental and human rights activists in Ecuador. Last year, an average of three environmental defenders were killed a week around the world. Last week, Efraín Fueres became one of the slain. The Indigenous land defender was shot and killed in Ecuador amid protests against th...

Did you hear the one about the space lasers starting forest fires? Fringe conspiracy theories like this still swirl in certain parts of the internet. But some climate change disinformation is harder to spot – it’s subtle, sophisticated, and circulated by trusted sources. Executive editor Vernon Loeb sits down with Washington bureau chief Marianne Lavelle and ICN’s chief science writer Bob Berwyn t...

Some 640 million acres of the United States are owned by the federal government for the benefit of the people. These public lands, widely loved by Americans, are being pulled in multiple directions over questions of who gets access, how the land is used and managed, and what values should guide those choices. Managing editor Jamie Smith Hopkins sits down with three ICN journalists who’ve been trac...

Most of the meat we eat in the United States isn’t raised on small farms or fenced fields, as it was decades ago. Today, it comes from large concentrated animal feeding operations, also known as CAFOs. These industrial facilities house thousands of animals in close quarters – generating tremendous amounts of manure, climate-polluting methane, and a host of issues for neighbors. Managing editor Jam...

China has invested more than $1 trillion in overseas infrastructure projects through its massive Belt and Road Initiative. Chinese corporations are building roads and railways, dams and ports, in developing countries around the world – an initiative marked by both its enormity and opacity. Executive editor Vernon Loeb sits down with reporters Katie Surma, Nicholas Kusnetz, and Georgina Gustin, who...

Spoiler alert: Yes, AI is bad for the climate. AI’s computing power relies on massive data centers that use enormous amounts of electricity and water. The Trump administration wants that energy to come from burning fossil fuels, rather than renewable sources. Where does that leave the climate and communities caught in the crosshairs? Executive editor Vernon Loeb sits down with Dan Gearino, ICN’s c...

Go behind the scenes with Inside Climate News' executive editor Vernon Loeb and Washington bureau chief Marianne Lavelle as they discuss the future of the environmental justice movement amid Trump cutbacks. The environmental justice movement suffered a striking blow this year when the Trump administration rescinded $3 billion in grants to support EJ initiatives. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin te...

Go behind the scenes with executive editor Vernon Loeb and reporters Martha Pskowski and Liza Gross as they discuss new reporting on the climate super-pollutant methane. The Trump administration says that drilling in the U.S. is cleaner than in other countries due to tighter environmental oversight. But Texas, the heart of America’s oil and gas industry, tells a different story. The state’s regula...

Go behind the scenes with executive editor Vernon Loeb and clean energy reporter Dan Gearino as they discuss the mounting demand for electricity to power AI. The data centers that power artificial intelligence require huge amounts of electricity. Some experts estimate we’ll need as much as 25% more electricity by 2030, and 78% by 2050, to meet this demand alone. Whether that electricity comes from...

Go behind the scenes with executive editor Vernon Loeb and conservation reporter Kiley Price as they explain why everyone’s talking about the Endangered Species List. More than 2,370 species have received protections from the federal government under the Endangered Species Act, from schoolbus-sized North Atlantic right whales off the East Coast to tiny Oahu tree snails in Hawaii. But only a fracti...

Go behind the scenes with executive editor Vernon Loeb and reporter Bob Berwyn as they explain why global talks on plastics pollution reached a disappointing end. Global talks on plastics fell apart this week as participating countries failed to agree on next steps for curbing harmful plastic pollution. Several countries, including the United States, opposed provisions that would put a cap on prod...

Go behind the scenes with executive editor Vernon Loeb and senior editor Michael Kodas as they discuss the many factors – both natural and political – fueling this year’s intense fire season. Nearly 40 large wildfires are burning across the country, covering hundreds of thousands of acres. The largest among them is the raging Dragon Bravo fire, which closed the North Rim of Grand Canyon National P...

Go behind the scenes with executive editor Vernon Loeb and reporter Katie Surma as they discuss the tumultuous international gathering to protect the world’s wetlands. Representatives of more than 170 countries gathered in Zimbabwe last week for the Convention on Wetlands, a global environmental protection treaty aimed at saving Earth’s fastest-disappearing ecosystem. Geopolitics quickly took over...

Go behind the scenes with executive editor Vernon Loeb and Washington bureau chief Marianne Lavelle as they discuss the dismantling of EPA’s scientific research office. Last week the Trump administration quietly took a hugely consequential action affecting environmental protections in America: beginning to shutter the EPA Office of Research and Development. The decision follows a long pressure cam...

Go behind the scenes with executive editor Vernon Loeb and reporter Keerti Gopal as they discuss Chicago’s slow approach to its massive lead-pipe problem. No city in America is more dependent on lead lines for drinking water than Chicago. A Biden-era EPA rule means the city must replace them, but it’s falling way behind deadlines, leaving residents at risk of harmful lead exposure. Keerti explains...

Go behind the scenes with executive editor Vernon Loeb and clean energy reporter Dan Gearino as they discuss what the One Big Beautiful Bill Act means for the EV market. President Trump’s giant tax and spending plan slices into every aspect of the national effort to address climate change – including clean energy incentives. One of the cuts that will be most visible to consumers, and will happen m...

Go behind the scenes with executive editor Vernon Loeb and reporter Lisa Sorg as they discuss the collision between corporate interests, government regulators, and the health of North Carolinians. A plastics plant in North Carolina has been dumping massive amounts of a likely carcinogen into the city’s wastewater for years, sending it downstream into rivers that supply drinking water to about 900,...