Britain’s only remaining coal power plant at Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire generated electricity for the last time on Monday after powering the United Kingdom for 57 years. The power plant came to the end of its life in line with the government’s world-leading policy to phase out coal power which was first signaled almost a decade ago....

This story is part of State of Emergency, a Grist series exploring how climate disasters are impacting voting and politics. The conspiracy theories started swirling even as the flood waters were rising: Hurricane Helene, the deadliest storm to strike the United States since Katrina in 2005, was created specifically to target Trump voters in...

Even as the full scale of devastation in the mountainous regions of North Carolina and Tennessee remains unknown, it’s clear that Hurricane Helene is one of the deadliest and most destructive storms in recent U.S. history. As of Friday, the storm had caused at least 180 deaths and destroyed or damaged many thousands of homes and other buildings. ...

An unfailingly friendly 30-year-old with tousled black hair and a slight, willowy frame, Michael Greenberg almost never loses his beatific smile — not even when a black SUV is plowing straight toward him. This apparent serenity makes it nearly impossible to imagine Greenberg uttering the following words, which he posted to X in May: “We are bold...

When the bubonic plague reached England in the summer of 1348 — spread by fleas, lice, or infected humans, according to the latest theories — it reached a breeding ground for disease. Londoners’ immune systems had little defense against the new strains of plague that had been circulating throughout Europe, and London’s streets were a cesspit, ringed...

This story is part of the Grist arts and culture series Moral Hazards, a weeklong exploration of the complex — sometimes contradictory — factors that drive our ethical decision-making in the age of global warming. In May 2014, Kate Schapira carted a little table with a hand-painted sign out to a park near her home in Providence, Rhode Island,...