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Tik Root, Grist

Stories By Tik Root, Grist

Taylor Swift’s Super Bowl flight shows what’s wrong with carbon removal

Taylor Swift’s Super Bowl flight shows what’s wrong with carbon removal

This story was originally published by Grist. You can subscribe to its weekly newsletter here.

A "quite radical" report suggests governments and communities, not the private sector, should be leading the carbon removal industry.

To get to the Super Bowl on time, Taylor Swift took a private jet from Tokyo to Los Angeles and then hustled to Las Vegas. The carbon removal company Spiritus estimated that her journey of roughly 5,500 miles produced about 40 tons of carbon dioxide — about what is generated by charging nearly 5 million cell phones. But don’t worry, the company assured her critics: It would take those emissions right back out of the sky....

Lawn equipment spews ‘shocking’ amount of air pollution, new data shows

Lawn equipment spews ‘shocking’ amount of air pollution, new data shows

This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist's weekly newsletter here.

Lawn-care equipment — leaf-blowers, lawnmowers, and the like — doesn’t top most people’s lists of climate priorities. But a new report documents how, in aggregate, lawn care is a major source of U.S. air pollution.

Using the latest available data from the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2020 National Emissions Inventory, the report found that the equipment released more than 68,000 tons of smog-forming nitrous oxides, which is roughly on par with the pollution from 30 million cars. Lawn equipment also spewed 30 millions tons of climate-warming carbon dioxide, which is more than the total emissions of the city of Los Angeles....