Hurricane Helene ravaged the southeastern United States for three days in September 2024, leaving a path of destruction and hundreds of casualties throughout North Carolina and five other states. Record-breaking rainfall devastated western North Carolina and triggered landslides that left many areas cut off from essential services for days. The mountain tourist hub of Asheville faced unprecedented destruction, including widespread property damage and disruptions to critical infrastructure.
Pew Research Center
Earlier this year, legislative staff in Colorado offered lawmakers a blunt, bold warning: “The budget appears to be on an unsustainable path.” Unless the state cut spending or increased revenue, staff members of the Joint Budget Committee (JBC) cautioned in February, ongoing deficits would exhaust the state’s reserves over the next five years.
Manufactured housing represents a critical opportunity to create and preserve lower-cost housing options in the United States, but many of these homeowners do not own their land—and millions don’t have leases that could prevent unexpected rent increases or eviction, according to a survey by The Pew Charitable Trusts.
Have you tried to figure out whether the fish you eat is sustainably sourced? At least 1 in 5 fish caught in the global ocean is a product of illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing—one of the main threats to the health of the ocean.
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The global ocean teems with life, and it contributes to the vital cycles that keep people and our planet healthy. But the seas are vulnerable to overfishing, loss of habitat such as seagrasses and mangroves, ineffective fisheries management, plastic pollution, and declining biodiversity. These mounting losses affect the coastal communities that depend on the ocean for food and jobs.
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Conserving natural spaces conveys benefits far beyond the gains to wildlife and their habitats. As scores of studies show, protecting and restoring lands and waters, particularly when done in close partnership with local communities, also improves people’s lives—and local economies—by increasing tourism and outdoor recreation.
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Peatlands are wetland ecosystems that store more carbon than any other natural habitat. By removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and trapping carbon from dead organic matter in waterlogged conditions, they serve as a critical tool for moderating global temperatures.
Are states investing enough in roads and bridges to prevent them from falling apart and to avoid leaving future generations on the hook for a costly repair bill? Historically, a lack of consistent information on the condition and needs of this infrastructure in states has limited policymakers’ ability to answer this question, prevented governments from making fully informed investment decisions to address maintenance backlogs, and hindered public accountability and transparency about whether decisions are fiscally sustainable.