Great Lakes Echo (https://greatlakesecho.org/category/solutions/)
Stories that offer environmental solutions.
By Katie Finkbeiner
A group of Democratic and Republican senators want to bring gun safety instruction into middle and high schools with DNR-certified instructors. The lead sponsor, from North Muskegon, said the program would improve gun safety among youth and perhaps increase the ranks of young hunters. Cosponsors include senators from Detroit, Harbor Springs, Manton and Mount Pleasant and Six Lakes. A U-M expert discusses.
When reporting in rural communities, journalists must “listen and shut up.”
That was the advice of former Native News Online managing editor and author Valerie Vande Panne, a panelist at a session of the recent Society of Environmental Journalists annual conference in Philadelphia.
Environmental reporting experts at the recent Society of Environmental Journalists conference in Philadelphia discussed how to report on climate in a more productive way.
Allen Arthur, the engagement director at Solutions Journalism Network, emphasized the need to avoid negative sentiments while engaging in the climate crisis dialogue to promote engagement in community-based activities.
Environmental journalists and educators face a changing media field and systemic barriers that make it difficult to improve the profession.
Experts at a recent Society of Environmental Journalists conference in Philadelphia addressed some of these challenges to reimagine a more sustainable system.
What do you do when an employee comes forward, exposing their company for wrongdoing?
Environmental journalists discussed how to handle that situation at a recent Society of Environmental Journalist Conference in Philadelphia.
Fields pockmarked by bombs, forests torn up by trenches and littered with landmines, cities around the Kakhovka dam in Ukraine flooded and then left with a water shortage as the reservoir dries up.
These scenes in Ukraine and Gaza are a few examples of how war leaves long lasting damage to the environment.
When U.S. Rep.-to-be Debbie Dingell was growing up in St. Clair, she’d get in an inner tube and ride in the wake of freighters passing on the St. Clair River.
She fished there too.
While the House and Senate have never had a direct, official connection to tribal governments throughout Michigan, new legislation could change that.
A bill would make Michigan the first state with a formal legislative connection with its tribal governments,
A tractor falls on you. A horse kicks you. A cow pins you against the side of a barn. Your hand gets caught in a corn shucker.
These are just some of the accidents Michigan State University researcher Laurel Morano documented in her recent study of agriculture-related injuries – and only among the most dramatic examples of the dangers farmers face every day on the job.
Steve Hall used to call public health “the invisible profession.”
“Previously, when we did our jobs well, people didn’t know about us,” said Hall, who for 10 years has been the health officer for the Central Michigan District Health Department.
When Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed off on expansive recycling reforms in December 2022, she also approved a last-minute amendment allowing chemical recycling — a process decried by many environmentalists — to be classified as a legal manufacturing process.
Chemical recycling, specifically the commonly used plastic pyrolysis process, turns plastic into fuel.
