A drive from South Shore to Lakeview reveals a stark truth about Chicago: factories and polluting industries cluster on the South Side, while northern neighborhoods remain largely untouched. This disparity is no coincidence—it stems from decades of racially charged policies that shield white, affluent areas from the burdens of air pollution, waste accumulation, and toxic runoff.
Climate change can feel like an overwhelming, global challenge—but meaningful progress often begins at the community level. Across neighborhoods and cities, local activists are designing smarter, more connected approaches to environmental action. Today, digital collaboration tools, like those offered by Adobe, make it easier than ever for community leaders to coordinate, document impact, and share their results globally.
I like to sleep with my windows open, which unfortunately means that if there’s a storm at night, I wake up to puddles by my bedside. The breeze and fresh air feel worth the occasional water damage, but this summer, the storms in Chicago reached an intensity that made me reconsider my preference for a ventilated sleep environment.
Since its inception in 1907, the forbidding Blackhawk Generating Station was the polar opposite of a friendly next-door neighbor to Beloit College’s quaint, leafy campus, located across Pleasant Street in Beloit, Wisconsin. Whenever winds blew from the west, the coal-fired, steam-generating electric power station’s 135-foot-high smokestack would belch plumes of polluted air toward the college green. This continued for years, as the brick, concrete, and steel plant expanded in stages until 1947, and finally ended in 2010 when its owner, Alliant Energy, ceased operations, slating the plant for demolition.
On May 29, 2025, the lawyers at Our Children’s Trust (OCT) filed Lighthiser v. Trump, on behalf of 22 youth from Montana, Oregon, Hawai‘i, California, and Florida, asserting their constitutional rights to life, health, and safety. This youth-led constitutional rights lawsuit challenges three of the Trump administration’s recent Executive Orders, each of which has the capacity to intensify the climate crisis and worsen the youth plaintiffs’ climate-related health injuries.
The annual One Earth Young Filmmakers Contest Global Awards Celebration is gearing up to take place at 10 a.m. Sunday, Sept. 21, both in person at the Davis Theater, 4614 N. Lincoln Ave., Chicago, Illinois, and online virtually anywhere in the world. Featuring the top 10 winning films from among almost 400 submissions, this event is the third with global reach since the contest started 13 years ago.
