Under its BESt program, BES curates independent environmental news sites covering climate change, clean energy, environmental justice, and policy, as well as highlighting nonprofit journalism, newsletters, and videos. These high-quality resources inform global audiences without paywalls or advertising barriers.
Our staff has picked its favorite environmental news and information websites without a paywall. Most sites have a YouTube channel and a presence on major social media platforms. Most do not accept advertising, surviving on grants, donations, and memberships. Many sites allow republishing of articles with credit. A listing here does not imply endorsement by the BES. Did we miss an important environmental news site? Let us know in the Comments.
Canary Media
🌎 Canary Media (https://www.canarymedia.com/) — In the sprawling world of environmental reporting, Canary Media is highly focused on one subject area: the transition to clean energy. Most of the world recognizes the need to decarbonize national economies, and Canary Media covers every sector: electricity generation, transportation, buildings, and industry. As a non-profit newsroom, Canary Media can afford to cover issues independent of advertiser preferences. Though it has a focus on U.S. policy and trends, such as the American government’s changing relationship with wind power, it goes beyond the border to countries, such as coal-powerhouse Poland, which is preparing for the end of coal as a fuel. In addition, Canary Media offers regional newsletters chronicling the on-going energy transition.
Carbon Brief
🌎 Carbon Brief (https://www.carbonbrief.org/) — Independent news sites typically publish an email newsletter as well as a website, but UK-based Carbon Brief specializes in sending out frequent newsletters tightly focused on climate issues, starting with Daily Briefing. Sent five days a week, the newsletter summarizes important climate and energy stories from the previous workday. The weekly Debriefed newsletter offers international news on floods, wildfires, and the policies that affect these climate-influenced natural and man-made disasters. Every two weeks, the Cropped newsletter delivers news and views on land use, food policy, and the planet’s shrinking biodiversity. Twenty journalists work for the award-winning outlet, which is funded by the European Climate Foundation, a philanthropic group with a mission to promote the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.
Climate Central
🌎 Climate Central (https://www.climatecentral.org/) — Although the non-profit Climate Central has a broader mandate than journalism, it partners with newsrooms around the country on local reporting about climate-related issues. The organizations provides expertise, data, and editorial assistance to traditional and non-traditional outlets in a collaborative manner. In addition, Climate Central offers the public access to tools than illustrate the impacts of the climate crisis. In one case, the site restarted the federal government’s “Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters” database after the US Administration told its old home to shut it down. The action shows the public’s growing reliance on independent outlets for critical climate information.
Climate Change TV
🌎 Climate Change TV (https://www.climate-change.tv/) — Produced by the non-profit Responding to Climate Change, which is also an official observer to many United Nations organizations, Climate Change TV features interviews and commentary at various international meetings on climate change, including COP30 and subsequent meetings. RTCC also published a 70-page online magazine on the conference.
Climate Home News
🌎 Climate Home News (https://www.climatechangenews.com/) — Of all the independent environmental news sites covering global warming, Climate Home News takes the most international point-of-view, recognizing the global nature of the problem. Founded in 2011 to support the UN climate conferences known as “COP” (usually with a number after it), the journalists soon expanded a modest news service into a website and newsletters. The site is read by government officials, diplomats, and others involved in pushing for a the transition to a low-carbon economy. As well as daily news developments and commentary by leading activists and policy advocates, Climate Home News features explainers with subjects ranging from sustainable aviation fuel to the growing importance of rare earth minerals.
Earth.org & Earth.org Kids
🌎 Earth.org (https://earth.org/) and Earth.org Kids (https://kids.earth.org/) — Like most of the sites listed here, Earth.org produces independent, data-driven online articles about climate change, biodiversity, and crucially, solutions to the many environmental problems facing humanity. But the site deserves a special shout-out for its focus on young people via its Kids.Earth.Org site, which encourages teens to tell their own stories. Divided into six subject areas, authors from all over the world as young as 10 years old contribute readable, scientific articles. And the site has one of the few sections devoted to the growing problem of pollution in low earth orbit.
EcoWatch
🌎 EcoWatch (https://www.ecowatch.com/) — Most of the large environmental news sites focus on the science-based news and policy debates of the day, but since its founding in 2005, EcoWatch has offered unique features more akin to a full-service print newspaper. Perhaps the most interesting is a section devoted to helping visitors navigate the complicated world of deregulated energy markets in 29 states, which can help rate-payers save money and purchase more “green” energy. The site offers similar tools for residential homeowners to purchase solar systems to generate their own electricity. EcoWatch accepts advertising, but the site is clear that advertisers have no influence on editorial decisions, including on products and companies they review.
Environmental Health News
🌎 Environmental Health News (https://www.ehn.org/) — Environmental justice is a core value espoused by many environmental news sites, including Environmental Health News. The editors make clear that diversity, equity and inclusion are values they use to contextualize the stories they curate and share with an eye toward making the environment safer for everyone. Neither are the editors shy about including views that diverge from the environmental mainstream, which tends toward the left of the political spectrum, believing that all sides deserve to be heard, even in the environmental arena. Founded in 2002, EHN and a sister publication, The Daily Climate, are projects of Environmental Health Sciences, a non-partisan, non-profit organization that supports science on endocrine disruption and its impact on public health.
Grist
🌎 Grist (https://grist.org/) — When it comes to comprehensive coverage of environmental issues, especially climate change, few sites can beat Grist. Founded in 1999, Grist has evolved from a gritty newsletter to a multi-million dollar organization with a staff of 50. Though the site’s mission focuses on the intersection of climate change and justice, the journalists take on many kinds of environmental issues. One snapshot of its daily coverage includes a map of all the lead pipes in the Chicago area. Lead pipes are a major source of poor water quality in much of the country. Another story describes the current US government’s policies reshaping the deep-sea mining industry, which could lead to more ocean pollution. And an end-of-year column lists some of the best unusual words of the year, such as “greenlash,” the conservative backlash against climate policies. The site runs an annual short story contest, Imagine 2200, which solicits climate fiction, encouraging writers to imagine life in the year 2200.
Inside Climate News
🌎 Inside Climate News (https://insideclimatenews.org/) — In a media landscape that discourages in-depth investigative reporting on almost any issue, especially at the local level, Inside Climate News bucks the trend. Founded in 2007 as a blog, journalists David Sassoon and Stacy Feldman have built a national reporting powerhouse that earned a Pulitzer Prize in 2013 for a series on a one million gallon spill into the Kalamazoo River in 2010 of diluted bitumen, or “dilbit,” described as the “dirtiest, stickiest oil used today.” Inside Climate News makes a special effort to cover localized environmental stories with its “ICN Local” program. The website has 20 sections focused on individual states and regions spanning the entire United States. For example, its Portland bureau has covered a recent order by the US government to keep the last coal burning electric plant in Washington State open and running, despite state law to the contrary.
The Revelator
🌎 The Revelator (https://therevelator.org/) — The Revelator has the feel of a magazine of commentary similar to The Nation or The New Republic, but tightly focused on environmental issues, especially climate change. As well as publishing well-researched articles about species loss and advances in environmental science, the online magazine site features commentaries by leading scientists and policy thinkers. You’ll also find reviews of environmental books and volumes about the natural world. An arts section discusses the intersection of visual and performing arts with the warming climate. Published by the non-profit Center for Biological Diversity, The Revelator (which may refer to the author of the Book of Revelation) is among the most well-rounded of the popular environmental news and views websites.
Yale Environment 360
🌎 Yale Environment 360 (https://e360.yale.edu/) — Unlike most other independent news outlets specializing in environmental news, Yale Environment 360 is operated by an academic department, the Yale School of the Environment at Yale University. Launched in 2008, “E360” published scientifically based environmental stories accessible lay people, often from an international perspective. Around 40 percent of its readership comes from outside the United States. Recent stories focus on the severe water shortage faced by Iran after decades of mismanagement, how rising seas are forcing scientists in New Jersey to retreat before their marine station is lost, and how satellites and rockets in low earth orbit are polluting space with their propellants. E360 also sponsors an annual contest for environmental short films.
Can you suggest more sources? Add your thoughts in the Comments.
Image from Pixabay.