Environmental Writer
Climate Change/Energy / Sustainable Practices / Technology / Transportation/Travel
by Marina Schauffler · Published March 12, 2023
With global carbon pollution at an all-time high and transportation the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Maine and the U.S., it’s encouraging to see the auto industry pivoting to electric vehicles (EVs) and more people acquiring them. Maine is installing new...
Ecological Values / Health / Pollution/Waste / Sustainable Practices / Technology
by Marina Schauffler · Published July 15, 2022 · Last modified July 16, 2022
The soft clouds of gray lint that slide off clothes dryer screens are tangible evidence of the dryer’s tumbling abrasion. Each handful comes at a cost, shortening the lifespan of garments. But the true...
Maine’s transition to clean energy hinges on a wholesale transformation of the electrical grid. Several laws passed in recent years may improve grid planning, but legislating institutional change in the utility field could prove...
Ecological Values / Pollution/Waste / Slower Living / Sustainable Practices / Technology
by Marina Schauffler · Published May 6, 2022 · Last modified June 5, 2022
We are consumers of convenience. Offer us a faster, easier, wrinkle-free, nonstick option, and we’re sold. We need no convincing that convenience is an inherent good; a lifetime of ads has done that...
Climate Change/Energy / Ecological Values / Health / Sustainable Practices / Technology
by Marina Schauffler · Published February 27, 2022 · Last modified March 29, 2022
After five years enduring a rain of toxic hairs from browntail moth caterpillars, Sally Donelson is ready for a novel solution. She has to suit up at her family’s lakefront camp in Litchfield —...
Climate Change/Energy / Economics / Sustainable Practices / Technology / Transportation/Travel
by Marina Schauffler · Published November 7, 2021 · Last modified March 30, 2022
Our family got an electric car two years ago and I have one major regret: I wish our previous cars could have been electric. Recalling years spent contending with the expense, pollution, noise, mechanical...
Climate Change/Energy / Economics / Sustainable Practices / Technology
by Marina Schauffler · Published September 12, 2021 · Last modified March 30, 2022
In the wake of Ida, a hurricane intensified by the warming climate, more than a million electric consumers in Louisiana and hundreds of thousands more households across the eastern U.S. lost power. It was...
Climate Change/Energy / Economics / Sustainable Practices / Technology
by Marina Schauffler · Published August 15, 2021
The U.S. electricity grid is a dinosaur, a huge, unwieldy relic of the past. Built with an expected lifespan of 50 years, much of its infrastructure is now more than 60 years old. Its...
