Dharna Noor
Dharna Noor is a fossil fuels and climate reporter at the Guardian US, focused on how powerful industries and political actors drive the climate crisis and shape public understanding of it. Her coverage centres on the systems behind emissions - oil and gas companies, tech firms, regulators and lawmakers - rather than on climate impacts in isolation. She connects corporate strategy, policy decisions and technologies such as datacenters and artificial intelligence to concrete risks for people, infrastructure and democracy. This combination of industry scrutiny, technology reporting and climate justice framing sets her work apart from more general environment coverage.
Big oil uncovered
Noor is a lead reporter on “Big oil uncovered,” a Guardian US series that examines the fossil fuel industry’s efforts to sow doubt about the climate crisis and block environmental policy. In this work she reports on organised campaigns to mislead the public about climate science and pollution, including how climate denial rhetoric travels into the highest levels of US politics.
She draws on documents, expert testimony and policy analysis to show how oil and gas companies, trade groups and aligned organisations influence regulation, education and media narratives around fossil fuels.
Her reporting tracks the ways these actors seek to weaken or delay climate rules, from lobbying and litigation to funding pseudo-independent research. Across the series she keeps the focus on responsibility and power, asking who profits from continued fossil fuel use and who bears the resulting risks.
Datacenters, AI and climate risk
Noor devotes significant attention to how the data economy and emerging technologies reshape climate and energy risk. In recent Guardian reporting she has covered research showing that many datacenters are exposed to climate hazards such as floods and wildfires, underscoring how critical digital infrastructure sits directly in harm’s way as the planet warms.
She has written about proposals in Congress to pause construction of new datacenters over concerns about their carbon footprint, public health impacts and strain on local grids.
Other stories explore expert warnings that tax and regulatory decisions around artificial intelligence could impose a heavy toll on the climate by locking in energy-intensive data infrastructure. Noor has also examined plans to use AI tools to amplify doubt about pollutants and environmental regulations, tying tech-sector innovation directly to familiar playbooks of industry-sponsored denial and delay.
Across these pieces she treats datacenters and AI as contested sites of climate risk and industrial power, not as neutral tools.
Democracy, climate and justice
A recurring thread in Noor’s work is the relationship between climate policy, democracy and justice.
In coverage of midterm candidates running on green platforms, she has examined disaster insurance, climate-exposed datacenters and right-to-repair laws as concrete stakes in environmental elections, showing how these technical issues determine who is protected and who is left vulnerable. She reports on unions fighting for good clean energy jobs in the face of political attacks, linking labour organising to the future of US energy systems and the distribution of climate benefits. In radio and podcast appearances she breaks down the outcomes of global climate summits such as COP29 and COP30 and what their decisions mean for communities living with rapid heating and extreme weather. Her reporting on housing and “zero-net energy” developments, including affordable homes equipped with solar panels but still reliant on gas appliances, highlights how continued fossil fuel use can undermine advertised climate gains and raise fairness questions in energy transitions.
This focus on the social architecture of climate policy - elections, work, housing, insurance - gives her beat a strong justice orientation.
Plastics, pollution and everyday impacts
Noor’s climate reporting frequently returns to the everyday materials and pollutants that link fossil fuel production to ordinary life. She has explained how industry lobbying helped entrench widely held but inaccurate beliefs about the effectiveness of plastic recycling, protecting demand for plastic products despite persistent waste and emissions. Her work traces how plastic-heavy fashion, single-use packaging and attempts to replace plastics with other disposable materials burden landfills and the climate, turning abstract emissions into familiar consumer choices.
She also writes on factory farming and other polluting sectors, connecting local health and environmental harms to broader climate goals and regulatory debates.
Across these stories she grounds climate coverage in tangible experiences - housing, food, work, energy use - rather than distant projections or pristine nature scenes. The result is a body of work that makes the climate crisis legible through the systems people encounter every day, from what they wear and eat to how their homes are powered.
4 more environment journalists.
Alan Halaly
Alan Halaly is a water reporter at the Las Vegas Review-Journal who treats the Colorado River as a working system, not a backdrop, making its governance, infrastructure and risks central to his beat. He covers how policy decisions and infrastructure projects shape the region’s water future, linking high-level choices on the Colorado River, dams, mining and data centers to everyday consequences under mounting heat and growth pressures. He reports deeply on new laws, lawsuits and regulatory shifts, focusing on on-the-ground impacts. His coverage spans Colorado River cuts, Hoover Dam operations, extreme weather, heat and parks, septic system rules, workplace and public health risks, lithium and gold mines, protected landscapes, data centers, AI infrastructure and public funding. Previously he reported for metropolitan dailies, digital outlets and public media, including the Miami Herald, WUFT, The Daily Beast and Miami New Times, with work recognized by Hearst, ONA and the Society of Environmental Journalists.
Alejandra Borunda
Alejandra Borunda reports on how climate change affects human health for NPR. Her work treats global warming as a direct cause of physical and mental health risks. She covers extreme heat, including undercounted deaths, lost sleep and local efforts to track heat-related fatalities. She also reports on wildfire smoke, hurricanes, disease spread such as dengue fever, trauma, stress and unequal health impacts. Her stories examine how communities protect themselves and recover, as well as practical solutions involving climate-resilient crops, agriculture and diet. Before NPR, she wrote about climate science and environmental issues for National Geographic, including glacier retreat, shade and heat inequity, and shrinking ice-fishing seasons. A former climate scientist, she combines field reporting with scientific data to connect atmospheric research to everyday risks, choices and people’s lived experiences.
Alex Lubben
Alex Lubben is an environment reporter at The Times-Picayune/The Advocate who connects climate risk to policy, industry and community change. He covers Gulf warming, flood protection, coastal restoration, wetlands litigation, industrial projects such as SpaceX’s possible expansion, invasive species and local ecosystems. His reporting tracks how law, politics and corporate decisions shape levees, drainage, marshes and long-term resilience. He also examines climate relocation, housing and labor, showing how hurricanes, floods and wildfires displace vulnerable communities and expose gaps in government systems. He works on a small environment team and brings an investigative background to document work, data analysis, legal and policy research, and field reporting. His work has appeared in VICE News, The Center for Public Integrity, The Nation, Jewish Currents and NBC News.
Alex Wigglesworth
Alex Wigglesworth reports on how climate, land use and public policy shape California communities. She covers the Inland Empire and Mojave Desert for the Los Angeles Times and is part of its environment team. Her beat includes wildfires, megadrought, extreme weather, desert development, conservation, wildlife, industrial hazards, aging infrastructure and regulatory enforcement. She has covered Western Joshua trees, desert tortoises, beaver-led restoration, toxic lead pipes, air-quality concerns after industrial fires and the effects of nuclear war on food systems. Earlier, she was a general assignment reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily News and Philly.com. She combines breaking news with detailed reporting grounded in scientific studies, modeling and expert interviews. Her work connects fires, drought and other hazards to climate change, while examining how agencies, companies and land-use decisions affect people and ecosystems.