Ellyn Lapointe
Ellyn Lapointe treats Earth’s changing systems, scientific experiments, and near‑space infrastructure as parts of the same story, covering how science reshapes the planet and daily life. She is a science writer at Gizmodo, working as a staff reporter focused on the environment, Earth science, and space. Her coverage sits at the intersection of planetary change and emerging technology, moving between climate impacts, orbital networks, and cutting‑edge lab work.
Climate, Oceans, and a Destabilizing Planet
Lapointe’s core reporting area is the climate crisis and its effects on Earth’s physical systems.
Her work on ocean deoxygenation examines how rapidly declining oxygen levels threaten marine ecosystems and broader planetary stability, treating the phenomenon as a structural risk rather than a niche scientific issue. She follows climate change beyond basic temperature and emissions stories, looking at how environmental stress shows up in oceans, biodiversity, and long‑term habitability.
She also covers access to climate information under hostile political conditions, including reporting on how, under a second Trump administration, it becomes increasingly harder to obtain public data about the climate crisis.
That piece connects environmental reporting to information policy, showing how constraints on data and transparency shape what scientists, officials, and the public can know about unfolding climate risks. Across these stories, she keeps the focus on systems - oceans, data infrastructures, regulatory environments - and the concrete ways they can either buffer or amplify planetary instability.
Spaceflight and Orbital Networks
Lapointe extends her beat into spaceflight and orbital infrastructure, often through question‑driven explainers.
In a Giz Asks feature comparing SpaceX’s Starlink, Amazon’s Leo, and Blue Origin’s TeraWave, she breaks down the differences between competing satellite internet constellations. The piece treats each system as part of a broader technological and environmental landscape, examining how orbital networks vary in design, capabilities, and implications for connectivity and the space environment.
Her space coverage sits alongside Earth science rather than apart from it, treating low‑Earth orbit, launch systems, and satellite architectures as extensions of planetary infrastructure. She shows how spaceflight projects and orbital networks intersect with communications, surveillance, and environmental concerns, maintaining the same plain, technically grounded style she uses on climate and Earth systems.
Experimental Science and Gizmodo Science Fair
Lapointe is a regular contributor to Gizmodo Science Fair, where she writes about ambitious experiments and unusual research directions.
In one Science Fair story on a physics experiment that turned lead into gold, she uses a striking historical metaphor to explore modern physics and the limits of what laboratory transformations can achieve. Another piece on a greener way to fuel nuclear fusion focuses on the materials and engineering choices that could make fusion energy less resource‑intensive and more sustainable.
Her Science Fair coverage also includes work on a 2,000‑year‑old scroll toasted in a volcanic eruption, highlighting how new analytical techniques recover text and knowledge from damaged artifacts. Across these stories, she treats experiments as practical attempts to solve long‑standing problems - energy, materials, information - rather than as curiosities. She pays close attention to experimental design and implications, showing how research outcomes connect to broader questions about energy systems, scientific progress, and the durability of cultural records.
Range Beyond the Environment Beat
Although environment and Earth science anchor her reporting, Lapointe writes widely across biology, health, and technology.
Her Giz Asks pieces include a biology‑focused feature on which wild animals humans could domesticate into the next great pet, using the question to explore evolutionary traits, behavior, and feasibility of domestication. Another question‑driven article examines how dangerous gene therapy is in light of deaths and reports of brain tumors, framing the issue as one of environmental justice and medical risk distribution.
Outside these series pieces, she has written about future passenger travel technologies, including systems that could move people from Los Angeles to Tokyo in under two hours, connecting aerospace innovation to everyday mobility. Prior to joining Gizmodo in May 2025, her work appeared in outlets such as Business Insider, Scientific American, and Smithsonian Magazine online, where she also wrote on science and environment topics.
Taken together, her body of work shows a reporter who stays rooted in scientific detail while moving across climate, spaceflight, experimental physics, biology, and health, with a consistent focus on how those fields affect planetary systems and human lives.
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.