Grid Magazine

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Since 2008, Grid has provided our readers with insightful coverage of the most important issues of our time, including climate change and social justice, while showcasing Philadelphia’s role as a national leader. As the catastrophic effects of climate change become more real and part of our daily lives, the independent journalism Grid provides has never been more important. To continue advocating for a more sustainable Philadelphia, Grid’s most recent editorial innovation is Sustainability Now: The Past, Present and Future. This series runs from Earth Day 2022 to Earth Day 2023 and dedicates each monthly issue to a sustainability sector (transportation, farming, energy, community) to look back on the last 12 years of Grid’s coverage of that sector and ahead to the next 10 critical years of addressing climate change in our city and on our planet.

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Scope Local
Language English
Country United States of America
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A freakish springtime freeze leaves regional farmers reeling after killing scores of crops

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By Bernard F. Brown Verified
| Grid Magazine
The helicopter was worth a shot, Dave Fahnestock thought. The owner of Hands on the Earth Orchard in Lititz, Lancaster County, which sells apples and peaches at farmers markets in Clark Park, Rittenhouse Square and Bala Cynwyd, hoped the downdraft from the propellers would mix warmer air with the freezing air hugging the ground across his 15 acres of fruit trees. In the days leading up to April 20, he had watched the forecast for the overnight low temperature go from worrisome to disastrous.
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The Climate Chaos Issue

| Grid Magazine
Could anything be worse than an early spring? In February, as we shivered under a shell of icy snow, we all looked forward to the melt. We imagined saying goodbye to our parkas and snow boots so that we could swap them for linen shirts and sandals. When that April heat came, we took to our porches and lingered outside to chat with our neighbors. It was lovely. But farmers were getting nervous. They knew that the early heat could be a setup.
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Regional farmers uneasy about contamination risks in using processed sewage as fertilizer

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By Ben Seal Verified
| Grid Magazine
Farmers are worried, but they don’t want to talk about it. Evidence is mounting that the nutrient-rich sewage sludge many have applied to their farmland for decades as a low-cost fertilizer often contains perfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, a class of “forever chemicals” that resist degradation in nature and are hazardous to human health. Typically vocal about the challenges they face, farmers are reluctant to discuss their own experience spreading the stuff — and it’s not hard to see why.
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Summer smoke is just a whiff of the impact of fire in Canada

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By Bernard F. Brown Verified
| Grid Magazine
The past three summers in Philadelphia have seen smoke drifting overhead, making for beautiful sunsets and, when it settles close to the ground, hazardous air. That smoke came from forest fires that burned thousands of miles away in the boreal forests of Canada. These woods cover 270 million hectares (or about one million square miles) in Canada, equivalent to about 29% of the United States’ land area.
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Publisher’s Notes | This Sucks: Hope after Grief

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By Alex Mulcahy
| Grid Magazine
My daughter lay in bed, her dark green cast propped on a stack of pillows. “This sucks,” she said. As a rule I discourage the use of the word “sucks,” an artifact of how I was raised. But after reviewing the facts — injured on the last play of the last game of the season, four days before a summer vacation that’s suddenly without swimming or circus camp — I had to admit she was right. “Yes,” I said, “this sucks.” In addition to the pain, she had to process the grief of the loss of summer plans.
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Watershed leaders visit Puerto Rico to help shape climate resilience plan

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By Gabriel Donahue Verified
| Grid Magazine
When research was needed to create a climate resilience plan for the neighborhood surrounding North Philadelphia’s Tacony Creek, leaders of the Tookany/Tacony-Frankford Watershed Partnership (TTF) had something more ambitious in mind than a traditional written study.
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Swarthmore College considers its planned artificial turf a facilities upgrade. Environmentalists aren’t so sure

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By Lucy Tobier
| Grid Magazine
Roughly half of the Swarthmore College field hockey team’s away games last season were played on “field hockey turf,” a water-based artificial turf standard for the sport. But because the college’s Clothier Field Stadium is “field turf” — which head coach Hannah Harris says varies widely from location to location and can affect player performance — the team had to travel up to 17 miles to other colleges’ fields so they could have some practice time on the surface ahead of the game.
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Micah Gold-Markel

| Grid Magazine
In 2008, I heard Van Jones speak at the Academy of Natural Sciences about his book “The Green Collar Economy.” He talked about the need to make careers in clean energy accessible to all of our communities, and that without intentional inclusion, the underserved neighborhoods in our region would be sidelined from these opportunities, too. More
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How Our Family Turned Our PECO Bill Into a $254 Credit

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By Micah Gold-Markel
| Grid Magazine
Plenty of our clients zero out their electric bill with solar. The real challenge is mastering PECO’s time-of-use plan, which requires shifting when you use power and when you sell power. If you do it right, you don’t avoid paying a bill — you earn money. I pulled up our family’s energy bill and let my 11-year-old, Mira, see if she could understand it. Here’s our conversation, lightly edited. The short version is that PECO credited us $254! Mira: Wait — our bill was zero? We’re making money?
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Mobile bike mechanic wants Philly to have more casual riders

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By Julia Lowe
| Grid Magazine
Flanked by cardboard signs reading “Free 5-Minute Tuneups” and “We Come to Your Bike!” Lauren “Mittens” Mitten lifted another bike — one of about 25 that day — onto a stand under the bright sun and got to work. Mitten, owner of The Mittens Pop Up Bike Shop, spent the afternoon of May 16 outside of Eco-Fair at Cherry Street Pier checking tires, inspecting frames, adjusting derailleurs and lubricating chains.
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Grid Magazine Journalists

Brown, Bernard F.
Donahue, Gabriel
Mulcahy, Alex
Seal, Ben