Mary Catherine O'Connor
Climate ReporterMary Catherine O’Connor is a radio and print reporter whose beats include climate change, energy, material circularity, waste, technology, and recreation. She was a 2022-23 Audio Academy Fellow at KALW. She has reported for leading publications including Outside, The Guardian, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, Al Jazeera America, and many trade magazines. In 2014 she co-founded a reader-supported experiment in journalism, called Climate Confidential.
Got a story idea? Reach her here.
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CrosscurrentsCement and concrete account for around 7 percent of carbon dioxide emissions. That's as much as cars. Now, this essential commodity is getting a climate-focused reinvention.
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CrosscurrentsIt’s not just our cars. There’s a big movement to get buildings off of gas.
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CrosscurrentsEach week, volunteers converge at Manny’s, a cafe and event space in SF’s Mission District, to clean up the neighborhood’s litter-clogged streets.
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CrosscurrentsFixit Clinics are all about empowering people and spreading an ethos of repair-ability.
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CrosscurrentsChristopher McDaniels, superintendent of the Bureau of Street Environmental Services in San Francisco’s Department of Public Works, talks about littering, illegal dumping, and how the agency is responding to the crisis.
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CrosscurrentsAfter picking up a trash-picking-up habit during COVID lock-downs, Vincent Yeun launched Refuse Refuse. Now, he and thousands of other volunteers have collected more than 23,000 bags of garbage.
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Meet Bayview residents who are using some very low and high technology to clean up the litter and illegal dumping that's plaguing their streets.
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Back in 2019, Berkeley became the first city in the nation to ban the use of natural gas in new buildings. But a successful lawsuit by a restaurant trade group led a panel of federal judges to reverse the ban – saying the city overstepped its authority to regulate energy use. Last week, Berkeley petitioned the court to reconsider.
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Following George Floyd’s murder in 2020, California assembled a task force to recommend how to address racist policies that harmed Black Californians over generations. The task force has finalized its report, which includes recommendations for direct payments, an apology, and policy changes.
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Valencia Street is home to some of San Francisco’s most popular eateries, bars, and shops. It’s also a hot spot for collisions between motorists and cyclists. The city began construction Monday on a year-long pilot project in an attempt to make it safer.