Abrahm Lustgarten
Abrahm Lustgarten writes about human adaptation to climate change, including global migration, demographic change and conflicts in response to a warming planet.
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Abrahm Lustgarten writes about climate change and works frequently with The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic and PBS Frontline, among others. His forthcoming book, “On The Move,” explores how climate change is uprooting American lives and where people will go.
Lustgarten’s recent reporting focuses on global migration, demographic change and conflict in response to a warming climate. His 2022 investigation into how the International Monetary Fund and global finance institutions have kept Barbados and other climate-vulnerable nations paralyzed by high levels of debt led in part to the introduction of the Bridgetown Initiative, a global effort to reform climate finance for developing countries crafted by Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley. In 2020 Lustgarten’s three-story cover series on a great climate-driven migration, published in partnership with the Times Magazine, helped prompt President Joe Biden’s formation of a climate migration study group and research report in the run-up to the COP26 conference in Glasgow, Scotland.
Lustgarten’s other investigations include an examination of the global palm oil trade, the climate drivers of pandemics and BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill (which led to the Emmy-nominated “The Spill” with Frontline, a project he worked on). His 2015 series examining water scarcity in the American West, “Killing the Colorado,” was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting, received the top journalism honor from the National Academies of Sciences and was also the basis of the 2016 Discovery Channel film “Killing the Colorado,” which Lustgarten co-produced. His early investigation into fracking, starting in 2008, exposed one of the oil industry’s most dangerous legacies — its ongoing threat to America’s drinking water. The work received the George Polk award for environmental reporting, the National Press Foundation award for best energy writing and a Sigma Delta Chi award; it was a finalist for the Goldsmith Prize.
Before joining ProPublica, Lustgarten was a staff writer at Fortune. He holds a master’s in journalism from Columbia University and a bachelor’s in anthropology from Cornell, and was a 2022 Emerson Collective Fellow at New America. He is the author of two books: “Run to Failure: BP and the Making of the Deepwater Horizon Disaster” and “China’s Great Train: Beijing’s Drive West and the Campaign to Remake Tibet.”
Company Backs out of $45 Million Deal to Buy Troubled Wyoming Gas Field
Legacy Resources reverses its plan to acquire gas assets near Pavillion, Wyom., shortly after the EPA unveiled test results showing water pollution nearby.
EPA Finds Compound Used in Fracking in Wyoming Aquifer
After years of complaints from residents about foul water and health concerns, government investigators have found chemical compounds consistent with those used in natural gas fracking.
Science Lags as Health Problems Emerge Near Gas Fields
People who live close to natural gas drilling in four states complain of similar health symptoms, ranging from respiratory infections to lesions and neurological problems, but there is little science or study to get at the cause of their ailments.
N.Y. Enviro Commissioner Expects Little From EPA Fracking Study
In an interview, the commissioner of New York's Department of Environmental Conservation says he is confident underground contamination from hydraulic fracturing is not a risk, and that the Environmental Protection Agency's study of fracking won't yield new information.
Does an Old EPA Fracking Study Provide Proof of Contamination?
A 24-year-old EPA report uncovered this week adds to a list of examples of how water supplies are polluted in natural gas drilling areas and provides the strongest articulation yet by federal officials that fracking has caused the contamination.
Latest BP Spill in Alaska Was Foreshadowed in Risk Assessment Last Year
A section of the BP pipeline that leaked thousands of gallons of methanol and oily wastewater into the Alaskan tundra on Saturday was flagged by the company more than a year ago as so corroded it presented an imminent threat of rupture.
EPA Fracking Study to Focus on Five States—But Not Wyoming
The Environmental Protection Agency has picked seven sites in five states that it will focus on for its national study of the effects of hydraulic fracturing on drinking water. The sites do not include two counties in Wyoming, where the EPA has already been collecting data for three years.
Gas Drilling Companies Hold Data Needed by Researchers to Assess Risk to Water Quality
Drilling companies complain that a recent study that linked methane in water wells to gas drilling lacked critical data. Now it turns out that the industry has been collecting that type of data for years but hasn’t made it public.
Scientific Study Links Flammable Drinking Water to Fracking
For the first time, a peer-reviewed scientific study has linked natural gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing with a pattern of drinking water contamination so severe that some faucets can be lit on fire.