
Abrahm Lustgarten
I report on climate change and how people, companies and governments are adapting to it.
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I’m discreet and handle confidential communications and sources with extreme care.
What I Cover
I investigate the social and political consequences of our rapidly warming environment, focusing on how money and power influence policy. My reporting is science driven, and I embrace nuance and complexity, telling the stories that are most difficult to tell.
My Background
I have been reporting on environmental harm and the warming planet for ProPublica since its inception in 2008 and before that as a writer covering the global oil industry at Fortune. I’ve reported from around the world, including Iran, Russia, Indonesia and China. Throughout, my work has focused on the social and economic consequences of warming and the conflicting business interests that often drive them.
My most recent reporting has focused on global migration, finance and conflict associated with climate change. In 2024, I wrote about how climate pressures are driving far-right extremism and violence in the United States, especially around fears of immigration. In 2022, I investigated how the International Monetary Fund and global banks have paralyzed small climate-vulnerable nations with debt that makes it impossible for them to address their own climate risks. That work followed a three-part 2020 investigation into the potential displacement of billions of people and global climate-driven migration, both outside and inside the United States, which is also the subject of my third book, called “On The Move.”
This work — beginning with my early investigation into fracking in 2008 — has been recognized with honors, including a George Polk Award; a Scripps Howard Award; the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s communications award; and consecutive Whitman Bassow prizes from the Overseas Press Club. My 2015 series about water scarcity in the American West, “Killing the Colorado,” was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
Long Story Short
An annotated history of the 30-year fight over a single polluted Air Force base.
War at Home
Unexploded ordnance. Open burns of munitions. Poisoned aquifers. Of all the military’s environmental hazards, the explosive compound RDX may be the greatest threat to America’s health.
by Ranjani Chakraborty and Abrahm Lustgarten,
The Bomb That Went Off Twice
The explosive compound RDX helped make America a superpower. Now, it’s poisoning the nation’s water and soil.
Bombs in Your Backyard
The military spends more than a billion dollars a year to clean up sites its operations have contaminated with toxic waste and explosives. A full map of these sites has never been made public — until now.
by Lena V. Groeger, Ryann Grochowski Jones and Abrahm Lustgarten,
Reporting Recipe: Bombs in Your Backyard
We published data on 40,000 hazardous sites across the country polluted by U.S. military operations. Here’s how journalists can find local stories.
How Military Outsourcing Turned Toxic
Fraud. Bribery. Incompetence. The military’s use of contractors adds to a legacy of environmental damage.
At Last, Air Monitor Set to Test for Lead Near Military Open Burn Site
For decades, residents near the Radford ammunition plant in Virginia have worried about the threat from munitions burning. A monitor near a school outside of the plant might start to offer answers.
Dangerous Pollutants in Military’s Open Burns Greater Than Thought, Tests Indicate
The first results in a national effort to better measure the levels of contaminants released through the burning of munitions and their waste show elevated levels of lead, arsenic and other toxins.
Kaboom Town
The U.S. military burns millions of pounds of munitions in a tiny, African-American corner of Louisiana. The town’s residents say they’re forgotten in the plume.
Open Burns, Ill Winds
The Pentagon’s handling of munitions and their waste has poisoned millions of acres, and left Americans to guess at the threat to their health.