Amid the frenzy of Election 2020 comes a quieter development: The emergence of Big Climate money. Green groups and climate-focused fundraisers are now starting to take their place as major players alongside Big Oil as campaign contributors. The latest Reporter’s Toolbox suggests databases and other resources to help track climate (and other election) money.

A battery of polluting industry spewing toxic pollution and a small town of residents south of Baton Rouge unbowed by their circumstance make for the ingredients of a powerful team investigative project, newly named to the top prize in the Society of Environmental Journalists’ 2020 reporting awards. Inside Story offers a look behind “Polluter’s Paradise” in a Q&A with reporter Tristan Baurick.

With the heart of a naturalist, the head of a scientist and the weary bones of someone watching the destruction of the natural world, a prize-winning writer shares insights into the environment … and into a mind shaped by autism. That writer, by the way, is just 16 years old. BookShelf’s Melody Kemp reviews “Diary of a Young Naturalist.” 

Keeping tabs on the increasingly frequent closing of U.S. coal-fired electric power plants is an important way to follow developments on the larger climate change beat. The latest Reporter’s Toolbox points to several mapping databases that help make the job far easier — whether watching the industry in the United States or abroad.