Elizabeth Shogren
Elizabeth Shogren is an NPR News Science Desk correspondent focused on covering environment and energy issues and news.
Since she came to NPR in 2005, Shogren's reporting has covered everything from the damage caused by the BP oil spill on the ecology of the Gulf Coast, to the persistence of industrial toxic air pollution as seen by the legacy of Tonawanda Coke near Buffalo, to the impact of climate change on American icons like grizzly bears.
Prior to NPR, Shogren spent 14 years as a reporter on a variety of beats at The Los Angeles Times, including four years reporting on environmental issues in Washington, D.C., and across the country. While working from the paper's Washington bureau, from 1993-2000, Shogren covered the White House, Congress, social policy, money and politics, and presidential campaigns. During that time, Shogren was given the opportunity to travel abroad on short-term foreign reporting assignments, including the Kosovo crisis in 1999, the Bosnian war in 1996, and Russian elections in 1993 and 1996. Before joining the Washington bureau, Shogren was based in Moscow where she covered the breakup of the Soviet Union and the rise of democracy in Russia for the newspaper.
Beginning in 1988, Shogren worked as a freelance reporter based in Moscow, publishing in a variety of newspapers and magazines, including Newsweek, The Dallas Morning News, the San Francisco Chronicle, and The Washington Post. During that time, she covered the fall of the Berlin Wall and the peaceful revolution in Prague.
Shogren's career in journalism began in the wire services. She worked for the Associated Press in Chicago and at United Press International in Albany, NY.
Throughout Shogren's career she has received numerous awards and honors including as a finalist for the 2011 Goldsmith Prize for investigative reporting, the National Wildlife Federation National Conservation Achievement Award, the Meade Prize for coverage of air pollution and she was an IRE finalist. She is a member of Sigma Delta Chi and the Society of Professional Journalist.
After earning a Bachelor of Arts in Russian studies at the University of Virginia, Shogren went on to receive a Master of Science in journalism from Columbia University.
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The Supreme Court has agreed to review an Obama administration policy that requires new power plants and other big polluting facilities to apply for permits to emit greenhouse gases. Industry groups argue that getting these permits causes delays in big projects that could help revive the economy.
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Under the proposal from the Environmental Protection Agency, new plants that run on coal would be permitted to emit only about half as much carbon dioxide as the average coal plant puts into the air today. Emissions from the electricity industry are already declining as utilities turn to natural gas and wind farms. -
Five years ago, a Canadian company proposed building the Keystone XL pipeline to connect Canada's tar sands oil development with the big U.S. refineries on the Gulf Coast. The southern stretch of this pipeline is nearly finished, but the northern stretch is still under study. -
Decimated by hunters, insecticides and other human pressures in the 1960s and 1970s, America's emblematic bird is once again flying high. Roughly 10,000 mated pairs now nest in the continental U.S., up from about 500 in the 1970s. But more birds also means fierce competition for territory and mates. -
The carvings etched into limestone boulders near Pyramid Lake in western Nevada show that the early North Americans were surprisingly creative artists. The carvings, which are at least 10,000 years old, are abstract, geometric designs including shapes that look like diamonds and trees. -
The electricity system is experiencing growing pains as the grid is beginning to rely on an increasing amount of renewable, particularly unpredictable sources of power like wind farms and solar panels. So grid operators are turning to individual customers to beef up redundancy and capacity. -
The environmental agency has proposed permits that would allow oil companies to continue releasing contaminated wastewater onto the Wind River Reservation in central Wyoming. NPR found last year that the EPA has been allowing oil companies to send so much wastewater onto dry land that it was creating raging streams. -
The federal government held its first ever auction for the right to build offshore wind farms on Wednesday. After 11 rounds, a Rhode Island company was the highest bidder, at $3.8 million. -
Since the 1930s, Louisiana has steadily been losing land that protects it from hurricanes and other disasters. The government board charged with protecting New Orleans from flooding sued the oil and gas industry Wednesday, arguing they are responsible for a big part of the problem. -
The Mount Charleston blue butterfly is found only in a couple of small patches high in Nevada's Spring Mountains. But the Carpenter 1 fire, which has been raging through the area since July 1, is threatening the land and scientists fear the fire could push the butterflies into extinction.
