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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U.S. automakers say the types of vehicles that will get more miles per gallon of gas have features that consumers tend to shun, including four-cylinder engines and stick shifts. The Senate is set to debate new energy legislation, and a major issue is how much to raise fuel economy standards for cars and trucks in order to fight climate change.
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President Bush is urging 15 major nations to agree on a global goal for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The plan isn't playing well with critics, including some leaders with whom the president will meet at upcoming G-8 economic talks.
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The United States will engage in new international negotiations to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, according to a plan President Bush announced Thursday. The president heads to Germany next week to discuss climate change with other world leaders.
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The Supreme Court rejects two Bush administration plans — one on global warming, the other on coal-fired power plants. The decisions are the latest in a string of setbacks the administration has suffered in the courts.
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Former Vice President Al Gore went to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to testify about the effects of global warming. He went face to face with global-warming critics in the Congress and told them that they need to act quickly, or the nation's grandchildren will pay the price.
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The largest electric utility in Texas, TXU Corp., has agreed to be sold for $32 billion to a group of private-equity firms. In a nod to environmentalists, the utility's new owners would drop plans to build 8 of 11 proposed new coal-burning power plants and make other environmental concessions.
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Wal-Mart wants to sell 100 million compact fluorescent light bulbs this year. The bulbs save energy and reduce emissions of the greenhouse gases that add to climate change. But there's a hitch: Each bulb contains about 5 milligrams of mercury, a toxic heavy metal. The EPA says they should be recycled.
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North Carolina is fed up with air pollution from other states making people sick and blanketing its scenic vistas with haze. Now it hopes to force the Tennessee Valley Authority, one of country's biggest polluters, to change its ways by using one of the oldest types of lawsuits: the nuisance suit.
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There's an unusual bi-partisan effort to get the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to release information about certain Superfund cleanup sites, pieces of land that have been deemed too toxic for development. The EPA says sharing some information about the sites could discourage companies from cleaning up their environmental messes.
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Hundreds of old coal-fired power plants still haven't installed modern pollution controls. One plant, across the Potomac River from the White House, is so vital to the Washington, D.C. region's electricity supply that the federal government is bending pollution rules to keep it running.
