John Ryan
Reporter
About
Environment reporter John Ryan welcomes tips, documents and feedback from listeners. Reach him at jryan@kuow.org or for secure, confidential communication: he's at 1-401-405-1206 on the Signal messaging app or heyjohnryan@protonmail.com.
Good thing John was a clumsy traveler.
Otherwise his cheap microcassette recorder wouldn't have fallen out of his pocket in an Indonesian taxi, a generous BBC stringer wouldn't have lent him some recording gear, and he wouldn't have gotten the radio bug. But after pointing a mic at rare jungle songbirds and gong-playing grandmothers for his first radio story, there was no turning back.
Two decades later, he has freelanced for most of the major public radio news shows as well as newspapers and magazines and covered transportation at the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce. He’s been a reporter at NPR stations in southeast and southwest Alaska (KTOO-Juneau and KUCB-Unalaska) as well as Seattle. He became KUOW’s first full-time investigative reporter in 2009 and one of the first shop stewards for KUOW’s SAG-AFTRA newsroom union, as well as KUOW’s full-time environment reporter, in 2018.
John’s stories have won multiple national awards for KUOW, including the Society of Professional Journalists' Sigma Delta Chi awards for Public Service in Radio Journalism and for Investigative Reporting, national Edward R. Murrow and PMJA/PRNDI awards for coverage of breaking news and a Society of Environmental Journalists award for in-depth reporting.
He believes democracy only works when journalism holds the powerful accountable for their words and actions.
Stories
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King County aims to slash carbon emissions in half by 2030, including aviation
The King County Council unanimously approved a new climate strategy Tuesday, aimed at cutting the county's climate-harming pollution in half in less than a decade.
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Cap-and-trade law tackles big polluters, fractures political alliances
A sweeping climate proposal from Gov. Jay Inslee has both fractured existing alliances and sparked new ones — among activists and oil refineries alike — on its way to becoming Washington state law.
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KUOW Newsroom
How Inslee’s climate agenda just got a boost
'I would call it a victory for climate advocates, with a big asterisk on it.’
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Climate advocates go to court to block Tacoma gas plant
Dueling lawyers made their opening arguments Monday in a case that could determine whether a major fossil-fuel plant opens on the Tacoma waterfront.
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Northwest ports pledge to stop air pollution (29 years from now)
The Northwest’s biggest ports promise to stop polluting the air — 29 years from now.
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KUOW Newsroom
One-third of Covid cases are 'variants of concern' in Washington state
About one-third of recent Covid-19 cases (35.9%) in Washington state are "variants of concern."
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KUOW Newsroom
Heavier rainfall to cost Seattle area billions to avoid sewage spills
More-intense storms are expected to cost the Seattle area billions of dollars in coming decades -- without even counting the potential for more flooding or landslides.
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Washington state is in danger of breaking its own climate laws, Inslee says
Without urgent action by the Legislature, Washington state will run afoul of its own pollution laws, according to Gov. Jay Inslee.
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KUOW Newsroom
Environmental justice moves to mainstream as governments embrace cause
Washington state’s oil refineries all sit near, or on, Indian reservations. Advocates say that fits a national pattern of pollution disproportionately hitting people of color.
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KUOW Newsroom
Out in Seattle: Downtown tolls. In: Electric cars
Mayor Durkan shelves major climate initiative after pushback from equity advocates.