When Krystal Steward started knocking on her neighbors’ doors in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 2021, to discuss energy efficiency and sustainability upgrades, she was met with a lot of blank stares. She was new to the issues herself, she said. But the longtime social worker kept at her new job...
The Supreme Court takes up a Guam munitions case with high stakes for CHamoru lands
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that could determine the future of a beach with cultural and ecological importance to the Indigenous CHamoru people of Guam. The case is an appeal from the U.S. Air Force, which wants to continue the open detonation of obsolete munitions...
Scientists race to decode data from Europe’s vanishing glaciers
High up in the Ötztal Alps, near the border of Austria and Italy, sprawls the closest thing you can get — scientifically, at least — to a time machine. For thousands of years, snow has fallen here and turned to ice, building layer upon layer of the Weißseespitze glacier and...
Is the world heating up faster than we thought?
For years, scientists have been keeping a wary eye on the massive system of currents that carry water and nutrients across the ocean from Greenland to Antarctica. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation plays a large part in stabilizing the global climate, but it appears to have been weakening in recent...
4 ways Trump is sabotaging climate action around the world
President Trump has spent much of his second term trying to reshape global politics, first through a series of tariffs and trade deals that began on what he termed “Liberation Day” last April. This year, he’s focused on changing the world through military force: After abducting the leader of Venezuela...
Species slowdown: Is nature’s ability to self-repair stalling?
Nature is slowing down, and its ability to regenerate is failing in the face of climate change, according to the authors of a new analysis of the speed of species turnover in ecosystems across the world. The finding comes as a big surprise to many ecologists. They have long predicted...
Mining rush for critical minerals threatens Amazon land reform settlements
On a dirt road that cuts through the Rio Novo settlement in the southeast of Pará state, battered motorcycles carry small loads of organic food to sell in the city, while passing trucks loaded with minerals for export. Parauapebas, Brazil’s so-called “mining capital,” hosts numerous rural worker communities, including the...
How the humble hornwort could supercharge agriculture
You are here because of a single, all-important enzyme. But don’t look inward to find ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase, known more mercifully among scientists as rubisco. Instead, look to the food you eat and the trees that manufacture oxygen, as this is the protein that makes photosynthesis possible. Without it, life on...
Trump EPA moves to repeal regulation of cancer-linked chemical ethylene oxide
Many medical devices need to be sterile to be used safely. But sterilizing a pacemaker, catheter, or other device with steam or heat could damage its structural integrity. So medical device manufacturers turn to the chemical compound ethylene oxide, which is highly effective at killing microbes at low concentrations and...
In rural West Texas, renewable energy brings a windfall for seniors
In the far corner of the Crockett County Senior Center, 75-year-old Cynthia Flores almost always has a puzzle going. She and her friends sort colors and look for edge pieces while they gossip — “faster than the telephone” — in the Tex-Mex blend of Spanish and English they grew up...