It’s not just easy to miss, but often downright hard to notice. A simple patch of greenery in a city may seem like a blip in the concrete jungle, but it’s an extremely powerful way to solve a bunch of problems at once: Studies have shown that green spaces improve...
Trump’s ‘God Squad’ blocks endangered species protections in the Gulf of Mexico
The Endangered Species Act is the bedrock law that protects threatened plants and animals in the United States, and in the 50 years since it became law it has prevented thousands of resource-extraction projects — oil drilling, mining, and logging — from moving forward. The law is difficult to circumvent,...
These maps show exactly where the West might burn this summer
Every state in the West is expected to face an above-normal threat of wildfire this summer, according to the latest projections, released Wednesday by the National Interagency Coordination Center. The government-run center publishes monthly reports predicting fire risk for the four months ahead, and the change since the March outlook...
Oceans are absorbing the Earth’s excess energy. That’s bad news for food systems.
Every year, the World Meteorological Organization, or WMO, tracks a set of key climate indicators — including the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the Earth’s temperature — to assess how global warming is progressing. In their latest report, released last Sunday, the authors decided to include a new...
Texas saw a $50B future in clean energy. Then the political winds shifted.
On an unseasonably warm January day, Duff Hallman’s goats and sheep wandered unhurried through the rocky hills of his ranch 30 miles south of San Angelo, Texas, unbothered by the long shadows that swept over the ground. The shadows fell from wind turbines towering 250 feet above, their blades spinning...
As climate change threatens student athlete safety, states try to adapt
When George LaComb moved two years ago to a new high school in Orlando, Florida, he quickly noticed safety precautions that the football team at his previous, less affluent school never had. There was a designated recovery room, staffed by a full-time athletic trainer, giant ice baths to cool overheated...
Your ‘widely recyclable’ Starbucks cup is still trash
Frappuccino lovers, rejoice: Your plastic to-go cups are now “widely recyclable.” That’s according to an announcement made in February by Starbucks, the waste hauler WM (formerly known as Waste Management), and three recycling groups called The Recycling Partnership, GreenBlue, and Closed Loop Partners. In a press release, they said that...
With its new farm bill, Florida’s climate fight just hit a tractor-sized roadblock
Against the backdrop of a looming global energy crisis, rising food insecurity, and the increased frequency and intensity of heat, hurricanes, and floods fueled by global warming, Florida’s governing bodies have had a consequential, but unsurprisingly counterproductive, month. At the beginning of March, the state legislature passed a bill blocking...
The West’s unprecedented winter could fuel a summer of disaster
In Park City, Utah, skiers could find patches of grass poking through the slopes for much of the winter — a striking sign of a season that never really arrived. Now, after one of the warmest winters on record, much of the West is entering spring with snowpack at historic...
‘We’re harvesting the sun’: A huge solar project grows in California
Harris Ranch Resort isn’t close to much. Residents of California’s major cities know it mainly as a rest stop about halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco on Interstate 5’s long run through the San Joaquin Valley. The sprawling stucco building has a Western-themed gift shop and a couple of good restaurants where travelers...