Venice’s landmarks teem with tourists — so many, in fact, that the city has had to implement restrictions, like banning guides from using loudspeakers. But just outside the famous canals and resplendent architecture sits an ecosystem that teems with less obnoxious forms of life: the Venetian lagoon. For millennia, its...
A tough Supreme Court hearing brings little clarity on Line 5 pipeline’s fate
The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on Tuesday about whether state or federal court will have the final say on the future of the controversial Line 5 pipeline, which carries crude oil and natural gas liquids across the Straits of Mackinac in Michigan. The case dates to a 2019 lawsuit...
A hotter, wetter South is becoming a breeding ground for mold
Regina is haunted by the specter of mold. She found the insidious spores in the closet, behind the refrigerator, and around the bathtub for two years after the dishwasher flooded her apartment in Asheville, North Carolina. The infestation only got worse after Hurricane Helene. Rainwater rushed into her son’s third-floor...
How a greening Arctic might be kick-starting a dangerous feedback loopÂ
Forests are great and all, but in one way, they don’t come close to the raw power of peatlands. Sprawling in the Arctic and elsewhere, like tropical regions, these soils are loaded with plant matter that’s resisting decay, turning into ultra-concentrated carbon. Though they comprise just 3 percent of Earth’s...
The Supreme Court hears a Line 5 oil pipeline case with high stakes for treaty rights
The U.S. Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments today about a narrow procedural issue that could determine whether Michigan or federal courts ultimately decide the fate of a 73-year-old oil pipeline that many tribal nations say threatens their waters, treaty rights, and ways of life. The case, Enbridge v. Nessel,...
To power Utah’s data center boom, companies are turning to fossil fuels
In Utah’s rural Millard County, Kalen Taylor is bracing for the day when the farmland across the street from his home transforms into a sprawling data center complex. The initial plans for Joule Capital Partners’ 4,000-acre data center site call for six buildings, each powered by 69 Caterpillar natural gas-powered...
These data center developers asked Trump for an exemption from pollution rules
When the developer Novva first announced that it was building Utah’s largest data center campus just south of Salt Lake City, the company’s CEO touted the many advantages of the region: among them a low risk of disasters, an expanding international airport, no sales tax on equipment, and the high...
Electric buses are passing a brutal cold-weather test in Wisconsin
Jonathan Mertzig was wary when Madison rolled out a fleet of 62 electric buses in the fall of 2024. The city had tested a few of them four years earlier, and it had not gone well. Winter in Wisconsin gets mighty cold, and batteries do not like the cold. “Operationally,...
Did the USDA just forget about $400M in drought aid for farmers?
For those coaxing thirsty crops like alfalfa from the parched fields and withered pasturelands in Eloy, Arizona, water is as good as gold — and just as scarce. “We’ve had nothing from the Colorado River for the last two or three years. I mean, we’ve had to cut back the...
Scientists have found another alarming pattern in wildfires
The extreme heat, high winds, and severe dry conditions that produce towering, fast-moving flames that advance by the acre are not just becoming more common; new research shows that these factors are increasingly arising in multiple regions at the same time, creating the conditions for simultaneous wildfires around the world....