Environment

Oil slicks from ships and offshore oil platforms cover nearly 1.6 million square kilometers (618,000 square miles) of the ocean surface each year, an area slightly larger than the nation of Mongolia.

The complaint lodged this week by Lighthouse Reports, and first reported by POLITICO, accuses the EU executive of setting up rules keeping the public from seeing how much energy and water are used by individual data centers.

Indigenous lands from Canada to Ecuador to Nepal are increasingly being hit by catastrophic storms, fires, and floods. Worse, these climate disasters often come one after the other as overlapping crises rather than isolated incidents. Still, despite the ongoing destruction, Indigenous peoples continue to prove that they have the knowledge and skills to respond, if only global powers will let them.

This was a tough essay to write. Tough but necessary. As the climate crisis intensifies, neoliberalism ushered in an age of individual resilience. You’re asked, told really, to prepare yourself and recover yourself. Entrepreneurial survivorship, or perish. In a world increasingly unaffordable, this will lead to increased harm and no systemic change.

In August 2024, excavation crews breached the last of four dams on the Klamath River in far northern California, marking the first time in over a century that salmon could swim above the dam sites.

Hayek noted that it’s difficult to attribute soy consumption to individual fish species. But other research has found a rise in the use of crop-based ingredients fed to farmed salmon. In Norway, the world’s biggest producer of farmed salmon, 90 percent of feed ingredients were marine-based in 1990, but by 2020 that had dropped to about 23 percent. Advocacy groups there determined that 90 percent of the soy fed to farmed salmon in Norway comes from three Brazilian companies, each of which have sourced soy ingredients from illegally deforested patches of the Amazon rainforest.

Within hours, some people on social media were confidently asserting that climate change caused the disaster, while others were just as confidently asserting it had nothing to do with it. In this piece I’ll try and lay out what the data and the scientific literature actually supports.

[…] according to data published by the Office for National Statistics on Wednesday.

David Roberts interview the man who decarbonized Uruguay on his podcast Volts. They discuss how it happened the first time, and how it could be replicated. He believes that every country could realistically achieve an 80% renewable grid.

Skeptics claim that charging your EV with grids that use fossil fuel power is just as bad as burning gas. They’re wrong. It is one of the most absurd and enduring points made by anti-EV advocates.

Environmental defenders, wildlife rescuers and farmers are paying with their lives as Israeli strikes continue across southern Lebanon.

The Great Lakes piping plover (Charadrius melodus) likes to live along sandy beaches in, of course, the Great Lakes in North America. In the past, its population is estimated to have been 500 to 800 pairs. But habitat loss, nest destruction, high tides and predators took their toll and the population fell to between 10 and 20 pairs by the 1980s. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service placed the bird on its endangered species list in 1985.

In the period leading up to the Second World War, technological advances were rapidly redefining everyday life, including the widespread use of a new class of superchemicals that promised to solve all our household problems. Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are a class of synthetic chemicals known as “forever chemicals”, which have quietly infiltrated our daily lives.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A proposed legal settlement with the U.S. government would require the Keystone Pipeline system’s operator to pay a $26.9 million civil penalty over a major oil spill in Kansas in December 2022 and spend about $40 million more to prevent future accidents.

With some still unable to accept humanity’s role in climate chaos, we tackle common misconceptions and deceptions

I will not say this is a silver lining. War should not be the driver for this change. However, here we are.

I will not say this is a silver lining. War should not be the driver for this change. However, here we are.

I took some time to build on a post I had here, and expand it into a broader discussion on climate impacts. I focus on the Happiest Place on Earth as it sweltered in near-deadly wet bulb conditions, AC failed, and asphalt liquefied. I discuss how the area is built for a climate past, still relies on old systems to design and grow, and what it’s impact is now.

Family ties to Alsace go back five hundred years. Two generations ago some moved to the US to avoid the, let’s say troubles, between the region and France after WW1. Those that are there reported their gardens simply shriveling. Unbearable heat they only escaped in their cellars. So much smog and traffic because people were trying to a) get into AC in their car and B) get to the mountains.

FULL ARTICLE: There’s some good news growing along the coasts of countries around the world.

Canada’s independent watchdog for overseas human rights complaints against Canadian companies has been leaderless since May 2025, leaving at least 24 active cases effectively stalled.

A three-month national investigation by Beyond Plastics found that not a single tracked Starbucks cold-beverage cup ended up at a recycling facility — even when the cups were placed in clearly marked recycling bins inside Starbucks stores. As detailed in the new report, titled “Tracking Starbucks’ Deceptive Recyclability Claims,” the findings directly contradict Starbucks’ recent public claims that its single-use polypropylene (No. 5 plastic) cold cups are “widely recyclable.”

The EJAtlas is a work in progress. Newly documented cases and information are continuously added to the platform. However, many are still undocumented and new ones arise. Please note that the absence of data does not indicate the absence of conflict.

A new World Meteorological Organization report estimated 13,000 annual heat-related deaths across 17 countries in the region.

“The campaign to restore the Everglades has received a boost with completion of a key project that returns the flow of water to 55,000 acres that had once been drained for development. Experts see it as a major step forward in bringing back South Florida’s River of Grass.”

You’ve no doubt heard some variation of the claim that “AI” will somehow solve the climate crisis. You’ve also probably heard the warnings: that the rapid expansion of all the data centres needed to deploy more of this technology comes with considerable environmental costs. There’s a widening rift, with competing voices making wildly different arguments about the tech’s climate impacts.

Original link

The Pacific heat pulse is temporary, but scientists warn that its climate impacts are not.

More than 50 nations are attending a world-first conference on phasing out fossil fuels in Colombia next week as the Iran war underscores how dependent countries remain on planet-heating coal, oil and gas.

archive article: https://archive.is/ZDeUd

Argentine MPs approved a bill early Thursday promoted by President Javier Milei that authorizes mining in ecologically sensitive areas of glaciers and permafrost, and has outraged environmentalists.

Virtual power plants continue to be one of the buzziest energy industry obsessions.

Every summer, people descend on the wildflower capital of Colorado to see grasslands flush with corn lilies, aspen sunflowers and sub-alpine larkspur. In January 1991, scientists set up a unique experiment in these Rocky Mountain meadows. It was one of the first (and longest running) to work out how the changing climate would affect an ecosystem.

While the US government continues to call climate change a hoax and attack the science, in courtrooms from The Hague to Honolulu, fossil fuel companies are taking a different approach. Shell, Chevron, RWE and TotalEnergies all accept that climate change is real, human-caused and serious. The era of corporate climate denial, at least in legal proceedings, is largely over.

The fate of environmentalists is to spend their lives trying not to be proved right. Vindication is what we dread. But there’s one threat that haunts me more than any other: the collapse of the global food system. We cannot predict what the immediate trigger might be. But the war with Iran is just the right kind of event.

When the Trump administration announced plans last year to rescind a rule limiting roadbuilding and timber harvests on millions of acres of national forests and grasslands, officials called the repeal necessary to prevent and manage wildfires.

The primary unit of climate collapse is the zettajoule. If you have never heard of this term, you are not alone. Even scientists who work on a planetary scale struggle to relate the immensity of the change measured by this titanic unit of energy.

War in the Middle East is once again exposing the downsides of our addiction to oil and gas. Transportation and electricity costs are soaring for ordinary families, while multinational oil giants and Vladimir Putin reap windfalls. Then add in the usual planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions.

The case is quickly becoming a national test of how states deploy terrorism laws against protest movements tied to environmental issues.

By the 1980s, Detroit’s once titanic carmakers were being upended by rivals from Japan. Ford, General Motors and Chrysler had grown rich selling gas guzzlers, but when oil prices rose and suddenly cheap, fuel-efficient Japanese models looked attractive, they were unprepared. The collapse in sales led to hundreds of thousands of job losses in the automotive heartland of the US.

Reading through speculation about what the Monsterverse’s new kaiju *Titan X aka Le Gran Dios de la Mar may be (such as the article linked above), it sounds increasingly as though she may be a new protective mother figure, impacted or possibly even responding to the effects of global heating on the oceans.

Archive link

The benefits of agrivoltaics—the placement of solar panels over cropland for more efficient land use—varies dramatically depending on where it’s located, finds new research from the United States. As agrivoltaics spread and attract more interest, this is one of the first studies to really dig into its inherent trade-offs, and identify places where it works well for both electricity generation and farmers’ bottom lines.

Warmer waters in the Pacific Ocean may have brought devastating floods to the cradle of ancient Chinese civilization, according to a recent study in which its authors link three wildly different lines of evidence to tell the story.

The economics of running fossil fuel infrastructure rely on having an economy of scale. As that scale decreases, the cost efficiency will plummet, leading the public sector to abandon them, most likely. We will either need to nationalize some of these things and run them at a loss as the sunsetting happens, or people will be left behind on the old fuels they can no longer access.

Yes. For more details, read or listen to content on the other side of that link.

Host David Roberts speaks with guest, environmental scientist Dr Sarah Kapnick. They discuss the overall status of the globe with regards to climate with a level of steadiness that is hard to find. Dr Kapnick is able to communicate effectively the complexities of the topic without downplaying the severity nor inducing overwhelming panic.

Host David Roberts speaks to Bruce Friedrich about how fake meat, plant based or lab grown, can reduce our land use substantially, reduce emissions substantially, and end or reduce the cruelty of animal agriculture. Notably, Friedrich contends that fake meats could end up on a learning curve to bring down the price of these meat alternatives to be cheaper than the real stuff. Much in the same way that we got better at making solar panels and flat screen TVs to the point where those items are magnitudes cheaper than they were just 10 years ago.

A Nobel laureate’s environmentally friendly invention that provides clean water if central supplies are knocked out by a hurricane or drought, could be a life saver for vulnerable islands, its founder says.

Plug-in hybrid electric cars (PHEVs) use much more fuel on the road than officially stated by their manufacturers, a large-scale analysis of about a million vehicles of this type has shown.

Like many of us who are mindful of our plastic consumption, Beth Gardiner would take her own bags to the supermarket and be annoyed whenever she forgot to do so. Out without her refillable bottle, she would avoid buying bottled water. “Here I am, in my own little life, worrying about that and trying to use less plastic,” she says. Then she read an article in this newspaper, just over eight years ago, and discovered that fossil fuel companies had ploughed more than $180bn (£130bn) into plastic plants in the US since 2010. “It was a kick in the teeth,” says Gardiner. “You’re telling me that while I am beating myself up because I forgot to bring my water bottle, all these huge oil companies are pouring billions …” She looks appalled. “It was just such a shock.”

Every year more than 12 million people visit the White River National Forest in central Colorado to ski, hike, bike, fish, camp and otherwise enjoy this iconic 2.3-million-acre landscape. As part of the public lands system, the forest is collectively owned by the American people and managed by the federal government on our behalf. Recently Senate Republicans tried to make half of it eligible for sale.

We’re still in a La Niña phase in the Pacific right now—the cooler part of the cycle that meant that 2025’s global temperature was “only” the second or third highest ever, trailing 2023, the last big El Niño year. But that hot phase seems to be returning, and somewhat faster than expected. In the last few weeks, big Kelvin waves have been moving eastward across the Pacific, driving warmer water before them; these can sometimes peter out, but strong westerly wind bursts across the region—counter to the usually dominant trade winds—seem to indicate this one is for real; the best guess of the various forecasters is that sometime between June and September the world will enter an El Niño cycle.

The future of the American west hangs in balance this week, as seven states remained at a stalemate over who should bear the brunt of the enormous water cuts needed to pull the imperiled Colorado River back from the brink. Time is running short to reach a deal before a critical deadline, set for Saturday.

This is admittedly from November, but it’s the first deep-dive I’ve seen.

Weather agencies and climate scientists have pointed to the possibility of an El Niño forming in the Pacific Ocean later this year – a phenomenon that could push global temperatures to all-time record highs in 2027.

Enforcement against polluters in the United States plunged in the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term, a far bigger drop than in the same period of his first term, according to a new report from a watchdog group.

“We have been occupying the U.S. company Cargill for 14 days, and now we have blocked access to Santarém’s airport, where many people come to take photos and swim in the river without knowing about the problems we are facing. The president signed a decree that privatizes three rivers – the Tapajós, Tocantins, and Madeira – and advanced a measure that opens the way for dredging the Tapajós. Our river is at risk. The government can no longer tell Europe and the United States that it preserves the environment while destroying it here,” said Goldman Prize winner Alessandra Korap Munduruku, a leader from the Middle Tapajós region.

“What is happening on the Tapajós is not an isolated episode: it is the direct consequence of decisions that treat rivers as export corridors and push projects forward without real listening and without rights safeguards. During COP30, more than 500 Indigenous people warned the world about the risks of projects tied to the Ferrogrão export corridor and the dredging of the Tapajós – and still, their demands remain without an effective response. The international community, buyers, and financiers cannot keep normalizing a ‘progress’ that fuels conflict and threatens living territories,” said Vivi Borari, an Indigenous leader and activist in the Tapajós Vivo Movement, a member organization of the Enough Soy Alliance.

Who would have guessed?

In the dim flicker of a kerosene lantern on a fog-wreathed houseboat, I watched Nazia Qasim’s reed-scarred hands pierce threadbare fabric with her needle, weaving colored abayas as her eyes fixed on Dal Lake’s silt-choked horizon, diesel haze mingling with the sour tang of rotting lotus stems, where vibrant beds once bloomed.

For someone aiming to end the global livestock industry, Bruce Friedrich begins his new book – called Meat – in disarming fashion: “I’m not here to tell anyone what to eat. You won’t find vegetarian or vegan recipes in this book, and you won’t find a single sentence attempting to convince you to eat differently. This book isn’t about policing your plate.”

New investigation reveals vast global overlap between drilling permits and cherished sites crucial for nature

In 2022, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) committed to developing strategies to reduce emissions from aviation. That process is now well underway.

Nearly half a century ago, the US Department of Energy launched a clean energy experiment beneath the University of Minnesota with a simple goal: storing hot water for months at a time in an aquifer more than 100 metres below ground.

Europe’s supermarket shelves are packed with brands billing their plastic packaging as sustainable, but often only a fraction of the materials are truly recovered from waste, with the rest made from petroleum.

Half the world’s 100 largest cities are experiencing high levels of water stress, with 39 of these sitting in regions of “extremely high water stress”, new analysis and mapping has shown.

An airport made of bamboo? A tower reaching 20 metres high? For many years, bamboo has been mostly known as the favourite food of giant pandas, but a group of engineers say it’s time we took it seriously as a building material, too.

The Trump administration’s new dietary guidelines urging Americans to eat far more meat and dairy products will, if followed, come at a major cost to the planet via huge swathes of habitat razed for farmland and millions of tons of extra planet-heating emissions.

The global cost of greenhouse gas emissions are nearly double what scientists previously thought, according to a study published Thursday by researchers at the University of California San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

For Antarctic scientists, getting a handle on what’s happening under the ice shelves is urgent because the fate of the planet’s coastlines will depend on how fast they melt.