Armed Border Patrol agents raided a protest camp in Lochiel, in southeast Arizona, making way for contractors to cut down the last standing cottonwood tree Monday morning for a double border wall, after protesters protected it for more than 70 days. Activists in Lochiel said at least 12 people had been arrested as of 8 […]

The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments from oil companies on Monday that could help decide the fate of more than two dozen lawsuits accusing the industry of deceiving the public about climate change. The claims seek potentially billions of dollars in damages to help pay the costs imposed by climate-related extreme weather. Yet the questions […]

New York City is running out of places to dump its trash. In the latest draft of the city’s once-a-decade solid waste management plan, the sanitation department warns that the landfills receiving much of the city’s garbage are filling up fast. More than two-thirds of the city’s municipal waste is transported to landfills hundreds of […]

ALTADENA, Calif.—Sylvie Andrews walks among the brilliant white poppies, purple California grapes and olive-green thorns surrounding her yard’s blackened pizza oven—one of the only things that survived last year’s devastating Eaton Fire. But her eyes scan the block beyond, ever-aware of changes to her neighborhood. Andrews says virtually all of her neighbors have received unsolicited […]

Water regulators and farmers in Colorado’s San Luis Valley are in a lose-lose situation. Either they adopt a plan to aggressively manage the use of groundwater from their rapidly declining aquifer, likely forcing a contraction of the local agricultural economy, or continue overpumping and further lower the water table, which will likely force mass shutoffs […]

After years trudging through marshes around San Francisco Bay studying conservation practices, coastal ecologist Megan Kelso realized that one of the largest determinants of wetland health may not be an invasive species lurking with her among the sea grasses, but decisions made miles away in the executive suites of insurance companies. Wetlands absorb massive volumes […]

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission wants to scrap a rule that allows shareholders to formally petition companies, one of the ways that shareholder advocacy groups have pressed for more action on climate and sustainability. Investor and advocacy groups warn that the SEC’s move would block a longstanding avenue for pressuring public companies to factor […]

From our collaborating partner Living on Earth, public radio’s environmental news magazine, an interview by Jenni Doering with author Craig Childs. Think about the darkest sky you’ve ever seen. Did you see the Milky Way? Did starlight cast shadows? This kind of experience is becoming rare in our brightly lit world, but the stars are […]

EL PASO—Federal Judge Kathleen Cardone granted a preliminary injunction Friday to halt construction on the border wall in Texas’ expansive Big Bend sector, including the national and state parks. Cardone read a brief order from the bench after hearing more than four hours of testimony from conservation groups and residents of the Big Bend region, […]

During this past summer of climate extremes, more than half of Europe experienced dangerous levels of heat stress, the combined effect of temperature, humidity, wind and sunshine on the body’s ability to cool itself. In some places, that amounted to a “feels like” temperature of 100 degrees Fahrenheit or higher. The heat stress spread across […]

The so-called “lame duck” session of Congress after November’s midterm elections could be momentous for clean energy as lawmakers are set to consider a long-sought bipartisan deal to speed permitting of large energy and infrastructure projects. Clean energy advocates and policy experts view the bill as a rare opportunity to deal with a major clean […]

More than 20 states, including North Carolina, New York, California and Pennsylvania, as well as several cities, are suing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over its repeal of most greenhouse gas emissions standards for coal- and natural gas-fired power plants. The agency’s proposal would also thwart future administrations from reinstating the rule. The state attorneys […]

A New Jersey county has become the latest local government to sue major oil and gas companies, seeking to recover costs from damage caused by worsening flooding and other climate change impacts. The filing comes just days before the U.S. Supreme Court takes up Boulder, Colorado’s climate case against Big Oil in a proceeding whose […]

As nations met this week in Bangkok for informal meetings on a United Nations plastics treaty, more than 70 developing countries supported addressing all causes and drivers of plastic pollution, environmental advocates said. Countries that comprise more than a quarter of the global plastics demand support strong measures to fight plastic pollution, said Giulia Carlini, […]

Drive the Pacific Coast Highway, spearfish alongside Great White sharks, surf in Santa Cruz, dive for lobster, cast a line or set a crab pot: California is defined by its 840-mile coastline. Managing the miles of beach, reef and cliffsides that define the state is a complicated and controversial process and has long left out […]

Two major challenges could complicate efforts to restore the Chesapeake Bay. First, a new executive order from President Donald Trump revoked the longstanding framework for coordinating federal efforts to protect the bay. Second, seven Virginia tribes withdrew from formal participation after the Chesapeake Bay Program partnership denied them the signatory status they sought. The new […]

BIRMINGHAM, Ala.—It’s time to act. It’s long past time. That was the case made by lawyers for the Southern Environmental Law Center, who filed a petition Wednesday in Jefferson County Circuit Court asking a judge to force local health officials to act on a 2023 air permit renewal application for ABC Coke, the nation’s largest […]

If one form of energy becomes the cheapest, most secure and cleanest, you’d probably adjust your economy to use more of it, right? That’s one of the ideas underpinning a report the International Energy Agency issued last week about the global move toward electrification. Fatih Birol, head of the IEA, discussed some of the concepts […]

For Europe’s fishing industry, it turns out size does matter. Of 60,000 European-flagged fishing boats, just 638 are responsible for most of the harm, according to a new report by French non-profit BLOOM. The largest in the fleet, at 108 feet or longer, pose the greatest threat to food security, cost taxpayers the most and […]

PLYMOUTH, N.C.—Fall had just arrived when a nor’easter began stewing in the Atlantic Ocean, its gale-force winds carrying the pungent smell of chlorine westward, away from downtown. Against the backdrop of dingy stratus clouds, the Domtar pulp mill loomed. The plant occupies 2,400 acres at the confluence of Welch Creek and the Roanoke River, where […]

Amid political pressure and rising energy prices, the European Commission is considering pausing a part of its landmark methane regulation, which is set to take effect in January. The move comes after French President Emmanuel Macron urged the Commission in a September 18 letter to postpone new methane reporting requirements and ease other fuel-related rules […]

As governments and global funds pour billions into oil, gas, renewable energy, digital infrastructure and mining, the future of cross-border investment is becoming a defining issue for environmental protection and climate action. China’s Belt and Road Initiative has been central to this trend, with more than a trillion dollars deployed since the early 2000s and […]

Apex Clean Energy and Meta have entered into a power purchase agreement that allows the technology company to financially benefit from energy generated from a solar project in Gonzales County, Texas. The 144-megawatt project wouldn’t have been built without Meta’s backing, the energy developer said. But the partnership comes after the parent company of Facebook […]

A series of deadly heat waves from May to August overwhelmed Germany’s healthcare and emergency response systems and led to an estimated 16,000 heat-related deaths during the summer, the most heat mortalities ever recorded in the highly developed country. At the 2026 Extreme Weather Congress in Hamburg this month, experts from local and regional governments, […]

Testing in a limited number of shallow aquifers near fracking sites in southwestern Pennsylvania found low levels of radium overall, but there aren’t yet enough samples to draw firm conclusions about the region as a whole, according to a new report from researchers at Penn State University. Researchers were looking for evidence that fracking has […]

In the foothills of southern Arizona’s Patagonia Mountains, atop so-called critical minerals such as zinc, is South32’s Hermosa project. The first mine added to a federal program designed to speed up permitting, it “set the standard for what the modern federal permitting process should look like” with “clear timelines, real transparency, and comprehensive interagency coordination,” […]

After three years helping Maui wildfire survivors track their health progress, Dr. Martina L. Kamaka is used to seeing high levels of heavy metals in their bodies. A family medicine doctor, Kamaka is one of the physicians helping with the Maui Wildfire Exposure Study, a multi-year effort from the University of Hawai‘i to chronicle the […]

Daniel Swain has made a name for himself studying the extremes of a warming planet. Fires, floods, droughts, heat, storms: if it’s a record breaker, Swain has probably studied it. As a weather and climate research scientist at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, Swain has dedicated his life to understanding so-called “outlier events” […]

During the Sand Creek Fire, which has burned since the start of August in southwestern Montana, difficult terrain and fire-weakened trees posed hazards to crews searching for areas still smoldering on steep slopes after the blaze passed. So instead of relying only on firefighters to find hidden embers, fire managers used unmanned aircraft to seek […]

Justice Samuel Alito decided Monday to sit out one of the most consequential climate change cases to reach the Supreme Court, but legal experts expected continuing ramifications due to his ownership of individual corporate stocks, including in the fossil fuel industry. After months of resisting calls for his recusal, Alito reversed himself one week before […]

The Trump administration Monday finalized the rollback of a major fuel economy standard for cars and trucks, a move critics say will cause more climate-warming pollution, human health problems and higher fuel costs for consumers. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a part of the Department of Transportation, published new Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards […]

This story is a collaboration between Inside Climate News and Honolulu Civil Beat. All over Hawaiʻi, property owners are hoping to rebuild homes and businesses destroyed by recent disasters. Many Kauaʻi and Hawaiʻi island residents are still assessing the damage caused by downed trees and utility poles or cleaning the mud and sewage that flooded […]

Welcome to Inside Climate, a podcast from the staff of Inside Climate News. In this episode, we discuss China’s burgeoning electric-vehicle exports—now entering a key market for U.S. automakers—and the environmental impacts of Beijing’s massive “Belt and Road Initiative,” which funds and builds overseas infrastructure projects like roads, railways, ports and dams. One such project […]

This investigation was reported in a collaboration between Inside Climate News and Columbia Journalism Investigations. MCDERMITT CALDERA, Ore.—On a cold and overcast spring morning, Katie Fite stood in one of the country’s last sage-grouse strongholds, contemplating the wooden stakes in the ground that she fears warn of its destruction. Every spring, males of the chunky […]

On a clean summer swell, the wave at Malibu’s Surfrider Beach arrives from the south, wraps around a cobblestone point and unspools toward the pier in a long, shimmering wave that can carry a surfer for hundreds of feet. It breaks slowly, forgivingly, over rounded stones that were delivered by Malibu Creek across millennia. The […]

KEN CARYL, Colo.—A new residential development south of Denver is the testing ground for an unusual partnership that could transform home heating and cooling across the country. Dandelion Energy, a geothermal startup, and Lennar, one of the nation’s largest homebuilders, recently completed construction of nearly 100 homes at the base of Colorado’s Front Range, each […]

A sprawling reservoir under construction south of Lake Okeechobee that Gov. Ron DeSantis has characterized as the “crown jewel” of Everglades restoration will not be enough to save Florida’s treasured and troubled river of grass, according to a new report. The report, prepared by Friends of the Everglades, an advocacy group, suggests the Everglades needs […]

When Nicole Williams moved into her house in Pennsylvania’s North Centre Township in 2011, it was a homecoming. She’d spent the first few years of her life a half-mile down the road in Brookside Village, a tidy community of 170 mobile homes nestled between the west branch of Briar Creek and a farm that grew […]

From our collaborating partner Living on Earth, public radio’s environmental news magazine, an interview by Paloma Beltran with Tanuja Pandey, a climate justice activist in Nepal. In the weeks following the deadly glacier collapse and floods in Nepal this August, researchers from the World Weather Attribution group rapidly assessed the event and concluded that climate […]

This week’s United Nations General Assembly in New York featured pleas for urgent action on climate change, with heads of state and Secretary-General António Guterres warning that the window for action is narrowing. Yet climate was a footnote amid the issues commanding public attention, including President Donald Trump’s talk of annihilating Iran, the walkout that […]

NY-17: Second in a series on the environmental stakes of one of the nation’s most fiercely contested congressional races. Nancy Vann’s resolve has become the subject of a local jingle. Its chorus goes: “If she can do it, so can we.” Vann, 78, moved to Peekskill, 40 miles north of New York City, after September […]

This story was originally published by Yale Environment 360. In a modern five-story building in the center of Hamburg, Germany, technicians are preparing to install several new “racks”—gray metal casings that hold computing hardware—alongside the scores that already line the narrow, dimly lit corridors of the German Climate Computing Center (DKRZ), one of the world’s […]

EL PASO—While Texas officials have hit pause on data center permitting, one project that is still moving ahead is Meta’s $10 billion, 1-gigawatt data center in northeast El Paso. Meta had already signed tax abatement agreements with El Paso, jumped through regulatory hoops and started construction before Texas officials tapped the brakes on data center […]

Earlier this week, President Donald Trump responded to rising public concerns about artificial intelligence with a post on Truth Social. “The same people that said, ‘We’ll all be dead in twelve years because of Global Warming,’ a name since ‘reborn’ to Climate Change, because the Planet was cooling, not warming, and nobody was dead, are […]

Glenda Beal’s roots in lobstering run nearly as deep as her roots in the town that shares her name: Beals Island, Maine. Her husband and two sons are lobstermen, as were her father and uncle, both grandfathers and a few generations before that. “Our economy runs on lobster fishing, predominantly,” said Beal, 60, a descendant […]

NEW YORK—From the podium of the United Nations General Assembly, Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino called on fellow leaders to support a treaty affirming that nature has inherent rights. “Today I am announcing that Panama will lead internationally an effort to recognize the universal rights of nature. And I ask all of you to support […]

Heading into election season, leaders in Corpus Christi face a puzzling question: what to do with $235 million from the state of Texas for a seawater desalination plant that was never built. This month, officials in the Gulf Coast city declined to pursue the flagship water supply project for the second time in a year […]

Seafood isn’t just a key source of protein and calories; it’s also where millions around the world get essential vitamins and minerals needed to build tissue, fight infections and grow. Yet, as modern mechanized fishing fleets plunder global waters, populations in low-income countries are losing out. If the fish caught by foreign-flagged bottom trawlers went […]

A federal court in Michigan has tossed out a pioneering antitrust lawsuit brought by the state of Michigan against four major oil and gas companies and their largest U.S. trade association that alleged a conspiracy to forestall the transition to renewable energy and electric vehicles in order to maintain market dominance of fossil fuels. Michigan […]

More than 451,000 people are projected to die across the globe in the next six months from the additional heat brought by a super El Niño, according to estimates from climate scientists released Wednesday. The El Niño—the warm phase of the Pacific Ocean’s recurring cycle, when heat from the ocean is released into the atmosphere—began […]