This spring the Biden administration proposed or implemented eight major environmental regulations, including the nation’s toughest climate rule, rolling out what experts say are the most ambitious limits on polluting industries by the government in a single season. Piloting all of that is a man most Americans have never heard of, running an agency that […]
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Extreme heat can bring on some extremely dangerous feedback loops for American hospitals and clinics. The good news is that there are some practical fixes. The time to prepare is now. Because the heat is likely to get worse. Much worse. Quite soon. First, the heat news. You know all about how rising fossil fuel emissions are raising […]
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If the United States can figure out how to quickly build more clean energy, places like Port Arthur, Texas, and Lake Charles, Louisiana, may have the most to gain. These communities have for decades shouldered a disproportionate burden of fossil fuel pollution and residents paid dearly with their health. With fewer oil, gas and petrochemical […]
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Male Arctic ground squirrels go through puberty every year. As if that wasn’t hard enough, now the females have a problem, too. According to a paper published on Thursday in the journal Science, climate change appears to be making them emerge from hibernation earlier. That matters, because it could throw off the timing of the […]
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When the French government officially enacted a ban on short domestic flights this week, it hailed the measure as proof that France was at the vanguard of ambitious climate change policies. But critics say it’s much ado about almost nothing. “We are the first to do it,” President Emmanuel Macron wrote in a celebratory message […]
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Look inside my pantry any given week, and you’ll see rice paper for summer rolls, rice noodles for my slapdash version of pad Thai, a few packets of rice ramen, sake, rice wine vinegar, and rice cakes that the teenager likes to smear with peanut butter. There’s a bag of arborio for an occasional herby […]
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If a multiday blackout in Phoenix coincided with a heat wave, nearly half the population would require emergency department care for heat stroke or other heat-related illnesses, a new study suggests. While Phoenix was the most extreme example, the study warned that other cities are also at risk. Since 2015, the number of major blackouts […]
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Arizona, California and Nevada have agreed to take less water from the drought-strained Colorado River, a breakthrough agreement that, for now, keeps the river from falling so low that it would jeopardize water supply for major Western cities like Phoenix and Los Angeles as well as for some of America’s most productive farmland. The agreement, […]
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When the floods hit in the northern Italian town of Lugo this past week, overflowing a local watercourse and sending water gushing into streets and the surrounding fields, Irinel Lungu, 45, retreated with his wife and toddler to the second floor of their home. As rescue workers navigated submerged streets in dinghies to deliver baby […]
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In theory, the world’s largest industrialized democracies have agreed to stop using fossil fuels within a little over a quarter-century and to switch to new sources of power such as solar and wind as fast as they can. But as leaders of the Group of 7 gathered in Hiroshima, Japan, this weekend for their annual […]
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As acrid smoke filled the air, turning the sky around her sleepy hometown, Fox Creek, Alberta, a garish blood orange, Nicole Clarke said she felt a sense of terror. With no time to collect family photographs, she grabbed her two young children, hopped into her pickup truck, and sped away, praying she wouldn’t drive into […]
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What does a country do when rising seas threaten to swamp its coastal capital? In the case of Indonesia, the country’s leaders are building a new capital city, from scratch, on higher ground. That monumental endeavor was recounted in detail this week by my colleague Hannah Beech, who has covered Asia for more than two […]
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Midway through his face-to-face meeting with President Biden in Indonesia last fall, the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, offered an unsolicited warning. Mr. Biden had in the preceding months signed a series of laws aimed at supercharging America’s industrial capacity and imposed new limits on the export of technology to China, in hopes of dominating the […]
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If there’s new hope, it’s blurry. What’s certain: the roller coaster tale of the ivory-billed woodpecker, a majestic bird whose presumed extinction has been punctuated by a series of contested rediscoveries, is going strong. The latest twist is a peer-reviewed study Thursday in the journal Ecology and Evolution presenting sighting reports, audio recordings, trail camera […]
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In Western Canada, fire season comes early by American standards — beginning, usually, right around now. In Alberta, by today’s date, only about 1,000 acres have burned in recent years. This season so far, the total is already more than 1.5 million — which would make it the province’s third-worst annual result, just a few […]
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What It Means: Fires are sending oil prices higher. The damage to oil and gas production was likely to significantly surpass current tallies, Thomas Liles, vice president of Rystad’s upstream research, said in a note. A large part of Alberta’s shale gas producing regions remained under “extreme” or “very high” wildfire warnings. Another 2.7 million […]
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The News Global temperatures are likely to soar to record highs over the next five years, driven by human-caused warming and a climate pattern known as El Niño, forecasters at the World Meteorological Organization said on Wednesday. The previous record for Earth’s hottest year was in 2016. There is a 98 percent chance that at least […]
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Widespread flooding in the northern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna killed at least eight people and forced another 5,000 to abandon their homes, officials said on Wednesday as rescue efforts continued to assist those stuck on the upper stories of buildings. Some of the worst-hit areas received almost 20 inches of rain in 36 hours, about […]
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The legal headaches for Big Oil are spreading. The latest company to land in court is Eni, the Italian giant. Today, I want to talk about lawsuits against oil companies and how the sheer volume and complexity of cases around the world may lead to change. Last week, Greenpeace and other groups, along with 12 […]
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On a stormy day in the spring of 2021, the sea defenses on the beach below Lucy Ansbro’s cliff-top home in Thorpeness, England, washed away. Then, the end of her garden collapsed into the North Sea. As she watched the plants tumble over the edge, she feared that her house in this coastal village 110 […]
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Ribboned shovel in hand, Prime Minister Keith Rowley joined a ceremonial groundbreaking last month to celebrate Trinidad and Tobago’s first large solar farm project expected to generate power for 42,000 homes. But if anyone thought the project symbolized the twilight of the island nation’s long embrace of fossil fuels, Mr. Rowley set them straight. “We […]
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Imtiaz Khan remembers the rains of his childhood as being light and providing welcome relief from the summer heat. A heavy shower, he said, would arrive only about once a month during the rainy season. Now 48, and president of the Carli Bay Fishing Association, Mr. Khan said the rains were something to dread. Storms […]
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Biden administration rules released on Friday that will determine which companies and manufacturers can benefit from new solar industry tax credits are being criticized by U.S.-based makers of solar products, who say the guidelines do not go far enough to try to lure manufacturing back from China. The rules stem from President Biden’s sweeping clean […]
Read More Biden administration rules released on Friday that will determine which companies and manufacturers can benefit from new solar industry tax credits are being criticized by U.S.-based makers of solar products, who say the guidelines do not go far enough to try to lure manufacturing back from China. The rules stem from President Biden’s sweeping clean […]
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They were unbelievably compassionate and deeply thoughtful people. I felt like I hit the jackpot. V.C.s with a heart. And a mission to save the planet. Through tech, yes, but also sheer capitalism. They only invest in start-ups with better unit economics than the existing solution. Because they’re practical and understand that a green premium […]
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Because the Texas energy system is so large and central to the American economy, we all have a shared stake in its energy success. When the Texas grid goes down, Atlanta might not get jet fuel. When Texas gas production freezes up in winter storms, a surprisingly frequent phenomenon, fuel prices spike in Minnesota. And […]
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The hotel ballroom was packed before breakfast as Jigar Shah took the stage at the oil and gas industry’s annual conference in Houston this spring. The host joked he was confident a huge crowd would come out for Mr. Shah, even at 7:30 a.m. It’s rare for a midlevel federal official to attract so much attention. But […]
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The Biden administration on Thursday will announce the first regulations to limit greenhouse pollution from existing power plants, capping an unparalleled string of climate policies that, taken together, could substantially reduce the nation’s contribution to global warming. The proposals are designed to effectively eliminate carbon dioxide emissions from the nation’s electricity sector by 2040. The […]
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The Biden administration’s signature policy achievement, at least so far, has been the Inflation Reduction Act, enacted last August. Despite its deliberately misleading name, the act was mostly a climate bill. Specifically, it sought to fight climate change with industrial policy, offering businesses and consumers a variety of subsidies to adopt green technologies, with the […]
Read More The Biden administration’s signature policy achievement, at least so far, has been the Inflation Reduction Act, enacted last August. Despite its deliberately misleading name, the act was mostly a climate bill. Specifically, it sought to fight climate change with industrial policy, offering businesses and consumers a variety of subsidies to adopt green technologies, with the […]
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The News Ecuador announced a record-setting deal on Tuesday designed to reduce its debt burden and free up hundreds of millions of dollars to fund marine conservation around the Galápagos Islands, an archipelago of unique biodiversity that’s famous for inspiring Darwin’s theory of evolution. The arrangement, known as a debt-for-nature deal, is a bit like […]
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