Fifty miles south of the U.S. border, at the edge of a city on the Gulf of California, a few acres of dusty shrubs could determine the future of Arizona. As the state’s two major sources of water, groundwater and the Colorado River, dwindle from drought, climate change and overuse, officials are considering a hydrological […]
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Will Wildfires Like Canada’s Become the New Normal?
With so much toxic wildfire smoke moving across the Canadian border and upending life across the Eastern United States, it raises a troubling question: Will there be more of this in the years ahead, and if so, what can be done about it? First, let’s take a step back. Global average temperatures have increased because […]
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Record Pollution and Heat Herald a Season of Climate Extremes
It’s not officially summer yet in the Northern Hemisphere. But the extremes are already here. Fires are burning across the breadth of Canada, blanketing parts of the eastern United States with choking, orange-gray smoke. Puerto Rico is under a severe heat alert as are other parts of the world. Earth’s oceans have heated up at […]
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Colorado River Carved Grand Canyon; Humans Dented It
You don’t need me to tell you that the Grand Canyon is magnificent. Otherworldly. Sublime. But, having rafted through 90 miles of the canyon with a group of scientists and grad students, I can tell you that it’s quite a bit more fragile, and less permanent, than you might think. I wrote an article about […]
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A Summer Without Arctic Sea Ice Could Come a Decade Sooner Than Expected
The first summer on record that melts practically all of the Arctic’s floating sea ice could occur as early as the 2030s, according to a new scientific study — about a decade sooner than researchers previously predicted. The peer-reviewed findings, published Tuesday, also show that this milestone of climate change could materialize even if nations […]
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The Debt Ceiling Deal and Climate Action
President Biden and Congress have wrangled a big political deal to raise the country’s debt ceiling. Tucked into that deal are some changes to how the government approves new projects that bear on the country’s climate goals, whether pipelines or bus lanes. While these tweaks are fairly modest, they’re part of a broader push by many […]
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Arizona Limits New Construction in Phoenix Area, Citing Shrinking Water Supply
Arizona has determined that there is not enough groundwater for all of the future housing construction that has already been approved in the Phoenix area, and will stop developers from building some new subdivisions, a sign of looming trouble in the West and other places where overuse, drought and climate change are straining water supplies. […]
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Congress Is Turning Climate Gaslighting Into Law
Late on Saturday, as members of Congress scrambled to strike a deal for legislation that would raise the nation’s debt ceiling, they agreed to a total non sequitur in the text they would release the next day. Following a series of late-in-the-game interventions by lobbyists and energy executives, the draft bill declared the construction and […]
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Europe Frets U.S. Battery Factory Subsidies Will Hurt, Not Help
European leaders complained for years that the United States was not doing enough to fight climate change. Now that the Biden administration has devoted hundreds of billions of dollars to that cause, many Europeans are complaining that the United States is going about it the wrong way. That new critique is born of a deep fear in […]
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New Oral History Peers Back at Obama, His Era and the Tradeoffs He Made
WASHINGTON — On a day of high drama at an international climate change conference early in his administration, President Barack Obama confronted a senior Chinese official who offered what the American delegation considered a weak commitment. Mr. Obama dismissed the offer. Not good enough. The Chinese official erupted. “What do you mean that’s not good […]
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State Farm Stops Offering Insurance in California
The climate crisis is becoming a financial crisis. This month, the largest homeowner insurance company in California, State Farm, announced that it would stop selling coverage to homeowners. That’s not just in wildfire zones, but everywhere in the state. Insurance companies, tired of losing money, are raising rates, restricting coverage or pulling out of some […]
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Debt Deal Includes a Green Light for a Contentious Pipeline
Environmental activists are enraged by the deal struck between President Biden and Republicans to raise the debt ceiling because it would also expedite construction of a bitterly contested gas pipeline and includes unusual measures to insulate that project from judicial review. The $6.6 billion Mountain Valley Pipeline, intended to carry natural gas about 300 miles […]
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Someone to Know: The Entitled Cyclist
Traffic jams might be the worst part of the day to many of you. Today, I want to introduce you to Tom Morash, an Angeleno who got tired of sitting in his car and decided to grab a bike instead. Now Morash, also known as the Entitled Cyclist, is on a mission to show that […]
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How Harmful Are Gas Stove Pollutants, Really?
Every morning, as millions of Americans light up the gas stoves in their kitchens to heat some coffee or griddle their hash browns, they aren’t just sending delicious breakfast smells wafting through their homes. The blue flames also emit harmful pollutants like nitrogen dioxides, as well as planet-warming gases. So a team of scientists from Stanford […]
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Germany’s Tenuous Coalition Government Shows Strain
BERLIN — Germany’s coalition government was always an awkward trio of center-left Social Democrats, climate-conscious Greens and pro-business Free Democrats. Yet in the heady days after their election victory in 2021, the parties vowed to stick to a tradition of consensus-driven politics, keeping the drama behind closed doors. Those doors have now swung open. In […]
Read MoreThe New Climate Law Is Working. Clean Energy Investments Are Soaring.
Last summer, in a meeting with business and labor leaders as Congress prepared to vote on the landmark Inflation Reduction Act, President Biden argued that it would result in “the largest investment ever in clean energy and American energy security — the largest in our history.” He added, “It will be the largest investment in […]
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Richard Revesz and His Agency Are Remaking the Pollution Fight
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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How Extreme Heat Causes Cascading Crises
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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The Americans Who Most Need a Greener Future May Get a Dirtier One
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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France Bans Short Domestic Flights, But Not Much Changes
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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Saving Rice in the Era of Global Warming
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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Deal Is Reached to Keep Colorado River From Going Dry, for Now
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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At G7 Summit, Leaders Wrangle on Coal, Natural Gas and Climate
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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What to Know About Rising Seas
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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A Vanished Bird Might Live On, or Not. The Video Is Grainy.
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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Canada’s Wildfires Have Been Disrupting Lives. Now, Oil and Gas Take a Hit.
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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Heat Will Likely Soar to Record Levels in Next 5 Years, WMO Says
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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The ‘Skeletons’ in Big Oil’s Closet
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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Why Some Countries Find It Hard to Move Away From Fossil Fuels
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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Climate Change Brings Warmer, Wetter Weather to Trinidad
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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Your Stories: Cool, Fascinating and Fun Climate Jobs
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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