“It’s stomach-turning to see this barbaric federal program wiping out hundreds of thousands of native animals,” said Collette Adkins, carnivore conservation director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Killing carnivores like wolves and coyotes to supposedly benefit the livestock industry just leads to more conflicts and more killing.

The operation of a high-energy nuclear power plant has, in effect, transformed a Central Coast ocean environment into a habitat more commonly found in Southern California. Multiple scientists have spent lifetimes studying the cove and documenting how the native cold-water fish and algae largely died off and were replaced by more-temperate species that can tolerate the balmy ocean.

In recent decades, PFAS exposure has been linked to a growing list of health problems, including immune system suppression, lower birth weight and increased risk for some cancers.

The way out of this bind would also appear obvious and urgent. By accelerating our transition to cheap and abundant renewable fuels, we can address two grave threats to the planet at once: the climate-warming, air-polluting menace of hydrocarbons and the dictators who rule their supply.

Startlingly large amounts of methane are leaking from wells and pipelines in New Mexico, according to a new analysis of aerial data, suggesting that the oil and gas industry may be contributing more to climate change than was previously known.

As climate breakdown takes hold, more people are likely to be affected by extreme weather, including flash floods, heatwaves, more violent storms and coastal storm surges, made worse by sea level rises.

Floridians are almost out of time to save the last of the state’s native habitat – only about 15% remains. Conservation efforts have significant bipartisan support in Florida, but are up against a tsunami of housing development. One million people move to Florida every three years.

Deforestation has devastating impacts on biodiversity, food security, and global heating. A recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)warned about catastrophic consequences humanity faces with rising temperatures.

But disaster struck in December. The couple learned the farm’s previous owner had decades earlier used PFAS-tainted sewage sludge, or “biosolids”, as fertilizer on Songbird’s fields. Testing revealed their soil, drinking water, irrigation water, crops, chickens and blood were contaminated with high levels of the toxic chemicals.

“In the positive situations, the calls are far shorter, with minor fluctuations in amplitude. Grunts, more specifically, begin high and gradually go lower in frequency.

Alaina Wood is well aware that, planetarily speaking, things aren’t looking so great. She’s read the dire climate reports, tracked cataclysmic weather events and gone through more than a few dark nights of the soul. She is also part of a growing cadre of people, many of them young, who are fighting climate doomism, the notion that it’s too late to turn things around. They believe that focusing solely on terrible climate news can sow dread and paralysis, foster inaction, and become a self-fulfilling prophecy. With the war in Ukraine prompting a push for ramped up production of fossil fuels, they say it’s ever more pressing to concentrate on all the good climate work, especially locally, that is being done.

In 2020, a forest fire near the reactor caused radiation levels to spike to 16 times above normal. The conflagration was extinguished after a two-week effort by firefighters, with a man arrested for allegedly starting the fire “for fun”. Climate scientists have pointed out that such potential disasters are partially a symptom of global heating, with rising temperatures causing forests to dry out and become more suitable fuel for fire.

Alaina Wood is well aware that, planetarily speaking, things aren’t looking so great. She’s read the dire climate reports, tracked cataclysmic weather events and gone through more than a few dark nights of the soul. She is also part of a growing cadre of people, many of them young, who are fighting climate doomism, the notion that it’s too late to turn things around. They believe that focusing solely on terrible climate news can sow dread and paralysis, foster inaction, and become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“The fallout from Russia’s war in Ukraine risks upending global food and energy markets, with major implications for the global climate agenda. As major economies pursue an ‘all-of-the-above’ strategy to replace Russian fossil fuels, short-term measures might create long-term fossil fuel dependence and close the window to 1.5C,” he warned, in a video address to a conference on sustainability run by the Economist newspaper in London on Monday.

Indeed the team say the new findings add weight to the idea that human language evolved gradually, with communication among our ape-like ancestors likely also influenced by social factors.

Countries are “sleepwalking to climate catastrophe” if they continue to rely on fossil fuels, and nations racing to replace Russian oil, gas and coal with their own dirty energy are making matters worse, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres warned on Monday.

Every day, millions of homes and thousands of businesses receive more than 15 billion gallons of natural gas, on average, from the nation’s largest gas utility, Southern California Gas Co. Families use the planet-warming fuel to stay warm in the winter and cook dinner on gas stoves. Power plants burn it to generate electricity that powers air conditioners on hot summer days.

The danger is twofold: heatwaves at the poles are a strong signal of the damage humanity is wreaking on the climate; and the melting could also trigger further cascading changes that will accelerate climate breakdow

The push is largely coming from investors themselves, who are increasingly keen to know how climate change might impact the businesses they fund. The White House also wants to address climate-related financial risk. President Biden issued an executive order last year pushing the federal government to help identify the risks posed by climate change.

Climate scientists, oil executives, progressives and conservatives all agree on one thing these days: The energy transition is upon us. The uninhibited burning of fossil fuels for more than a century has already warmed the planet significantly, and cleaner and more sustainable sources of power are urgently needed in order to avoid further catastrophic changes to the environment. But even as longtime adversaries use the same terminology, calling in unison for an “energy transition,” they are often talking about starkly different scenarios.

Both Greenpeace USA and the Sunrise Movement are calling for Biden to declare a climate emergency and use the Defense Production Act, which allows the federal government to commandeer manufacturing operations under emergency circumstances, to expedite the transition to renewable energy.

Light pointed to “decades of research” that has found no safe levels of benzene exposure because it’s so toxic at very low levels. The petroleum-based chemical “causes cancer”, especially leukemia and in blood forming organs, the US Department of Health and Human Services wrote. The toxin has also been shown to harm the central nervous system and reproductive organs. The US banned benzene’s use as an ingredient nearly 45 years ago, and it is “somewhat unique in that it’s pretty well established to be incredibly toxic – that’s been known for decades to over a century,” said David Andrews, senior scientist at the public health advocate Environmental Working Group.

At the urging of environmental groups, Democrats are going on the offensive on gas prices — hitting energy companies with a populist message that puts the party squarely at odds with Republicans and the oil industry. To do otherwise would be “dangerous and political malpractice,” Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster, argued in a memo published on Thursday.

While this ingenuity demonstrates the cephalopods’ intelligence and “extreme ability to adapt,” Proietti stressed that “it is not a good thing to think that the animals may be using litter as shelter because the seashells are gone.”

Homes in the area were built in the 1970s and 1980s and marketed to Black, low- and middle-income residents who weren’t told that the site was a one-time landfill. As awareness grew and environmentalists raised concerns, the area was named a federal Superfund cleanup site in 1994. Amid reports that the soil was contaminated with lead and carcinogens, including arsenic, residents began a decades-long effort to be relocated at government expense.

Since 2016, more than 50,000 structures in California have been destroyed by wildfire. During fire season in the West, when the sky is dim with smoke and the sun’s an eerie red, you might find yourself breathing in tiny carbonized particles of what used to be someone’s front-porch swing. These fires are only going to get worse as the climate warms. Unless we want to keep risking lives and inhaling incinerated dreams, something has to change.

Last fall, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) took out a full-page ad in The New York Times declaring that the U.S. “produces the most sustainable beef in the world” and that “cattle play an important role in protecting and enhancing our ecosystems.” Why was the nation’s beef trade group spending some of its $66.5 million budget to promote this climate-forward message? Because the conversation about the climate crisis has been heating up (pun intended) and policy makers increasingly connect food production, particularly meat and dairy, with the crisis—and rightfully so.

Long before most of the emergency rooms were overloaded, it was the food system that showed the first signs of the enormous impact the pandemic would have. Empty shelves at the supermarket. Closed restaurants. Farmers dumping milk out into their fields or euthanizing animals as meat processing plants became overwhelmed or shut down. And it wasn’t just farmers or the restaurant owners or the agricultural industry that suffered: hunger spiked across the country. Food insecurity in the US increased from 11% to 15% during the pandemic, with at least 60 million Americans visiting a food bank during 2020, an increase of 50% from the year before.

In April 2020, while Covid-19 spread around the country, and millions of people were sheltering at home, Shay Meyers, the CEO of Owyhee Produce, one of the largest onion growers in the US, asked his workers to bury thousands of pounds of onions.

Almost all the infrastructure in Quintana Roo state is concentrated in a coastal ribbon of beach resorts and timeshare properties, especially from Tulum to Cancún, about 80 miles (130km) to the north. Air-conditioned white minivans filled with tourists buzz over hot asphalt as palms stand by on parade. But this land is in a perilous position.

Officials announced in 2019 that the transit agency would allow the public to acquire the 22-ton cars, as BART slowly replaces more than 650 of them with the new Bombardier fleet. BART released a news story on Feb. 10 detailing the “winners” of the odd sweepstakes contest, who only have to pay to move the cars and upgrade them — at a minimum cost of about $8,000.

Granholm said the Biden administration wants to act as a partner with the oil industry to accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy, even as some in the fossil fuel industry have chafed at Biden's climate policies. “We have to still reckon with the impact of climate change. We can walk and chew gum at the same time," she said, adding that "to be on the right side of history, we have to work together.”

Britain said Tuesday that it would phase out Russian oil imports by the end of the year, and other European countries — far more dependent than the United States on those supplies — are under pressure to take similar action. International banks, shippers and insurance companies are balking at deals with Russia. BP, Shell and Exxon Mobil have decided to suspend big operations there.

“I started to think about the parallels between climate change and this war and it’s clear that the roots of both these threats to humanity are found in fossil fuels,” said Krakovska.

If it goes through, it could significantly blunt one of the Kremlin’s most formidable economic weapons: piped gas to heat and power the continent. It also raises an uncomfortable question: Why did it take a full-blown attack on civilians to speed up climate action?

But while states such as Connecticut and New Jersey have enacted some curbs on neonicotinoids, the US federal government is set to bend to pressure from farming groups and pesticide makers to perpetuate their use nationally.

Heavy exposure is known to cause serious and sometimes fatal organ damage, including killing off brain cells. But what became clear by the 1970s is that there is no safe level of lead exposure, and even exposure to low but chronic levels of lead can still be dangerous, especially to the developing brains of children. Aside from cognitive loss, other research has suggested that lead can affect people’s behavior, and there is even some evidence that higher exposure in past decades may have increased crime rates on a national level.

The city of Los Angeles is suing Monsanto and two other companies for past and future costs of dealing with contamination of waterways by long-banned chemicals called polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, the city attorney announced Monday.

HIGHLAND, Calif. — When California declared the San Bernardino kangaroo rat an endangered species recently, conservationists rejoiced. The state designation seemed to promise stronger protections for the tiny, seed-munching rodent.

SACRAMENTO, CA – In response to increasing concern about pervasive and persistent pollution caused by microplastics, the California Ocean Protection Council yesterday approved the first comprehensive microplastics strategy in the nation. This leading-edge Statewide Microplastics Strategy identifies early actions and research priorities to reduce microplastic pollution in California’s marine environment. Worldwide, an estimated 11 million metric tons of plastic enter the ocean each year. Without any intervention, this amount is anticipated to triple by 2040. Over time, plastics break down in aquatic environments into pieces of ever-decreasing size, with those less than 5 mm in size known as “microplastics,” which are easily ingested by ocean life, causing harm such as tissue inflammation, impaired growth, developmental abnormalities and reproductive complications.

“ Aside from all-out nuclear war, nuclear plant meltdowns pose the greatest risk of radiation exposure. An international expert panel is urgently needed to develop rules protecting nuclear plants during warfare. We can’t just hope we’ll be so lucky next time; this is a game of Russian roulette the world can’t afford to play!” - Christie Brinkley

The problem is the planet’s population of whales is now only 5% of its estimated level 400 years ago, whaling having taken a terrible toll on the world’s largest marine mammals.

While the idea of earthworms or bacteria having personalities might seem a stretch, it’s clear that more complex animals, including wolves, bears, dolphins, whales and many birds, have highly developed personalities that mirror human traits.

Before it became a conflict zone, the Donbas has long been Ukraine’s coal country, and the earth is riddled with hundreds of miles of tunnels underneath cities, factories, and farms, many of them abandoned. Recently, those shafts have been flooding, causing the surface to shift and carrying toxic chemicals that now threaten the region’s water supply. One of those mines, the site of a nuclear test in the 1970s, remains potentially radioactive. Ukrainian scientists have warned that the risks to the region could be “more deep and dangerous than Chernobyl.

Ultimately, solving the problem of plastic waste requires that companies produce and use less plastic, experts said. Single-use plastics like bags and takeout containers — which have boomed during the pandemic — should be the first to go.

After failing to overturn an election expected to hasten the transition away from fossil fuels, conservative industry groups last year managed to get future votes canceled and tightened their grip over the process used to develop new building codes. The Biden administration protested, along with dozens of major cities, but the battle over a critical tool for shrinking the fourth-largest source of the United States’ climate-changing emissions got little attention.

(Bloomberg) -- Not only are humans not adapting fast enough to hazards created by climate change, many of the relatively limited dollars they are putting toward preparing for a warmer future are being misspent, according to the world’s leading scientists. The term “maladaptation” runs throughout the report put out Monday by the United Nations-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPC

With the bang of a gavel made of recycled plastic and a standing ovation, representatives of 175 nations agreed on Wednesday to begin writing a global treaty that would restrict the explosive growth of plastic pollution. The agreement commits nations to work on a broad and legally binding treaty that would not only aim to improve recycling and clean up the world’s plastic waste, but would encompass curbs on plastics production itself. That could put measures like a ban on single-use plastics, a major driver of waste, on the table.

US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), which administers the Endangered Species Act, has been working on proposals in recent years that would strip the Key deer of its endangered species status – even as the agency’s own scientists have highlighted the threat of rising sea levels to the deer’s habitat, according to records obtained by the Guardian and Type Investigations.

Timothy F. Smith, 50, a professor of sustainability at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia, said he and his colleagues had long wrestled with doubts about their work: “Is it worth continuing if we’re not having the impact that we need?”