Insurance payouts for U.S. crops losses due to drought and flooding more than tripled from 1995 to 2020, according to a new analysis from the Environmental Working Group (EWG). “As extreme weather has become more frequent, the climate crisis has already increased insurance payments and premium subsidies,” the report said. “These costs are expected to go up even more, as […]
For well over a century, the Pittsburgh region was infamous for its industrial air pollution. Belching chimneys from coal and steel plants dimmed the light of the sun at times, prompting a writer for The Atlantic Monthly in 1868 to call Pittsburgh “hell with the lid taken off.” In the 1940s, the smoke and soot from factories coated buildings and […]
General Motors is spending $7 billion to erect a new battery plant and overhaul an existing assembly plant to produce electric trucks. The move, which will create more than 4,000 jobs, is the “largest single investment announcement” in company history, the automaker said Tuesday. GM will retain 1,000 workers at an assembly plant in Orion Township, near Detroit, and will […]
With parts of Europe still recovering from last summer’s devastating floods, the European Central Bank (ECB) is gauging how commercial lenders would cope if flood-prone real estate were to suddenly lose nearly half of its value. Last year saw $323 billion in losses from climate-related disasters worldwide, making it the third-costliest year on record, according to a new report from […]
A survey of oil and gas facilities in Texas and New Mexico revealed 30 so-called “super-emitters,” which are leaking as much heat-trapping pollution as roughly half a million cars, according to a new report from Carbon Mapper and the Environmental Defense Fund. The findings are the result of three years of aerial surveys that spotted natural gas leaking from wells, […]
Air pollution may be making it harder for bees and other insects to follow the scent of flowers, reducing pollination by as much as a third, new research suggests. A team of British researchers exposed fields of black mustard to differing levels of ozone and nitrogen oxides, which are emitted with diesel exhaust, and observed the effect on local pollinators, […]
In Minnesota, there’s a research farm peppered with wind turbines that, when in full swing, boasts an astonishingly low carbon footprint. The wind powers a chemical plant that makes ammonia, which can not only be spread as fertilizer under the turbines, but also fuels an experimental tractor, stores energy for a non-windy day, and — soon — will heat the […]
Having won rights to develop wind farms off the coast of Scotland, Shell, Total, and BP are set to invest more in wind power than in oil and gas drilling in the North Sea in the years ahead, the latest evidence of oil majors changing tack on renewables to better navigate the energy transition. “Even before the ScotWind round, TotalEnergies […]
Africa’s most lauded Indigenous-owned eco-lodge, Il Ngwesi — which hosts rich tourists amid giraffes, elephants, and rhinos above a watering hole on the Laikipia plateau near Mount Kenya — is facing the toughtest times in its 25-year history. The Covid pandemic has decimated bookings from the United States and Europe, as it has for tourism throughout sub-Saharan Africa. At the […]
Berlin’s regional parliament is considering creating a car-free zone in the German capital in response to a concerted push from a local advocacy group. The car ban would apply to the space ringed by the S-Bahn train line, which circles the city center, an area larger than Manhattan. Volksentscheid Berlin Autofrei, or People’s Decision for Auto-Free Berlin, the group behind […]