Juma Xipaia has been defending her people’s land in the Brazilian Amazon since she was 13, when her eyes were opened to the impacts of the planned construction of the nearby Belo Monte hydroelectric dam complex on her village. Located on the Xingu River, Belo Monte, which began operations in 2016, displaced an estimated 20,000 to 40,000 people and eventually […]
Coal is down and oil is up according to the latest projections from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). Coal plants will account for 85 percent of power capacity being retired in the U.S. this year, consistent with a long-term downward trend in coal burning, while U.S. oil output is expected to increase in 2022 and hit a new high […]
A sign hanging above the door of a giant open-top glass chamber in a remote part of Minnesota’s Marcell Experimental Forest explains why so many scientists from around the world have worked hard to get a piece of this boreal woodland. “Welcome to the Future” the sign reads, and that is literally what researchers get when they come to do […]
2021 was the fifth-hottest year on record and close to 1.2 degrees C (2.1 degrees F) warmer than the preindustrial average, according to an analysis from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. The last seven years were the hottest ever “by a clear margin,” the analysis found, thanks to rising concentrations of greenhouse gasses, which hit new highs last […]
Last year, deforestation in Brazil’s Cerrado region, one of the largest savannas in the world, reached its highest level since 2015, according to newly released data from the National Institute for Space Research (INPE). Following that announcement, an INPE researcher said the government would stop monitoring deforestation in the Cerrado, owing to a lack of funds. “It’s extremely worrying,” Mercedes […]
In France, where junk food ads must include messages imploring consumers to snack less and eat more fruits and vegetables, car ads will soon be required to include messages encouraging people to walk, bike, or take public transportation, French media report. “Decarbonizing transport is not just switching to an electric motor,” Barbara Pompili, France’s ecological transition minister, said in a […]
Tom Jeffries and Tom Kelleher met at Rutgers University in the 1970s while studying industrially useful microbes. Jeffries went on to run a yeast genomics program at the U.S. Department of Agriculture; Kelleher spent decades in the biomedical industry, working with biologics like insulin, which are produced by genetically modified microbes in giant, fermenting vats. In 2007, the two reunited […]
Beijing met state air quality standards for the first time in 2021, though it still faces high levels of pollution as it prepares to host the 2022 Winter Olympics. “The improvements are real … and happening across the industrial belt surrounding Beijing, as well as in much of the rest of the country,” Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Center […]
Electric cars accounted for roughly two-thirds of new sales in Norway last year, a key milestone on the country’s way to ending the sale of gas-powered cars by 2025, Reuters reported. “Norway is the country with the biggest openness to EVs, the biggest understanding of what it is to drive an EV, and the most welcoming for having an alternative,” […]
NASA’s Earth Observatory regularly publishes striking satellite images of our rapidly changing planet, this year showing everything from the massive fires in Greece and California to the historic floods in China and the Netherlands. These photos document the ways humans are remaking the planet, both by building dams, cities, and farms, and by fueling climate change, which, in turn, is […]