STORIES OF THE HOUR (FULL STORIES)
Stories of the Hour
The Biden administration announced Friday it will delay the implementation of a rule that would dramatically cut the critical habitat of the northern spotted owl, the first step in the potential reversal of one of the final environmental rollbacks of the Trump administration.
Ten years after a devastating earthquake and tsunami led to a nuclear meltdown in northern Japan, residents are readjusting to places that feel familiar and hostile at once.
Could there ever be justice for someone like Berta in a country like Honduras, where impunity reigns supreme?
Rural communities in Oregon paid millions of dollars for clean, safe drinking water because the state didn’t protect their watersheds from logging-related contamination.
Just when we thought octopuses couldn't be any weirder, it turns out that they and their cephalopod brethren evolve differently from nearly every other organism on the planet.
Felix Vasquez, a defender of environmental and human rights, was attacked by masked men and killed in front of his children
Health impact is unknown but scientists say particles may cause long-term damage to foetuses
"If nothing else does it, this should make you passionate about climate change."
Internal emails show a tax-funded agency created to educate people about forestry has acted as a public-relations agency and lobbying arm for Oregon's timber industry, in some cases skirting legal constraints that forbid it from doing so.
Like future Olympic Games, the first nuclear fusion power plant site is being chosen a decade in advance.
Humans have broken our planet with ‘suicidal war’ on nature, UN chief warns – with ‘apocalyptic fires, floods, and cyclones’ becoming the new normal
Prince Harry’s lofty wish is for every person to be the “raindrop that falls from the sky and relieves the parched ground.” Is that so much to ask?
Climate change is making people sick and leading to premature death, according to a pair of influential reports on the connections between global warming and health.
After four years of Trump, protected places such as national monuments and wildlife refuges have opened to oil drilling, new maps show – with more on the way
The Trump administration on Friday advanced its plans to cut federal protections that critics argue will be severely detrimental to the U.S. bird population.
The fires sweeping across millions of acres in California aren’t just incinerating trees and houses. They’re also filling the lungs of California’s children with smoke, with potentially grave effects over the course of their lives.
Wall Street investment funds took control of Oregon’s private forests. Now, wealthy timber corporations reap the benefits of tax cuts that have cost rural counties billions.
The CO2 increase in the atmosphere over the last century or so has equaled comparable amounts of increase that may have occurred over several thousand years during the massive eruption episodes in the geologic past that caused major extinctions.
Officials aim to sell drilling rights to the pristine wilderness’s coastal plain before the president-elect takes office
Starting Tuesday, oil and gas companies can pick which parts of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s coastal plain they’re interested in drilling.
Russia has no plans to end its contribution to climate change before the end of the century and is aggressively expanding Arctic gas production for the Asian market
Plastic pollution is ubiquitous today, with microplastic particles from disposable goods found in natural environments throughout the globe, including Antarctica. But how those particles move through and accumulate in the environment is poorly understood.
Couple finds areas that once required ice-breaking ship have become open water
Svalbard, Norway, is home to the world’s doomsday seed vault because it’s so cold. But the climate crisis is changing that calculation.
Thanks to climate change, though, traffic along the Northeast Passage is heating up—especially traffic in a product that could itself accelerate Arctic ice melt.
In the next few decades, scientists expect we’ll see an ice-free Arctic Ocean throughout the summer. That prospect got much closer in 2020, due in part to the exceptional summer heatwave that roiled the Russian Arctic.
Scientists in northern Russia have discovered a huge walrus haulout on the shores of the Kara Sea where their habitat is under threat from shrinking ice and human activity.
To what extent are China’s challenges to maritime order in the South China Sea a signal for how it will approach the Arctic?
The Southern Beaufort Sea population of polar bears is listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. This population — of about 900 — is among the most imperiled polar bear population on the planet, and it has declined about 50% in the last three decades.
New plan would last 20 years, reshaping California’s landscape
For decades, Oregon’s timber industry has promoted the idea that private, logged lands are less prone to wildfires. The problem? Science doesn’t support that.
L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground. No one could see it – until now.
Canada’s oil patch has nearly 100,000 suspended wells, neither active nor capped, and they’re a worrying source of planet-warming methane.
Wildfires rage in the West. Hurricanes batter the East. Droughts and floods wreak damage throughout the nation. Life has become increasingly untenable in the hardest-hit areas, but if the people there move, where will everyone go?
Experts say the chronic impact of smoke from longer-lasting, more frequent wildfires could have serious health impacts.
According to new data from the Rhodium Group analyzed by ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine, warming temperatures and changing rainfall will drive agriculture and temperate climates northward, while sea level rise will consume coastlines and dangerous levels of humidity will swamp the Mississippi River valley.
Like many of the virus’s hardest hit victims, the United States went into the COVID-19 pandemic wracked by preexisting conditions. A fraying public health infrastructure, inadequate medical supplies, an employer-based health insurance system perversely unsuited to the moment–these and other afflictions are surely contributing to the death toll. But in addressing the causes and consequences of this pandemic–and its cruelly uneven impact–the elephant in the room is extreme income inequality.
At least 500,000 people in Oregon—or 12% of the state’s population—have been told to evacuate in response to record wildfires raging across the state and the West Coast, the Oregon Office of Emergency Management said Thursday.
47 whales have been found dead along the South East coast of Mauritius, including pregnant females and juveniles. The numbers continue to rise each day, around the crash site and sinking of the forward section of the Wakashio.
“They used to frolic next to my boat,” said fisherman Yannick Fine. “Now they are dead."
Government says it will carry out autopsies on all 40 animals and investigate spill fully
Keeping forests standing is one of the most effective and important ways to keep the world below dangerous levels of warming.
While more than 1 million acres of California has been scorched, one major fire hasn’t made headlines.
This is a story about frustration, about watching the West burn when you fully understand why it’s burning — and understand why it did not need to be this bad.
By the 2070s, global warming will increase extreme rainfall and reduce snowfall in the Sierra Nevada, delivering a double whammy that will likely overwhelm California's reservoirs and heighten the risk of flooding in much of the state, according to a new study by UCLA climate scientists.
The worst apparent damage so far in the wake of Hurricane Laura, which roared ashore as a category 4 storm with 150 mph winds.
The first leases to drill for oil and gas in the area could be sold by the end of 2020, Interior Department Secretary David Bernhardt said as his agency formally announced its leasing program.
The Trump administration finalized its plan to open up part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil and gas development, a move that overturns six decades of protections for the largest remaining stretch of wilderness in the United States.
The findings indicate that honey can provide important evidence of environmental pollution, scientists say
Logitech will start labeling all its products with a nutrition label for CO2.
From New York to Los Angeles, Minneapolis to the Gulf Coast, people of color suffer disproportionately from pollution, callous government and climate change.
Warfare may be a rousing way to speechify, but it's perilous when used to describe disasters from hurricanes to viral outbreaks.
Orphaned apes in the rainforest of Indonesian Borneo are taught all the skills they need in preparation for their eventual return to the wild.
As people around the world stay home, air pollution is down and urban wildlife sightings are up.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has declared a state of emergency after a giant diesel fuel spill in a remote Arctic region 1,800 miles from Moscow.
Lockdowns lead to air pollution drops in major cities.
The Trump administration has lifted a temporary freeze on billions of dollars of grants from the Environmental Protection Agency, saying the programs will continue as planned.
The global coronavirus pandemic continues to unfold at a staggering pace, decimating lives, livelihoods and the normal functioning of society, as well as interrupting energy demand and CO2 emissions.
Foote’s ingenious experiment more than 150 years ago yielded a remarkable discovery that could have helped shape modern climate science had she not been overshadowed.
Wuhan-based virologist Shi Zhengli has identified dozens of deadly SARS-like viruses in bat caves, and she warns there are more out there.
Antibodies from Winter, a 4-year-old llama with great eyelashes, have neutralized coronavirus and other infections in lab experiments.
Numbers now reflect that the coronavirus may be past its peak in several U.S. states, but the question as to how to prevent future pandemics remains.
The U.S. has fared worse than other countries not because it lacked information or funding but because it failed to learn the lessons of the last outbreaks.
US government vets said to be ready to assist with culls, or ‘depopulation’ of pigs, chickens and cattle because of coronavirus meat plant closures.
Plants that don't treat animals well often don't treat workers well.
The churches all closed. Jets flying overhead. Lunatics banging pots and pans.
A relatively small number of fossil fuel producers and their investors could hold the key to tackling climate change.
The public health threat isn’t a foreign enemy. It’s here, too.
Van Beek and other farmers say they have no choice but to cull livestock as they run short on space to house their animals or money to feed them, or both.
Atmospheric currents are transporting plastic pollution into remote, pristine areas, showing the global nature of the problem
Public health experts and elected officials have emphasized again and again that social distancing is the best tool we have to slow the coronavirus outbreak.
Several countries around the world are emitting less carbon due to the pandemic slowdown, but the climate will continue to warm.
As humanity retreats into quarantine, the internet is overgrowing with tales of a revived natural world.
Coronavirus can survive on common materials for hours or even days. Here's what you need to know and how to protect yourself.
The United Kingdom’s last plutonium reprocessing plant, B205, located in Sellafield in northern England, will shut down by the end of 2020.
The island nation chose strict lockdowns and austerity. What’s next?
President Trump is directing federal agencies to bypass requirements of some of the country's most significant environmental laws.
Stop deforestation by supporting companies that take an active role against it.
Only one species is responsible for coronavirus – humans – say world’s leading wildlife experts.
After three years in office, the Trump administration has dismantled most of the major climate and environmental policies the president promised to undo.
The CEOs, oilmen, financiers, politicians, and ideologues who are robbing us of a stable climate.
The iconic Doomsday Clock symbolizing the gravest perils facing humankind is now closer to midnight than at any point since its creation in 1947.
Scientists reveal 1 million species at risk of extinction in damning UN report.