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Planetary warming, also known as climate change, continues to accelerate. The last eight years have been the warmest on global record, which is well-documented, with information dating back to 1850. Additional warming will continue in the years to come, but how much more warming depends on the decisions we make in the coming decades about energy use. For those looking to take individual actions, and in recognition of Earth Day, there are many that are relevant across income levels: 1. Reduce food waste This can be as simple as being sure that food is consumed before it goes bad and...

Like many of you, I both attend and lead many a presentation. Some are sales-focused, some are just project updates; some are intended to be educational. One of the more disturbing things I’ve noticed throughout my career has been how political points creep into such presentations. Sometimes it’s formal – “this is the company-mandated slide on diversity hiring.” Sometimes it’s more subtle – “Here are some interesting statistics about our business: so many sites, so many employees, so many solar panels” – and so forth. I’ll share two recent ones. One of my vendors now includes a slide showing a...

The Scottish government has rescinded its 2030 target of a 75% emissions cut to greenhouse gas emissions, relative to 1990. The target was statutory, meaning it had been set in law in the Emissions Reduction Targets Act of 2019. Scotland is still subject to the 2030 carbon target for the UK as a whole. This was set in law by the UK parliament in 2016. Still, Scotland's move raises questions about the credibility of national (or in this case subnational) carbon targets and the usefulness of putting them into law. Climate policy experts have maintained that a crucial way to...

CNN — In a sweeping win for climate and environmental advocates, the Biden administration on Friday finalized a rule to ban fossil fuel drilling on nearly half of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, alongside other major conservation actions. The Interior Department will block oil drilling on over 13 million acres in the Western Arctic, including about 40% of the land of the NPR-A – a remote area that is home to protected animal species including polar bears and caribou. The reserve is more than 23 million acres of public land and an underground emergency oil supply for the US...

Europe’s plunging electric vehicle sales are painful proof the market isn’t ready to stand on its own, putting governments on notice for more support until affordable EVs become a reality. The glut is clogging up ports and factories are cutting production — a red flag for the region’s climate goals and risk of job cuts after Tesla’s mass layoffs this week. Without subsidies, the cost of EV ownership no longer makes sense for many drivers. Insurance and repairs are more expensive than for combustion-engine cars, and many would-be customers still bristle at limited charging infrastructure. At the same time, rapid...

BISBEE, Ariz. — Boots dusty, lungs heaving, Dr. John Wiens searched the boulders of a desolate Arizona mountaintop for the last survivors of a 3-million-year-old lizard population — then said the words that both confirmed his life's work and broke his heart. "They're not there," he said. "It seems like the species is now extinct." The loss of plant and animal species on Earth is happening at a speed never seen in human history, according to the United Nations. That includes the likely extinction of the lizards Wiens has studied for 10 years — the population of Yarrow's spiny lizards...

Global warming has slightly slowed the Earth’s rotation — and it could affect how we measure time. A study published Wednesday found that the melting of polar ice — an accelerating trend driven primarily by human-caused climate change — has caused the Earth to spin less quickly than it would otherwise.

Earth's changing spin is threatening to toy with our sense of time, clocks and computerized society in an unprecedented way — but only for a second. For the first time in history, world timekeepers may have to consider subtracting a second from our clocks in a few years because the planet is rotating a tad faster than it used to. Clocks may have to skip a second — called a "negative leap second" — around 2029, a study in the journal Nature said Wednesday.

VIDEOHas actor Hugh Jackman fallen on hard financial times or does he genuinely worship Bill Gates as someone who knows what is best for everybody else? The latter scenario is actually scarier than the first.

Scientists have created an interactive map that shows how parts of Illinois may be swallowed up by Lake Michigan as climate change bites. The Great Lakes in the Midwest comprise the largest unfrozen freshwater stores on Earth, but experts have forecast that rising water levels could have serious consequences. More than 30 million people live along the lakes' roughly 4,500 miles of coastline, which stretches across the U.S. and Canada, and touches upon the cities of Chicago, Detroit and Buffalo, New York. That means millions of families could be hit hard by new, higher water levels, which could potentially wash...

In recent months Tesla has had a bumpy ride. In January the electric-vehicle (ev) pioneer warned that growth would be “notably lower” this year, as motorists’ enthusiasm for battery power loses charge. The same month it had to suspend most production at its giant factory near Berlin because of supply disruptions caused by turmoil in the Red Sea. Its market share in China, the world’s biggest ev market, is falling as it fends off cheaper local competition, especially from byd, which late last year briefly eclipsed Tesla as the world’s biggest ev-maker. Tesla hit another big pothole on April 2nd,...

OXFORD, England (AP) — Humanity has only two years left “to save the world” by making dramatic changes in the way it spews heat-trapping emissions and it has even less time to act to get the finances behind such a massive shift, the head of the United Nations climate agency said. With governments of the world facing a 2025 deadline for new and stronger plans to curb carbon pollution, nearly half of the world's populations voting in elections this year, and crucial global finance meetings later this month in Washington, United Nations executive climate secretary Simon Stiell said Wednesday he...

A team of European researchers says that hundreds of thousands of meteorites, which may provide valuable information about the dawn of life on Earth, are disappearing from Antarctica at an alarming rate. Based on their research, the scientists behind the alarming findings say that as many as three-quarters of the approximately 300,000-800,000 meteorites resting on the surface of the Antarctic ice sheet could be lost by 2050. Published in the journal Nature Climate Change, the research says the culprit behind the wholesale disappearance is the steady rise in global temperature. “For every tenth of a degree of increase in global...

The Senate on Wednesday afternoon voted in favor of passing a bill reversing the Biden administration's actions mandating states to track and set reduction goals for greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles on highways. The chamber approved the resolution in a 53-47 vote in which Sens. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz.; Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio; Jon Tester, D-Mont.; and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., joined every Republican voting in the affirmative. The bill was introduced in February by Sens. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D.; Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va.; and Manchin. "Few things are more frustrating in government than un-elected bureaucrats asserting authority they don’t have and foisting federal...

An amount of land equivalent to the Isle of Wight has been added to the shorelines of 13,000 islands around the world in just the last 20 years. This fascinating fact of a 369.67 square kilometre increase has recently been discovered by a group of Chinese scientists analysing both surface and satellite records. Overall, land was lost during the 1990s, but the scientists found that in the study period of three decades to 2020 there was a net increase of 157.21 km2. The study observed considerable natural variation in both erosion and accretion. Of course, the findings blow holes in...

A group of older Swiss women have won the first ever climate case victory in the European Court of Human Rights. The women, mostly in their 70s, said that their age and gender made them particularly vulnerable to the effects of heatwaves linked to climate change. The court said Switzerland's efforts to meet its emission reduction targets had been woefully inadequate. It is the first time the powerful court has ruled on global warming. Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg joined activists celebrating at the court in Strasbourg on Tuesday. "We still can't really believe it. We keep asking our lawyers, 'is...

State insurance regulators are taking the first steps on what will be long and difficult effort to mitigate climate impacts. Foremost it will require cooperation and buy in. To that end, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners took the rare step of holding a media briefing Friday to again spotlight its landmark National Climate Resilience Strategy. Adopted March 18, the strategy is a desperately needed first step, said Andrew Mais, Connecticut insurance commissioner and 2024 president of the NAIC. “The goal of a strategy is to drive faster and more effective risk reduction by state insurance regulators to ensure that...

One of nature’s most important keystone species is working itself to death. Colonies of honey bees — crucial pollinators for a wide variety of plants and cash crops — are at risk of collapse because of climate change, a recent study by scientists at Washington State University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture found. Long and warmer fall months across the Pacific Northwest encourage bees to emerge from their colonies when they should be resting, said Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman, a research leader at the USDA’s Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Arizona. “When it’s warm out, they fly and when they...

President Biden has done more to address climate change than any of his predecessors. So far, voters don’t seem to care. The Biden campaign and a collection of progressive groups are trying to change that. They believe the president’s record on climate change can boost his popularity with young voters. The strategy is risky because climate has never been a priority with voters. A Journal poll, which surveyed voters in seven swing states in March, found that just 3% of 18-to-34-year-old voters named climate change as their top issue, with most citing the economy, inflation or immigration. That is roughly...

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts — Lawyers advancing an effort to charge oil companies with homicide over climate-related deaths are ramping up their campaign to hold fossil fuel producers criminally accountable for contributing to climate change. The authors of “Climate Homicide: Prosecuting Big Oil for Climate Death” embarked on a road trip of college campuses this spring, making the case for bringingcriminal charges against oil and gas companies. The push by David Arkush, director of Public Citizen’s climate program, and Donald Braman, an associate professor at George Washington University Law School, aims to bolster support for the theory through presentations at law schools....