Inside Climate News

The urgent message was delivered to Brazilian officials during annual U.N. climate talks in Bonn, Germany, and includes new warnings about an Amazon rainforest tipping point.

By Bob Berwyn

Citing the global increase of heatwaves, mega-fires, floods and mass climate-driven displacement, a group of 250 scientists this week asked Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to champion “a fast, fair, effective, and full phaseout of fossil fuels” in the lead-up to the COP30 climate talks later this year in Brazil.

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The new standards will reduce amounts of 12 toxic or cancer-linked pollutants in Alabama waterways, according to clean water advocacy groups that petitioned for the changes.

By Dennis Pillion

Alabama environmental regulators have agreed to update standards used to limit the amounts of 12 toxic and carcinogenic substances in the state’s waterways, a move that clean water advocates say will help protect those who fish and swim in Alabama’s rivers.

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The American-made clean energy technology promises energy security and high-paying jobs but needs continued federal support to take off, CEOs argue.

By Phil McKenna

Ground source heat pumps, a small but growing segment of the U.S. heating and cooling sector, could help slash energy demands, boost American manufacturing and stabilize the electric grid as AI-fueled power demands soar.

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Listing pangolins under the Endangered Species Act is unlikely to slow the animals’ population decline, some experts say.

By Kiley Price

Earlier this week, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed listing seven species of pangolins—scaly, armadillo-like creatures found in Asia and Africa—as endangered.

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Spurred by rising utility bills, St. Peter’s-San Pedro Episcopal Church in Salem, Mass., looked for alternatives. Its “Heaven and Earth” plan would loop in much of downtown Salem.

By Phil McKenna

SALEM, Mass.—One of the most ambitious clean energy projects under consideration in this state started after a nasty surprise.

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Some companies are paying low rates for renewable energy that would otherwise go unused. There’s more of that than you’d think.

By Arcelia Martin

John Belizaire says he has a secret hiding in plain sight. But before revealing it, the CEO of Soluna, a green data center development firm headquartered in Albany, New York, asks people to picture the last time they drove through a gusty stretch of countryside and saw wind turbines in the distance. But when they zoom into that frame, he asks, did they notice that not all of those turbines were spinning despite it being windy?

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Researchers are trying to get a handle on the impacts of wildfires like those in the Pine Barrens, Canada and elsewhere.

By Anna Mattson

The Jones Road fire in New Jersey scorched 15,300 acres for nearly three weeks this spring. Its sickly orange haze vanished hours after the blaze was doused, but a stench from the blackened landscape, including parts of the Pine Barrens, lingered for days.

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It’s a first for the Central Iowa Water Works, which is worried about maintaining compliance with EPA nitrate standards.

By Anika Jane Beamer

Right before a sweltering weekend in Iowa, the water authority for the Des Moines metro area banned its 600,000 customers from watering their lawns.

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Why the Rev. Mariama White-Hammond believes Juneteenth and celebrating the end of slavery is a way to lead broader society to freedom from the destruction of the environment and climate change.

Interview by Steve Curwood, Living on Earth

From our collaborating partner “Living on Earth,” public radio’s environmental news magazine, an**interview by host Steve Curwood with the Rev. Mariama White-Hammond, pastor of New Roots African Methodist Episcopal Church in Dorchester, Massachusetts. White-Hammond is also the former chief of environment, energy and open spaces for the city of Boston.

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Environmentalists worry the report will be used to justify an increase in drilling without justifiable demand.

By Jake Bolster

The United States Geological Survey released a report on Wednesday showing vast quantities of undiscovered oil and gas resources beneath public lands. The analysis comes as Republicans in Congress try to sell up to 3.2 million acres for development.

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Despite overwhelming public opposition, officials in Bessemer voted to recommend changes to city zoning ordinances to allow the massive development. Its operation could strain the state’s water and power supplies and leave an already imperiled fish species at risk of extinction.

By Lee Hedgepeth

BESSEMER, Ala.—When a representative for a hotly contested development began to speak inside City Hall here Tuesday evening, the lights went out.

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The global goal of protecting 30 percent of the world’s ocean by 2030 remains paramount to attendees who call for accelerated action to halt biodiversity loss and climate change.

By Teresa Tomassoni

NICE, France—Resolute about their efforts to protect 30 percent of the Earth’s global ocean by 2030, world leaders agreed to sweeping but nonbinding commitments at last week’s United Nations Ocean Conference to designate vast stretches of their territorial waters as marine protected areas.

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Demand for low-carbon nuclear energy could boost uranium prospects on Alaska’s Seward Peninsula. But residents of the small village of Elim fear a mine would pollute the river they depend on.

By Max Graham, Northern Journal

This story was published in partnership with Northern Journal and is the second in a two-story series.

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Researchers found that students with asthma in the Mon Valley were more likely to miss school on days with higher air pollution.

By Kiley Bense

In 2020, Dr. Deborah Gentile helped lead a study that showed children living near major sources of industrial pollution in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County were diagnosed with asthma at triple the national rate—and quadruple for African American children. Among the students with asthma in the study, 59 percent suffered from uncontrolled symptoms.

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Ahead of a hotter than normal summer, activists call for immediate action to protect workers from deadly temperatures. “We shouldn’t be waiting for Donald Trump,” one said.

By Liza Gross

A father died last summer. His son sat on the porch with a baseball glove waiting for a game he never got to play. The man didn’t die in a fire or a fall from a scaffold. He collapsed under the sun on a job site with no shade, no breaks and no water.

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At a Bonn conference on climate, some participants say there’s a chance to make progress with the world’s biggest economy, America, no longer in the room.

By Bob Berwyn

For the first time since the United Nations started its annual climate talks in 1995, the United States is not sending an official government delegation to one of the biannual global negotiation sessions.

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Protesters are at the mercy of Mother Nature during outdoor demonstrations, which could become riskier as climate change accelerates.

By Kiley Price

Last Saturday, Laurie Marshall joined hundreds of people in El Paso, Texas, for the city’s “No Kings Day” protests, part of a nationwide series of actions in opposition of what organizers say is authoritarian behavior by the Trump administration.

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Vancouver, British Columbia, home to dozens of companies searching the world for minerals, has a special interest in the northernmost U.S. state.

By Max Graham, Northern Journal

This story was published in partnership with Northern Journal and is the first in a two-story series.

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The biggest funders of fossil fuel expansion are U.S. banks that, like those in other countries, are retreating on their climate commitments.

By Georgina Gustin

The world’s biggest banks continue to bankroll the expansion of the fossil fuel industry and have largely retreated from their climate commitments, even as the world heads toward breaching thresholds for a livable planet.

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A newly identified species is already in danger of extinction. A proposed massive data center in Alabama would “nuke” its habitat, scientists say. 

By Lee Hedgepeth, Lanier Isom

BESSEMER, Ala.—A newly identified species of fish in central Alabama is already endangered due to human development, experts say. Now, plans to build a massive hyperscale data center could turn an already dire situation into an extinction event.

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As another punishing summer edges into Karachi, a Stanford researcher and a former climate minister confront the same crisis—extreme heat—from opposite ends of Pakistan’s most populous city.

By Aman Azhar

KARACHI, Pakistan—Inside a sprawling estate in Karachi’s elite Defense neighborhood, air conditioning hummed in a low-frequency buzz. Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s former federal minister for climate change, walked into a chilled study room and clutched her shawl tighter around her. “Turn this down,” she told an aide. “It’s freezing in here.”

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Computing facilities require lots of water to operate, putting the burden of allocating resources on municipalities.

By Susan Cosier

Illinois is already a top destination for data centers, and more are coming. One small Chicago suburb alone has approved one large complex and has proposals for two more.

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Former utility executive and amateur wrestler Mark Ellis is exposing the little-known factors that raise electricity bills and threaten the energy transition. People across the country are starting to listen.

By Dan Gearino

SAN DIEGO—On a walk near his house, with views of the ocean, Mark Ellis speaks with urgency about how the utility business—the industry that long employed him—is harming the public with unsustainable rate increases.

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Almost 8,000 acres of forest in Alabama’s Mobile-Tensaw Delta was in danger of becoming the site of a wood pellet mill. Instead it is now protected as the E.O. Wilson Land Between the Rivers Preserve, honoring the world-famous biologist and Alabama native.

By Dennis Pillion

Long before he was writing bestselling books that defined the understanding of biodiversity, Edward O. Wilson was a boy in Mobile, Ala., exploring the bayous and backwaters of the Mobile-Tensaw Delta and marveling at its wildlife.

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Red Feather, which works to improve housing on the Navajo and Hopi reservations, is just one of hundreds of groups that have had grants meant to help disadvantaged communities terminated by the Trump administration.

By Wyatt Myskow

TUBA CITY, Ariz.—When Carol Parrish built her first fire using her new wood-burning stove, tears streamed down her face.

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