Yale e360

Runoff from farms and feedlots has badly polluted Iowa’s waterways, more than half of which do not meet federal quality standards. Now, an unlikely coalition is calling for stricter controls to clean up the drinking water sources for millions of the…

America’s national parks are warming up and drying out much faster than the rest of the United States, according to a new study on the impacts of climate change on U.S. parks published in the journal Environmental Research Letters. The changing conditions…

Large-scale geoengineering projects that would involve building walls and berms along the seafloor could help stem the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and slow global sea level rise, two scientists contend in a new peer-reviewed study published in the…

Urged on by the oil and gas industry, the Trump administration is moving to drastically weaken the Endangered Species Act. But the act, writes a former U.S. Interior Secretary, has saved hundreds of species that might now be extinct, while allowing for…

The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities is seeking proposals from developers to build 1,100 megawatts (MW) of offshore wind capacity, the largest single-state solicitation of its kind in the United States to date, according to Greentech Media. The order is…

An estimated 7,000 to 14,000 lions are held in captivity and bred in South Africa. Increasingly, the animals are slaughtered for their bones and other body parts, many of which are sold in Asia for their purported — and scientifically discredited — health…

A new 100-foot track in the Dutch city of Zwolle is the world’s first bike path made almost entirely out of recycled plastic, containing the equivalent of 218,000 plastic cups or 500,000 plastic bottle caps. The plastic road is the latest example of the…

Twenty-seven cities across the globe, home to 54 million people, have already reached their peak greenhouse gas levels and are now seeing emissions fall an average 2 percent per year, according to C40 Cities, a coalition of local governments working to fulfill…

Hurricane Florence measures 50 miles wider and will drop 50 percent more rainfall on the U.S. East Coast in the heaviest precipitating parts of the storm than it would have without global warming, according to a new attribution study by a team of U.S.…

For millennia, ecosystems in Greenland and throughout the Arctic have been regulated by seasonal changes that govern the greening of vegetation and the migration and reproduction of animals. But a rapidly warming climate and disappearing sea ice are upending…

As climate change continues to fuel more intense and frequent wildfires, the number of people who die in the United States from inhaling wildfire smoke could more than double by 2100, jumping from 15,000 premature deaths per year today to 40,000 by the end of…

A convoy of Chinese cargo ships, with at least two carrying turbine blades and other equipment for the wind power industry, has traveled via the Northern Sea Route from Asia to Europe across the Arctic Ocean. Read more on E360 →

As climate negotiators consider rules for verifying commitments under the Paris Agreement, they will have to confront a difficult truth: There currently is no reliably accurate way to measure total global emissions or how much CO2 is coming from individual…

The Walney Extension wind farm, whose 87 turbines are capable of powering nearly 600,000 homes, has officially begun operations in the Irish Sea off northern England. Read more on E360 →

Pledges by cities, states, and businesses to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions can have a significant impact toward meeting goals set in the Paris Climate Agreement, but local action alone is not enough to keep global temperature increases below 2 degrees…

A century of fire suppression and historic drought have combined to kill 129 million trees and counting in California’s forests. As wildfires rage across the state, managers are increasingly setting fires to burn the dead timber and ward off catastrophe.…

Japanese whalers killed more than 50 minke whales in a marine protected area (MPA) in Antarctica earlier this year, according to a new report from the World Wildlife Fund. Harvesting krill and fishing is not allowed in Antarctica’s 600,000 square-mile Ross…

If nations fail to rein in their greenhouse gas emissions, nearly every terrestrial ecosystem on the planet — from forests to grasslands to marshland —will undergo “major transformations” that will completely change the world’s biomes, warn a team of…

Eastern Australia’s crippling drought, which has wilted crops and threatened livestock, will continue to intensify for at least the next three months, according to the country’s meteorological bureau. The entire Australian state of New South Wales —…

Scientists have discovered a massive deep-sea coral reef stretching at least 85 miles long off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina. The previously unknown reef sits in complete darkness about a half-mile below the ocean surface and is teeming with Lophelia…

The grounding of a research-cruise vessel in a remote polar region last week was a reminder of the hazards of increased ship traffic in an ice-free Arctic. Our correspondent was on board and reports on the ordeal and the long, uncertain wait for rescue.…

Facing a scourge of plastic bags, the Indian state that includes Mumbai mandated a sweeping ban on plastic bags and other throwaway plastic items. But the chaos that followed shows the challenges of restricting a material so deeply embedded in the modern…

There are now more than one million electric cars on the streets of Europe, according to new data from EV-Volumes, an industry analysis group. That number is expected to reach 1.35 million by the end of the 2018. Europe hit the one million EVs milestone a year…

Each year, 1.6 billion tons of food, worth $1.2 trillion, are lost or wasted. That translates to one third of all food produced. But according to a new report by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), the problem will get even worse in the coming decades: By 2030,…

The winner of the 2018 Yale Environment 360 Video Contest examines how the people of Augusta, Sicily, led by the town’s priest, are fighting back against a cancer epidemic linked to a massive petrochemical complex. Read more on E360 →

For centuries, frigid temperatures in places like the Arctic and the Himalayas have significantly limited plant growth, restricting it to short periods of time during the year or to species that could survive such harsh conditions. But new research has found…

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has announced a new proposal to scrap the Obama-era Clean Power Plan that restricts emissions from coal-fired power plants. The new rules would give states the authority to write their own weaker regulations for the…

Climate change is causing major planetary atmospheric circulation systems like the jet stream to slow down — stalling summer weather patterns across Europe, North America, and parts of Asia, according to a new analysis published in the journal Nature…

In an interview with Yale Environment 360, ecologist Charles M. Peters discusses how, in an era of runaway destruction of tropical forests, the centuries-old ecological understanding of indigenous woodland residents can help point the way to the restoration of…

The Trump administration has announced plans to open up nearly 700,000 acres of former federally protected lands in Utah for oil and gas drilling, coal mining, and mineral extraction, The Salt Lake Tribune and other news outlets reported. The land was…