Yale e360 · Page 56

The Indonesian government has announced a major expansion of a program to make biodiesel out of palm oil, a move that officials say would necessitate planting 37 million acres of new palm oil plantations — an area one-fifth the size of Borneo. Read more on…

Dozens of Europe’s aging nuclear power plants will be decommissioned in the coming decade or two, forcing the continent to find new energy sources to power roughly 60 million homes, Reuters reports. Read more on E360 →

More than 1.2 million barriers stretch across rivers in Europe, from large-scale dams to locks to weirs — more than twice as many as previously thought, according to new research published in the journal Nature. Scientists said the artificial structures…

Aided by advances in deep-drilling technology for fracking, engineers are developing new methods of tapping into the earth’s limitless underground supplies of heat and steam. But the costs of accessing deep geothermal energy are high, and initial government…

Scientists estimate that if current food production methods continue, the world will likely need between 770,000 to 3.9 million square miles of new agricultural land by 2050 to feed the planet’s growing, wealthier population. Such agricultural expansion…

Scientists have found microplastic in all of the most-consumed mussel species around the world. One gram of mussel meat purchased from a grocery store contains between 0.13 and 2.45 microplastic particles, according to a new study, with organisms harvested in…

Aerial photos often document the destruction of the natural world. But these striking satellite images show how countries are beginning to respond to the global environmental crisis by restoring ecosystems, expanding renewable energy, and building climate…

Parts of the Amazon rainforest degraded by human activities such as farming, timber extraction, and burning are markedly hotter, drier, and more flammable, and store less carbon than areas of intact forest, according to a new survey of more than 33,000 acres.…

Driven by technological advances, facilities are being built with storage systems that can hold enough renewable energy to power hundreds of thousands of homes. The advent of “big battery” technology addresses a key challenge for green energy — the…

New York State has announced plans to eject oil and gas stocks from its $226 billion financial portfolio, becoming the first U.S. state and the biggest pension fund anywhere to divest from fossil fuels. Read more on E360 →

The combined weight of human-made objects will likely exceed that of all living things on Earth by the end of this year, weighing a total 1.1 trillion metric tons, or teratons, according to a new study published in the journal Nature. The study also found that…

Residents of Alabama’s Lowndes County lack adequate wastewater systems and must contend with sewage backing up into their yards and homes. Environmental activist Catherine Coleman Flowers says this problem affects many low-income, rural parts of the U.S. and…

Wall Street has begun trading water as a commodity, like gold or oil. The country’s first water market launched on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange this week with $1.1 billion in contracts tied to water prices in California, Bloomberg News reported. Read more…

The impact of introduced plants on native biodiversity has emerged as a hot-button issue in ecology. But recent research provides new evidence that the displacement of native plant communities is a key cause of a collapse in insect populations and is affecting…

Whether marine turtles are born male or female is dependent on the temperature of their nest during incubation. As global temperatures rise, scientists have found that the sand around the Red Sea is now warm enough to cause hatchlings in the area to be born…

Using GPS and satellite tags inside plastic bottles, scientists have found that plastic pollution can travel thousands of miles in just a few months. Their project, published this week in the journal PLOS ONE, tracked one bottle over 1,768 miles in 94 days.…

Even without strong action by Congress, President-elect Joe Biden will have a wide array of tools — from expanding renewables on federal lands to pushing the financial industry on climate change — that could put the U.S. on track to decarbonizing its…

The number of affordable housing units in the United States at risk of flooding could triple over the next three decades due to climate change, to nearly 25,000 by 2050, according to a new study from the research group Climate Central. Low-income residents in…

The Karen people of eastern Myanmar have long fought for autonomy over their lands. In a bold move, they have turned a war zone into a protected area that respects their cultural traditions and looks to save the Salween, one of the world’s last free-flowing…

As nations went into lockdown to contain the spread of Covid-19, factories halted and cars sat idle, clearing the skies above polluted cities and sending climate-changing emissions to historic lows. But the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere…