metazine

While China's push to modernize sparked a surge in burning coal, India is turning to increasingly cheap solar to meet its booming energy needs. Though it faces big hurdles, including a rickety grid, India's solar buildout could soon be a model for other emerging economies.

When Yale E360 launched in 2008, it was a pioneer in online environmental journalism, filling a critical gap in coverage. As he prepares to step down, founding editor Roger Cohn reflects on his years at e360, his debt to the writers he’s worked with, and his hopes for the future.

The campaign to restore the Everglades has received a boost with completion of a key project that returns the flow of water to 55,000 acres that had once been drained for development. Experts see it as a major step forward in bringing back South Florida’s River of Grass.

Scientists are increasingly worried that a vast system of ocean circulation, which delivers warmth to northern Europe and impacts climate globally, is at risk of collapse. Mounting evidence suggests it may be nearing a tipping point, though the research is far from certain.

While President Trump is directing hundreds of millions of dollars to coal projects, miners in Appalachia are suffering from a resurgence of black lung disease. But industry pushback has indefinitely delayed federal rules that would reduce miners’ exposure to deadly silica dust.

A growing body of research is pointing to the critical, but unappreciated, role that older animals play in ensuring the survival of wildlife populations. Conservationists say the new findings should lead to policies that protect these elders and the essential knowledge they impart.

Climate change has thawed permafrost and increased rainfall in the Far North, producing sulfuric acid that is turning rivers and lakes yellow or rusty orange. Scientists are scrambling to parse the impacts on wildlife, fish, and the drinking water of Indigenous communities.

Scientists have uncovered a "blind spot" in the research on rising seas, revealing that tens of millions of people thought safe from coastal flooding are at risk of inundation. Across much of the world, sea levels are higher than previously assumed and land is sinking faster.

In his latest book, biologist David George Haskell describes flowering plants as “world creators. ” In an interview with Yale Environment 360, he explains how they spurred the evolution of new ecosystems and what flowering plants can teach us about survival on a warming planet.

For people who came of age in the 1970s, it is especially painful to witness the Trump administration’s relentless rollback of hard-won environmental progress. But as the assaults on clean air and water, endangered species, and more mount, a noted ecologist finds reasons for hope.

Despite being a renewables superpower, China continues to permit and build new coal-fired power plants at a rapid pace. Analysts say the nation’s new five-year plan will ensure further coal plant expansion and jeopardize China’s ability to deliver on its climate promises.

Gray wolves made an uneasy comeback in the Northern Rockies and are struggling to return to the Southwest. But legislation now working its way through Congress is being spurred by misinformation and myth, rather than science, and threatens to end wolf recovery in the U. S.

Zambia is expanding development of its rich deposits of critical minerals, which are needed for the global shift to renewables. But contamination from past mining and a toxic spill at a mine site are raising fears that new wealth will come at a high cost for people and the environment.

Fungi create soil, sequester vast amounts of carbon, and contribute $55 trillion to the global economy, but knowledge about them is scarce. Now, mycologists are pushing to get the international scientific community to recognize fungi on the same level as plants and animals.