Our Neighborhood

Earth

Keeping It Green

Atmospheric CO2 Levels

(Monthly Averages)

Nov 1, 2025: 425.7 ppm
10 years ago: 396 ppm
Pre-industrial base: 280
Safe level: 350 ppm

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT

Page Updated:
Dec. 19, 2025

• The 2024 Clean 15 (Safe Foods)
• Get the Lead Out Toolkit
• Oil Spill History
• World Air Quality Report
• Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act

• US Emissions by Sector Chart

  
  

  Where is all that CO2 coming from? This graph breaks it down by economic sector.

• Greenest U.S. Cities
• Safe Water in Pictures
• U.S. WEA Grassroots Accelerator
• Safer Habitats

• • The Hidden Toll of Green Energy

  Mining Controversies
  
  {MONGABAY}
  
  

  Dec. 17, 2025 -A study published in Nature Reviews Biodiversity in September describes the extensive environmental toll of mining for minerals needed for a transition to green energy. The direct, site-level impacts are well known — deforestation, soil degradation, contamination of water bodies — with impacts on nearby settlements and wildlife habitat.

  “A truly just energy transition must align climate action with conservation and social equity,” Aurora Torres, an ecologist at the University of Alicante in Spain and co-author of the study, told Mongabay.

  Projections indicate that demand for energy transition minerals is expected to increase sixfold between 2020 and 2040. However, a 2023 analysis suggests that expanded mining to meet this demand would still require less mining overall than the current fossil fuel-based system.

• • These Kitchen Items May Be
  Contaminating Your Food With Chemicals

  See the Thousands of Plastic Chemicals In What We Eat
  
  
  

  Dec. 17, 2025 -When Americans eat a burger, they aren’t just biting through bun, lettuce, tomato and cheese. Instead, the burger — or its packaging, or the utensil used to cook it — also likely contains a blend of chemicals scientists believe harm human health. PFAS. Phthalates. BPA. Flame retardants.

  These chemicals act on the body in multiple ways — confusing hormones, disrupting immune systems and boosting cancer cells. But they all have one thing in common: They are intimately linked to plastic.

• • Tech Giants Clash Over How to Measure Their Carbon Footprint

  GHG Protocol, a Nonprofit Affiliated With the World Resources Institute, Produces Guidelines For Corporate Emissions Accounting That Are Widely Regarded As the Industry Gold Standard
  
  {SEMAFOR}
  
  

  Dec. 16, 2025 -Big Tech firms including Amazon and Meta are lining up against rivals like Google in a battle over ostensibly obscure rules on tallying emissions which could have huge implications for how — and where — clean energy projects are financed worldwide in years to come.

  At issue are the accounting standards for Scope 2 emissions — those that come from a company’s purchased energy — which are currently being reviewed by a little-known nonprofit that administers them. An overhaul of the regulations is expected early next year, driving a wave of lobbying by Silicon Valley giants and major energy providers.

• • Workers Were Exposed to Toxic Chemicals In Firefighting Foam

  Dozens of Factory Workers Were Exposed to Toxic Chemicals Within Firefighting Foam Over Decades
  
  {BBC}
  
  

  Dec. 16, 2025 -Multi-billion-pound US manufacturer, 3M, failed to tell employees at its Swansea site they were using foam containing two forever chemicals, now classed as carcinogenic, despite knowing for decades of the health risks.

  The company said it would stop manufacturing the forever chemicals – so called because they persist in the environment – in 2002, but failed to remove them from the factory resulting in an environmental accident four years later.

  3M said that the health and safety of its workers and their families were "critical priorities" for the company.

• • Why This Vegan Environmentalist Thinks Meat Is the Future

  A New Book Argues That People Will Never Give Up Meat — and That Plant-Based and Lab-Grown Meat Will Be the “Next Agricultural Revolution”
  
  
  

  Dec.13, 2025-Bruce Friedrich gave up meat for good as a college student in 1987. But if you’re not willing to go vegetarian, he won’t begrudge you a burger.

  In his upcoming book on solving the environmental and health problems that come with global meat consumption, Friedrich — a former animal rights activist at PETA — argues that it’s hopeless to persuade most people to give up steak, sausage and chicken nuggets.

• • Humble Fish Inspire Self-Cleaning Microplastic Filter

  Washing Machines Release 500 Grams of Plastic Microfibers Into Waterways. Researchers Have Made a Fish Gill-Inspired Filter That Traps 99% of Those Microfibers
  
  
  

  Dec. 11, 2025 -Taking inspiration from anchovies and herrings, researchers have made a new filter that could keep microplastics from entering waterways and oceans.

  The filter, with a design based on the gill systems in these fish, traps a record high 99% of tiny microplastic fibers from washing machine wastewater. And its innovative design keeps it from getting blocked, unlike filters that are on the market today. The team from University of Bonn in Germany reported their patent-pending filter in the journal npg Emerging Contaminants.

• • Forever Chemical TFA Could Cause Irreversible Harm.
  In Eastern North Carolina, It’s Everywhere

  The Discovery of TFA in Blood and Water Samples Raises Questions About Chemours’ Role In Adding to the Pollution Burden
  
  
  

  Dec. 10, 2025 -The shipment arrived by FedEx, packed in dry ice. Inside were 119 plastic vials, each containing three drops of blood that had been stored at minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit for as long as a decade.

  Jane Hoppin, an environmental epidemiologist at N.C. State University had ordered the blood. From 2010 to 2016, Wilmington residents had donated their serum to a biobank run by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to help scientists better understand how the body works. Now Hoppin wanted to learn if high concentrations of PFAS in the city’s drinking water were also present in the donors’ blood.

• • South Dakota Ranchers Are Burning the Prairie to Save It

  A “Green Glacier” of Trees Is Steadily Taking Over Native Grasslands. Landowners Are Banding Together to Treat the Problem With Fire
  
  
  

  Dec. 9, 2025 -Sara Grim’s ranch near Bonesteel, S.D., is a ruggedly beautiful place. Three generations of her family have grazed cattle on the pleated hills of prairie grass that slope down to the Missouri River, winding toward the broad horizon like a painter’s brushstroke. In 2016, she and her husband, Rich, decided to set it ablaze.

  “I was scared out of my mind, we were losing sleep,” Ms. Grim said. “In this country, fire was a bad word.”

  Eastern red cedar trees had grown so thick that the Grims were having trouble riding horses through the pastures, let alone managing their cattle. They hoped the flames, in what’s known as a prescribed burn, would halt the spread of the evergreens taking over their land.

• • This Arkansas City Shows How to
  Slash Emissions and Save Money, Too

  In the Ozarks, the Growing College Town of Fayetteville, Ark., Is Using Clean Energy to Power City Facilities and Embracing Nature-Based Solutions to Climate Threats
  
  
  

  Dec. 9, 2025 -Fayetteville, Ark., has proudly worn colorful descriptors over the years.

  Crunchy. Funky. “Kind of a granola, hippie environment,” said Jeff Pummill, who chairs the city’s environmental action committee.

  Set in the Ozark Mountains in the northwest corner of the state, a region of lush, rolling hills crisscrossed by rivers and creeks, Fayetteville drew back-to-the-land enthusiasts in the 1960s. It’s a city where, 25 years ago, a 53-year-old grandmother tried unsuccessfully to stop mature oaks from being razed for a retail development by taking up residence in a tree for a few weeks.

• • Hawaii’s Kilauea Volcano Absolutely
  Destroys This Webcam in a Fiery New Video

  One of Earth’s Most Active Volcanoes, Sent Lava Fountains Spewing Into the Air, Obliterating a U.S. Geological Survey Camera
  
  
  

  Dec. 8, 2025 -Hawaii’s Kilauea—one of Earth’s most active volcanoes—is bringing the drama.

  On December 6 lava fountains in the Halema‘uma‘u crater at the shield volcano’s summit spewed more than 1,000 feet into the air, sending molten rock, boulders and ash hurtling into one of the ?U.S. Geological Survey’s webcams, taking it completely offline.

• • Magnitude 7.5 Quake In Northern Japan Injures 23 People

  And It Triggers a Tsunami
  
  
  

  Dec, 7, 2025 - A powerful 7.5-magnitude earthquake struck off northern Japan late Monday, injuring more than 20 people and triggering a tsunami of up to 70 centimeters (28 inches) in Pacific coast communities, officials said.

  The Japanese government said it was still assessing damages from the tsunami and late-evening quake, which struck at about 11:15 p.m. (1415 GMT) in the Pacific Ocean around 80 kilometers (50 miles) off the coast of Aomori, the northernmost prefecture of Japan’s main Honshu island.

• • 98 Percent of Gaza’s Tree Crops Are Now Destroyed By Israel

  What Satellite Data Reveals
  
  
  

  Dec, 7, 2025 - Two years of war in Gaza have taken a devastating toll on the people living there. Nearly 70,000 people, including more than 20,000 children, have been killed by Israeli attacks. Disease and famine have taken hold as Israel blocks the flow of food and medical aid into the territory. Several international human rights organizations have determined that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

  Alongside the human casualties and the destruction of homes and infrastructure, the war has brought the widespread destruction of arable land. Agriculture comprised 32% of land use in Gaza before 7 October 2023, when Hamas, a recognized terrorist organization supporting Palestinian self-determination, attacked Israeli communities in Gaza and Israel launched a massive military response.

• • The Big Bet to Fix the Rio Grande Sewage Problem

  Nuevo Laredo Was Dumping Millions of Gallons of Sewage a Day Into the Rio Grande
  
  
  

  Dec. 7, 2025 -Silvia Fernández Gallardo Boone leaned over a stream of water rushing through a concrete chute at the city’s wastewater treatment plant.

  “Smell it!” she said, beaming.

  Odorless, treated wastewater flowed into the Coyote Arroyo, or creek, then the Rio Grande. Mere months earlier, more than 12 million gallons of raw sewage were leaking every day into the river and groundwater in Nuevo Laredo. After repairs to the treatment plant, to Fernández Gallardo’s delight, the flow of untreated wastewater has been significantly reduced.

• • Seattle Braces For Atmospheric River

  What Is An Atmospheric River?
  
  
  

  Dec, 7, 2025 - An atmospheric river will arrive in the Western Washington region on Monday, according to the National Weather Service. Here’s what to know.

  An atmospheric river is a plume of moisture from the subtropical Pacific Ocean that sweeps an area, according to Logan Howard, meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Seattle.

• • This Study Found This Weed-Killing Chemical Doesn’t Cause Cancer

  It Was Just Retracted
  
  
  

  Dec. 5, 2025 - A scientific journal has retracted a bedrock study that found that glyphosate — the active ingredient in one of the most widely used herbicides on the planet — does not pose a human health risk, igniting a fresh debate over the chemical’s possible link to cancer.

  Scientists and regulators have worked for years to determine whether glyphosate — the active ingredient in Roundup, which was produced by Monsanto until the company was acquired by Bayer in 2018 — causes cancer. European and U.S. officials have not classified it as a carcinogen, while the World Health Organization deemed it “probably carcinogenic to humans” in 2015.

• • Protect Wildlife From This Pesticide: Atrazine

  Tell the Service: It's Past Time to Protect Imperiled Species and Public Health From Atrazine.
  
  
  

  Dec, 5, 2025 -Atrazine is banned in 60 countries, but it's the second-most used herbicide in the United States — even though it's one of the nation's most common water contaminants and a known hormone disruptor linked to birth defects, multiple cancers, and fertility problems. It's highly toxic to wildlife, poisoning habitat for aquatic plants and animals — as well as drinking water all life needs to survive.

  Even at extremely low levels, atrazine can chemically castrate male frogs, leading to reproductive damage that can cause major population declines in amphibians.

• • China’s CO2 Emissions Might Have Finally Peaked

  China Has Rapidly Become the World Leader In Renewable Energy, But Continued Coal Use Means It Could Take Longer For Its Emissions to Decline
  
  
  

  Dec. 4, 2025 -China’s carbon dioxide emissions have plateaued in 2025, indicating the country may have reached a peak after years of being the world’s top emitter.

  The plateau reflects how China’s record-setting build-out of wind and solar power and rapid expansion into electric vehicles has tempered fossil-fuel emissions, according to the nonprofit Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air.

• • How Volcanoes Upend the Story of What Sparked the Black Death

  Volcanic Eruptions Could Have Fueled the Spread of the Black Death Plague Across Medieval Europe, According to a New Study
  
  
  

  Dec. 4, 2025 - For centuries, the prevailing explanation of how the Black Death entered medieval Europe was a simple narrative of biological warfare. During a siege of Caffa, a Genoa-controlled port city on the Crimean Peninsula, a Mongol army catapulted plague-infested bodies over the city walls, according to a historical account. It was a simple narrative, with a clear villain.

  But a new study published Thursday adds to a body of evidence that upends that grisly origin story, suggesting that a perfect storm of volcanic eruptions, crop failure, famine and medieval globalization converged in the mid-1300s to unleash the Black Death across Europe.

• • Trump Administration’s Threats to Shrink or Eliminate
  National Monuments Could Endanger Drinking Water for Millions

  A New Center For American Progress Report Found 31 National Monuments Are the Only Conservation Tool Protecting 21,000 Miles of Rivers and Streams That Provide Water For Downstream Communities
  
  
  

  Dec. 4, 2025 - The 31 national monuments designated since the Clinton administration, which could be downsized as the Trump administration pushes to open more public lands to extractive industries, safeguard clean water for millions of Americans, according to a new analysis from the Center for American Progress.

  Using geospatial data to quantify the miles of rivers and watersheds within the studied national monument boundaries, as well as the number of users who depend on that water, the report found that the water supplies for more than 13 million Americans are directly provided by watersheds within or downstream of these national monuments. About 83 percent of the water passing through these public lands has no other protection besides the monument designations, it found.

• • Factory Farms in Iowa Generate 110 Billion Pounds of Manure Per Year

  No One Tracks Where It’s Going
  
  
  

  Dec. 4, 2025 - More than a thousand hogs grow fat in the enclosed shed-like structures on Gene Tinker’s farm in northeast Iowa, while a few hundred cattle pace in open feedlots.

  His farm is one of nearly 8,000 concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) in Iowa. But the 64-year-old is not an average Iowa pork producer.

  Less than a decade ago, Tinker was the state’s top administrator managing questions and disputes over livestock operation permitting.

• • Colorado Mandates Ambitious Emissions Cuts For Its Gas Utilities

  Colorado Just Set One of the Toughest Clean-Heat Standards In the Country
  
  {energy central}
  
  

  Dec. 3, 2025 -Gas utilities like Xcel have been ordered to cut emissions 41% by 2035—far above what utilities wanted and more aligned with the state’s 2050 climate targets.

  Regulators rejected weaker 22–31% proposals after state agencies and advocates showed the cheapest path isn’t blending “clean” fuels, but reducing demand through weatherization, heat pumps, and other “clean-heat” upgrades.

• • Is My Morning Coffee Climate Friendly?

  What to know About Your Daily Brew and the Environment
  
  
  

  Dec. 3, 2025 - You love your morning coffee and you love the planet. So, you might wonder what your caffeine habit means for climate change.

  Coffee isn’t a huge climate polluter, but it does produce greenhouse gases. On the high end, a kilogram of roasted coffee can produce 40 kilograms or more of carbon dioxide equivalent, according to Dave White, director of the Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation at Arizona State University. That means a single bag of beans can represent the same emissions as driving a few dozen miles in a gas-powered car.

• • The Impact of Eating Chilean Salmon

  We Cannot Imagine How Much Human Blood It Carries With It’
  
  
  

  Dec. 2, 2025 - Julia Cárcamo López’s house faces the sea, near enough to hear the gulls calling through the salt-encrusted windows. She lives in the small town of Maullín, on the edge of Chile’s Patagonia, an area where almost everyone works in the fishing industry.

  Outside, it is drizzling and the sky is darkening as she recalls 1 May 2019, one of the worst days of her life. “Two men knocked on my door and told me they had bad news: my husband had had an accident while working at sea,” she says. Since then, she has discovered that the accident seems to have been caused by negligence.

• • Reuse and Return Schemes Could Help
  Eliminate Plastic Pollution In 15 Years

  Pew Charitable Trusts Finds Plastic Pollution Will More Than Double Globally By 2040 Unless Action Taken
  
  
  

  Dec. 3, 2025 -The 66m tonnes of pollution from plastic packaging that enters the global environment each year could be almost eliminated by 2040 primarily by reuse and return schemes, significant new research reveals.

  In the most wide-ranging analysis of the global plastic system, the Pew Charitable Trusts, in collaboration with academics including at Imperial College London and the University of Oxford, said plastic, a material once called revolutionary and modern, was now putting public health, world economies and the future of the planet at risk.

• • ‘Everywhere Chemicals’ Are In Our Food,
  Decades After Scientists Recognized Dangers

  A Large Body of Science Has Linked Phthalates to a Variety of Serious Health Conditions
  
  
  

  Dec, 2, 2025 -Earl Gray was astonished by what he found when he cut into the laboratory rats. Some had testicles that were malformed, filled with fluid, missing or in the wrong place. Others had shriveled tubes blocking the flow of sperm, while still more were missing glands that help produce semen.

  For months, Gray and his team had been feeding rats corn oil laced with phthalates, a class of chemical widely used to make plastics soft and pliable. Working for the EPA in the early 1980s, Gray was evaluating how toxic substances damage the reproductive system and tested dibutyl phthalate after reading some early papers suggesting it posed a risk to human health.

• • A Massive, Chinese-Backed Port in Peru
  Could Push the Amazon Rainforest Over the Edge

  The Ultra-Sophisticated Port North of Lima Will Revolutionize Global Trade, But It’s Already Sparking Destructive New Routes Through the World’s Most Climate-Critical Ecosystem
  
  
  

  Dec. 1, 2025 - The elevator doors leading to the fifth-floor control center open like stage curtains onto a theater-sized screen.

  This “Operations Productivity Dashboard” instantaneously displays a battery of data: vehicle locations, shipping times, entry times, loading data, unloading data, efficiency statistics.

  Most striking, though, are the bold lines arcing over the dashboard’s deep-blue Pacific—digital streaks illustrating the routes that lead thousands of miles across the ocean, from this unassuming city, to Asia’s biggest ports.

• • Greeks Challenge EU-Backed Fish Farms Amid Environmental Concerns

  The Country Is One of the Top Producers of Farmed Fish In the EU, Which Has Promoted Aquaculture As An Environmentally Sustainable Option For Food Security Within the Bloc
  
  
  

  Nov. 30, 2025 - For Nikos Tsipas, the mud is most disconcerting. When he sets out in his fishing boat, the waters of the Aegean Sea are clear enough for him to see quite a ways down. He says that for large patches of the shallow waters that encircle his village on the Greek island of Evia, where there were once meadows of wavering sea grass and schools of minute silver fish, there is now a thick layer of sludge. “It’s a quagmire,” he said.

  Tsipas and a few of his neighbors assert the muck is proof of the myriad forms of environmental destruction wrought by the nearby fish farm. A group of residents from Porto Lafia and nearby Agio Irini have strung up a banner by the beach which states: “No more fish farms, we want clean seas.”

• • The Carbon Capture Plan Turning Cattle Farms Into Power Plants

  Big Tech Just Dropped $41M On a Plan to Turn Cattle Farms Into Carbon-Sucking Power Plants
  
  {energy central}
  
  

  Nov. 30, 2025 -The tech: German startup Reverion drops shipping container-sized solid-oxide fuel cells onto farms. They intake biogas, churn out clean electricity for the grid, and liquefy the remaining CO? for permanent storage.

  Why it matters: With ~140K biogas sites already operating worldwide, Frontier sees a path to scaling removal past two gigatons a year by 2040 if the tech keeps performing in the field.

• • Invasive European Green Crabs Discovered in WA’s Skagit Bay

  Crab Molting Occurs When a Crab Sheds Its Shell
  
  
  

  Nov. 26, 2025 -Researchers found the first evidence of European green crabs in the northern Whidbey Basin, a sign that one of the world’s most harmful marine species has made inroads in the Salish Sea, the Washington Sea Grant Crab Team announced Tuesday.

  European green crabs are small, invasive shore crabs that damage bed sediments, leading to the loss of eelgrass, an essential habitat for Dungeness crab and Pacific salmon, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

• • Magnitude 4.0 Earthquake Rattles Bay Area

  Aftershocks Likely to Follow
  
  
  

  Nov. 26, 2025 -An earthquake of magnitude 4.0 rattled the Bay Area shortly after 6 A.M. local time on November 26—the quake is the largest so far in a string of recent activity near Gilroy, Calif.

  The U.S. Geological Survey had originally estimated the earthquake to be magnitude 4.3 but quickly revised the strength down to 4.0. That kind of revision is typical in the immediate aftermath of a quake as scientists analyze the data available to them.

• • One In Seven English Bathing Spots Rated As Polluted In Latest Testing

  Scarborough and Bognor Regis Among Places Where Water Is So Polluted It Is Not Recommended For Swimming
  
  
  

  Nov, 25, 2025 -One in seven (13%) of England’s bathing waters are rated as polluted, and one in 14 so polluted they are not recommended for swimming.

  Famous beaches including Bognor Regis, Scarborough’s South Bay and Littlehaven Beach in South Shields were all rated “poor” in the latest classifications from the Environment Agency, which means they are not recommended for swimming.

• • Seattle’s Rad Power Bikes Linked to 31 Fires

  It's Not Always Easy Being Green
  
  
  

  Nov. 24, 2025 -A struggling Seattle-based electric bike company is facing yet another bump in the road as a federal product safety agency warned customers Monday to stop using some of the models due to safety concerns around their batteries.

  The lithium-ion batteries used in some Rad Power Bikes products can unexpectedly ignite and explode, and can pose a risk of serious injury and death, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission wrote in a notice.

• • Fire Threatens Iran’s Ancient Forest, a World Heritage Site

  Iran has Been Battling Its Worst Drought In More Than Six Decades
  
  
  

  Nov. 24, 2025 - A wildfire burning for more than a week in drought-stricken Iran has razed portions of the ancient Hyrcanian Forests, a UNESCO World Heritage site home to many endangered species.

  On Sunday, Turkey sent aircraft at Iran’s request to help battle the blaze in one of the world’s oldest forests, according to Iranian state media. The local authorities said they had managed to contain most of the fire, which they have been battling in the country’s north.

• • Volcano Erupts After Lying Dormant for 12,000 Years

  The Hayli Gubbi Volcano, Long Thought to Be Dormant, Sent Ash Nine Miles into the Sky In an Eruption On Sunday
  
  
  

  Nov. 24, 2025 -A long-quiet volcano in Ethiopia spewed ash nine miles into the sky on Sunday, marking the first known major eruption from this volcano for more than 12,000 years.

  Under-studied and situated in Ethiopia’s arid, rural northeast, volcano Hayli Gubbi’s towering ash column may be a clue to other, undetected eruptions in that period, says Juliet Biggs, an earth scientist at the University of Bristol in England.

• • Toxic Mines Put Southeast Asia's
  Rivers, and People At Risk

  Mines May Be Releasing Deadly Chemicals into River Water
  
  
  

  Nov. 24, 2025 -For most of her life, 59-year-old farmer Tip Kamlue has irrigated her fields in northern Thailand with the waters of the Kok River, which flows down from neighbouring Myanmar before joining with the Mekong River that cuts through Southeast Asia.

  But since April, after authorities warned residents to stop using the Kok's water because of concerns over contamination, Tip has been using groundwater to grow pumpkins, garlic, sweet corn and okra.

• • Oil Producers, but Maybe Not the Planet,
  Get a Win as Climate Talks End

  The Final Agreement, With No Direct Mention of the Fossil Fuels Dangerously Heating Earth, Was a Victory For Countries Like Saudi Arabia and Russia
  
  
  

  Nov. 23, 2025 - Global climate negotiations ended on Saturday in Brazil with a watered-down resolution that made no direct mention of fossil fuels, the main driver of global warming.

  The final statement, roundly criticized by diplomats as insufficient, was a victory for oil producers like Saudi Arabia and Russia. It included plenty of warnings about the cost of inaction but few provisions for how the world might address dangerously rising global temperatures head-on.

• • New England Kicks Off $450M Plan
  to Supercharge Heat Pump Adoption

  The Program Aims to Use Federal Funds Awarded Under the Biden Administration to Deploy More Than 500,000 Heat Pumps In the Chilly Region Over the Next Few Years
  
  {CANARY MEDIA}
  
  

  Nov. 21, 2025 -New England winters can get wicked cold. This week, five of the region’s states launched a $450 million effort to warm more of the homes in the often-frigid region with energy-efficient, low-emission heat pumps instead by burning fossil fuels.

  “It’s a big deal,” said Katie Dykes, commissioner of Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. ?“It’s unprecedented to see five states aligning together on a transformational approach to deploying more-affordable clean-heat options.”

• • Earthquake Jolts Bangladesh,
  Killing Five and Injuring Around 100

  Tremors Felt In Neighbouring India
  
  
  

  Nov. 21, 2025' -At least five people, including a child, were killed and around 100 injured when a magnitude 5.7 earthquake struck Bangladesh on Friday, the government said, with buildings damaged in many areas including the densely populated capital Dhaka.

  Tremors were felt in eastern states in neighboring India that border Bangladesh, but there were no immediate reports of major damage there, authorities said.

• • She Studied How to Protect Children From Pollution and Heat

  “There Was No Warning, No Conversation,” Said Jane Clougherty, an Environmental Health Scientist, Who Had a Federal Grant Canceled Earlier This Year
  
  
  

  Nov. 20, 2025 -I’m a professor of environmental health at Drexel University. I study how the impacts of pollution can differ because of a person’s surroundings and individual circumstances. This will be an important influence on children’s health as the climate changes, an area that I have focused on in recent years.

  I had a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to identify the relationships between heat, pollution and children’s health in New York State. It’s an important case study because New York State includes the most and least populated areas in the country, like Manhattan and the Adirondacks.

• • The Lethal Dose of Plastic for Seabirds and Marine Animals

  Its Far Smaller Than Anyone Expected
  
  
  

  Nov. 20 -New research has found that even small amounts of plastic can be deadly to seabirds, sea turtles and marine mammals. While previous research has established that plastic can lead to mortality in many species, this new study identifies the types and amounts of plastic that pose the greatest danger, and estimates how likely an animal is to die after ingesting it. The study authors found the lethal dose to be much smaller than expected.

  The team of international researchers, including several from U.S.-based environmental advocacy group Ocean Conservancy, conducted a literature review of more than 50 studies, drawing together the necropsy results for more than 10,000 animals that included data on the cause of death and on plastic ingestion. The mortality data included 1,537 seabirds from 57 species; 1,306 sea turtles from all seven marine turtle species; and 7,569 marine mammals representing 31 species, including whales, dolphins and seals.

• • Trump Officials Unveil Plan to Drill Off California, Sparking a Fight

  Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom Declared the Plan “Dead On Arrival”
  
  
  

  Nov. 20 -The Trump administration unveiled plans Thursday to open the coast of California to offshore drilling, a major provocation against a state that has for decades fought to protect its coastal waters.

  The administration’s draft maps call for six California offshore lease sales between 2027 and 2030, saying it would help cement American energy “dominance.”

• • Ocean Acidification to Hit Puget Sound Harder

  This Sounds Pretty Bad
  
  
  

  Nov. 20, 2025 -The waters of Puget Sound are more susceptible to ocean acidification and sliding faster into dangerous territory for its marine wildlife than other places around the world, a new study shows.

  Should the trend continue, our marine wildlife and fisheries will likely suffer greatly years or decades earlier than previously anticipated, said Alex Gagnon, a chemical oceanographer with the University of Washington.