Environment + Energy - The Conversation - Climate change, environmental health, biodiversity, extreme weather

Tips of evergreen trees poke out of a muddy lake with mountains in the background

Why are so many historically rare storms hitting the Carolinas? Geography puts these states at risk, and climate change is loading the dice

Russ Schumacher, Colorado State University and Kathie Dello, North Carolina State University

A huge plume of black smoke goes into a clear blue sky, with houses in the foreground and firefighter walking down the street.

Toxic chemicals from Ohio train derailment lingered in buildings for months – here’s what our investigation found in East Palestine

Andrew J. Whelton, Purdue University

Health risks are rising in mountain areas flooded by Hurricane Helene and cut off from clean water, power and hospitals

Jennifer Horney, University of Delaware

A man carries belonging out of a homes that flooded near a creek. Debris is washed up all around.

Trump and Harris have clashing records on clean energy, but the clean power shift is too broad for any president to control

Daniel Cohan, Rice University

Large arrays of solar panels on desert land

In storms like Hurricane Helene, flooded industrial sites and toxic chemical releases are a silent and growing threat

James R. Elliott, Rice University; Dominic Boyer, Rice University, and Phylicia Lee Brown, Rice University

Two men walk near a giant storage tower that lies on its side near rail road tracks.

Rising electricity demand could bring Three Mile Island and other prematurely shuttered nuclear plants back to life

Todd Allen, University of Michigan

Four large cooling towers at an industrial site, two releasing steam

Big lithium plans for Imperial Valley, one of California’s poorest regions, raise a bigger question: Who should benefit?

Manuel Pastor, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and Chris Benner, University of California, Santa Cruz

A fish bone sculpture in the Salton Sea. The sun is setting over the shore.

Home insurance rates are rising fast – hurricanes and wildfires play a big role, but there’s more to it

Andrew J. Hoffman, University of Michigan

Trucks parked in front of four closely-built two-story homes, all with storm damage to roofs and windows.

Can you trust companies that say their plastic products are recyclable? US regulators may crack down on deceptive claims

Patrick Parenteau, Vermont Law & Graduate School

Coffee pods and grounds scattered on a table top

Sharks and rays leap out of the water for many reasons, including feeding, courtship and communication

A. Peter Klimley, University of California, Davis

Four large rays leap simultaneously fromt he ocean's surface

Read our latest Environment + Energy stories

Subscribe to our science newsletter

In your inbox every week

Extreme weather

. Vehicles in murky water and a washed-out bridge with shops behind.

Hurricanes don’t stop at the coast – these mountain towns know how severe inland flood damage can be, and they’re watching Helene

Craig E. Colten, Louisiana State University

Hurricane Helene power outages leave millions in the dark – history shows poorer areas often wait longest for electricity to be restored

Chuanyi Ji, Georgia Institute of Technology and Scott C. Ganz, Georgetown University

A man walks through ankle-deep water toward a police car at the end of the road. Road signs are knocked askew.

What the jet stream and climate change had to do with the hottest summer on record − remember all those heat domes?

Shuang-Ye Wu, University of Dayton

A food truck worker puts his head down while resting on the step during an NYC heat wave in June 2024.

More cities are getting hit by compounding disasters, which complicates everything from insurance to rebuilding

Tracy Kijewski-Correa, University of Notre Dame

A woman steps through what was once a wall from her kitchen to her yard after a hurricane.

What meteorologists look for as they hunt for early signs of a future hurricane forming

Xingchao Chen, Penn State

Biodiversity + environment

A mountain lion stands on a rock surrounded by dry grass

Colorado voters weigh a ban on hunting mountain lions as attitudes toward wild predators shift

Kevin Crooks, Colorado State University and Rebecca Niemiec, Colorado State University

Wild ginseng is declining, but small-scale ‘diggers’ aren’t the main threat to this native plant − and they can help save it

Justine Law, Sonoma State University

A leafy plant with a cluster of red berries growing on the forest floor

Whales are recovering from near extinction, but industrial fishing around Antarctica competes for their sole food source

Matthew Savoca, Stanford University

A whale's back rises from the water near a large fishing boat with nets deployed

Cats and dogs both like to play fetch − it’s rooted in their hunting instincts

Mikel Delgado, Purdue University and Judith Stella, Purdue University

A cat carries a toy in its mouth while walking indoors

I’ve visited the same Rocky Mountain subalpine meadow weekly for a decade of summers looking at plant-pollinator interactions – here’s what I learned

Julian Resasco, University of Colorado Boulder

A fuzzy gold and black striped insect clings to a yellow flower

Climate change

The Bruce Mansfield Power Plant operated on the Ohio River in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, until 2019.

Climate change is a pollution problem, and countries know how to deal with pollution threats – think DDT and acid rain

Alexander E. Gates, Rutgers University - Newark

Oil and gas communities are a blind spot in America’s climate and economic policies

Noah Kaufman, Columbia University

A pumpjack in Colorado with snow-covered mountains in the distance.

Climate engineering carries serious national security risks − countries facing extreme heat may try it anyway, and the world needs to be prepared

Ben Kravitz, Indiana University and Tyler Felgenhauer, Duke University

The workhorse ship of ocean drilling may have made its last voyage – here’s why scientists don’t want to see the JOIDES Resolution mothballed

Suzanne OConnell, Wesleyan University

View from atop a large ship, with masts and equipment

Thwaites Glacier won’t collapse like dominoes as feared, study finds, but that doesn’t mean the ‘Doomsday Glacier’ is stable

Mathieu Morlighem, Dartmouth College

An aerial view of Thwaites ice shelf's front shows an already tall area of floating ice.

Energy + infrastructure

An offshore oil rig with mountains in the background

Under both Trump and Biden-Harris, US oil and gas production surged to record highs, despite very different energy goals

Valerie Thomas, Georgia Institute of Technology

Utilities rely on dirty ‘peaker’ plants when power demand surges, but there are alternatives

Akshaya Jha, Carnegie Mellon University

Two large buildings side by side with five massive smokestacks

India’s new mega-dam will roil lives downstream with wild swings in water flow every day

Parag Jyoti Saikia, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

A photo of the dam in a rocky gorge with steep walls.

Los Angeles is in a 4-year sprint to deliver a car-free 2028 Olympics

Jay L. Zagorsky, Boston University

A woman in a red workout jacket stands outside a jet plane holding the Olympic flag

Offshore wind farms connected by an underwater power grid for transmission could revolutionize how the East Coast gets its electricity

Tyler Hansen, Dartmouth College; Abraham Silverman, Johns Hopkins University; Elizabeth J. Wilson, Dartmouth College, and Erin Baker, UMass Amherst

Three wind turbines on yellow bases, part of the Deepwater Wind project off Block Island, R.I.

Environmental health

Urban wildfires disrupt streams and their tiny inhabitants − losing these insects is a warning of bigger water problems

Lauren Magliozzi, University of Colorado Boulder

Plants start to regrow along burned land and trees next to a stream.

Making fuels from plastics in Newaygo, Michigan, would be controversial – here’s why

Anne McNeil, University of Michigan; Aleksandr V. Zhukhovitskiy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Yutan Getzler, Kenyon College

Square pallets of plastic recycling waste sit on a dock at a recycling facility.

Wildfire smoke linked to thousands of premature deaths every year – here’s why and how to protect yourself

Rachel Connolly, University of California, Los Angeles and Michael Jerrett, University of California, Los Angeles

A person walks a dog in a residential neighborhood of Oxnard as orange wildfire turns the sky dark overhead. The street is lined with palm trees and is otherwise empty...

Avian flu has infected dairy cows in more than a dozen states – a microbiologist explains how the virus is spreading

Jenna Guthmiller, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus

Standing in a grassy field, two dairy cows stare at the camera.

Regulation + lawsuits

US has its first national strategy to reduce plastic pollution − here are 3 strong points and a key issue to watch

Sarah J. Morath, Wake Forest University

Plastic bottles and other waste lines a shallow channel

What’s next after Supreme Court curbs regulatory power: More focus on laws’ wording, less on their goals

Robin Kundis Craig, University of Kansas

Gloved hands sort through a tray of Atlantic herring

New EPA regulations target air, water, land and climate pollution from power plants, especially those that burn coal

Patrick Parenteau, Vermont Law & Graduate School

heaps of coal in front of a power plant with three tall smokestacks

Large retailers don’t have smokestacks, but they generate a lot of pollution − and states are starting to regulate it

Johnathan Williams, University of Northern Iowa