Climate

Last month, I shared my story of switching to a heat pump and of how doing the right thing for the planet turned out, at least in my case, to be a frustrating experience as a consumer. Almost immediately, I was inundated with emails from readers eager to share their …

Demand for electricity around the world is rising faster than expected, making it harder for countries to slash their emissions and keep global warming in check, the International Energy Agency said on Wednesday. Over the next decade, the world is poised to add the equivalent of Japan’s annual electricity demand …

High food prices, meet the global water crisis. The world’s food supply is under threat because so much of what we eat is concentrated in so few countries, and many of those countries are increasingly facing a water shortage. That’s the conclusion of three independent studies published this week. One …

Scientists have found plastic pollution almost everywhere they have looked. In clouds. On Mount Everest. In Arctic snow. Now, for the first time, tiny plastic particles have been detected in the breath of dolphins. The findings, published on Wednesday in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS One, point to the ubiquitousness of …

When you live a long time with trees, they become a part of you. So it pained me to take down the old sugar maple, my arboreal cathedral, one rafter at a time, her demise not from flames but an underground blaze of fungus. Small honey-colored mushrooms fruiting at her …

In the summer of 2017, Donald Trump stood in the lobby of Trump Tower and declared he would heal a “massive self-inflicted wound on our country” by eliminating red tape that he said was making construction in America an arduous, expensive process. One policy he eradicated that day was a …

By the time the murky brown water in the house reached his chest, Joe Rogers realized it was too late to leave safely. Then, in an instant, his mobile home shifted violently, creating a wave that swept up furniture and trapped his wife, Sandra, in their bedroom. Mr. Rogers pleaded …

California officials have been working for months on a plan to “Trump proof” the state’s leading edge environmental and climate policies, in the event that former President Donald J. Trump returns to White House and follows through on his promise to gut them. Whether California succeeds could affect more than …

Hurricane Milton walloped Florida with at least 20 percent more rain and 10 percent stronger winds than a similarly rare storm would have done in a world that humans hadn’t warmed by burning fossil fuels, scientists said on Friday. As a result, Milton may have caused roughly twice as much …

In 1957, my grandparents moved from Provincetown, Mass., to Stuart, Fla., bringing with them my mother, who was 11 at the time, and her three brothers. For the next half-century, my family lived the Florida dream. My grandfather helped develop Sailfish Point, an upscale housing community on a spit of …