The Green New Deal proposed by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other progressives has dramatically changed the US debate on climate change. It calls for decisive and deliberate public investments to tackle climate change and other social challenges, particularly inequality. This kind of …Continue reading
Cleaning up the air we breathe might actually be making droughts worse
Climate change is clearly making some regions wetter and others drier. But it’s been difficult for scientists to detect a clear, consistent human role in increasing the frequency and severity of global droughts given natural climate variability, regional differences, and limited data. …Continue reading
Startups looking to suck CO2 from the air are suddenly luring big bucks
A small band of scientists have been trying to pluck carbon dioxide out of the air for years, despite the deep skepticism of their peers. But the space has suddenly gotten pretty popular. This week a startup based in Dublin, Ireland, acquired …Continue reading
The race to make a lab-grown steak
In 2013, the world’s first burger from a lab was cooked in butter and eaten at a glitzy press conference. The burger cost £215,000 ($330,000 at the time) to make, and despite all the media razzmatazz, the tasters were polite but not …Continue reading
The new, safer nuclear reactors that might help stop climate change
BP might not be the first source you go to for environmental news, but its annual energy review is highly regarded by climate watchers. And its 2018 message was stark: despite the angst over global warming, coal was responsible for 38% of …Continue reading
Why China’s electric-car industry is leaving Detroit, Japan, and Germany in the dust
After the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and ’70s crippled China’s economy, the country began to open its markets to the outside world. The aim was to bring in technological know-how from abroad that domestic firms could then assimilate. By the early …Continue reading
We could still prevent 1.5 ˚C of warming—but we almost certainly won’t
A new study finds the world could still avoid 1.5 ˚C of warming, achieving the aim of the landmark Paris climate accord. The bad news is we almost certainly won’t. If we immediately began phasing out fossil-fuel infrastructure at the end of …Continue reading
The day I tasted climate change
In early November, gale-force winds whipped a brush fire into an inferno that nearly consumed the town of Paradise, California, and killed at least 86 people. By the second morning, I could smell the fire from one foot outside my door in …Continue reading
A long-awaited battery that would cut electric-vehicle costs may finally be close
In 2010, a pair of MIT materials scientists helped launch 24M, promising to deliver cheaper, better batteries by stripping out inactive materials in the electrodes. Eight years later, you still can’t buy the startup’s products. But in an interview last week, chief …Continue reading
The record for high-temperature superconductivity has been smashed again
Superconductivity is the weird phenomenon of zero electrical resistance that occurs when some materials are cooled below a critical temperature. The best superconductors have to be cooled with liquid helium or nitrogen to get cold enough (often as low as -250 °C …Continue reading