Read the full story at Inside Climate News. The Outer Banks of North Carolina attracts more than 5 million visitors annually who prize this 200-mile stretch of islands as a Southern beach paradise. But as storms pound coastlines and sea levels rise, the pristine ocean and sprawling beaches that drew so many people to this tourist hotspot could now undermine it.

Read the full story at Inside Climate News. Year after year, the same 15 million acres across Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin are planted with corn. Each August, the fibrous green leaves in those fields reach eye level. And each November, the dusty stalks are razed to stumps. “Continuous corn,” as the growing strategy is called, allows farmers to profit from a steady demand for corn from the ethanol and livestock industries.

Read the full story at Floodlight. Arizona’s lax water laws let corporate farms pump unlimited groundwater to grow alfalfa for cattle overseas, even as local families spend their savings drilling new wells.

A herd of antelope graze near a giraffe in Botswana’s Okavango Delta. Murat Ozgur Guvendik/Anadolu via Getty Images by Jessica Beaudette, Arizona State University Botswana’s fertile Okavango Delta is one of the last remaining high-biodiversity ecosystems in the world, home to cheetahs, African wild dogs, baobab trees, crocodiles, termites and owls that catch fish. Roughly the size of the state of Connecticut, the freshwater Okavango Delta opens into an enormous alluvial fan that stretches up to 5,800 square miles (15,000 square km) into the Kalahari Desert.

Read the full story at Grist. The Trump administration wasted no time in tapping individuals with ties to fossil fuel industries and right-wing think tanks funded by oil tycoons for key environmental and energy policy positions, according to a new report. Public Citizen and the Revolving Door Project, two nonprofit organizations that monitor corporate influence in government, analyzed the backgrounds of 111 nominees and appointees to executive branch positions in agencies including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of the Interior (DOI) that chart environment and energy policy.

Read the full story at Knowable Magazine. A new technique for detecting unknown and unlooked-for chemicals is revealing dozens of contaminants in alligators, sea lions and condors

Read the full story at The New Lede. Children whose mothers lived near farms and fields treated with certain pesticides during pregnancy have a higher risk of a deadly cancer that is most commonly found in infants before their first birthday, according to a new study. The new study, published in the Environmental Research journal, found that pregnant women in California who lived near areas that were treated with insecticides — flonicamid, cypermethrin or permethrin — or a now-banned fungicide called benomyl were more likely to have babies that would suffer from neuroblastoma, a cancer of the nerve cells that is seldom diagnosed after the age of five.

Read the full story in The Guardian. Local non-profits and schools are helping students explore traditional practices paired with modern science to make food sovereignty a reality

Read the full story at Canary Media. Between 2025 and 2030, the world is expected to build nearly 4,600 gigawatts of renewables — almost double the amount built over the previous five-year period.

Read the full story at Inside Climate News. From America Online to the rise of AI, Virginia has been good for an industry now transforming the economy and grid. Has the industry returned the favor?

Read the full story at Grist. Drought is set to pose a greater risk to the $4 trillion municipal bond market than floods, hurricanes, and wildfires combined.

Friday, Feb. 6, 2026Monroe Convention Center, Bloomington, IndianaVisit the conference website Connect with Hoosier climate leaders for a day of networking and knowledge, listen to speakers and panels who are leading Indiana's sustainability journey, and identify opportunities to collaborate on shared climate resilience goals. Registration is $90 for general admission and $25 for students. It includes a full day of conference activities and buffet lunch.

Read the full story at Grist. A new kind of gold rush is sweeping the West, and this time the prize isn’t minerals but megawatts. From Phoenix to Colorado’s Front Range, data centers are arriving with outsize demands for power and water. In a new report, the regional environmental advocacy group Western Resource Advocates (WRA) warns that without stronger guardrails, the financial and environmental costs could fall on everyday households. 

Read the full story from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Wetlands are an important part of the ecological system, providing a myriad of benefits for people, wildlife, and the environment. They also serve as “nature’s kidneys,” filtering out pollutants from surface water. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign finds that wetlands along the Mississippi River Basin effectively clean up nitrogen runoff from agricultural fields. The researchers also show this can lead to significant savings for local drinking water treatment facilities.

Read the full story at Inside Precision Medicine. Cigarette butts may pose a risk to the health of smokers and nonsmokers alike by acting as genetic pools of microbial antibiotic resistance, researchers report. With estimated annual cigarette consumption reaching nine trillion this year, the findings suggest that discarded butts present both a major health and environmental issue. The study, in the…

Read the full story at Inside Climate News. The EPA wants the city of 28,000 to rein in an industrial solvent, 1,4-Dioxane, from its wastewater discharges. So far, Asheboro has refused.

Read the full story from The Hill. The Trump administration issued a proposal late Thursday that aims to help AI data centers get connected to the electric grid more quickly. Energy Secretary Chris Wright sent the proposal to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) that he hopes will accelerate the connection of data centers to the grid, according to a department press release.

Read the full story from The Guardian. Renewable energy investment should come from defence budgets, say retired military leaders Former European officers say spending on low-carbon power would make nations more resilient to threats from potential aggressors Fiona Harvey Environment editorThu 23 Oct 2025 06.00 EDTShare Investment in renewable energy should be counted under defence expenditure, says a group of retired senior military personnel, because the climate crisis represents a threat to national security.

Read the full story at Inside Climate News. A new report on purpose-built wetlands in Ohio showcases their success in reducing nutrient runoff from farms, validating millions of dollars’ worth of efforts to combat toxic algal blooms. Researchers with the H2Ohio Wetland Monitoring Program developed the report, which uses data from 10 wetlands that have been restored since the H2Ohio program launched in 2019.

Read the full story from Grist. After a political standoff between President Trump and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, the state is now moving ahead with a billion-dollar project to contain invasive carp.

Read the full story at Floodlight. Across the U.S. military, climate change isn’t a distant threat. It’s a daily challenge. The fallout from a warming planet has hit the military hard, sidelining more than 10,000 troops since 2018, flooding bases and undermining everything from runways to nuclear readiness. Extreme weather is battering installations from Guam to North Carolina and fueling instability in regions overseas where American forces may be called to intervene.

Read the full story at Grist. A new study confirms that commonsense workplace protections from extreme heat — water, shade, breaks — help save workers from being injured on the job. The finding — something labor and climate advocates have long known and pushed for in public policy — comes just as the federal government shutdown may have suspended the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s lengthy rulemaking process to create the U.S.’s first-ever nationwide heat standard for workers.  Some experts now fear that the agency, which ordinarily takes about seven years on average to establish new rules, will face further delays.

Read the full story at Ars Technica. Over the past seven years, AI tools based on computer imaging have almost completely automated one of the fundamental tasks of seismology: detecting earthquakes. What used to be the task of human analysts—and later, simpler computer programs—can now be done automatically and quickly by machine-learning tools. These machine-learning tools can detect smaller earthquakes than human analysts, especially in noisy environments like cities. Earthquakes give valuable information about the composition of the Earth and what hazards might occur in the future.

A Chevron refinery in El Segundo, Calif., burns on Oct. 3, 2025. Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images by Philip Steenstra, University of Michigan; Rachel O’Brien, University of Michigan, and Stuart Batterman, University of Michigan When fire erupted at the Intercontinental Terminals Co. bulk liquid petroleum storage terminal, large plumes of dark smoke billowed into the clear skies over Deer Park, Texas.

Read the full story in The Guardian. As rising tides eat away at the Saint-Pierre and Miquelon archipelago off Canada, plans to move the historic village to higher ground have divided residents