National (U.S.)

"Herbicides are losing the war — and agriculture might never be the same again."

"During the first hurricane season of the coronavirus pandemic, emergency officials warned residents in low-lying coastal areas to pack masks in their evacuation bags. This year, they’re urging everyone to be vaccinated."

"The Energy Department on Wednesday proposed reversing a Trump-era rule that was expected to undermine its ability to regulate efficiency of both residential furnaces and commercial water heaters."

"The Caldor Fire burning in California has grown 24 times its size in two days, forcing another 10,000 residents to evacuate."

"Construction on an enormous $9.4 billion plastics plant proposed in St. James Parish must be delayed so the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers can do a more extensive and lengthy review of the facility's impacts on the environment and nearby minority communities, a top Army official said Wednesday."

"For the first time, a Native American may become the director of the National Park Service. President Joe Biden nominated Charles F. “Chuck” Sams III Wednesday and will be considered by the U.S. Senate. If confirmed, he will be the 19th permanent director of the National Park Service."

"A federal judge in Alaska on Wednesday blocked construction permits for an expansive oil drilling project on the state’s North Slope that was designed to produce more than 100,000 barrels of oil a day for the next 30 years."

"The Environmental Protection Agency will ban the use of a pesticide widely applied on food crops but linked to neurological damage in children, reversing one of the Trump administration’s most fraught public health decisions."

"Scientists have come tantalizingly close to reproducing the power of the sun — albeit only in a speck of hydrogen for a fraction of a second."

"The first thing to know about Thermal, California, is: It’s really damn hot. Already, at this early date in our planetary crisis, 139 days a year are over 95 degrees Fahrenheit in Thermal. Over the next 30 years, temperatures will rise 4 to 5 degrees more, and by the end of the century, more than half the year there will be hotter than 95 and nearly a quarter will be hotter than 112."