Natural Resources

"In a leafy neighborhood in Framingham, Massachusetts, cars traverse a freshly capped trench conveying a newly implanted pipe below the roadbed. From the jet-black strip of tar at the surface, one could imagine that the local gas company just replaced another of New England’s leaky gas mains. In fact, the infrastructure buried this year in Framingham marks a clean break from fossil-fueled business-as-usual. Rather than delivering combustible methane gas, Framingham's newest piping carries tepid water that’s the lifeblood of a geothermal energy system—technology that could help put gas pipes out of business across the United States."

"Corporations have found ways to be heard during negotiations on reversing the drastic global decline in plant and animal life."

"Toxic pesticides dumped off Southern California’s coast decades ago are staying put — deep in adjacent ocean sediments and in the fish that reside in these habitats, a new study has found."

"Wind-strewn dust from California’s lithium-rich, shrinking Salton Sea may be triggering respiratory issues in children who live nearby, a new study has found."

"A new groundbreaking survey highlights the human toll from pollution and other quality of life impacts connected to those living near the forest biomass industry’s wood pellet mills in the U.S Southeast. Door-to-door interviews were conducted by a coalition of NGOs, with 312 households surveyed in five mostly poor, rural and minority communities located near pellet mills"

"More than a third of the world’s tree species are threatened with extinction, according to the first comprehensive assessment of trees by the world’s leading scientific authority on the status of species."

"Damage to oceans is releasing vast amounts of CO2, despite efforts to market fish as a sustainable food."

"New research provides evidence that chemicals used in farming may be more harmful to insects than previously thought, contributing to worldwide declines in important species."

"Enormous swathes of pristine forest are being cut down across Indonesia to supply the rapidly rising international demand for biomass material seen as critical to many countries’ transitions to cleaner forms of energy."

"New York, New Jersey and Delaware were accused in federal lawsuits Thursday of improperly allowing Atlantic sturgeon to be killed by commercial fishing operations even as the prehistoric fish is on the brink of disappearing."