"A federal judge ordered an immediate halt on Thursday to plans to dredge a shipping channel on the Georgia coast, citing a threat to sea turtles nesting on nearby beaches."

"Texas' electricity leaders were deeply focused on natural gas shortages days before blackouts crippled the state in February and plunged the state's power industry into chaos, according to documents obtained by E&E News."

"President Joe Biden on Thursday directed federal agencies to assess and mitigate the increasing and serious risks that climate change poses to individuals, businesses, the federal government and the U.S. financial system, the White House said."

"The Biden administration is taking the first step necessary to instate an energy efficiency standard for light bulbs, a move that’s expected to undermine incandescent bulbs in favor of LEDs."

"Negotiations between the White House and Senate Republicans over President Joe Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan are hitting a crucial stage ahead of talks Friday after the latest GOP offer left some dismay in the administration that there wasn’t more movement off the Republicans’ initial $568 billion proposal."

"Just months after the conclusion of the busiest Atlantic hurricane season on record, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has released its 2021 outlook, calling for another active season. The agency is the latest of several forecasting groups watching the upcoming hurricane season’s potential to overperform for the sixth year in a row."

"Storms, floods, wildfires — and to a lesser degree, conflict — uprooted 40.5 million people around the world in 2020. It was the largest number in more than a decade, according to figures published Thursday by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, a nonprofit group based in Geneva that tracks displacement data annually."

"The Arctic is now warming three times as fast as the global average, and faces an ongoing barrage of dangerous climate and environmental pollutants, Arctic Council experts warned at the start of their meetings in Reykjavik, Iceland this week. Black carbon, or soot, remains high on the list of concerns because of its negative effect on human health and because it accelerates the Arctic meltdown by darkening snow."

"In the boreal forests of the planet’s far north, where the climate is warming faster than almost anywhere else in the world, some wildfires are surviving winter snows and sparking back up again in spring."

"The financial burdens caused by invasive pests and plants in Africa may total more than $3.5 trillion per year, according to a study published Thursday."