"Environmental groups hailed a sweeping $3.5 trillion domestic spending plan announced by Democrats, saying it would make “transformational investments” in clean energy and jobs and put the nation on a path to cut greenhouse emissions by at least 50% by 2030. The plan also would move the country toward a carbon-free electric grid by 2035, with 100% of U.S. electricity powered by solar, wind, nuclear and other clean energy sources."

"When Brandon Jorgensen picked up the phone, he was in the middle of staging his latest house in Napa, California. “We are getting very very close to, I wouldn’t say fireproofing, but fire-resisting a house,” Jorgensen, an architect, said, speaking from the home’s driveway."

"A year after pandemic precautions all but halted work to raise the world’s most endangered cranes for release into the wild, the efforts are back in gear. Fourteen long-legged, fuzzy brown whooping crane chicks — one more than in 2019 — are following their parents or costumed surrogates in facilities from New Orleans to Calgary, Canada."

"Doctors test only a fraction of Denver children for levels of lead in their blood each year, even though federal law requires the tests for thousands of them."

"Negotiators are hoping the World Trade Organization will on Thursday not only deal a major blow to overfishing after 20 years of trying, but in doing so also dispel doubts about its own usefulness."

"Ben DuVal knelt in a barren field near the California-Oregon border and scooped up a handful of parched soil as dust devils whirled around him and birds flitted between empty irrigation pipes. DuVal’s family has farmed the land for three generations, and this summer, for the first time ever, he and hundreds of others who rely on irrigation from a depleted, federally managed lake aren’t getting any water from it at all."

"A toxic algal bloom is plaguing Tampa Bay and befouling St. Petersburg’s shores. It could stick around for a while."

"Unrelenting heat waves are boiling cities across the U.S. this summer, spiking ozone pollution levels and threatening the fighting power of air quality safeguards."