Climate

This week, a high-profile World Bank report warned that the global economy is expected to slow to a pace we haven’t seen in 30 years. The reasons are varied, as my colleague Alan Rappeport reported. The pandemic, the war in Ukraine and longer-term issues like weaker cross-border trade. But economists are worried that one factor … Read more

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Friday plans to grant California the legal authority to require that half of all garbage trucks, tractor-trailers, cement mixers and other heavy vehicles sold in the state must be all-electric by 2035, an aggressive plan designed to clean up the worst polluters on the road. According to people familiar … Read more

A tiny Pacific island nation has pulled off the kind diplomatic win that can elude global superpowers. On Wednesday, Vanuatu, population 300,000, rallied a majority of countries to ask the world’s highest court to weigh in on a high-stakes question: Can countries be sued under international law for failing to slow down climate change? The … Read more

There’s a lot to like about geothermal energy. It’s clean, it’s renewable and it generates electricity 24/7. It taps heat from Earth’s interior that, in theory, will last billions of years. I recently traveled to Japan, a country that sits atop the third-largest geothermal resources of any country by some measures, with Chang W. Lee, … Read more

The Environmental Protection Agency is considering new standards for the maximum amount of fine particulate matter, tiny specks about one-thirtieth the diameter of a human hair that can penetrate the lungs, in outdoor air. A recent study examined how the benefits of stricter limits would be distributed across American society. What’s new in this research … Read more

What can I do, personally, about the climate crisis? You often ask us a version of this question. That was especially true this week, after the latest international scientific report on global warming. Some of the most obvious answers can seem frustrating. Not everyone can install solar panels on their roof or give up driving, … Read more