THE PARROT AND THE IGLOO: Climate and the Science of Denial, by David Lipsky In the preface to “The Parrot and the Igloo,” the journalist David Lipsky’s new book on global warming, he admits he thought about opening it with a threatening line: “This…

Denmark on Monday (Sept. 2) became the first country to completely ban PFAS from food packaging. The class of chemicals, also referred to as “perflourinated” or “flourinated” compounds, commonly coats microwave popcorn bags, baking paper, and take-out containers.

Over the past month, US law enforcement has uncovered some 25,000 marijuana plants growing illegally within California’s national forests, according to federal court documents reviewed by Quartz. In at least one case, the illicit growers sprayed the plants with one of the most dangerous pesticides in the world.

In 2018, on New Year’s Day, the world of trash changed forever.

Judith Enck has been working behind the scenes on plastic for decades. In 2009, US president Barack Obama appointed Enck the administrator of EPA’s Region 2, which covers New Jersey, New York, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and eight Indian Nations. She served in that position until president Donald Trump took office in 2017. Before that, Enck was the deputy secretary of the environment for New York’s governor, and before that, an advisor to the New York State attorney general. While she wa

For decades, the core mission of the National Park Service was absolute conservation. Now, ecologists are being forced to decide what to safeguard and what to let slip away. We’re also covering the sources of plastic pollution and some very weird…

For more than a century, the core mission of the National Park Service has been preserving the natural heritage of the United States. But now, as the planet warms, transforming ecosystems, the agency is conceding that its traditional goal of absolute…

It happened faster than seemed right. One day, the tiny gray pinheads of mushrooms were just beginning to emerge from a two-inch cut in a bag of sawdust; the next, they were huge, scalloped hand-like lobes. They looked practically in motion, like…

The Valentine ecological study area in Mammoth Lakes, Calif., is situated in the caldera of an ancient volcano 8,000 feet above sea level. There’s no fence to keep tourists out of the 156-acre reserve owned by University of California at Santa…

As if we all needed another health concern, Lyme disease season has arrived. A walk in the woods might be an appealing way to relieve stress from the coronavirus lockdown, but it comes with an underappreciated risk: Ticks that carry Lyme and other…

Welcome to the Climate Fwd: newsletter. New this month, for the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, The New York Times is bringing you The Greenhouse, a digital event series on climate change. Join us on our first live video call this Friday at 11:30 a.m.…

If you are one of the millions of Americans breathing polluted air, you may be at a greater risk of catching the coronavirus and of having a more severe infection. The reasons are twofold. First, air pollution can cause or aggravate respiratory…

AP Photo/Mukhtar Khan This is the year we found microplastic in the snow. Although microplastics have been popping up everywhere from the waters of Antarctica to our table salt, the idea that it could blow in the wind or fall as precipitation back…

It's hard to understand the full lifecycle of a material we touch and use every day. This helps.

The Story of Plastic It’s hard to choose which scene in The Story of Plastic most sent a chill down my spine, so startling is the hour and a half-long documentary. But if forced, I’d say it’s the drone footage from Indonesia. Piles of plastic blanket…

Carbon credits often get funneled to specific tree-planting projects. But it’s very hard to make sure those new trees don't disappear.

AP Photo This week in Madrid, delegates from around the world are meeting to nail down the finer points of how to achieve their Paris Agreement commitments. The gloomy backdrop to the UN’s COP25 climate change conference is the fact, repeated in…

REUTERS/Susana Vera Over the past few years, reusable plastic shopping bags began showing up in grocery stores in many parts of the world. They are sturdier than the flimsy plastic bags that have become a symbol of the global movement against…

One of the main matters of debate will be setting rules for carbon markets, one of the few internationally coordinated efforts to contain climate change.

Wahyu Putro A/Antara Foto/Reuters Delegates from around the world will gather Monday in Madrid for the start of a week of climate change summitry. This follows a major UN report showing that the goal of holding climate change at 1.5°C above…