After RWE disclosed its new gas investments as part of the deal, one climate campaigner declared that "committing to reinvest over $1 billion in fossil fuels is a disastrous mistake."

Despite climate concerns and high prices from President Donald Trump’s illegal war on Iran, his administration continued its assault on offshore wind this week, using another “taxpayer-funded bribe” to convince a company to instead invest in fossil fuels.

The German company RWE announced Thursday that it had reached a settlement with the US Department of the Interior to relinquish offshore wind leases off the coasts of New York, California, and Louisiana for $1.22 billion.

After appearing to back off earlier this year, President Donald Trump this week renewed his threats to seize Greenland. A Saturday report that a Texas oil company with ties to Trump had begun preparing to drill in the Arctic territory without permission has raised fresh concerns that his push for control of the island may already be moving beyond rhetoric.

As blackouts continue to cripple Cuba and fuel growing public discontent, China is leveraging the island’s worst energy crisis in decades to deepen its dependence on Chinese-made solar technology.

Key Points

• Cuban imports of Chinese photovoltaic panels increased over 1,800 percent in five years, with dozens of solar parks now operating across the island.
• China controls nearly 80 percent of the global solar supply chain and has positioned itself as Cuba's leading renewable energy partner while addressing its industrial overcapacity.
• Solar energy accounts for only about 9 percent of Cuba's electricity generation because the aging power grid cannot efficiently integrate new capacity and lacks battery storage systems.
• Cuba compensates for Chinese energy technology with nickel exports, creating asymmetric cooperation that gives Beijing access to strategic minerals while expanding its economic and strategic influence on the island.

Climate change, biodiversity loss and water conservation are often framed as problems in need of national policies. However, there is an often more important level of governance: the neighborhood.

Some 180 kg of explosives were used today, Adevărul reported, to move a large rock restricting the flow of water.

Acting defence minister Radu Miruță hailed the operation as a success, saying it will help with cooling of the plant and water transport on the river.

Given the continuing extreme weather conditions, the Cernavodă plant may still have to temporarily suspend its operations at some point, but any extra day of its work is worth more than the cost of the explosion, he said.

Ticks are taking over the United States. Due to climate change, changing land use, and an explosion in the deer population, ticks have been expanding their territory and infecting more people than ever.

They carry pathogens that cause everything from Lyme disease to the red meat allergy-inducing Alpha gal syndrome. In some cases, tick bites can be fatal.

Ticks usually lurk in the tall grass in wooded areas. That means going on a hike or even just hanging out in your backyard or a park can expose you to a tick bite.

Federal safety regulators have given Zoox a temporary exemption that will allow the Amazon-owned autonomous vehicle technology company to charge customers for rides in its custom-built robotaxi.

The exemption from certain federal motor vehicle safety standards, which was announced Thursday by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), was one of the last remaining regulatory hurdles Zoox needed to clear before launching a commercial robotaxi service.

Google, Microsoft, and other hyperscalers have come under scrutiny for their impact on water quality and availability.

On Monday, SpaceX amended its initial public offering to state that water conditions—including water scarcity, regulations around water, and drought—could constrain data center development.

It isn’t the only tech company trying to assess how water scarcity might impact its business. Water use is emerging as one of the most contentious data center issues. A recent Gallup poll found that seven out of 10 Americans are opposed to data center development, with water scarcity ranking as the top resource concern. Facing increasingly fierce resistance, some tech companies are scrambling to assure the public that they’re facing the issue head-on.

A cybersecurity researcher explains how hackers target small computers that control a water system’s tanks, pipes and valves.

Hackers tried to break into at least 30 municipal water systems in Minnesota on July 26-27, 2026. Since then, Michigan, New Jersey and several other states have reported similar cyberattacks.

The attackers did not try to infiltrate the computers that utility offices use. Instead, they tried to seize control of small computers in equipment like pumps and valves that deliver drinking water to millions of people.

The utilities countered the attacks by shutting down the control computers and sending personnel out into the field to operate equipment manually. Utility officials have said that water remained safe to drink.

Investors and founders at a Pacific Northwest Climate Week happy hour named the technologies drawing too much money and the ones showing real promise. Hear from them on new episode of GeekWire's Positive Charge podcast.

Greater Philadelphia earned failing air quality grades. A new study finds higher asthma rates near industry and major roads, especially where green space is scarce.

Philadelphians who live near industrial land and major roads – those who live in the Port Richmond and Bridesburg neighborhoods along I-95, or the Delaware River port-industrial corridor, for example – face worse air pollution and are more likely to have asthma than residents who live farther from those sites.

Philly neighborhoods with a higher percentage of green areas, by contrast, have lower levels of diesel particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide and other toxic air pollutants, which inflame and irritate the respiratory system. Many of them have lower asthma rates too.

We are urban and regional planning professors and a graduate research fellow with expertise in environmental planning, environmental health and climate resilience. In 2025 we studied 766 census tracts across nine counties in Pennsylvania and New Jersey that fall within the Philadelphia metropolitan area. This region has a mix of cities, older suburbs and lower-density communities.

US News: Every year after Christmas, thousands of used trees are thrown away. In New Orleans, however, many of them get a second use. Instead of ending up in landfill, the trees are collected, tied into large bundles and dropped by helicopters into coastal marshes to help slow land loss.

For decades, regular citizens and advocacy groups have filed suits that forced companies and the federal government to clean up the environment. Trump officials have moved to limit that power.

Now, in a legal filing, the Trump administration is saying citizens should not be allowed to enforce environmental laws. Rather, despite what the laws say, the U.S. Department of Justice has claimed in a case involving Elon Musk’s xAI that people should be required to leave enforcement to the executive branch – even if the executive decides to take no action.

"The numbness or avoidance among many of us who care about the impact of Earth’s warming climate, is similar to the ambivalence and static grief that can take hold after a serious medical diagnosis," writes Alexis Drutchas.

Just days before Earth Day last April, my 3-year-old son, Oliver, said the most alarming thing as we walked down the stairs. “I don’t want to leave Earth.” I stopped mid-step. Was he thinking about death? Climate change? He’s only 3! 

“What do you mean, love?” I asked.

“I don’t know, Mama, but I don’t want to leave the planet with blue and white swirls,” he said, twirling his finger in the air like wind.

“We don’t have to go anywhere. Earth is where we live,” I said.

Oliver has recently become fascinated with space. Yet his words had a clairvoyant feel, reaching into a distant future. At 3, he has no idea that scientists are already considering whether other planets might be viable for human life.

The Environmental Protection Agency under Donald Trump has scrapped an important regulation meant to limit spraying of biosolids on crops.

Consumers and agricultural workers rejoice: the Trump administration has killed a key regulation meant to keep toxic human and industrial waste sludge from our food supply, because toxic sludge is apparently not a threat to public health.

On Monday, the Guardian reported that the Environmental Protection Agency is tossing out a major body of research that formed the basis for regulations which would have effectively limited the amount of sewage byproduct we’re allowed to spray into the environment.

We often think about weather controlling wildfires: dry air, heat, wind and lightning help determine when fires start and how quickly they spread.

However, once a wildfire becomes intense enough, the relationship can flip. Instead of simply responding to the weather, the fire begins to create its own weather.

I study wildfires and air quality at the University of Texas at Arlington. Here are four key ways wildfires influence the weather around them:

Campaigners worry politicians will have moved on by time of elections in which Marine Le Pen is expected to challenge.

As dozens of forest wildfires burned across France this week amid the summer’s fourth brutal heatwave and increasing air pollution, some wondered whether voters’ first-hand experience of the climate emergency would change the political debate ahead of next year’s presidential election.

The Green leader, Marine Tondelier, who cut short a tour of France on medical advice that at seven months pregnant she should avoid breathing smoke-filled air in the south-west near a huge wildfire in Gironde, said the political class still had its head in the sand.

She said the government had ignored her plea for cross-party crisis talks to declare a national state of emergency on the climate this summer. She called for a new “climate welfare state” in France to help those whose lives were being affected as about 260,000 people were evacuated because of wildfires across the country.