The outer continental shelf is mostly a desert of sand.

Flat and shifting, and almost entirely without anything hard to hold onto.

A mussel needs a wall the way a climbing plant does, and out there no wall exists.

Then a crane arrives and drives a steel cylinder the size of a grain silo into the seabed.

It does that fifty four times.

Nobody set out to build a reef, but that is what happens next.

What the divers counted off Taiwan

The clearest picture comes from the other side of the world. Off Miaoli County on Taiwan’s west coast, 69 foundations went into a flat sandy seabed between 2016 and 2021, and fish biologists have been diving on them ever since.

The tally is not subtle.

Divers logged 11,552 individual fish across 97 species, and pole and line surveys added another 40, bringing the total to 137. Of those, 86 were reef fish, and every single one was recorded within about 165 feet of a foundation. Not one turned up in the open sand between the towers.

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.

The mayors of Charleston, South Carolina, and Boise, Idaho, make the case for investing in the improvement and innovation of local government.

Rejecting North Sea drilling licences and protecting nature are just some measures Andy Burnham must implement to ready country.

From record-smashing temperatures, wildfires, hosepipe bans and thousands of premature deaths, the climate crisis has left its mark across the summer of 2026.

Tackling the root cause – the burning of fossil fuels – and ending the crisis will take years. So will fixing the UK government’s calamitous failure to protect lives and livelihoods against the long-predicted affects of global heating.

But the climate emergency is right here, right now, and here are 10 policies that Andy Burnham’s government should consider announcing urgently.

Now that JPMorgan Chase & Co. is nearly finished turning the parking lot at its McCoy Center at Polaris into a giant solar farm, it is planning to do something similar at its other Columbus offices.

The bank, the Columbus region's largest private employer with about 20,000 workers here, will be adding solar arrays at three other of its commercial sites in the Columbus area — Vision Drive, Morse Crossing and in Westerville. Like the Polaris project, the panels are being added to carports at the sites.

"These installations in the Columbus market are the crowning jewel of our solar deployments because of the scale and the size and the impact," said Tyler Deaton, vice president in Chase's global real estate group who has a focus on sustainability.

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.