@The Convergence of ICT, the Environment, Climate Change, EV and HEV Transportation & Distributed Renewable Energy

When we picture the open Pacific, we imagine endless blue water and not much else. Marine researchers, however, are now seeing something very different: places like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch where plastic waste has built a kind of artificial shoreline far from any land.

In the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, the huge rotating current system between California and Hawaii, floating objects tend to get trapped instead of drifting away.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch now holds tens of thousands of tons of plastic pieces, along with dozens of species that call it "home." 

Drivers who are told about the safety risks posed by SUVs to cyclists and pedestrians are very unlikely to be deterred from buying one, a new study has found.

The findings indicate that if governments want to reduce the number of large, dangerous vehicles on the roads, it is likely to require financial penalties, according to the psychologists at Swansea University who led the research.

A series of studies have shown that sport utility vehicles (SUVs) and similarly oversized domestic vehicles such as pickup trucks are more dangerous than standard cars for pedestrians and cyclists. Much of the risk comes from their higher and blunter front ends.

The Trump administration reverses plan to dismantle crucial deep-sea monitoring system, preserving vital storm forecasting data and coastal health.

In an announcement posted on its website, the US National Science Foundation (NSF) said it “will not proceed with further removal or descoping of equipment” from the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), less than a month after it revealed plans to remove more than 900 instruments deployed along US coastlines.

The Major Oak, famously linked to the legend of Robin Hood, has died.

On June 18, 2026 the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, which manages the Sherwood Forest site, officially confirmed that the ancient Quercus robur has reached the end of its extraordinary life.

The decision followed a heartbreaking spring in which the tree failed to produce a single leaf, marking the definitive conclusion of a decline that had been closely monitored for years.

For an estimated 1,000 to 1,200 years, the Major Oak was a living bridge between the past and the present.

The company has identified at least 13 instances where its robotaxis drove into highway sections closed for construction.

Waymo has recalled its fleet of nearly 4,000 robotaxis to restrict them from driving on highways while it figures out how to make the vehicles behave around construction zones.

The recall comes after Waymo identified at least 13 instances of its robotaxis driving into highway sections that were closed for construction. Six of these happened in Phoenix, Arizona in April, and seven occurred in San Francisco, California in May.

We know what we need to do: stop climate change as quickly as possible. Now, with the Drawdown Explorer, we know how to do it.

From Science to Solutions  

The climate crisis is urgent, so it’s critical that the solutions are fast-acting and effective.

Drawdown Explorer identifies and characterizes the most effective climate solutions that can address climate change on a meaningful scale today. It also provides valuable insights into proposed solutions that are not viable, not impactful enough, or not yet ready for prime time.

See A Primer on Science-Based Climate Solutions to learn more about the science behind our next-generation guide to meaningful climate action.

The  Daily Yonder published a commentary  comparing the potential closures of data centers with nuclear power plants. The author has worked with host communities in planning for and managing the impacts of nuclear plant closures as well as with developers who site large-scale energy infrastructure projects grounded in durable community partnerships. So he has a

a unique perspective. I appreciate the very long term look at how such large projects can impact a community…

Across the United States, communities are evaluating whether to host a new generation of infrastructure: hyperscale data centers. These projects are often framed as low-impact, high-value opportunities: quiet neighbors that promise reliable tax revenue, infrastructure upgrades, and a foothold in the digital future. They are being sold as clean, quiet, and high-tech.

But a critical blind spot remains in how potential host communities evaluate these facilities: what happens at the end of their lives?

U.S. District Court Judge Angel Kelley in Boston said the removals violated federal laws related to national parks and the administration was sought "to rewrite the nation's history with a white-out pen." The judge ordered the government to restore signs within 21 days, just in time for the country's 250th anniversary on July 4.

News about renewable energy in the United States had been rather discouraging for its supporters in recent months, but a recent report on solar energy production shows how it’s continuing to grow.

President Donald Trump’s administration has been working against renewables such as wind and solar, which do not emit greenhouse gases, while promoting the development of coal, oil, and natural gas. Burning these fossil fuels produces greenhouse gases, the primary causes of climate change.

Trump's latest boost to fossil fuels came earlier this month, when he announced that his government would invest $700 million to support the country's coal plants.

Climate scientists warn of unprecedented Antarctic heatwave, with temperatures 20C above normal. Loss of sea ice threatens marine life and penguins.

EPA and Justice Department officials were looking into potential criminal violations by the vast coal empire owned by Sen. Jim Justice. Then the Office of the Deputy Attorney General told them “pencils down.”

The investigation examined potential criminal violations of the Clean Water Act by the multistate mining operations largely run by Justice’s son, Jay, according to current and former officials familiar with the matter.

The criminal probe was a significant escalation in the yearslong effort to police serial pollution offenses by Virginia-based Southern Coal and dozens of affiliated mining operations controlled by the family. In the past decade, Southern Coal and other Justice corporations have racked up tens of thousands of alleged violations of the Clean Water Act and have been sued repeatedly by state and federal prosecutors over their failure to properly follow environmental laws at their mining sites.

The investigation shuttered by the Trump administration was a joint effort by prosecutors and investigators with the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Justice’s Environmental Crimes Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Western District of Virginia to probe whether the incessant violations of antipollution laws had risen to the level of criminal behavior, people familiar with the matter said.

A WIRED timeline shows how dozens of governments, companies, and other organizations across Europe are moving, or planning to shift, away from US Big Tech.

Europe is done with American Big Tech. Well, sort of. Since the start of President Donald Trump’s chaotic second administration last year, concerned governments and companies across the continent have accelerated plans to end their near-total reliance on technology from US firms.

Alongside political declarations, home-grown European tech development, and millions in additional funding, a WIRED analysis has documented dozens of public instances of companies, governments, NGOs, and education establishments stepping away from US technology companies in favor of open source or local alternatives. It is likely the tip of the iceberg.

Between 2010 and 2020, more than two-thirds of U.S. rural communities experienced sustained population loss, driven by outmigration, declining birth rates, and corporate land and resource grabs that prioritize profit over community needs. This decline fuels a vicious cycle: as young people leave, rural areas lose workforce, businesses, services, and tax revenue, further eroding schools, infrastructure, and public programs. Without strong opportunities or reliable services, disinvestment deepens, and communities struggle to sustain themselves.

These facts are true, but too often this is solely how outsiders see rural communities: in terms of what they lack.

Rural communities are also complex and diverse; rich in natural resources and natural beauty; reliant on each other and always ready to lend a hand; connected to the land and water; and deeply proud of where we’re from.  

For more example policies rooted in rural livability check out the SiX Blueprint for Rural Policy. 

The European Commission plans to rewrite the EU’s flagship water protection law to speed up the development of critical minerals mines, despite many being located in drying and water-stressed regions, analysis has found.

Mining is a water-intensive industry, requiring large volumes of water for ore processing, dust suppression, waste management and mine dewatering. While modern projects recycle water, they still require significant amounts, and in water-stressed regions those demands can add to pressure on already stretched rivers, aquifers and water supplies.

This background guide on energy demands and AI was distributed to participants ahead of the FCAI dialogue on Nov. 18, 2025.

• The dialogue examined how rapid AI-driven growth in data centers is impacting increasing electricity and water consumption worldwide.
• Participants discussed how international governance efforts may help build out measurement, standards, and reporting tools, and explored energy policy and investment strategies for managing energy constraints in the context of hyperscaler expansion and sustainability goals.

Energy consumption due to computing for artificial intelligence (AI) has become a high-profile issue with the rapid advancement of AI models and tools. In our 2022 paper discussing possibilities for global collaboration on large-scale research and development projects that can help with significant global challenges, including climate change, we noted the potential adverse impact of AI’s energy consumption. At that time, there were outlying predictions that AI could consume as much as 20% of the world’s energy by 2025. But at the time, the International Energy Agency (IEA) reported that, despite large increases in the number of data centers, energy demand had remained level because of efficiency improvements in equipment and cloud services.

That picture has since changed dramatically. Uncertainties remain as to the extent of increases in consumption due to opacities in corporate disclosures and inconsistencies in methodologies. Nevertheless, it has become clear on several fronts that advanced AI models have become a new, fast-growing source of global energy consumption.

In this week’s newsletter: The melting of the Arctic’s summer sea ice is the most visible upshot of the climate crisis. Refreezing it might be a long shot – but do drastic times call for drastic measures?

Plaintiffs in the class -action complaint allege Rivian falsely promised for years it would bring hands-free driving to its first-generation R1 vehicles.

A new study reveals how melting icebergs are depositing rocks on the Arctic seafloor, leading to new habitats for corals and sponges. Explore the intricate effects of climate change on marine ecosystems and the potential implications for marine biodiversity.

The Sesuit Creek salt marsh restoration project in Dennis has spanned nearly two decades and is now in a race against time, as sea-level rise driven by climate change threatens to wipe it out. Workers and volunteers are planting 90,000 plugs of salt marsh grass to jump start the wetland’s recovery.

Two decades ago, a massive oil spill off the coast of Massachusetts killed hundreds of loons that spent their summers in Vermont. Now, settlement money is helping New England scientists better track the birds.

Every summer, hundreds of volunteers help count Vermont’s loons. They keep tabs on nests, chicks and mating pairs at their favorite lakes, and they send their reports in letters and voicemails and emails to one person: Eric Hanson.

Since 1988, he’s been the lead biologist for the Vermont Loon Conservation Project.

It takes Hanson hours and hours to sort that information and put it into spreadsheets. That’s changing this summer, thanks to a new app the program is piloting called LoonWeb.

"There’s a thing out there called 'climate hushing' -- people arguing that Democrats should stop talking about climate change if they want to win elections," writes Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse. "Whatever their motives, the climate hushers are wrong about pretty much everything."

Much ink has been spilled over the DNC’s autopsy of what went wrong in 2024.

I can tell you what I’ve observed: voters, dogged by cost pressures and fuming about a perpetually out-of-reach American Dream and an increasingly billionaire-centric system, needed a fighter at the top of the ticket.

The first question voters asked themselves in November 2024 was, “Is this person a fighter?”  If the answer was yes, the second question was, “Will this person fight for me?”

Democrats never made it through the first gate.