China makes audacious promise of aiming for carbon neutrality by 2060

Sep 25, 2020
How will the world's most populous country and its worst polluter get there?
Employees work on a floating solar power plant in Huainan, a former coal-mining region, in China's eastern Anhui province in 2017.
AFP via Getty Images

Eliminating the concept of waste from the economy

Aug 19, 2020
For architect William McDonough, an economy of the future is a "circular economy."
"If we're destroying the Earth, we have to ask ourselves, is this is our intention? And if it's not, perhaps we need a new design," architect William McDonough says.
David McNew/Getty Images

Cities are piloting e-bike programs in a bid to reduce delivery truck traffic

Nov 21, 2019
Montreal and Oslo are aiming to alleviate truck traffic and pollution.
A driver cycles on a tricycle delivery vehicle to deliver packages for UPS in the rain in 2018 in Berlin, Germany.
Sean Gallup/Getty Images

The two-decade legal battle with DuPont over a toxic chemical

Oct 15, 2019
In 2017, DuPont settled more than 3,500 personal injury lawsuits for roughly $670 million. The story is being turned into a movie.
Bridges spanning across the Ohio River are seen between West Virginia and Ohio, seen from Parkersburg, West Virginia, where the chemical PFOA leeched into the water supply.
Ivan Couronne/AFP/Getty Images

Cities pledge to lower climate change emissions

Oct 10, 2019
And they’ll look to do it without major budget impacts, because there’s no dedicated “city climate change fund.”
Los Angeles Mayor and Chair of C-40 Eric Garcetti is trying to strike a "Global Green New Deal" to lower emissions. Above, a layer of pollution hovering over L.A. in late 2017.
Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images

For public good, not for profit.

EPA poised to roll back what waterways are protected

Dec 11, 2018
The Trump administration is set to release a plan that would redefine which bodies of water are protected by the 1972 Clean Water Act.
The Trump administration is set to release a plan that would redefine which bodies of water are protected by the 1972 Clean Water Act. 
BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images

Would moving government offices out of Mexico City solve its overcrowding problem?

Nov 30, 2018
The country’s incoming president has a plan to reduce congestion by moving government offices out of the capital.
Mexico's incoming President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has promised to move federal offices out of the capital, and longer commutes are on the horizon.
Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/Getty Images

Study links air pollution to early death

Nov 19, 2018
A new report ranks air pollution as the greatest threat to human life, above war and disease.
A Chinese man wears a mask as he waits to cross the road near the CCTV building during heavy smog on November 29, 2014 in Beijing, China. 
Kevin Frayer/Getty Images