Corporations and countries around the world are promising to eliminate their contributions to climate change. But many of their targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions are prefaced by a slippery phrase: “net-zero.” More than 130 countries have set or are considering net-zero emissions goals, and many are stepping up as they prepare for next week’s … Continue reading "Are “net-zero” climate targets just hot air?"

Almost every country in the world signed the 2015 Paris climate agreement, a monumental accord that aimed to limit global warming. But it was forged on a contradiction: Every signatory agreed that everyone must do something to address the urgent threat of climate change, but no one at the time pledged to do enough. In … Continue reading "The fate of the planet will be negotiated in Glasgow, Scotland"

As the White House revealed Thursday, President Joe Biden has stripped a lot from his Build Back Better framework to placate moderate Democrats. Free community college is out, as is Medicare coverage of dental and vision services, among several other priorities. But there is one surprising area that’s so far survived the congressional gauntlet as … Continue reading "Biden’s $27 billion bet on forests"

More than 28 million children across the US are now eligible to receive Covid-19 vaccinations, a step that could relieve anxiety for families, bring more kids back to schools, and slow the spread of the disease. On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention endorsed the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for kids between the ages of … Continue reading "Covid-19 vaccines for young kids are a big step toward a new normal"

Every year, thousands of whales strand — meaning that they wind up trapped on beaches or in shallow waters — and it’s really hard to figure out why. It’s not for lack of trying. Teams of forensic researchers investigate stranded whales, studying organs, analyzing body parts with CT scanners, digging through stomach contents, and checking … Continue reading "The curious case of the ancient whale bones"

When SpaceX launches its first all-civilian crew into space later this fall and takes a multi-day trip circling the Earth, humanity can follow along online thanks to an exclusive documentary deal Netflix sealed with Elon Musk’s private space company. The first two installments of the five-episode miniseries, Countdown: Inspiration4 Mission to Space, will debut on … Continue reading "Streaming space tourism is the new reality TV"

In 2017, an evolutionary biologist named R. Alexander Pyron ignited controversy with a Washington Post commentary titled “We don’t need to save endangered species. Extinction is part of evolution.” He wrote: “Conserving a species we have helped to kill off, but on which we are not directly dependent, serves to discharge our own guilt, but … Continue reading "The case against the concept of biodiversity"

Michael Miranda had been fully vaccinated for over four months when he tested positive for the coronavirus. “I stared at my phone for a few moments, wondering if this was a death sentence,” said Miranda, who works as a probation officer in Hawaii. After flying home from a trip to the West Coast, Miranda had … Continue reading "What it feels like to get Covid-19 after being vaccinated"

There’s a cliché that has popped up for years in discussions of climate and weather disasters: You can’t blame any individual event on climate change. Climate is all about trends and statistics, the reasoning goes, so you can’t necessarily draw meaningful conclusions from a single data point, be it a heat wave, a hurricane, or … Continue reading "Climate change worsens extreme weather. A revolution in attribution science proved it."

There’s a growing consensus among health experts: Covid-19 may never go away. We’ll likely always have some coronavirus out there, infecting people and, hopefully only in rare cases, getting them seriously ill. The realistic goal is to defang the virus — make it less deadly — not eliminate it entirely. This is not a surrender … Continue reading "We have to accept some risk of Covid-19"