Cicadas climb up a tree at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., during the Brood X emergence in 2021. Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images In the wake of North America’s recent solar eclipse, another historic natural event is on the horizon. From late April through June 2024, the largest brood of 13-year cicadas, known as Brood XIX, will co-emerge with a midwestern brood of 17-year cicadas, Brood XIII. This event will affect 17 states, from Maryland west to Iowa and south into Arkansas, Alabama and northern Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia and Maryland. A co-emergence like this of tw ..read more

Cloudy Designs/Shutterstock Right now, there’s a global race underway. The goal: bring back manufacturing and energy jobs as the energy transition speeds up. In 2022, America launched its mammoth Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act. Japan followed suit the same year, while the EU launched its own effort in 2023, as did Canada. China, of course, moved first, and dominates the market for most clean energy products, from solar panels to wind turbines and batteries. Now it’s Australia’s turn. Last week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced plans to introduce a Future Made in ..read more

Africa is home to more than 20% of the world’s bat population. There are over 200 species to be found on the continent. South Africa is particularly diverse, with 72 bat species. I am a zoologist who has studied bats for many years. Recently, while doing some reading about South Africa’s fossils, I started wondering about bat fossils. Given the continent’s incredible bat biodiversity, I was sure the country’s fossil record would be teeming with bat bones. I was wrong. While there appear to be many bat fossils from the Pleistocene epoch (about 2.58 million to 11,700 years ago) onwards, South Af ..read more

Tundra swans migrating from southern China to the high Arctic. Yifei Jia, Author provided Every spring, hundreds of thousands of birds leave their winter habitat on Poyang, the largest freshwater lake in China, and fly north over the most densely populated region on Earth to reach their breeding grounds in Siberia. As with any long-distance journey you might take, these birds need to make stops where they can find a good meal and a chance to refuel. Migratory birds must make use of food that is only available seasonally. Grass-eating birds like geese follow fresh, green shoots that appear as t ..read more

We’ve long known Australia’s main environmental protection laws aren’t doing their job, and we know Australians want better laws. Labor was elected promising to fix them. But yesterday, the government walked back its commitments, deferring the necessary reforms to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act indefinitely in the face of pressure from the state Labor government in Western Australia and the mining and resources industries. Federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek was on the front foot yesterday, promising the new national agency Environment Protection Australi ..read more

Bleached coral at the Keppel Islands in the southern Great Barrier Reef in early March 2024. © AIMSEoghan Aston The fourth global coral bleaching event, announced this week, is an urgent wake-up call to the world. While the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s announcement is not unexpected, it’s the second global mass bleaching in the past decade. It heralds a new reality in which we can expect more frequent and severe bleaching events as ocean temperature records . Cycles of decline and recovery are normal for coral reefs, but the windows for recovery are now shorter. S ..read more

Those advocating for a green transition have, in recent years, had to contend with not just economic or political resistance, but ideological push back as well — specifically, from those adhering to the “ideology of fossil fuels.” The ideology of fossil fuels is characterized by an inability to imagine life, or progress, without petroleum products. In politics, this ideology influences the positions of left and right alike. It even encourages those on the centre-left to support oil and gas while also endorsing green energy. In Alberta, we saw this when former Premier Rachel Notley enthusiastic ..read more

A cheetah in the Okavango, Botswana. The species is rapidly heading for extinction. Arturo de Frias Marques, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA Set aside the apple and the snake. Set aside the unforgiving God. The loss of Eden is a story about the consequences of monumental folly and needless greed. Having soiled paradise, we live now in a harsher, bleaker world. In The End of Eden: Wild Nature in the Age of Climate Breakdown, the South African author and naturalist Adam Welz shows we are repeating those errors, sowing and reaping our despoilation. His book is a thoughtful, perceptive, empathetic ..read more

Every few weeks global fast fashion brands mass produce their latest clothing, pumping out garments to be sold around the world. There is growing criticism that it’s socially irresponsible to produce such large volumes of clothes so often. It leads to surplus and waste that takes a toll on the environment. And by requiring new styles so often it also stifles designers’ creativity in an industry that thrives on it. Read more: Ultra-fast fashion is a disturbing trend undermining efforts to make the whole industry more sustainable Sustainable fashion means clothes being produced and consumed in w ..read more

Far more methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is being released from landfills and oil and gas operations around the world than governments realized, recent airborne and satellite surveys show. That’s a problem for the climate as well as human health. It’s also why the U.S. government has been tightening regulations on methane leaks and wasteful venting, most recently from oil and gas wells on public lands. The good news is that many of those leaks can be fixed – if they’re spotted quickly. Riley Duren, a research scientist at the University of Arizona and former NASA engineer and scientist, lead ..read more