Yale Environment 360 is an online magazine offering opinion, analysis, reporting, and debate on global environmental issues.
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China is leading the world on renewable energy, last year installing more wind and solar capacity than every other country put together. But its buildout has unfolded at such a ferocious pace that China is now generating much more electricity than its power grid can handle, meaning that huge amounts of clean power are going unused. Read more on E360 →
A little more than one year ago, Australia rolled out a program to heavily subsidize home batteries, part of a larger effort to make use of the huge volumes of solar energy that were going to waste. On Friday, officials announced that more than 500,000 batteries had been installed under the plan, helping to slash wholesale power prices roughly in half. Read more on E360 →
In “Here There Was Cerrado” — the Second-Place Winner of the 2026 Yale Environment 360 Film Contest — Natascha Otoya shows how industrial farms are plowing up the Brazilian savanna, changing the flow of water, and skewing human memory of the landscape. Read more on E360 →
An ongoing drought in Europe has sapped French rivers. Officials say that 43 percent of small waterways in France have been partially or completely dried up. Read more on E360 →
As Brazil cracks down on the illegal clearing of forests, farmers and ranchers are moving into Bolivia, helping to fuel a wave of deforestation in a country where land is cheap and enforcement lax. Read more on E360 →
Oceans globally recorded their hottest July ever last month, according to a new analysis. The severe ocean heat was evident around Europe, which is coping with a scorching summer. Read more on E360 →
Mountain lions in Washington state may be cutting down on traffic accidents by scaring deer away from roads, new research finds. Read more on E360 →
For 50 years, the Endangered Species Act has defined "harm" as not just injury to individuals but to the habitat on which they depend. By narrowing that definition, the Trump administration is leaving hundreds of species at risk of extinction. Read more on E360 →
In "Land Less" — the Third-Place Winner of the 2026 Yale Environment 360 Film Contest — filmmaker Alexi Liotti follows the activists fighting a bill that would transfer thousands of acres of Alaskan rainforest to five Native corporations, opening the land to logging. Read more on E360 →
In March, the world passed a major energy milestone, adding its third terawatt of solar power. Increasingly, poorer countries are leading the shift to solar, analysts say. Read more on E360 →
El Niño is expected to intensify in the weeks ahead, fueling more severe heat across the globe, according to the U.N. World Meteorological Organization. The forecast comes as blistering heat shatters temperature records from Europe to Asia. Read more on E360 →
A landmark study of the towering ash trees that grow in the mountains of Victoria, Australia, which was launched in the 1980s, boosted arguments for clearcutting the iconic trees. But when scientists returned to the site years later, they came to a much different conclusion. Read more on E360 →
Since the colonial era, India has regarded its native scrublands and savannas as little more than degraded forest. Now, amid a growing recognition of rangelands globally, officials are working to map the nation's ailing grasslands, with a view to restoring these vital ecosystems. Read more on E360 →
In May, a group of fishers on the Indonesian island of Biak were dismantling an unexploded shell left over from World War II when the device went off, reportedly killing seven people and injuring 19 others. Officials have concluded that the fishers were harvesting materials from the shell for use in blast fishing. Read more on E360 →
In a first, Germany drew more power from wind and solar than from fossil fuels last year. Read more on E360 →
In a summer of record heat waves, France and Spain are now facing wildfires that have forced the evacuations of more than 300,000 people. Scientists say that a sharp swing from wet to dry weather, a signature of climate change, helped fuel the blazes. Read more on E360 →
The use of small, controlled burns to clear out flammable underbrush has saved thousands of giant sequoias from devastating wildfires, new research finds. Read more on E360 →
Warming has brought extreme rain to the parched Sahel, which is seeing aquifers refill as monsoons grow stronger. But heavier downpours alone cannot explain the groundwater revival, say hydrologists, who believe efforts to harvest rainfall may also be paying dividends. Read more on E360 →
Last year, the acreage burned in the Brazilian Amazon reached its lowest level in at least four decades. Read more on E360 →
Sixty years after surveyors first uncovered evidence of a sprawling coral reef off the West African nation of Benin, scientists have at last found the reef. Read more on E360 →
As global warming fuels more extreme rainfall in Appalachia, new research finds a link between flooding and opioid deaths. Read more on E360 →
The Aral Sea sits between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and was once the fourth-largest inland body of water on Earth. For the past 60 years, though, humans have bled it nearly dry irrigating cotton crops, leaving behind a salty plain the size of Ireland. Its loss has long been seen as an ecological and humanitarian problem, but new research shows that it has also been a significant driver of climate…
A Japanese steel giant has pledged billions in new investment in Pennsylvania’s Monongahela River Valley, raising hopes that it would clean up pollution from its steel mills in the region. But documents show that its plans to ramp up production will worsen local air quality. Read more on E360 →
Scientists have identified a new species of monkey in the forests of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is just the fifth new species of African monkey discovered in the last 75 years. Read more on E360 →
As China erects the largest hydropower installation on Earth atop an active fault line in the Himalayas, Chinese scientists are calling on engineers to guard against risks from earthquakes. Read more on E360 →
Western Europe recorded more than 10,000 excess deaths during an unprecedented June heat wave, an analysis finds. Read more on E360 →
Four Ugandan farmers have launched a suit in the U.K. High Court against a controversial oil pipeline being built in East Africa. The suit is a last-ditch effort to halt the project before it goes online in October. Read more on E360 →
As EV sales boom and grids seek more energy storage, researchers are racing to develop batteries that are cheaper, more powerful, and less reliant on hard-to-source materials. Lithium-ion still dominates, but sodium-ion and solid-state technologies are moving from lab to market. Read more on E360 →
Pervasive plastic contamination and unreliable methods have clouded the science on microplastics in the human body. In an interview, Australian scientist Cassandra Rauert, who built a plastics-free lab to study human exposure, explores the challenges for researchers. Read more on E360 →
A vast system of Atlantic currents that delivers warmth to northern Europe is at risk of collapse, according to a growing body of research. The latest study to warn of its demise finds there is at least a 10 percent chance that a collapse may already be “locked in.” Read more on E360 →
Off the eastern coast of Italy, large numbers of bottlenose dolphins are looking to fishing trawlers as a source of food, a sign that dolphins may be struggling to feed themselves in waters depleted by overfishing. Read more on E360 →
As residential batteries have become more energy dense, cheaper, and smaller, more households are storing their excess solar power. Now, utilities and energy companies in dozens of countries are buying up those electrons, bundling them together, and using them to balance the grid. Read more on E360 →
As extreme heat worsens pollution, a network of 277 monitors will identify pollution hot spots. Read more on E360 →
In mountain regions from the Andes to the Himalayas, Indigenous people see the retreat of glaciers as a sign that they have lost the favor of their gods or ancestors. Read more on E360 →
Despite years of opposition, a 900-mile crude oil pipeline through East Africa is about to be completed, and its environmental and social risks are coming into focus. Campaigners in Uganda and abroad are making a final push to halt the project before the oil starts to flow. Read more on E360 →
Much like human languages, the vocalizations of sperm whales evolve over time, as disparate populations of whales develop distinct dialects. A new study shows how an isolated population of sperm whales in the eastern Mediterranean developed its own dialect based on vocalizations used by other whales. Read more on E360 →
Europe is sweltering through an intense heat wave that is setting temperature records in the U.K. and France. It comes on the heels of another record heat wave in May. Read more on E360 →
As the Iran War has driven up fuel costs in Africa, demand for electric motorbikes has grown. Read more on E360 →
Rising temperatures are set to drive up emissions from wildfires, fermenting wetlands, and melting permafrost, but these feedback loops are poorly captured in climate models. Scientists are racing to make sense of these emissions to gauge how much warming may lie ahead. Read more on E360 →
In January 2025, the Trump administration began shutting down projects within the EPA’s independent science division that touched on climate change and environmental justice. Air quality researcher Thomas Luben, who had worked at the agency for 18 years, was fired for objecting. Read more on E360 →
Researchers are increasingly digitizing plant and fungi specimens and using A.I. to analyze them, work that is transforming conservation science, according to a new report. Read more on E360 →
In Albania, a mass protest movement has emerged to challenge a plan, spearheaded by Jared Kushner, to build a sprawling resort along the delta of the last wild river in Europe. Tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the capital city of Tirana last week, raising signs that said “Albania Is Not for Sale,” with marches continuing over the weekend. Read more on E360 →
A new paper details how the remnants of dead organisms strongly influence the fate of survivors. Read more on E360 →
At one time, kelp forests — which shelter fish, slow erosion, and sequester carbon — grew along a third of the world’s coastlines. Now, scientists are working to bolster heat-stressed kelp by attacking the urchins that prey on them and transplanting hardier kelp varieties. Read more on E360 →
Last month, for the first time in the U.S., solar generated more electricity than coal, a reflection of both the rapid adoption of renewable power and the declining fortunes of America's aging fleet of coal power plants. Read more on E360 →
Lost to science for more than 70 years, the black-lored waxbill was only recently rediscovered in a marshy region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Now, researchers have published the first clear photographs of the bird ever taken in the wild. Read more on E360 →
In U.S. cities, ridership on public transit is growing as the Iran War keeps gasoline prices high. Read more on E360 →
Former crew members on squid fishing expeditions report environmental destruction and labor abuses, due to a regulatory vacuum. Read more on E360 →
A growing body of research shows how air pollution, fertilizers, and fungicides are altering the chemical signals that plants and animals use to communicate. Scientists warn that insect reproduction, foraging, navigation, and even the pollination of crops could be affected. Read more on E360 →
The Trump administration is moving to dismantle an ocean observation system consisting of more than 900 instruments in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Data supplied by the system has been used to study key Atlantic currents that increasingly appear in danger of collapse as the climate warms. Read more on E360 →