Articles 2020

Le riz nourrit plus de la moitié de l’humanité depuis 9 000 ans. Mais selon une étude publiée dans Communications Earth & Environment, le réchauffement climatique progresse désormais 5 000 fois plus vite que la capacité d’adaptation de cette plante. Les régions rizicoles atteignent des températures jamais enregistrées dans toute l’histoire de cette culture — et le milliard de personnes qui en dépendent directement commence à manquer de temps.

La construction d'un datacenter en Utah a entrainé une opposition farouche des habitants. La course à l'IA repose la question de l'équilibre entre technologie et ressources limitées en eau, en terres arables et terres rares, en électricité. De nombreux datacenter vont utiliser des énergies fossiles.

L’ONG Transport & Environment calcule que la demande pour ces carburants produits à partir de ressources agricoles pourrait bondir de 30 % en 2026 et de 70 % d’ici à 2030.

Patrick Pester is the trending news writer at Live Science. His work has appeared on other science websites, such as BBC Science Focus and Scientific American. Patrick retrained as a journalist after spending his early career working in zoos and wildlife conservation. He was awarded the Master's Excellence Scholarship to study at Cardiff University where he completed a master's degree in international journalism. He also has a second master's degree in biodiversity, evolution and conservation in action from Middlesex University London. When he isn't writing news, Patrick investigates the sale of human remains.

Most research on “forever chemicals” focuses on how best to remove them from the environment. But solutions to tricky problems often emerge from the most unexpected of places—as demonstrated by a new study that instead redirects the pollutants into becoming tools for extracting precious lithium. In a recent Nature Water study, a team led by Rice University researchers describes a novel way to use spent perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, to recover lithium from high-salinity brine pools. The team tapped into the fluorine content inside PFAS leftovers, using it to attract lithium from briny water. Remarkably, the team was able to collect lithium fluoride at 99% purity and confirmed that the sample was pure enough to boost the stability and performance of lithium-ion batteries.

Trump has launched an unprecedented assault on the environment. Where’s the pushback?

Olivier De Schutter says new economic agenda needed to tackle crises of rising inequality and ecological collapse

The first session of the Plenary of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Panel on Chemicals, Waste and Pollution (ISP-CWP P1) will be hosted by the Government of Switzerland, from 2 to 6 February 2026 at the Geneva International Conference Centre (CICG). The session will be preceded by regional and stakeholder meetings on 1 February 2026, at the same venue. The tentative schedule for the first session is available here. Please note that this schedule is subject to change.

“Water crisis” has become the default label for almost any episode of water stress, from short-lived droughts to decades-long overuse of rivers and aquifers. Yet in many regions of the world, water problems no longer resemble a crisis in the conventional sense. They represent a post-crisis failure state in which human–water systems have exceeded their hydrological carrying capacities, and societies have spent beyond their sustainable hydrological budgets for so long that critical water assets are depleted, some ecosystem damages are irreversible on human time scales, and a return to “normal” is infeasible even with prohibitive economic, social, and environmental costs.

The Global Environment Outlook, Seventh Edition: A Future We Choose, the product of 287 multi-disciplinary scientists from 82 countries, is the most comprehensive scientific assessment of the global environment ever carried out.

It looked like snow under water: white, endless, and still. The reef, my friend Lisbeth said, was “the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.” For a second, I almost agreed. Then, I stared at it for a long time before replying. She wasn’t wrong about its beauty. But she was also showing me death. Bleached coral isn’t a kind of coral. It’s the moment just after the funeral, what’s left when life is gone. A cathedral of bone-white skeletons stretching over an empire of calcified death. From above, it glows like marble. Up close, it’s a graveyard.

Healthy environment a human right, UN court says in landmark climate ruling

This Contemplation is the result of my beginning to put together a different one that’s focussing upon an academic article I’ve been reading (Collapse, Environment, and Society) but that got me thinking about the academic ‘debate’ regarding what ‘societal collapse’ is, how it may–or may not–unfold for our current experiment in large, complex societies, and how things are perceived in the moment by those experiencing societal change. The ‘debate’ (centred more-or-less on the question: Do societies actually ‘collapse’ or are they ‘merely’ shifting/transforming/adapting to changing conditions?) is rather ‘academic’ in that in the grand scheme of things it’s intellectually interesting but doesn’t have much to do with the on-the-ground, real-life experiences and concerns of most humans in a society–especially if they are experiencing some of the more ‘problematic’ consequences of collapse/transformation.

The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Panel on Chemicals, Waste and Pollution (ISP-CWP) is a new, independent intergovernmental body established to strengthen the global science-policy interface.

Microplastics have been found for the first time in human ovary follicular fluid, raising a new round of questions about the ubiquitous and toxic substances’ potential impact on women’s fertility. The new peer-reviewed research published in Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety checked for microplastics in the follicular fluid of 18 women undergoing assisted reproductive treatment at a fertility clinic in Salerno, Italy, and detected them in 14.

Countries must move rapidly to slash CO2 emissions from homes, offices, shops and other buildings—a sector that accounts for a third of global greenhouse gas pollution, the United Nations said Monday. Carbon dioxide emissions from the building sector rose around 5% in the last decade when they should have fallen 28%, according to a new report by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).

As fossil fuel interests attack climate accountability litigation, environmental advocates have sounded a new warning that they are pursuing a path that would destroy all future prospects for such cases. Nearly 200 advocacy groups have urged Democratic representatives to “proactively and affirmatively” reject potential industry attempts to obtain immunity from litigation.

A rule known as the endangerment finding requires the E.P.A. to regulate greenhouse gases. It has proved resilient against earlier attacks.

Trump could reverse the nation’s progress on climate change, but rolling back the Biden administration’s significant climate successes could be a low, slow and difficult process...

As climate impacts intensify globally, the Emissions Gap Report 2024: No more hot air … please! finds that nations must deliver dramatically stronger ambition and action in the next round of Nationally Determined Contributions or the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C goal will be gone within a few years. The report is the 15th edition in a series that brings together many of the world’s top climate scientists to look at future trends in greenhouse gas emissions and provide potential solutions to the challenge of global warming.