Even as she promoted her efforts to boost clean energy, Vice President Kamala Harris said in Tuesday's debate that the Biden-Harris administration has overseen "the largest increase in domestic oil production in history because of an approach that recognizes that we cannot over rely on foreign oil."
The comment by Harris, a longtime climate hawk who backed the original Green New Deal, surprised supporters and opponents alike — and conflicted with frequent boasts by Harris and President Joe Biden that they are champions in the fight to slow global warming.
Full StoryThe death toll in the aftermath of a typhoon in Vietnam climbed to 233 on Friday as rescue workers recovered more bodies from areas hit by landslides and flash floods, state media reported.
Flood waters from the swollen Red River in the capital, Hanoi, were beginning to recede, but many neighborhoods remained inundated and farther north experts were predicting it could still be days before any relief is in sight.
Full StoryIn a visit to see the damage caused by drought and fire in the Amazon, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva pledged to pave a road that environmentalists and some in his own government say threatens to vastly increase destruction of the world's largest tropical forest — and contribute to climate change.
The BR-319 roadway is a mostly dirt road through the rainforest that connects the states of Amazonas and Roraima to the rest of the country. It ends in Manaus, the Amazon's largest city with over 2 million people, and runs parallel to the Madeira River, a major tributary of the Amazon River. The Madeira is at its lowest recorded level, disrupting cargo navigation, with most of its riverbed now endless sand dunes under a sky thick with smoke.
Full StoryAlex Luna, a 20-year-old missionary, saw the sky turn from a cherry red to black in about 90 minutes as an explosive wildfire raced toward the Southern California mountain community of Wrightwood and authorities implored residents to leave their belongings behind and get out of town.
"It was very, I would say, hellish-like," Luna said Tuesday night. "It was very just dark. Not a good place to be at that moment. ... Ash was falling from the sky like if it was snowing."
Full StoryChange has broken, remade and continues to reshape this remote town where tundra meets forest on the shore of Hudson Bay.
The economic base collapsed when the military left town. Rail service and cargo ships — the lifeblood of supplies for a town not connected to the rest of the world by roads — blinked out. The weather is warming, signature animals are dwindling and even the ground is shifting.
Full StoryA bridge collapsed and a bus was swept away by flooding Monday as more rain fell following a typhoon Vietnam that has caused at least 59 deaths in the Southeast Asian country and disrupted businesses and factories in the export-focused northern industrial hubs, state media reported.
Nine people died when Typhoon Yagi made landfall in Vietnam on Saturday before weakening to a tropical depression, and at least 50 others have died in the consequent floods and landslides, state media VN Express reported. The water levels of several rivers in northern Vietnam were dangerously high.
Full StorySummer 2024 sweltered to Earth's hottest on record, making it even more likely that this year will end up as the warmest humanity has measured, European climate service Copernicus reported Friday.
And if this sounds familiar, that's because the records the globe shattered were set just last year as human-caused climate change, with a temporary boost from an El Nino, keeps dialing up temperatures and extreme weather, scientists said.
Full StoryLike ghosts from the past, sunken villages at the bottom of water reservoirs are not meant to be seen. But the ruins of Kallio in the mountains of central Greece are becoming very much visible — and they have a warning to deliver.
As an unprecedented drought induced by climate change rampages across much of southern Europe this summer, reserves at the artificial Lake Mornos — the biggest of the four reservoirs supplying drinking water to Greece's capital, Athens — have hit their lowest in 16 years.
Full StoryA British man has been found dead while emergency services search for a woman of the same nationality after both were apparently swept away in a flash flood while hiking on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca, Spanish police said Wednesday.
Spain's Civil Guard said that both people were taking a trail that leads through a small canyon to the sea when the storm hit on Tuesday.
Full StoryLightning struck Rome's Constantine Arch near the Colosseum during a violent thunderstorm, loosening fragments from the ancient structure.
The fragments from Tuesday's lightning strike were immediately gathered and secured by workers at the Colosseum Archeological Park, officials said. The extent of the damage was being evaluated.
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