The Earth & I

Climate change may be accelerating, but news coverage of it is moving in the opposite direction, according to the University of Colorado Boulder-based Media and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO).

Across the globe, the rapid thawing of permafrost is destabilizing mountain slopes and turning once-settled alpine regions into hazardous zones. As subzero temperatures rise in high-altitude environments, the subterranean ice that binds fractured rock faces together is melting, making living in mountainous regions dangerously unpredictable.

While environmental policy and climate science typically rely on hard datasets and complex graphs, a growing body of research suggests that data alone is insufficient to drive public engagement or political consensus.

In a dense tropical forest in Central Africa, a mama elephant takes a walk with her two cute calves. The calves stay close to their mother, as she is a hefty giant who shows them how to walk through and feed on the ample vegetation surrounding them. At the same time, these family members are engaged in quiet conversations using low-frequency rumbles that are mostly inaudible to ...

The United Nations estimates that 266 million people are at risk of acute hunger this year. And while many converging crises have conspired to create such a troubling statistic—from geopolitics, war, and extreme weather to inflation—the sheer availability of food is perhaps the simplest to understand.