Fast fashion brands flood the market with cheap, trendy clothing at an unsustainable rate, creating enormous environmental and social harm. Despite their attempts at greenwashing (especially those involving the use of sustainability labels covering environmental or social aspects), their business model is fundamentally incompatible with true sustainability.

States have powerful legal tools to counter federal environmental rollbacks, from enacting stronger local regulations to forming interstate coalitions that protect natural resources and public health.

Why do cold snaps persist if the Earth is warming? This question has popped up in various forms online, especially on social media. Climate contrarians often use it as a rhetorical question to make the false claim that ‘global warming must not be happening if we still experience cold weather’.

Others may ask this question out of genuine curiosity – after all, it might be confusing to hear that the planet is warming if you are shivering in a cold spell.

But does anything actually prevent global warming and cold snaps from coexisting? Not at all. Cold snaps (short periods of very cold weather) occur when there are large southward dips in the jet stream – strong winds 5 to 7 miles (8 to 11 kilometers) above Earth’s surface that blow west to east

This huge energy transition – with the technologies currently standing at 1,408GW – can make a “decisive contribution” to the country’s climate efforts and bring big economic rewards, the China Energy Transformation Outlook 2024 (CETO24) shows.

The report was produced by our research team at the Energy Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Macroeconomic Research – a “national high-end thinktank” of China’s top planner the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).

The outlook looks at two pathways to meeting China’s “dual-carbon” climate goals and its wider aims for economic and social development.

In the first pathway, a challenging geopolitical environment constrains international cooperation.

The second assumes international climate cooperation continues despite broader geopolitical tensions.

We find that, under both scenarios, China’s energy system can achieve net-zero carbon emissions before 2060, paving the way to make Chinese society as a whole carbon neutral before 2060.

However, the outlook shows that meeting these policy goals will not be possible unless China improves its energy efficiency, sustains its electrification efforts and develops a power system built around “intelligent” grids that are predominantly supplied with electricity from solar and wind.

Groups now worry about FBI probes as they struggle to rebound from federal spending freeze enacted under President Donald Trump

New research finds the industry’s campaigns to confuse the public about beef’s climate impact go back longer than previously recognized.

Breakthrough Energy is winding down its policy and advocacy office, depriving the Inflation Reduction Act of a powerful defender.

Long-term Population Trends for America’s Birds

~† Shorebirds indicator trend data has not been updated since 2019.~

• 5 Years After the 3 Billion Birds Lost Research, America Is Still Losing Birds: A 2019 study published in the journal Science sounded the alarm—showing a net loss of 3 billion birds in North America in the past 50 years. The 2025 State of the Birds report shows those losses are continuing, with declines among several bird trend indicators. Notably duck populations—a bright spot in past State of the Birds reports, with strong increases since 1970—have trended downward in recent years.
• Conservation Works: Examples spotlighted throughout this report—from coastal restoration and conservation ranching to forest renewal and seabird translocations—show how proactive, concerted efforts and strategic investments can recover bird populations. The science is solid on how to bring birds back. Private lands conservation programs, and voluntary conservation partnerships for working lands, hold some of the best opportunities for sparking immediate turnarounds for birds.
• Bird-Friendly Policies Bring Added Benefits for People, and Have Broad Support: Policies to reverse bird declines carry added benefits such as healthier working lands, cleaner water, and resilient landscapes that can withstand fires, floods, and drought. Plus birds are broadly popular—about 100 million Americans are birdwatchers, including large shares of hunters and anglers. All that birding activity stimulates the economy, with $279 billion in total economic output generated by birder expenditures.

A study in the United States found a dramatic 22% decline in butterfly populations between 2000 and 2020.