The purchase of Vidler Water Company by D.R. Horton is a clear indication of where the West is headed, as the need grows to find creative new water supplies that will allow national builders to keep building even as regulators try to clamp down on unsustainable growth. Read more»

High-intensity fires in western states kill mature trees and their seeds while warmer, drier conditions stress seedlings - but forest managers can still intervene to change this trajectory. Read more»

PFAS have been around since the 1940s, and more than 120 different compounds have been found in wildlife - with some 330 species were affected, spanning nearly every continent - now, scientists are working to determine how these chemicals affect wild animals’ health. Read more»

Scientists are finding in an ongoing study that despite the haze from far-off blazes, enough indirect sunlight was available to fuel the nation’s burgeoning solar panel industry in 2020 - good news as the U.S. government is seeking to quickly ramp up solar energy production. Read more»

The EPA denied the requests of six coal plants - including the Salt River Project’s Coronado Generating Station - to keep dumping toxic ash into unlined or inadequately lined pits, signaling the agency’s commitment to enforce the 2015 federal coal ash rules. Read more»

As the world faces yet another reckoning over energy supplies, several recent innovations aim to make 200-year-old heat pump science even more efficient than it already is, potentially opening the door for much greater adoption of the technology worldwide. Read more»

Much of the very same land that is the source of diversity for our food lies in countries that are the most vulnerable to the destructive impacts of climate change - and that vulnerability rebounds into how much Americans pay for food. Read more»

Subsidized water cultivated the West, but to accommodate growth without limits as the population boomed, this required becoming increasingly profligate with the region’s scarcest resource. Read more»

There are more than 600 fossil fuel lobbyists at the COP27 climate conference, a rise of more than 25% from last year and outnumbering any one frontline community affected by the climate crisis. Read more»

A series of symbolic moves on climate finance at COP27 suggests positive momentum could be starting to build on a pivotal issue at the UN summit in Egypt. Read more»

From Arizona to Maine and beyond, a new generation of Indigenous entrepreneurs, activists and government leaders are making strides and money with clean energy as a way for Native people to regain control over their own energy decisions and continue to be stewards of the land. Read more»

Solutions on how to address the Navajo Nation’s water problem are hard to come by, not only because Arizona is using its full share of the Colorado River allotment, but because many traditional Navajo members don’t want the nation participating in the reservoir-based water system. Read more»

Extreme heat kills more people each year than any other type of weather-related event, and those risks can be amplified in “heat islands” - predominantly located in low-income neighborhoods - and now, the federal government and some cities have begun to act. Read more»

Indigenized Energy Initiative - a nonprofit established to help guide further solar development on Native lands - is working "to developing renewable energy as a means to mitigate climate change, eliminate poverty and restore sovereignty in Tribal communities." Read more»

The tax reform and spending bill signed by President Joe Biden is also the country’s largest climate change investment, with what could be sweeping changes to the National Environmental Policy Act - the bedrock of environmental law - and the law’s critics cover the political spectrum. Read more»