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Boom Supersonic wants to build the world’s first commercial supersonic airliner. Founded in 2014, the company set out to make air travel dramatically faster — up to twice the speed of today’s passenger jets — while also aiming for a smaller environmental footprint. For years, Boom has focused on developing the high-performance engine technology needed to sustain supersonic flight.

Though the company has not yet debuted its revolutionary jet, last year it identified a new and potentially lucrative application for its novel technology: generating electricity for the data centers powering the artificial intelligence boom.

Many of these data centers want the kind of flexible, around-the-clock energy associated with combined-cycle natural gas turbines. These heavy-duty machines burn gas to spin turbines and generate electricity, then capture the associated heat and use it to spin the turbines some more. As far as fossil fuel generation goes, they are among the most efficient options for dispatchable baseload power. But with demand for these turbines surging and supply increasingly tight, developers are turning to creative alternatives.

The upshot of all this creativity is clear: Much of the data center build-out is poised to be powered by natural gas — and the climate consequences that come with it.

Boom Supersonic inked a $1.25 billion agreement with a developer called Crusoe, which is building a suite of data centers for the artificial-intelligence startup OpenAI. The turbine company agreed to provide Crusoe with 29 jet-engine gas turbines that the developer could position at data centers across the U.S.

The deal is just one example of developers and tech companies straining to find power sources for the data centers sprouting up nationwide. Meta’s data center in El Paso, Texas, will draw fuel from more than 800 different mobile mini-turbines. Meanwhile, the construction equipment company Caterpillar has supplied gas engines to a data center in West Virginia. And the developer Crusoe used “aeroderivative” turbines based on airplane models for its massive Stargate data-center campus in Abilene, Texas, where power demand is a whopping 1.2 gigawatts.

It’s not just the U.S. New proposed natural gas capacity has surged worldwide over the past year. The energy analysis firm Global Energy Monitor reports that projects totaling more than 1,000 gigawatts of gas-fired power are now in development worldwide — a roughly 31 percent jump in just the last year. The United States leads the pack, accounting for about a quarter of that pipeline. More than a third of the new U.S. capacity will power data centers. The analysis also notes that two-thirds of gas project developers in the U.S. have yet to identify who will manufacture their natural gas turbines.

This rush to build out natural gas generation will have serious consequences for the climate. Early boosters of the data center boom suggested that new AI facilities would draw power from renewable sources such as solar and wind farms. While that has happened in some cases, developers are also rapidly locking in years of additional fossil fuel usage. An analysis from researchers at Cornell University found that the build-out could add as much as 44 million metric tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by 2030, equivalent to the annual emissions of around 10 million passenger cars.

“This is a huge proposed build-out,” said Cara Fogler, deputy director of research, strategy, and analysis at the nonprofit Sierra Club, which has been tracking gas plant expansions by utilities. “Existing coal that’s not coming offline and planned gas that’s trying to come online are potentially boxing out clean energy.”

As Silicon Valley’s AI boom drives demand for ever more computing power, data center developers have struggled to keep up, largely because securing the massive amounts of electricity needed to run these facilities has become so difficult. The rush has led to long wait times to secure power from traditional utilities. As a result, developers and tech companies are increasingly taking matters into their own hands by generating power on-site. According to an analysis by Cleanview, a data firm tracking the energy transition, at least 46 data centers with a combined capacity of 56 gigawatts — equivalent to that of roughly 27 Hoover Dams — are using this “behind-the-meter” approach, as it’s known in industry parlance.

The chief executive of Bloom Energy, a startup that builds behind-the-meter fuel cells for data centers, said in a recent call with investors that the startup’s order backlog has more than doubled over the past year.

“On-site power has moved from being a decision of last resort to a vital business necessity,” said company executive K.R. Sridhar. He noted that while most of the company’s previous business was in states like California with high electricity costs, now “states where we are growing fastest have robust natural gas infrastructure and favorable regulatory and policy frameworks for on-site power generation.”

Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai lead a panel at a Google data center in Midlothian, Texas. Google plans to invest $40 billion in new Texas data centers through 2027.
Ron Jenkins / Getty Images

One of those states is Texas, which is the epicenter of the build-out so far. Unconventional gas power will anchor campuses like that of Titus Low Carbon Ventures, which is building half a dozen data center parks across the Lone Star State. In September, the company signed a deal with power developer Gruppo AB to source Jennbacher gas generating engines, each of which provides just a few megawatts of power. The company will plug in hundreds of these boxy generators to provide baseload power alongside solar and wind.

“We could’ve elected to go with gas turbines,” said Jeff Ferguson, the president of Titus, in an interview with Grist. Instead of sourcing traditional gas turbines, he opted to buy “reciprocating engines,” which are smaller gas-powered generators that are similar to passenger car engines.

“We think that reciprocating engines are a better solution for data centers,” he said, adding that ”the difference is in the ability to manage transient loads,” or rapid fluctuations in power demand that are very common at the facilities.

Not only is it unlikely that 200 generators will ever go offline all at once, but the engines are also much faster to start up and stop than turbines — they can come online in around a minute, as opposed to an hour for a traditional power plant. Ferguson likened it to the difference between accelerating in a Corvette and a jet plane.

But experts say these substitute gas sources are even worse for the climate than traditional power plants, which use more efficient combined-cycle turbines that employ both gas and steam. The worst offenders are not turbines at all but rather internal-combustion engines like the ones in most automobiles.

“Internal combustion [engines] have better ramp up/down time[s] but are less efficient when compared to a gas turbine,” said Jenny Martos, a researcher who runs the gas plant tracker for Global Energy Monitor. “All gas power technologies produce emissions, but generally engines produce more emissions than the others.”

Texas has almost 58 gigawatts of natural gas power in various stages of planning and construction, according to the latest estimates from Global Energy Monitor. That’s more than the next four states combined, and more than every country on Earth except for China. Nearly half of the power plants under construction in Texas will provide power exclusively to data centers, without connecting to regional energy grids. These projects span the state, from OpenAI’s Stargate campus in central Abilene to Meta’s data center in El Paso, where the company has contracted with a Houston-based microgrid developer to set up 813 modular generators.

The projects are also popping up in rural areas of the country with few other economic development prospects. A developer called BorderPlex is proposing a $165 billion data center campus called Project Jupiter in southern New Mexico, powered by two microgrids that operate on simple-cycle gas turbines, which just burn gas to generate energy without capturing and deploying their waste heat. The project’s 2,880 megawatts of generation are more than the entire generation capacity of central New Mexico’s main utility.

“I’ve never seen something quite this big before, dollar-wise, scale-wise,” said Colin Cox, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, which is opposing the project. “To call this a microgrid defies common sense.” Remaining behind the meter allows the project to avoid seeking approval from regulators who would enforce compliance with the state’s climate laws — even though Project Jupiter’s carbon emissions alone could outweigh the actions that New Mexico has taken to lower emissions over the past several years.

The project’s developer has promised jobs and tax revenue to rural Doña Ana County, but the future is murky. It remains unclear whether demand for artificial intelligence products will keep up with the historic capital expenditures being made by companies like OpenAI. If the bubble were to pop, the state would be left with a gas turbine that didn’t serve any users — an asset that the state would not need and that, under its climate laws, it would not be allowed to use.

“They’ll just be stranded assets,” said Cox. “You can’t do anything with a gas turbine besides run gas through it to make it spin.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Data centers are scrambling to power the AI boom with natural gas on Feb 10, 2026.

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The first center for dispersing sterile screwworm flies from U.S. soil in decades opened Monday in Texas, part of a larger effort to keep the flesh-eating parasite they spawn from crossing the Mexican border and wreaking havoc on the American cattle industry.

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If you’ve ever been to a hot spring or geyser or volcano, you’ve seen the future of energy. Earth’s innards are hot — really hot — and that heat sometimes bubbles to the surface. If engineers dig holes in these geologically active places, then pipe water through rock, they can tap into this geothermal energy. Whereas solar and wind require sunlight and gusts to produce electricity, the Earth itself provides this constant source of fuel, which provides a powerful technique for bolstering the grid.

A new report from the energy think tank Ember underscores geothermal’s potential, finding that it could theoretically replace 42 percent of the European Union’s electricity generation from coal and natural gas — and at the same cost. New technologies could help Europe keep pace with the United States and Canada by opening new regions and exploiting this abundant, clean energy supply, the report adds. “We can’t really say that all of it will be utilized, but there is enough of it to get policymakers and investors more interested, even in Europe and even outside of traditional hot spots,” said Tatiana Mindeková, a policy advisor at Ember and lead author of the report.

About those hot spots. Historically, geothermal has been limited to geologically active places. That is, if the Earth isn’t hot near the surface, you’d have to dig farther to get at the energy. And the deeper you dig, the higher the costs and the harder it is to recoup that investment. In addition, the rock at these sites must be permeable: A facility pumps down liquid, which flows through the gaps and heats up, then returns to the surface to power a turbine.

But next-generation techniques are opening swaths of new territories to exploit. Engineers are drilling deeper, allowing them to tap into the constant heat emanating from the planet’s molten core. And they’re creating their own permeability by fracturing rock at depth, so the water has space to heat up. “With these new technologies, we actually can extend the scope of where geothermal makes sense economically,” Mindeková said.

This is not to say that these techniques, known as enhanced or advanced geothermal, are cheap or easy. As crews drill deeper, the equipment on the surface must scale up to handle the load. We’re talking depths of several miles. “Anytime you get deeper, it gets more difficult,” said Wayne Bezner Kerr, who manages the Earth Source Heat program at Cornell University but wasn’t involved in the report. “It gets more expensive, it gets more challenging.”

Oddly enough, tools and techniques developed by the oil and gas industry have helped massively here, opening pathways in a geothermal system. That creates more surface area for the water to move across and heat up. “It is a bit ironic,” Mindeková said, “and I feel like it’s also maybe one of the reasons why we don’t talk about [geothermal] in Europe as much.”

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Which is not to say that geothermal can now be done economically everywhere. One major consideration is the geothermal gradient — how quickly temperature rises the deeper you go: Rock may be the desired temperature two miles below the surface in one place, but just one mile deep in another place. The cost and complexity of drilling fall if things are hotter near the surface. Geology also matters: Water can be lost as it’s pumped underground — which becomes a problem if you’re drilling in an area without access to a lot of surface water to replace. Certain types of rock also infuse that water with more minerals, which can interfere with the equipment aboveground.

Still, like any technology, efficiency will increase and expense will decrease as more geothermal comes online. “To the extent that we see more deployment of advanced geothermal in Europe, we’re going to see that bring down the cost of applying the innovation in lots of other places in the world,” said David Victor, co-director of the Deep Decarbonization Initiative at the University of California, San Diego, who wasn’t involved in the report.

Really, though, we don’t need to drill deep to get major energetic gains from the Earth. In the EU, the average household uses more than three quarters of its energy on home and water heating. A new geothermal project could generate electricity to meet that demand or, alternatively, a shallower project could heat and cool those homes more directly.

This is known as networked geothermal: A utility drills maybe 600 or 700 feet deep and pipes water through the ground, which maintains a fairly constant temperature at that depth throughout the year. That heated H2O flows to individual homes, where ultra-efficient heat pumps extract warmth from the liquid in the winter and inject the cooled water back underground to heat again. Then in the summer, the heat pumps pull warmth from indoor air and add it to the water, which is pumped underground once more. This heats up the subterranean rock, so it’s ready to provide warmth once winter rolls back around.

Similarly, geothermal can complement wind and solar by turning the ground into a giant battery. When the wind is blowing and the sun is shining, a facility uses that energy to heat water and pump it underground. Then when those renewables aren’t available, the hot water is pumped back up, discharging the subterranean battery.

The future for geothermal, then, is looking hot. And ironically enough, it’ll be advances from the oil and gas industry that will help the technology grow — in the EU and beyond. “We are trying to highlight,” Mindeková said, “that it’s also an opportunity for people working in these sectors to just transfer the knowledge, the skills, and find future employment in this new sector.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Geothermal could replace almost half of the EU’s fossil fuel power on Feb 10, 2026.

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The Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro recently announced it has banned the purchase of shark meat for roughly 95% of its state-run schools, citing environmental and health concerns. A July 2025  Mongabay investigation found shark meat was commonly purchased for use across Brazil in public institutions, including eldercare facilities and schools. The exposé found that more than a thousand public tenders had been issued since 2024, amounting to more than 5,400 metric tons of shark meat destined for public consumption. In Brazil, shark meat is often generically labeled cação instead of the Portuguese word for shark, tubarão. As a result, people often don’t know exactly what they are eating. Conservationists warn that such a lack of transparency can result in endangered sharks or rays being illegally fished and sold to unwitting buyers. Public-health experts also point to potential health risks. As apex predators, sharks bioaccumulate heavy metals in their tissue, including mercury, a neurotoxin. Scientists say there is no safe level of mercury exposure, but children and their growing bodies are especially vulnerable. In an email to Mongabay, the Rio de Janeiro department of education acknowledged the risks. “The suspension was based on technical, scientific, health and environmental grounds … complying with the principle of precaution and comprehensive protection of children.” However, the Brazilian Association for the Promotion of Fish pushed back on the ban.  In an email to Mongabay, a spokesperson said, “The consumption of cação is completely legal and safe.” Moreover, they expressed concern that removing shark…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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The application of modulated UV-C light to guavas—emitted in pulses or cycles rather than continuously—combated anthracnose. This fungal disease is caused by microorganisms belonging to the Colletotrichum gloeosporioides complex and triggers dark lesions on the fruit after harvest, reducing its shelf life. An article on the technique was published in the journal Horticulturae.

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Americans love dogs. Nearly half of U.S. households have one, and practically all owners see pets as part of the family—51% say pets belong "as much as a human member." The pet industry keeps generating more and more jobs, from vets to trainers, to influencers. Schools cannot keep up with the demand for veterinarians.

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This is the first of two stories about the potential impact of Cambodia’s planned Funan Techo Canal. Part two, about consequences for inland communities and wildlife, will be published soon. KEP, Cambodia — “Nobody from the government has spoken to us directly about how we’ll be affected,” Mae Vuthy told Mongabay while he sat on his longtail fishing boat moored off the coast of Angkoal commune in Cambodia’s Kep province. “We’re all concerned, we’re all fishers, so we need access to the water, but what can we do? We have no power.” That morning, in November 2024, Vuthy had just returned to shore after laying crab traps and collecting fishing nets that he’d left in the Gulf of Thailand overnight. It had been a disappointing haul for Vuthy and his crew, but not a surprising one. Rampant illegal fishing and breakneck coastal development have left Cambodia’s marine fisheries reeling for years. Now, on top of the dwindling catches he pulls from the water and the increased pressure from land privatization along the coast, Vuthy, the fishing community and the marine lifeforms of Kep’s waters face a new threat. The Funan Techo Canal, which will link the Mekong River in inland Kandal province to the sea in Kep, looks set to turn the sleepy fishing commune of Angkoal into a bustling port and logistics hub. Mongabay has followed this mega-project’s development for more than a year. We’ve spoken with more than 50 people living along the canal’s proposed route in Kandal, Takeo,…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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Beyond societal concerns relating to the environment, animal welfare and human health, several consumer surveys indicate that the decline in beef consumption in France is also linked to its relatively high price, which does not always reflect its eating quality.

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Kipnuk leaders are calling hundreds of tribal members to determine the village’s future after last fall’s storm caused widespread destruction.

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We humans have long viewed ourselves as the pinnacle of evolution. People label other species as "primitive" or "ancient" and use terms like "higher" and "lower" animals.

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Professor Darren Evans and Madeleine Fabusova from the School of Natural and Environmental Science have published new research that shows that typical levels of artificial light at night can simultaneously suppress early-night activity and disrupt navigation cues in nocturnal insects and spiders. These findings identify twilight as a disproportionately sensitive period, raising questions about how street lighting and other mitigation strategies should be targeted.

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A scientific breakthrough not only promises faster testing for antimicrobial resistance, but also an ethical solution to the controversial issue of using rodents in research. University of Exeter scientists have created the world's first genetically engineered wax moths—a development which could both accelerate the fight against antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and significantly reduce the need for mice and rats in infection research.

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Since the beginning of January, an unusually long period of easterly winds has caused the average water level in the Baltic Sea to fall to a historic low. Measurements at the Swedish Landsort-Norra gauge show values that are the lowest since records began in 1886. Researchers at the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde (IOW) are currently monitoring this development very closely, as it represents a rare oceanographic situation that could lead to a large inflow of saltwater from the North Sea into the Baltic Sea. An inflow of this kind could significantly affect the physical and chemical conditions in the deep basins of the central Baltic Sea.

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Constructed with tubulin heterodimers connected into a hollow cylinder, the microtubule, an essential component of the cytoskeleton, plays a vital role in various intracellular processes. In a recent study, a cross-disciplinary research team led by Professor Yuan Lin from the Department of Mechanical Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering, and Professor Jeff Ti from the School of Biomedical Sciences in the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), has revealed how the biological function of microtubules is achieved through mechanical regulation at the tubulin level.

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Scientists at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed software that reduces the time needed for a key task in the development of custom microbes from a week to just hours. The new tool cracks a key defense mechanism of microorganisms, expediting the creation of microbes with desired traits for the production of new biofuels and other valuable products for the bioeconomy.

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Harbor porpoises "buzz" less when boats and ships are nearby—suggesting a drop in feeding and socializing, new research shows. The paper, published in the journal Marine Mammal Science, is titled "Seasonal and diurnal patterns of harbor porpoise (Phocoena phocoena) behavior and the disruptive effects of vessel presence in a high-traffic coastal habitat."

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This story was originally published by Source New Mexico.

Leah Romero
Source New Mexico

Members of the New Mexico Legislature’s House Government, Elections and Indian Affairs Committee advanced a memorial Friday that calls for a “comprehensive” study of the scope and impact of forced sterilization of Indigenous women and women of color in New Mexico.

House Memorial 32 requests the New Mexico Indian Affairs Department and the New Mexico Commission on the Status of Women identify all cases of forced or coerced sterilization that have occurred in the state and gather survivor testimony. The memorial requests that the agencies evaluate the availability of reproductive health services for women of color and recommend actions the state can take to prevent future forced sterilization practices.

The legislation also requests that the study explore creating a reproductive sovereignty program “focused on culturally grounded health, education and healing services,” developing a public memorial and having the state formally acknowledge the “inhumanity of the grievous policy” of forced sterilization.

The memorial states that the study must be completed and presented to the Legislature and governor by Dec. 31, 2027.

Keely Badger, an international human rights attorney, joined Friday’s meeting as an expert specializing in Indigenous women’s rights issues. According to Badger, if the memorial passes, New Mexico would become the first state in the U.S. to acknowledge the historical scope and continued impacts of these practices.

“Coerced and forced sterilization is considered a crime against humanity under international law and also constituting genocide, both biological and cultural genocide, in certain contexts,” Badger said. “It’s estimated that over 70,000 Native American women and women of color were forcibly sterilized just in the ’70s alone, when these eugenics laws were on the books.”

Jean Whitehorse, Diné, the daughter of a Navajo Code Talker, told the committee about her experience in Gallup in 1972. She said she was admitted to the hospital for a ruptured appendix and was required to sign multiple forms for the emergency surgery.

“I didn’t know one of those papers was for sterilization,” Whitehorse said. She has one daughter and said she wanted more children. “My ability to have more children was medically terminated without my consent. Within our Navajo culture, wealth goes beyond monetary value and material possession. True wealth is the number of children one has.”

HM32’s lead sponsor Rep. Patricia Roybal-Caballero (D-Albuquerque) shared that she had a late term miscarriage years ago and had to have a procedure. However, the paperwork stated she was to have a hysterectomy instead.

“Had [my husband] not seen the checked box indicating that I was being wheeled in for a hysterectomy, I would have had a hysterectomy and been deprived…of further pregnancies,” Roybal-Caballero said. “For me, to hear about cases existing in this day and age, I had nothing more than to be compelled, obligated, a responsibility to ensure that these processes and these institutions stop this forced and coerced sterilization.”

Donald Clark, a physician practicing family medicine, told the committee that he worked with the Indian Health Service throughout his career and continues to work in tribal clinics. He said he supported the memorial because the impacts of previous forced sterilization is still affecting younger generations.

“The issue continues to come up sometimes in younger women and women who are in their 20s and 30s seeking contraception, but not trusting that they will not be irreversibly sterilized because of what they’ve heard from their mother or grandmother or an aunt,” he said. “It’s still an issue that is affecting women’s choice of birth control today.”

The post New Mexico memorial calling for study of forced sterilization against women of color advances appeared first on ICT.

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In her 1962 book, "Silent Spring," American biologist Rachel Carson revealed that DDT, a widely used pesticide at the time, was responsible for the mass death of birds, including the iconic bald eagle. One reason was that the pesticide made eggshells thinner, causing mothers to break them when sitting on them to incubate. Silent Spring is considered the founding work of the modern environmental movement.

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February 9, 2025 – The United States has finalized a deal with Argentina that is expected to more than quadruple beef imports from the South American country, acting on plans floated in October that received pushback from U.S. cattle producers.

On Friday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to increase Argentine beef imports by 80,000 tons, for a total of 100,000 tons, for an estimated $800 million increase in imports.

The move is aimed at lowering the cost of beef for American consumers. But when it was first discussed in October, it received pushback from Republicans and U.S. cattle ranchers, who are currently selling domestic beef at relatively high prices due to challenges in the market.

“Instead of imports that sideline American ranchers, we should be focused on solutions that cut red tape, lower production costs, and support growing our cattle herd,” Senator Deb Fischer (R-Nebraska) said in a statement following the executive order.

Shortly before Trump signed the order, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. urged cattle producers to increase the size of their herds. Speaking to beef industry stakeholders in Nashville at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) CattleCon, Kennedy cited a decline in herd size since the 1970s and said many ranchers are slaughtering breeding cows due to market fluctuations.

“I’d ask you to stop doing that,” Kennedy said. “We need a lot of beef, and we want to make it here in America. We don’t want to be importing it from other countries.” (Link to this post.)

The post Trump Signs Executive Order Boosting Argentine Beef Imports appeared first on Civil Eats.

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Scientists from Tokyo Metropolitan University have uncovered how fertilized rice seeds begin to divide and establish their "body axis." Using a new imaging method, they discovered that while the first cell divides in an asymmetric way initially, this is followed by random growth and the apparently "collective" determination of a body axis. This is a significant break with known pathways, a rare glimpse into the birth and growth of plant embryos.

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Regulators at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced late Friday the reapproval of the herbicide dicamba—a weedkiller that courts have banned twice because of its tendency to drift and damage crops and other plants—for use on soybeans and cotton. While the agency says the approval includes new restrictions that will reduce the chemical’s harms, watchdog organizations say it actually weakens protections.

“The Trump administration’s hostility to farmers and rural America knows no bounds,” Bill Freese, science director at the Center for Food Safety (CFS), said in a press release. “Dicamba drift damage threatens livelihoods and tears apart rural communities.”

Farmers have been using dicamba since the 1960s, but issues emerged about a decade ago, when it was first approved to spray on soybeans and cotton plants engineered to resist the weedkiller. Because farmers could spray it over the top of those growing plants, its use increased later in the growing season.

Farmers have been using dicamba since the 1960s, but issues emerged about a decade ago, when it was first approved to spray on soybeans and cotton plants engineered to resist the weedkiller.

But dicamba is prone to vaporizing, so it drifted on the air from those fields onto neighboring farms, forests, gardens, and wildlife refuges. When plants that are not resistant to dicamba are exposed, they can be weakened or killed. Tree leaves begin to cup and curl, for example, and soybeans that are not resistant might produce lower yields. Dicamba drift has damaged millions of acres of crops, orchards, and native plant and trees. It has pitted neighbors against each other, as drift from one farm can kill another farm’s entire vegetable crop.

In a press release, the EPA said it recognized drift created “legitimate concerns” in the past and that new restrictions the agency put in place to reduce risks will make it the “most protective” dicamba registration in history. It cited new measures, including cutting the total amount of dicamba that can be used annually and restricting applications when temperatures are high, since heat can increase drift. The EPA also said its analysis “found no unreasonable risk to human health and the environment.”

The American Farm Bureau Federation celebrated the decision, which it said was based on “sound science” and would provide farmers with certainty around which herbicides are available as they plan for the upcoming planting season. The Illinois Soybean Association sent out an email to its members announcing that dicamba use “would return under similar, but arguably more conservative rules than in past years.”

But Freese and other experts pointed to ways in which they say the registration also weakens protections that prevent dicamba from drifting. For example, past registrations prevented farmers from spraying soybeans after June 12 to ensure heat did not exacerbate drift, according to CFS. Now, the temperature-based restrictions replaced that provision. So, farmers will be able to spray year-round, but they’ll be limited to treating half of their acres on days between 85 and 95 degrees and will not be allowed to spray on days that are 95 degrees or hotter.

In the press release, the EPA said it “will work with state enforcement to actively monitor compliance, and violations will be met with serious consequences,” but the agency does not currently have field staff monitoring pesticide use.

Advocates at CFS have other concerns about the approval. They warn that the agency will no longer require that dicamba mixtures with other pesticides be reviewed to make sure they don’t make drift worse. They also note that buffer requirements intended to limit spray drift—which have proven ineffective in the past—remain in place. “For 10 years now, time and time again they have claimed the same—‘This time will be different’—and all the scientific and agronomic evidence shows their claims are false,” George Kimbrell, co-executive director and legal director at CFS, told Civil Eats. “It’s a harmful, toxic product, and moving the deck chairs around on the Titanic will not change the catastrophic iceberg ahead.”

Many prominent supporters of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement who have largely supported the Trump administration expressed outrage over the approval.

On X, anti-pesticide activist Kelly Ryerson said the EPA’s decision would lead to “further destruction” of soil and rural communities. “No one should believe that MAHA is being upheld at the EPA at this point,” she posted. “Time for the President to step in and correct the crash course in this agency.”

Since November, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has been meeting with MAHA supporters and appearing at their events to allay their concerns about fast pesticide approvals and the rollback of regulations that prevent pollution.

While Zeldin has been eager to publicly frame other pesticide decisions, such as a recent announcement around ongoing paraquat research, as “MAHA wins,” so far, he has stayed quiet on the dicamba approval.

The post EPA Reapproves Weedkiller Dicamba Despite Concerns About Drift and Crop Damage appeared first on Civil Eats.

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In terms of area, forest is the most important means of avalanche protection. It is also the most cost-effective and is naturally renewable. This insight hit home after the winter of 1951, when over 1,000 avalanches caused immense damage. The SLF began researching how protection forests could be sustainably developed.

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Despite a barren start to Colorado's ski season, Winter Park Resort opened on Halloween and served up holiday powder. The ski area's secret is a contraption a few miles upwind of the chairlifts that looks like a meat smoker strapped to the top of a ladder. When weather conditions are just right, a Winter Park contractor fires up the machine, burning a fine dust of silver iodide into the sky—a process known as cloud seeding. Ideally, the particles disappear into a cloud that is cold enough and wet enough to produce snow, but may need a nudge.

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As carbon emissions continue to be pumped into the atmosphere at record levels, it will be critical to recapture and sequester as much of these warming gases as possible. While technological approaches face many barriers before they can be scaled up, efforts to capture carbon can rely on proven, natural interventions, like blue carbon ecosystems (BCEs). UConn researcher Mojtaba Fakhraee makes the argument in a Nature Sustainability paper that strategic placement of BCEs can not only sequester carbon, but have the added benefit of helping with the restoration of another vital ecosystem—coral reefs.

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Cornell researchers have discovered a new way cells regulate how they respond to stress, identifying an interaction between two proteins that helps keep a critical cellular recycling system in balance. The findings show that a protein called SHKBP1 regulates another protein, p62, which plays a key role in clearing damaged cell components and activating antioxidant defenses. By helping maintain this balance, SHKBP1 allows cells to respond appropriately to stress—a process that can break down in diseases such as cancer and neurodegenerative disorders.

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