Climate Change & Environment
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Carbon dioxide emissions reached a record high in 2022

Communities around the world emitted more carbon dioxide in 2022 than in any other year on records dating to 1900, a result of air travel rebounding from the pandemic and more cities turning to coal as a low-cost source of power.

Emissions of the climate-warming gas that were caused by energy production grew 0.9% to reach 36.8 gigatons in 2022, the International Energy Agency reported Thursday. (The mass of one gigaton is equivalent to about 10,000 fully loaded aircraft carriers, according to NASA.)

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At Gabon talks, a debate on who pays to save world's forests

A summit on how to protect the world's largest forests underway in Gabon is set to be dominated by the issue of who pays for the protection and reforesting of lands that are home to some of the world's most diverse species and contribute to limiting planet-warming emissions.

French president Emmanuel Macron and officials and environment ministers from around the world are attending the One Forest Summit this week in the capital Brazzaville to discuss maintaining the world's major rainforests.

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Cyclone lashes Pacific's Vanuatu as residents hunker down

Residents of Vanuatu were hunkering down Wednesday as a cyclone barreled through the Pacific island nation.

Authorities said that there were power outages in some areas and many fallen trees and branches, but it was too early to assess the extent of the damage with Cyclone Judy still raging. They said there were no initial reports of major destruction or deaths.

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From California to NY, storms ravage US from coast-to-coast

Parts of the Northeast are gearing up for what could be very heavy snow Tuesday, after tornadoes and other powerful winds swept through parts of the Southern Plains and the Midwest, killing at least one person in Oklahoma, and some Michigan residents faced a sixth consecutive day without power following last week's ice storm.

In California, the National Weather Service said winter storms will continue moving into the state through Wednesday.

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Energy agency: SUV growth weighs on emissions, batteries

Ever bigger cars pose a growing problem for the environment because they produce more greenhouse gas emissions and need larger batteries than their smaller cousins, according to the International Energy Agency.

The Paris-based body suggested Monday that it's time for the car industry to downsize its vehicles, citing data that showed the world's 330 million sports utility vehicles, or SUVs, pumped out almost 1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2022.

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Back-to-back hurricanes likely to come more often

What used to be a rare one-two punch of consecutive hurricanes hitting about the same place in the United States weeks apart seems to be happening more often, and a new study says climate change will make back-to-back storms more frequent and nastier in the future.

Using computer simulations, scientists at Princeton University calculate that the deadly storm duet that used to happen once every few decades could happen every two or three years as the world warms from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, according to a study in Monday's Nature Climate Change.

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Elephants in US zoos? Without breeding, future is uncertain

Mabu saunters across a grassy field and raises his long, gray trunk to wrangle food from a hole carved inside a large boulder, captivating the attention of a girl propped up on her father's shoulders.

At this zoo in a central California farming community, the 32-year-old African elephant is key not only to drawing visitors but also to ensuring there are elephants for zoogoers to see in the years to come — a future some animal lovers want to avoid.

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In Iran, endangered Asiatic cheetah dies at 10 months old

Iran's only Asiatic cheetah cub died Tuesday despite days of treatment for kidney failure, local media reported.

Pirouz, 10 months old, had been the only survivor of his litter of three endangered Asiatic cheetahs. He was the subject of widespread discussion online. The semiofficial Tasnim News Agency reported Tuesday that days of treatment had failed to save him.

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UN chief slams 'climate-wrecking' firms at human rights body

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres on Monday stressed the importance of legal challenges against "climate-wrecking corporations" like fossil-fuel producers, ratcheting up his call for the fight against climate change—- this time before the U.N.'s top human rights body.

Guterres opened the latest session of the Human Rights Council, part of an address that decried summary executions, torture and sexual violence in places like Ukraine; antisemitism, anti-Muslim bigotry and the persecution of Christians; inequality and threats to free expression, among other issues.

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Michigan power crews work, California recovers after storms

Some Michigan residents faced a fourth straight day without power Sunday as crews continued work to restore electricity more than 165,000 homes and businesses in the greater Detroit area following last week's ice storm.

Leah Thomas, whose home north of Detroit lost power Wednesday night, was still waiting Sunday afternoon for the power to come back.

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