The Spanish government announced 2.2 billion euros ($2.4 billion) worth of drought response measures, including funding for urban water reuse and further aid for struggling farmers.
Currently, 27% of Spanish territory is in a drought "emergency" or "alert." Spain recorded its hottest and driest April ever last month.

Attorneys for young people suing Montana over damages caused by climate change said officials repealed the state's energy policy in a last-minute bid to avoid a trial sought by the plaintiffs to highlight the dangers of fossil fuels.
The two sides are due in court Friday for arguments before state District Judge Kathy Seeley. A two-week trial is scheduled to begin June 12.

Spain says it plans to ban outdoor work during periods of extreme heat.
Second Deputy Prime Minister Yolanda Díaz told reporters that the government will modify legislation covering occupational risks to prohibit outdoor work when the state weather agency, AEMET, issues red or orange alerts.

New Mexico and its Democratic governor are being sued over alleged failures to meet constitutional provisions for protecting against oil and gas pollution, a challenge that comes as the nation's No. 2 oil-producing state rides a wave of record revenue from drilling in one of the most prolific collection of oil fields in the world.
A coalition of environmental groups filed a lawsuit Wednesday in state district court, marking the first time the state constitution's pollution-control clause has been the basis of such a legal claim. The 1971 amendment mandates that New Mexico prevent the despoilment of air, water and other natural resources.

The Biden administration is proposing new limits on greenhouse gas emissions from coal- and gas-fired power plants, its most ambitious effort yet to roll back planet-warming pollution from the nation's second-largest contributor to climate change.
A rule to be unveiled Thursday by the Environmental Protection Agency could force power plants to capture smokestack emissions using a technology that has long been promised but is not in widespread use in the U.S.

When Joe Seaman, the city planner for the working class town of Cohoes, New York, Googled the term "floating solar," he didn't even know it was a thing. What he did know is that his tiny town needed an affordable way to get electricity and had no extra land. But looking at a map, one feature stood out, he said. "We have this 14-acre water reservoir."
Seaman soon found the reservoir could hold enough solar panels to power all the municipal buildings and streetlights, saving the city more than $500,000 each year. He had stumbled upon a form of clean energy that is steeply ramping up. Floating solar panel systems are beginning to boom in the United States after rapid growth in Asia. They're attractive not just for their clean power and lack of a land footprint, but because they also conserve water by preventing evaporation.

Dozens of zoo animals in Sudan's capital — including an elderly crocodile, parrots and giant lizards — are feared dead after street battles between the country's rival forces made the location unreachable.
At least 100 animals, all kept inside enclosures, will have gone more than three weeks without food or water, said Sara Abdalla, the head zoologist at the zoo, which is part of the Sudan Natural History Museum.

Mexican officials and the conservation group Sea Shepherd said Monday that experts will set out in two ships in a bid to locate the few remaining vaquita marina, the world's most endangered marine mammal.
Mexico environment secretary said experts from the United States, Canada and Mexico will use binoculars, sighting devices and acoustic monitors to try to pinpoint the location of the tiny, elusive porpoises. The species cannot be captured, held or bred in captivity.

A U.S. agency has agreed to an in-depth environmental study into whether dredging a Georgia shipping channel in the spring and summer would threaten rare sea turtles nesting on nearby beaches — a review demanded by conservationists who sued to stop the project.
Georgia conservation group One Hundred Miles moved to dismiss its lawsuit against the Army Corps of Engineers after the agency announced Friday that it would voluntarily conduct the study. The group sued in December, asking a U.S. District Court judge to order the Corps to produce such a report.

Daily tides stoked with increasingly warmer water ate a hole taller than the Washington Monument at the bottom of one of Greenland's major glaciers in the last couple years, accelerating the retreat of a crucial part of the glacier, a new study found.
And scientists worry that the phenomenon isn't limited to this one glacier, raising questions about previous projections of melting rates on the world's vulnerable ice sheets.
