After talking the climate talk at U.N. negotiations in Scotland, the Biden administration now tests whether a divided United States can walk the climate walk: push a massive investment for a new era of clean energy through the narrowest of margins in the Senate.

The House passed a roughly $2 trillion social policy and climate bill Friday, including $555 billion for cleaner energy, although the legislation is almost certain to be changed by the Senate. What ultimately emerges in the climate part of the bill will have a lasting impact on America and all its neighbors on Earth, and help determine whether the United States does its promised share to keep climate damage at a level not disastrously worse than it is now.

Lebanon's economic meltdown presents an opportunity to improve the country's environmental policies and tackle its festering waste management crisis, Environment Minister Nasser Yassin told AFP Wednesday.

Lebanon's economy has been in tailspin for two years, leading to a historic currency collapse that has sent poverty rates soaring and ravaged the country's already ailing infrastructure.

It's a ghastly sight: ticks by tens of thousands burrowed into a moose's broad body, sucking its lifeblood as the agonized host rubs against trees so vigorously that much of its fur wears away.

Winter tick infestation is common with moose across the northern U.S. — usually survivable for adults but less so for calves, and miserable either way. And climate change may make it worse, scientists have reported.

Climate change isn't what's driving some U.S. coal-fired power plants to shut down. It's the expense of stricter pollution controls on their wastewater.

Dozens of plants nationwide plan to stop burning coal this decade to comply with more stringent federal wastewater guidelines, according to state regulatory filings, as the industry continues moving away from the planet-warming fossil fuel to make electricity.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Monday that it is proposing threatened status for the Pearl River map turtle, seeking to grant added federal protections to an at-risk species found only in Louisiana and Mississippi.

"These native freshwater map turtles are at risk and need our help," regional director Leopoldo Miranda-Castro said in a news release.

A Democratic plan to impose a fee on methane emissions from oil and gas wells has cleared a key hurdle, but it faces strong opposition from the oil and gas industry and criticism by centrist Sen. Joe Manchin.

The proposed fee on methane — a powerful pollutant that contributes to global warming — was included in a huge social and environmental policy bill passed by House Democrats last Friday.

Countries must prepare for future "shocks" to their agricultural and food systems from droughts, floods or diseases following the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, a U.N. agency said Tuesday.

Thousands of farmers in central Iran joined a protest on Friday demanding authorities open a dam to relieve drought-stricken areas, state TV reported.

Several prominent actors and athletes have taken part in the peaceful demonstrations in the city of Isfahan, urging the government to intervene to aid famers increasingly suffering from droughts that have worsened over the years. The demonstrations began earlier this month.

Authorities have been investigating the death of a pilot who crashed while fighting a wildfire near Rocky Mountain National Park at night, the second person to die amid wind-driven, late season wildfires in the Rockies this week.

The pilot of the single-engine air tanker was found dead Tuesday night south of Estes Park about three hours after authorities received reports of a crash, the Larimer County Sheriff's Office said. The pilot was the only person on board, it said.

The Canadian Pacific coast province of British Columbia has declared a state of emergency following floods and mudslides caused by extremely heavy rainfall, and officials said they expected to find more dead.

Every major route between the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, where Canada's third largest city of Vancouver is, and the interior of the province has been cut by washouts, flooding or landslides following record-breaking rain across southern British Columbia between Saturday and Monday. The body of a woman was recovered from one of the mudslides late Monday.