By Bob Berwyn , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: ...more than 50 nations are  gathering in Santa Marta , Colombia, today to start mapping out specific plans to phase out fossil fuels, going beyond the conditional global consensus on “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems” reached at COP28 in Dubai. A lack of progress toward that goal spurred Colombia and the Netherlands to build a coalition of countries willing to move faster and farther. Attending countries span a spectrum from influential fossil fuel producers like Australia, Norway, Brazil, Nigeria and Mexico to climate-vulnerable island nations including Fiji, Tuvalu and the Maldives, as well as Denmark, Spain and France and the European Union. Notably absent are the United States, Russia, China and major Gulf petrostates such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Offering a perspective from  The Elders , a group of former independent world leaders that acts as a moral and ethical voice on issue...

By Farah Nayeri , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Olafur Eliasson s hook up the contemporary art scene in 2003 when he installed a glowing replica of the sun inside London’s Tate Modern and watched visitors flock to it as if to the nearest beach. Recently, another of Eliasson’s outsized spheres drew large crowds, this time in Salt Lake City, Utah: a  towering, globe-shaped screen  which, night after night, beamed sounds and images illustrating the ecological threats faced by the Great Salt Lake and its ecosystem. To make the installation (titled “ A symphony of disappearing sounds for the Great Salt Lake” ), the Danish Icelandic artist teamed up with the music producer Koreless to create a soundtrack using sounds (collected by archivists) made by more than 150 local animal species — including bison, coyotes, frogs, pelicans and rattlesnakes — which he has paired with abstract images inspired by crystalline shapes and motifs in nature.  The Great Salt Lake is in peril :...

By Brad Plumer , The New York Times.  Excerpt: A federal judge on Tuesday blocked the Trump administration from enforcing a series of decisions that wind and solar developers say  have throttled hundreds of renewable energy projects  across the country. Judge Denise J. Casper of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts  granted a preliminary injunction  in a lawsuit that a coalition of renewable energy developers filed against the Interior Department in December. The developers argued that the Trump administration was unlawfully discriminating against wind and solar power, impeding projects on public and private land....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/climate/solar-wind-trump-judge.html .  See also article from The Guardian .

By Valerie Volcovici , Reuters.  Excerpt: WASHINGTON, April 16 (Reuters) - The Department of Energy will retain funding for major carbon direct air capture awarded under the Biden administration after targeting them for ​fund cancellation last year, according to a list of projects identified ‌by the agency that it sent to Congress this week seen by Reuters. Last October, the DOE considered cancelling billions of dollars in funding for clean energy programs, including awards for auto ​manufacturing, hydrogen and carbon capture. Projects slated for cancellation included two major direct ​air capture hubs that received $1.2 billion awards from former President Joe ⁠Biden's administration, including one that involves oil company Occidental (OXY.N) in Texas and another ​in Louisiana. ...The DOE confirmed that the South Texas DAC Hub and Louisiana's Project Cypress were on the list of nearly 2,000 projects that would ​retain their funding....  Full article at https://www.reuters.com...

By Hannah Richter , Science.  Excerpt: A simple idea underpins an audacious intervention to augment Arctic sea ice and slow the climate feedback loop accelerating its disappearance. Drill holes through a floe, pump seawater onto its surface, and let the cold do the rest. The first results from two field tests show the technique can thicken the ice. But they also show those gains don’t last. The added ice—about 30 centimeters—is equivalent to decades of thinning from global warming. But ocean heat and surface slush erased the buffers soon after they formed. The tests, which were reported  last week in the  Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans  and  in a recent preprint , show how difficult it would be to meaningfully expand the strategy across the Arctic, says Leigh Stearns, a glaciologist at the University of Pennsylvania who was not involved with the studies. The “effort to do these tests over a really small area was pretty enormous,” she says. “The thought ...

By Jasper Jolly , The Guardian.  Excerpt: The price of new battery electric cars has fallen below petrol cars in the UK for the first time, according to the car sales website Autotrader, in a significant milestone in Britain’s transition away from fossil fuels. The average price of a new electric car listed on the website was £42,620, compared with £43,405 for a new petrol model – making the former £785 cheaper based on advertised prices after discounts. The higher upfront cost of electric vehicles has long been one of the big sticking points preventing some drivers from switching away from cars with polluting petrol and diesel engines towards those with battery motors, which  do not emit carbon dioxide directly . Total running costs for electric cars have been  lower for some time . UK battery electric car sales accounted for 22% of new car sales in the first three months of the year....  Full article at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/apr/17/new-uk-ele...