By Sandra Laville , The Guardian.  Excerpt: Pollution is affecting the climate, biodiversity, ecosystems, ocean acidification and human health, according to analysis. Plastic pollution is changing the processes of the entire Earth system, exacerbating climate change, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, and the use of freshwater and land, according to scientific analysis. Plastic must not be treated as a waste problem alone, the authors said, but as a product that poses harm to ecosystems and human health. ...Microplastics are now everywhere, from  the top of Mount Everest  to  the Mariana Trench , the deepest point on earth. ...“It’s necessary to consider the full life cycle of plastics, starting from the extraction of fossil fuel and the primary plastic polymer production” said the article’s lead author, Patricia Villarrubia-Gómez, at Stockholm Resilience Centre....  Full article at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/07/plastic-pollution-is-ch...

https://www.science.org/content/article/clearer-skies-may-be-accelerating-global-warming By PAUL VOOSEN , Science.  Excerpt: When 2023 turned out to be  the hottest year in history , it underscored the warnings of some prominent climate scientists, including James Hansen, that the pace of global warming was accelerating and had entered a dangerous new phase. A new study,  published  Wednesday in Communications Earth & Environment, suggests one reason for such an acceleration: Earth’s skies are getting clearer and letting in more sunshine. ...a set of NASA instruments in space [the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES)] since 2001 have tracked the delicate balance of energy entering and leaving the planet...have detected a  marked rise  in the amount of solar energy the planet has absorbed—well beyond the warming expected from rising greenhouse gases. The readings show the planet has become less reflective, as if it recently put on a ...

https://apnews.com/article/electric-school-buses-diesel-exhaust-environmental-justice-4263455c7d55e34acd6f35dceb6db7c0 By ALEXA ST. JOHN , Associated Press.  Excerpt: Areli Sanchez’s daughter, Aida, used to be one of 20 million American kids who ride a  diesel bus  to school each day. Aida has asthma. When she was little, she complained about the  smell and cloud of fumes  on her twice-daily trip. “When she would come home from school or be on the bus, she got headaches and sick to her stomach. ...Research shows diesel exhaust exposure can cause students to  miss school  and affect learning. ...Diesel  exhaust  from school buses potentially affects one-third of U.S. students... according to federal data. It’s a known  carcinogen  plus it contains harmful nitrogen oxides, volatile gases and particles that  exacerbate lung issues . It also contributes to global warming. ...A few years after her daughter started having problems, S...

https://www.science.org/content/article/even-warmer-expected-2023-was-hottest-year-record By PAUL VOOSEN , Science.  Excerpt: ...2023 was the hottest year in human history. Average surface temperatures rose nearly 0.2°C above the previous record, set in 2016, to 1.48°C over preindustrial levels, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service  reported today . ...Humanity’s unabated burning of fossil fuels is the dominant driver of the long-term trend, but it is insufficient to explain 2023’s sudden spike, says Michael Diamond, an atmospheric scientist at Florida State University. ...One exacerbating factor was the end of a La Niña climate pattern, which from 2020 to 2022 stirred up an increased amount of deep cold water in the eastern Pacific Ocean that absorbed heat and suppressed global temperatures. In 2023, the pattern flipped into an El Niño event, which blanketed the equatorial Pacific with warm waters and began to boost global temperatures. ...But the flip is no...

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/22/climate/epa-supreme-court-pollution.html By  Lisa Friedman , The New York Times.  Excerpt: When the Supreme Court restricted the ability of the Environmental Protection Agency to fight climate change this year, the reason it gave was that Congress had never granted the agency the broad authority to shift America away from burning fossil fuels. Now it has. Throughout the landmark climate law, passed this month, is language written specifically to address the Supreme Court’s justification for reining in the E.P.A., a ruling that was  one of the court’s most consequential of the term . The new law amends the Clean Air Act, the country’s bedrock air-quality legislation, to define the carbon dioxide produced by the burning of fossil fuels as an “air pollutant.” That language, according to legal experts as well as the Democrats who worked it into the legislation, explicitly gives the E.P.A. the authority to regulate greenhouse gases and to use...

https://www.science.org/content/article/paradox-cleaner-air-now-adding-global-warming By Paul Voosen, Science Magazine.  Excerpt: It’s one of the paradoxes of global warming. Burning coal or gasoline releases the greenhouse gases that drive climate change. But it also lofts pollution particles that reflect sunlight and cool the planet, offsetting a fraction of the warming. Now, however, as pollution-control technologies spread, both the noxious clouds and their silver lining are starting to dissipate. Using an array of satellite observations, researchers have found that  the climatic influence of global air pollution has dropped by up to 30% from 2000 levels . Although this is welcome news for public health—airborne fine particles, or aerosols, are believed to kill several million people per year—it is bad news for global warming. The cleaner air has effectively boosted the total warming from carbon dioxide emitted over the same time by anywhere from 15% to 50%, estimates Joha...

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/07/climate/trucks-pollution-rules-epa.html By Coral Davenport , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The Biden administration on Monday proposed strict new limits on pollution from buses, delivery vans, tractor-trailers and other heavy trucks — the first time in more than 20 years that tailpipe standards have been tightened for the biggest polluters on the road. The new draft rule from the Environmental Protection Agency would require heavy-duty trucks to reduce emissions of nitrogen dioxide by 90 percent by 2031. Nitrogen dioxide is linked to lung cancer, heart disease and premature death. The E.P.A. also announced plans to slightly tighten truck emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that is driving climate change. The new rules for nitrogen oxide pollution would apply to trucks beginning with the model year 2027, while the carbon dioxide rules would apply to trucks starting with the model year 2024.…

https://eos.org/research-spotlights/health-impacts-of-air-pollution-from-australian-megafires By  Saima Sidik , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: From October 2019 to February 2020,  fire ripped through the Australian bush  with unprecedented intensity, killing 34 people and more than 3 billion animals. In a new study,  Graham et al . seek to quantify the health impacts of an indirect form of fire damage: the damage caused by poor air quality. Like car engines, gas stoves, and cigarettes, fires create fine particles with a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometers, called PM 2.5 . High PM 2.5  concentrations can exacerbate a  wide range  of  medical conditions , from lung disease to cardiovascular disease, even leading to death. ...Around 437,000 people were exposed to air with a PM 2.5  concentration of least 25 micrograms per cubic meter of air, which is substantially more than the 15 micrograms per cubic meter of air that the  World Health Organiz...

https://eos.org/articles/air-pollution-killed-a-million-people-in-africa-in-2019 By  Andrew Mambondiyani , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Air pollution was responsible for 1.1 million deaths across Africa in 2019, with more than half of those fatalities associated with household (indoor) pollutants, according to a   study recently published  in  The Lancet Planetary Health . ...More than  350 million  African children live in households that use solid fuels, mostly wood and coal, for cooking and heating. Sanganyado, who is also president of the  Zimbabwe Young Academy of Sciences , said emissions from these solid fuels were the main causes of indoor air pollution. ...a shift away from wood and coal and toward solar and wind could help reduce the hazard. ...“While use of electrical stoves has helped to reduce indoor air pollution, the gains are now being reversed due to the  current electricity shortage  in most sub-Saharan African countries,” Sanga...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2020/06/12/india-emissions-climate/ Source:  By Joanna Slater, The Washington Post.  Excerpt: ...About 1.75 million electric rickshaws ply India’s roads — more than the total number of electric cars sold in the United States. The scrappy, slightly anarchic industry is a homegrown success story in India’s fight against climate change and debilitating air pollution. It’s a small leap forward in a much longer race. As the world confronts a changing climate, India is a crucial unknown, and its decisions could either doom efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions — or jump-start them. ... In the coming years, India will need policies that not only lower pollution and carbon emissions but also create jobs for its growing workforce. In that regard, the spread of electric rickshaws is instructive. Unlike in the United States, where the transportation sector is the largest single contributor to emissions, in India the sector accounts fo...

https://www.sciencealert.com/here-s-what-covid-19-is-doing-to-our-pollution-levels Source:   By Jacinta Bowler, Science Alert. Excerpt: The COVID-19 pandemic is getting more overwhelming by the day, with increasing lockdowns, a death toll of more than 7,000 people across the world, and a direct hit to the global economy. But if there's a sliver of good news, it's about how the spread of the new coronavirus has been decreasing air pollution, and possibly even saving lives in the process. ..."Given the huge amount of evidence that breathing dirty air contributes heavily to premature mortality, a natural - if admittedly strange - question is whether the lives saved from this reduction in pollution caused by economic disruption from COVID-19 exceeds the death toll from the virus itself," Burke writes....

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/19/climate/us-air-pollution-trump.html Source:   By Nadja Popovich, The New York Times. Excerpt: When asked about climate change, President Trump often shifts the focus to America’s “clean air.” “We have the cleanest air in the world in the United States and it’s gotten better since I’m president,” he said again this month while meeting with Prime Minister Leo Varadkar of Ireland. ...Air pollution has improved dramatically over the past four decades because of federal rules.  ...By one crucial metric, fine particulate pollution, the United States ranks 10th in air quality. New Zealand, Canada, Australia and several European countries can boast clearer skies. ...Particulate matter and other pollution have dramatically decreased over the past 40 years, in large part because of regulations put in place under the Clean Air Act of 1970 and its later updates, experts say. ...But, despite these gains, more than 110 million Americans sti...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/26/climate/trump-greenhouse-gas-emissions.html Source:   By Coral Davenport and Lisa Friedman, The New York Times. Excerpt: WASHINGTON — President Trump had a clear message Monday when asked about the core conclusion of a scientific report issued by his own administration: that climate change will batter the nation’s economy. “I don’t believe it,” he said. Mr. Trump then laid responsibility for cleaning the atmosphere on other countries like China and Japan.... the National Climate Assessment, issued on Friday, was the product of four years of work by 13 federal agencies. It concluded that “Earth’s climate is now changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization, primarily as a result of human activities,” and adds, “the severity of future impacts will depend largely on actions taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” Those impacts include more devastating wildfires, severe storms and coastal flooding, droughts, crop failu...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/27/climate/california-climate-change.html Source:   By Hiroko Tabuchi, The New York Times Excerpt: SACRAMENTO — The Trump administration may appear to control climate policy in Washington, but the nation’s most dynamic environmental regulator is here in California. Mary D. Nichols, California’s electric-car-driving, hoodie-wearing, 72-year-old air quality regulator, is pressing ahead with a far-reaching agenda of environmental and climate actions. She says she will not let the Trump administration stand in her way. ...For now, Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the E.P.A., has said that he will not seek to revoke the federal waiver that allows California to set auto emissions standards — an action that would likely propel the issue to court. Automakers, similarly, have not publicly asked for such a move. ...For much of the 20th century, swaths of Southern California were hit with smog outbreaks that turned the skies so dark that locals once misto...