The Environment

The decision to move Iran’s capital is partly driven by climate change, but experts say decades of human error and action are also to blame

Hurricane Melissa raged as a Category 5 storm in the Caribbean last month—and now scientists have confirmed that its strongest gusts neared record speeds

Criminals around the world are increasingly mixing trade in illegal animal parts with trafficking of arms, humans, and more—even exchanging wildlife for drugs

A tiny, misplaced label may have slowly loosened a critical wire on the ship that hit Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, eventually causing a catastrophic failure

These valuable but difficult-to-extract metals are increasingly important to modern life

To keep profits rolling in, oil and gas companies want to turn fossil fuels into a mounting pile of packaging and other plastic products

Designing nuclear-waste repositories is part engineering, part anthropology—and part mythmaking

A ridiculous but instructive thought experiment involving deep time, plate tectonics, erosion and the slow death of the sun

Thousands of years ago, a space rock hit what is now China, leaving a bowl-shaped crater some 900 meters wide

Oceanographers hope to find otherworldly ecosystems at hydrothermal vents on the Arctic seafloor

Ten years after the Paris climate agreement, the limited progress we’ve made in reducing global warming means that there will be less extreme heat in the future than there would be without the accord

The International Energy Agency says weak climate action and energy security fears are effectively delaying peak fossil fuel consumption