North America

Written by: Kimberly White  Canada is taking a step forward in the battle against plastic pollution. The Canadian government will ban the manufacturing, import, and sale of harmful single-use plastics, with some regulations coming into effect later this year.  Canadian Prime...

Written by: Audrey Henderson Normal, Illinois, aspired to be part of the electric vehicle revolution long before Rivian came to town.  In 2011, Normal dubbed itself “EVTown” in a marketing effort to make the city an early destination for Mitsubishi’s all-electric i-MiEV subcompact....

Written by: Kimberly White  The U.S. Administration has nixed three oil and gas lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Alaska. The three sales would have opened up more than a million acres of ocean...

Written by: The Energy Mix A heavy industry town in British Columbia with an ingrained suspicion of government has decided to say yes to a 100 percent renewable energy transition by 2050, after a local climate group spent time meeting...

Written by: Kimberly White This story was originally published on May 11, 2019 and has been updated and republished in honor of Wildfire Awareness Month. The Smokey Bear wildfire prevention campaign was launched in 1944 and is the longest-running public service...

Written by: Kimberly White Hawaii has become the first U.S. state to ban shark fishing.  Hawaiian Governor David Ige signed the shark protection bill into law on June 8th, one of nine bills the governor signed on World Oceans Day in...

Written by: Laurel Sutherland  For Indigenous tribes living in Alaska’s remote Yukon-Kuskokwim region, southwest of the state, the future is bleak and uncertain. Tribal councils worry that plans to construct a 6,474-hectare (15,990 acres) open-pit gold mine near the Kuskokwim River watershed...

Written by: YCC Team Along the Georgia-Florida border, the vast Okefenokee Swamp is home to alligators, tortoises, otters, and hundreds of fish and bird species. “There’s rare species there that depend upon that system,” says Rena Ann Peck of the Georgia River...

Written by: Maia Wikler It’s nearly 2 in the morning and the sun is just beginning to set as Ben Stevens navigates the braided channels of the Yukon River toward his fish camp. Stevens is a traditional fisherman — Dinyee...

Written by: Elizabeth Claire Alberts Plastics will outpace coal plants in the U.S. by 2030 in terms of their contributions to climate change, according to a new report released Oct. 21 by Beyond Plastics, a project at Bennington College in Vermont....