California bans single-use plastic bags. It is the first state to do so. 

California regulates groundwater. It is the last Western state to do so. 

Homeowner associations in California can no longer penalize members for not watering their lawns or for replacing them with drought-resistant plants. 

Earth's water is older than the sun. 

Four lakes provide water to the 20 million inhabitants of Sao Paulo, Brazil. They are 96 percent drained.

August 2014 is the hottest August on record. September is the hottest September. 

Statoil, Norway's national energy company, shelves its plans for a multibillion-dollar investment in Canada's tar sands.

President Barack Obama designates 350,000 acres of Southern California's San Gabriel Mountains as a new national monument. 

The world's first commercial-scale coal-fired power plant equipped with carbon capture-and-storage technology opens in Saskatchewan, Canada. The captured CO2 is pumped underground into a nearby oilfield to increase production. 

The M.V. Nunavik is the first cargo ship to sail the Northwest Passage without assistance from icebreakers. 

Canada discovers the wreck of Erebus, one of two ships in Sir John Franklin's ill-fated 1845 expedition in search of the Northwest Passage.

A cruise ship company is offering a 32-day, 7,273-mile luxury cruise from Seward, Alaska, to New York City, passing through the Northwest Passage. Prices start at $20,000.

With no sea ice to rest on, 35,000 walruses crowd a beach near Point Lay, Alaska. 

Melting ice in West Antarctica is so extensive that it has caused a dip in the region's gravitational field. 

The trial of climate activists who used a lobster boat to block a load of coal bound for the Brayton Point Power Station in Massachusetts ends when the district attorney drops the charges and says he agrees with the protesters. 

Earth's population is likely to reach 11 billion by 2100, 2 billion more than previously thought, according to a study by the University of Washington and the United Nations. 

Wildlife populations around the world have declined by half in the last 40 years, says the London Zoological Association.

Sea level rise in the last century is unmatched in the last 6,000 years. 

A 2,500-square-mile cloud of methane gas is discovered floating over the Four Corners region of the Southwest.

A German man crashes a drone into Lake Yellowstone and is banned from the park. A Dutch man crashes a drone into Yellowstone's Grand Prismatic Spring and is fined more than $3,000. 

More than 400,000 people in New York City join in the People's Climate March, the largest such demonstration ever.