Drought is drying up the world’s waterways and revealing long-buried objects: the victims of Mafia hits in Lake Mead, a Nazi warship in the Danube, a “hunger stone” on the Elbe River (“If you see me, then weep”), and ancient Buddhist statues on the Yangtze. 

China’s heat wave may be the most severe ever recorded anywhere in the world.

Five 1,000-year floods strike the US in five weeks. 

Louisiana withholds flood-control funds from New Orleans because city officials oppose the state’s abortion ban, which has no exceptions for rape or incest. 

California bans the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035. 

France offers a subsidy of €4,000 if you trade your car for an e-bike, and €300 toward an e-bike even if you keep the car. 

The last private oil company leasing land in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for possible drilling abandons its lease.  

A little-noticed provision of the Inflation Reduction Act explicitly recognizes carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act, restoring the EPA’s ability to regulate the burning of fossil fuels that was taken away earlier this year by the Supreme Court.

For the first half of 2022, US carbon emissions rose by 2.5 percent.

The wolf population in Isle Royale National Park, a few years ago down to two individuals, surges to 28. 

Following right-wing anger at the FBI search of Donald Trump’s Florida compound, the EPA warns employees of the rising danger of anti-government violence. 

The Oregon Geographic Names Board decides it’s time to rename Swastika Mountain. 

During Jair Bolsonaro’s administration in Brazil, land invasions and illegal mining in protected Indigenous areas have increased by 180 percent. Bolsonaro has, without evidence, attacked the legitimacy of Brazil’s electronic voting machines leading up to the October 2 election, threatening to “go to war” if he doesn’t win. Vermont senator Bernie Sanders introduces a resolution calling on the United States not to recognize any Brazilian government that assumes power through undemocratic means. 

Polio makes a comeback in New York City and around the world.  

Chemists find an easy method to destroy PFAS, a class of dangerous and otherwise extremely persistent chemicals. 

Virtual fences can restrain cattle and other grazing animals while allowing wildlife to wander freely. 

The East Coast is overrun by the spotted lanternfly. California is infested with the Turkestan cockroach.

As many as 100 US tree species are at risk of extinction, primarily because of invasive insects. 

Herschel Walker, the GOP Senate nominee in Georgia, criticizes the climate spending in the Inflation Reduction Act: “A lot of money—it’s going to trees. Don’t we have enough trees around here?” 

Jared Kushner’s book reveals what then-president Donald Trump thought of his administration’s Trillion Trees Initiative: “more liberal shit.”