Rangers at Saguaro National Park in Arizona are inserting microchips into saguaro cacti in order to catch thieves. 

Atmospheric levels of CO2 reach a record level of more than 410 parts per million.

Climate change could reduce U.S. economic growth by one-third over the next century, says the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.

Florida’s mangroves are moving inland. Bull sharks and bottlenose dolphin are moving north.

South African entrepreneurs want to use larger tankers to guide icebergs from Antarctica to thirsty Cape Town. They believe that a single iceberg could provide 30 percent of the city’s drinking water for a year.

The Environmental Protection Agency grants a financial hardship waiver to an oil refinery owned by billionaire investor and Trump advisor Carl Icahn. 

Trump’s EPA is even more pro-business than it was under the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. 

The new head of the EPA’s western Region 9 office is Michael Stoker, an agricultural-industry attorney best known for coining the Republicans’ “lock her up” chant about Hillary Clinton.  

EPA administrator Scott Pruitt’s trip to Morocco in December 2017 was arranged by his longtime friend Richard Smotkin, a lobbyist who subsequently won a $40,000-a-month contract to promote the kingdom’s economic interests. 

Pruitt faces more than 10 ethics investigations. Three top aides resign this week.   

In an attempt to “take the heat off” Pruitt, a member of his press team tries to plant damaging stories about Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.  

Nigerian men who work with e-waste have significantly lower levels of three key fertility hormones.  

India added more production capacity from renewable energy than from coal in 2017. 

A November 2017 earthquake in South Korea, registering 5.5 on the Richter scale, is linked to geothermal energy development. 

U.S. wind and solar energy companies are donating far more money to Republican congressional candidates than to Democrats in the current electoral cycle.

Hawaii’s legislature votes to ban sunscreens that contain chemicals that can damage coral reefs, and to phase out the pesticide chlorpyrifos by 2023. 

Solo drivers of zero-emission vehicles in Los Angeles can no longer legally use carpool lanes on the 10 and 110 freeways. 

Hit-and-run deaths in the United States hit a record high. Sixty-five percent of those killed are pedestrians or cyclists.

New York City plans to have an all-electric bus fleet by 2040.  

The world’s oldest-known spider, an Australian trapdoor spider known as Spider 16, dies at the age of 43.  

The U.S. Forest Service apologizes for damaging the Appalachian Trail with ATVs in the course of monitoring protesters against the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a proposed natural gas pipeline that would run beneath the trail. 

Yellowstone National Park’s Steamboat Geyser is erupting with unusual frequency. 

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rules that a crested macaque monkey named Naruto cannot own the copyright to a selfie that he took.