Worldwide demand for air conditioners, refrigerators, and other cooling devices is expected to nearly double by the middle of the century.

An undersea heat wave in 2016 killed 30 percent of the corals in the Great Barrier Reef. 

Despite the solar tariffs imposed by the Trump administration, the global solar photovoltaic industry is expected to grow by 6 percent this year, largely because of rapid expansion in Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa. 

In an apparent effort to get around Trump’s solar tariffs, SunPower Corporation—which manufactures solar panels in Malaysia, Mexico, and the Philippines—is purchasing Oregon-based solar manufacturer SolarWorld Americas. 

The longitudinal climate boundary dividing the humid East from the arid West in the United States—famously identified by explorer John Wesley Powell as running along the 100th meridian—is shifting east due to climate change. It is now closer to the 98th meridian. 

Britain bans the sale of plastic straws. 

Seven months after Hurricane Maria, an excavator knocks down a transmission line, causing the entire island of Puerto Rico to lose power.  

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s zeal for opening up public lands to oil and gas drilling does not extend to his home state of Montana. 

After the second outbreak of E. coli contamination in bagged, chopped lettuce since January, the Centers for Disease Control advises shoppers to avoid romaine lettuce entirely. 

The Government Accountability Office rules that EPA administrator Scott Pruitt’s $43,000 soundproof phone booth violated federal spending caps. 

The chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission says that the United States’ energy infrastructure is under “constant” cyber-attack.  

Frog and amphibian extinction around the world may be linked to the spread of the American bullfrog. 

Don Blankenship, the former CEO of Massey Energy, is running for Senate in West Virginia. Blankenship spent a year in jail on charges related to the Upper Big Branch coal mine disaster, which killed 29 miners in 2010, but is now seeking to have his conviction vacated.  

Orcas are taking advantage of increasingly ice-free Arctic waters to prey on narwhals. Seeking to avoid the orcas, narwhals are swimming closer to shore, where they are easy prey for Inuit hunters.