TC Energy cancels the Keystone XL Pipeline.

President Biden suspends oil drilling leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that were granted in the last days of the Trump administration and reverses Trump’s efforts to weaken the Endangered Species Act. 

Atmospheric carbon dioxide measured at NOAA’s Mauna Loa observatory hits 419 parts per million, a new record. 

The 2020 Castle Fire in California’s Southern Sierra killed up to 14 percent of all the giant sequoias in the world.

Drought drives Lake Mead to its lowest level since it was filled in the 1930s. 

At a meeting of the House Natural Resources Committee, Representative Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) asks whether the Forest Service or BLM might alter the orbit of the moon in order to fight climate change.

El Salvador is looking into bitcoin mining powered by the nation’s volcanoes. 

First Solar will open a third solar-panel manufacturing plant near Toledo, Ohio, doubling production capacity and employing 500 people.  

Bill and Melinda Gates are the nation’s largest owners of farmland.

The peace accord that ended 60 years of civil war in Colombia has led to a 40 percent increase in the conversion of rainforest to agricultural land. 

After New York shut down the Indian Point nuclear power plant, its electricity has been replaced entirely by fossil fuels. 

Four cooling towers at the Rugeley nuclear power station in Staffordshire, England, are brought down in a dramatic controlled explosion (video). 

The first gray wolf pups in 80 years are spotted in Colorado.

Sonoran Desert toads are being poached for their hallucinogenic secretions.

The number of red knots visiting Delaware Bay hits a new low, signaling that the shorebird may be headed toward extinction.  

Endangered North American right whales have shrunk by three feet over the past 20 years. 

Singing humpback whales are recorded for the first time in the New York Bight. 

A judge rejects a Florida man’s attempt to use the state’s “stand your ground” law to justify his beating to death of a three-foot iguana that he claims attacked him. He is charged with animal cruelty.

The Supreme Court will rule on whether chocolate-making corporations Nestlé and Cargill can be held responsible for child labor practices in West Africa tantamount to slavery. Ghana threatens to stop selling raw cocoa to Switzerland in favor of manufacturing chocolate domestically. 

The US Fish and Wildlife Service will consider listing Tiehm's buckwheat flower as an endangered species, which could nix a proposed mine for lithium (a key component of electric car batteries) in Nevada.  

The methane gas industry is behind a nationwide push to forbid cities from banning new gas hookups, as more than 40 California cities have done. Eighteen states have passed such legislation, dubbed “energy choice.” 

China will now allow families to have three children. 

A multicellular organism called a rotifer that was frozen in Siberian permafrost for 24,000 years is brought back to life. 

An intact, 1,000-year-old chicken egg is discovered at Yavne, Israel. “Even today, eggs rarely survive for long in supermarket cartons,” said the excavation director.