Keepers at a British zoo have to separate a group of African gray parrots who were encouraging one another to swear at visitors. 

President-Elect Joe Biden appoints former senator and climate advocate John Kerry to be special presidential envoy for climate, a new position on the National Security Council.

Expediting the lease sale, the Trump administration will auction oil and gas drilling rights in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on January 6, 2021, just two weeks before Biden’s inauguration.

Bank of America joins every other major US bank in refusing to finance fossil fuel exploration in the Arctic Refuge.

Norway offers a record 136 new drilling blocks for oil in the North Sea, half of which would be the most northerly in the world. 

General Motors drops its previous support of Donald Trump’s campaign against California’s strict automobile fuel-efficiency standards. 

US deaths from COVID-19 top 275,000. On December 2 alone, over 3,000 people die, more than perished in the September 11 attacks.

The “Sistine Chapel” of prehistoric rock art is discovered in Colombia. At a Californian rock art site, depictions of hallucinogenic plants and the chewed remains of those plants provide clear evidence for a hallucinogenic tradition there.

For the third year in a row, Coca-Cola tops the list of plastic waste producers. It is responsible for as much waste as the next two (Pepsi and Nestlé) combined.

The enormous Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, key to the search for alien civilizations and killer asteroids, collapses. (Dramatic drone footage here.)

The mysterious metal monolith discovered by a helicopter crew in the Utah desert abruptly disappears, toppled by a group who carts it off saying “leave no trace."

A generation after gill nets were banned in Northern California waters, the state sees a dramatic increase in numbers of harbor porpoises.

Steelhead trout in California are getting mercury poisoning from eating roly-polies that fall into streams.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service proposes the whitebark pine for threatened species status. Its seeds are a crucial food for grizzly bears, but it is under pressure from climate change and introduced diseases. 

The Fish and Wildlife Service also seeks to modify the century-old Migratory Bird Treaty Act, to make it legal for corporations to kill protected birds in the course of their operations so long as the killing is not intentional.

Average winter temperatures in the Northeast have warmed up to 4.8°F since 1970.

Keyhole wasps in Australia are endangering aircraft by building their nests in crucial airspeed indicators.