Sex was invented in Scotland. 

President Xi Jinping announces that China will stop funding coal-fired power plants overseas.  

An army of more than 1,400 firefighters saves Sequoia National Park’s famed Giant Forest from the flames of the KNP fire.

In response to the state’s drought, Californians have reduced water consumption by only 1.8 percent—far short of the 15 percent sought by Governor Gavin Newsom. 

For the first time, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration will draft regulations aimed at protecting workers from extreme heat.

The EPA establishes a program to cut the use of hydrofluorocarbons, a class of powerful greenhouse gases used in refrigeration, by 85 percent over the next 15 years.

Purdue University engineers develop a white paint that is so white that it can be used to reduce the need for air conditioning. (The record for the blackest black was set in 2019.)

After distributing many billions of disposable plastic toys, McDonald’s says it is “drastically reducing” the use of plastics in its Happy Meal toys.  

Since 1950, the world’s tropical coral reefs have declined by half.

Due to a somewhat cooler summer, Arctic sea ice reaches its minimum extent, the 12th-lowest on record. 

New York will build two long-distance transmission lines to carry clean energy— hydropower from Quebec and wind and solar from upstate—to New York City. 

The headquarters of the Bureau of Land Management, which was moved to Grand Junction, Colorado, during the Trump administration, will return to Washington, DC.

The Colorado Geographic Naming Advisory Board votes unanimously to change the name of Squaw Mountain to Mestaa'ėhehe (mess-ta-HAY), to honor the early-19th-century Cheyenne leader also known as Owl Woman. 

In South Africa, bees kill 63 endangered African penguins.

Officials in the Indian state of Assam burn 2,500 rhino horns on September 22, World Rhino Day.

The world’s first battery-electric freight train debuts in Pittsburgh. 

Executives from ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, and Royal Dutch Shell are being called to testify before the House Oversight Committee regarding their role in spreading disinformation about climate change.  

COVID has now killed 675,000 Americans—as many as died in the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918–19. In 2020, for the first time in recorded history, Alabama recorded more deaths than births.  

The 2022 Iditarod will require COVID vaccination of all mushers, staff, contractors, volunteers, pilots, and veterinarians. 

In White Sands National Park in New Mexico, children’s footprints are discovered that are 21,000 to 23,000 years old—the earliest unequivocal evidence of human presence in the Americas.