New York City’s ban on single-use plastic bags goes into effect.

Aerial infrared technology used by oil and gas companies to identify dens where polar bears are hibernating with their cubs works less than half the time.

Wells Fargo joins JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and more than a dozen other financial institutions in ruling out funding for oil and gas projects in the Arctic.

As the novel coronavirus spreads worldwide and economies slow, demand for oil drops by 3.8 million barrels per day, the largest drop ever.

Citing coronavirus risk, Starbucks will no longer fill personal or “for here” cups and only serve drinks in disposables.

The world’s major ocean currents are migrating northward by half a mile a year.

Warmer temperatures, drought, and deforestation are reducing the ability of tropical forests to absorb atmospheric carbon.

The amount of climate coverage on the news shows the major US networks increased coverage by 68 percent in 2019 over 2018—but still amounted to only four hours for the entire year. 

Moscow has its warmest winter on record, the first in nearly 200 years to have an average temperature above freezing.

An Interior Department official has inserted climate-denial talking points into at least nine scientific reports.  

President Trump, after proposing steep cuts to the Land and Water Conservation Fund in his budget, reverses course to support full funding. A bill with strong bipartisan support to provide permanent funding for the LWCF is expected to move in Congress next week. 

The US Bureau of Reclamation awards a permanent water contract to California’s enormous Westlands Water District, for whom David Bernhardt served as a lobbyist before being named Interior Secretary. Exports of water to Westlands from the Sacramento, San Joaquin, and Trinity Rivers have led to major declines in numbers of salmon and other fish.

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility complains to the US Office of Special Counsel that efforts by the Trump administration to find and remove federal employees it deems insufficiently loyal to the president violate the Hatch Act’s protections for civil service employees. 

Trump’s Interior Department is opposing bills that would encourage national parks to provide free tap water to visitors instead of selling it in plastic bottles.            

Climate-champion billionaires Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg drop out of the Democratic presidential primary. Non-billionaire climate champion Elizabeth Warren drops out as well.