WASHINGTON (AP) — A panel of U.S. health advisers on Tuesday narrowly backed a closely watched COVID-19 pill from Merck, setting the stage for a likely authorization of the first drug that Americans could take at home to treat the coronavirus. A Food and Drug Administration (FDA) panel voted 13-10 that the drug’s benefits outweigh its risks, including potential birth defects if used...

(LOS ANGELES) — NASA launched a spacecraft Tuesday night on a mission to smash into an asteroid and test whether it would be possible to knock a speeding space rock off course if one were to threaten Earth. The DART spacecraft, short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test, lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in a $330 million project with echoes of the...

As you tuck into your Thanksgiving dinner, the kick-off event (at least for Americans) of the holiday season, spare a thought for the planet’s carbon waistline. Food production is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for more than a third of emissions worldwide — and a new study has given fresh insight into how small changes in the diet can have a big impact on...

One of my favorite bar signs is the one that promises “Free beer tomorrow.” That’s how I’ve always thought of nuclear fusion—a (theoretically) cheap, pollution-free and inexhaustible energy source, the promise of which has pretty much been a decade away ever since the technology was first tested 70 years ago. When “nuclear energy” is discussed,...

The Russian missile test that shattered a dead satellite this week highlights a growing threat of space debris just as companies such as SpaceX and Boeing Co. make plans to launch as many as 65,000 commercial spacecraft into orbit in coming years. The anti-satellite weapon smashed a Russian orbiter into at least 1,500 pieces, forming a belt of debris hurtling around the Earth at speeds up to...

Getting calories out of grass is not easy. That’s why cows and other ruminants, like goats and sheep, have multiple compartments in their stomachs to help them digest their food. One of those stomachs is populated by microbes that help break down plant matter into a more digestible form. The process, called enteric fermentation, also produces methane, a potent greenhouse gas that is 80...

(PACIFIC GROVE, Calif.) — There is a ray of hope for the vanishing orange-and-black Western monarch butterflies. The number wintering along California’s central coast is bouncing back after the population, whose presence is often a good indicator of ecosystem health, reached an all-time low last year. Experts pin their decline on climate change, habitat destruction and lack of food...

The overarching narrative emerging from COP26 is complicated. The deal that emerged—the Glasgow Climate Pact—wasn’t universally celebrated, nor was it universally condemned. It won’t save the world, but it does move the needle. “We made real and vital progress,” Tina Stege, climate envoy for the Marshall Islands, told me just after countries agreed to the deal...

On a conference-room whiteboard in the heart of Silicon Valley, Jacob DeWitte sketches his startup’s first product. In red marker, it looks like a beer can in a Koozie, stuck with a crazy straw. In real life, it will be about the size of a hot tub, and made from an array of exotic materials,…

As companies scramble to declare their commitments to a net-zero future, greenwashing strategies will likely become more commonplace

Speaking in Glasgow last week, Danish climate minister Dan Jorgensen emphasized that the international oil and natural gas phase-out agreement he shepherded wasn’t mere talk. “When I talk to scientists, citizens and activists, they all want one thing more than anything else: bold and tangible action,” Jorgensen said. “That is what the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance is here...

Assembly line workers at the Thomas Built school bus factory in High Point, North Carolina are over the moon about the new infrastructure bill—specifically Title XI, Section 71101. Buried deep in the 2,702-page document approved by the House last week, that line item allocates federal funds to help localities purchase brand-new battery-powered school buses. That’s good news for...

Bloomberg — Responding to another Twitter user, Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk says the list of people who have walked on the Moon will soon “grow much longer as humanity reaches new heights.” Soon, that list will grow much longer as humanity reaches new heights! — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 14, 2021 The original post lists all astronauts that have reached and walked on...

Six years ago, when the hammer was gaveled and the Paris Agreement agreed upon, the negotiators gathered at the massive conference complex on the outskirts of Paris erupted in applause and left the city with a sense of optimism. Celebration ensued in bars across the city for the thousands who had traveled to Paris to push for a deal. The mood at the conclusion of COP26 in Glasgow was notably...

In the weeks leading up to COP26, the U.N. climate conference now in its final hours in Glasgow, youth climate activists consistently expressed dismay at the lack of progress decarbonizing the global economy. Negotiators from countries around the world seemed poised to rebuff the youth demands for a dramatic intervention to avert the worst of climate change, and, in doing so, condemn them to...

Climate change is the defining issue of our era. World leaders have come together to align on global goals, companies are judged by their environmental impact, and millions of ordinary people have marched in the streets. Yet, progress remains slow and major questions outstanding. Will government commitments and investments materialize? Will markets adapt and technologies emerge rapidly enough?...

It’s easy to be brand loyal to the moon. We’ve only got the one, after all, unlike Jupiter and Saturn, where you’d have dozens to choose from. Here, it’s luna or nada. Or not. The fact is, there’s another sorta, kinda moon in a sorta, kinda orbit around Earth that was discovered only in 2016. And according to a new study in Nature, we may at last know how it was...

At COP26 this year, the climate advocacy organization Arctic Basecamp had a four-ton piece of glacier shipped from Greenland to Glasgow in what was supposed to be a visual reminder of what Arctic warming means for the planet. The effort largely fell flat for delegates—most of whom understand by now that climate change is a threat. But the iceberg stunt did, however inadvertently, draw...

(GLASGOW, Scotland) — United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7°F) is “on life support” as U.N. climate talks enter their final days, but he added that “until the last moment, hope should be maintained.” In an exclusive interview Thursday with The Associated Press, Guterres said the...

China and the United States have pledged to increase cooperation on climate action at U.N. talks in Glasgow, China’s climate envoy said Wednesday. As the talks approached a Friday deadline, Xie Zhenhua told reporters that the two biggest carbon polluters would outline their efforts in a joint statement based on the guidelines of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. The agreement...

GLASGOW, Scotland (AP) — Governments are poised to express “alarm and concern” about how much Earth has already warmed and encourage one another to end their use of coal, according to a draft released Wednesday of the final document expected at U.N. climate talks. The early version of the document circulating at the negotiations in Glasgow, Scotland, also impresses on countries...

When Juan Carlos Monterrey Gómez went to his first round of U.N. climate negotiations as part of Panama’s delegation in 2015, his colleagues told him not to talk about his age, in case it made other countries’ representatives take him less seriously. At the time, he was just 22. Now, aged 29 and the lead negotiator for Panama at COP26 in Glasgow, he won’t shut up about...

(CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.) — NASA on Tuesday delayed putting astronauts back on the moon until 2025 at the earliest, missing the deadline set by the Trump administration. The space agency had been aiming for 2024 for the first moon landing by astronauts in a half-century. In announcing the delay, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said Congress did not provide enough money to develop a landing...

At the COP26 conference this year, there’s a lot of grumbling among activists that official venues are serving meat, even if it’s locally-sourced meat. Animal agriculture has an outsized impact on global warming—up to 14.5% of annual global CO2 emissions, depending on which metrics you include. But here in Glasgow, a serving of meat also comes with a lesson in carbon footprint...