Carey L. Biron

Surrounded by warm lights and deep-green crops growing in stacked, rotating carousels reaching towards the ceiling, Oren Falkowitz sets out a vision of the future of urban farming.

It is one of localized food production, using vacant buildings – strip malls, industrial buildings, even gas stations – to grow food near people instead of shipping it from afar.

When Kawika Riley surveys the beaches and forested hills of the Hawaiian islands, his eyes are drawn to a dangerous interloper: flammable invasive grasses.

Two years ago, such grasses fed devastating wildfires that tore through the island of Maui, killing more than 100 people and causing $5.5 billion in damage.

President Donald Trump has yet to announce a homelessness policy, but comments he made during the election about forcibly removing the homeless and relocating them to "tent cities" have advocates worried, especially amid reports of key funding cuts.

Trump's new administration takes over following a landmark Supreme Court ruling in June that made it easier for local officials to crack down on homelessness, even while dozens of cities have since moved in the opposite direction and sought to create new protections for the homeless.

The United States has suffered a record run of hurricanes, wildfires and storms this past year, including the recent Texas floods, shining a renewed spotlight on the federal department that is tasked with handling ever more natural disasters.

President Donald Trump issued an executive order dated Jan. 24 calling for a review of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which is challenged by disasters that strike more frequently and powerfully in a fast-changing climate.

After six decades, the coal-fired JH Campbell power plant on the shores of Lake Michigan was set to close in May, after years of moving workers into other jobs and letting local communities decide what to do with the land.

Then came an order from President Donald Trump's administration to keep the plant running, citing an energy emergency in the region brought about, in part, by the retirement of coal and gas power plants.

Fear for her father's health led Jazmin Moreno-Dominguez to Washington this month to push for a first-ever heat standard for U.S. workers.

Her father suffered a heat-induced stroke a decade ago, but he still needs his construction job in blistering Phoenix, Arizona temperatures, she said at the start of three weeks of public hearings.

The fast-rising energy demands of Big Tech are undermining the ambitious climate pledges that Apple, Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft have all made in recent years, according to a report from the nonprofit NewClimate Institute.

The research says the tech sector faces a "climate strategy crisis" as its data centres demand ever more electricity and water to power growing fields, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing.

A U.S. Supreme Court decision upending a foundational environmental law is already affecting pending cases and will make it harder to require that federal agencies take into account climate impacts in regulated projects, attorneys say.

At issue is the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which became law in 1970 and has since shaped how regulatory decisions get made for major or sensitive projects.

An effort by the administration of President Donald Trump to use public lands to address the affordable housing crisis is underway across the country, sparking reactions both pro and con.

The initiative coincides with debate in the U.S. Congress over selling public lands more broadly, with a Senate panel last week proposing the sale of millions of acres of federal land, including for housing.

President Donald Trump is seeking to end a decades-old energy assistance program used by six million people, amid the second-warmest global temperatures on record and U.S. electricity prices that are expected to rise more than ever in coming months.

Experts warn the confluence, worsened by climate change that makes summer heat more intense and longer-lasting, could mean a deadly season for poor communities.