Carey L. Biron

A great idea in theory, recycling is a pain in practice - a dirty job that relies on people to sift plastics from glass, sort soggy paper from rotten vegetables and root out hazardous items before they get tipped into fast-filling dumps.

Now artificial intelligence (AI) is here promising help, bringing potentially the biggest shakeup of the trash industry in decades.

As wildfires driven by climate change are spurring efforts to build homes with fire-safe materials, the dangers of the use of plastic in construction needs more recognition, experts say.

Plastic in both the exteriors and interiors of homes burns far hotter than do traditional building materials such as wood or other natural products.

Born and raised in New York City's Red Hook neighbourhood, Maddy Jenkins says she cannot remember seeing the volume of trucks now plying the streets.

"Since the pandemic, everyone started ordering more," she said, referring to the boom in online shopping. "That's when we started to see more trucks come in, and when these warehouses started to go up."

The busy intersection in Northwest Washington used to be Gloria Gomez's safe place, providing the street vendor with customers, visibility and a location to sell her sliced fruits, juices and prepared snacks.

But with the stepped-up immigration enforcement under the administration of President Donald Trump, which includes federal agents patrolling the streets of cities like Washington, Gomez said she and other vendors feel in danger.

With a snappy title and a laudable goal, "30 by 30" was a landmark plan hatched to help save at least 30% of the planet's land and oceans by 2030.    

Alongside this multinational push, the United States had its own trailblazing version of 30x30 and Americans came to see conservation as an effective - and fairly straightforward - way of helping win wider climate pledges.

U.S. President Donald Trump's second term in office has seen unprecedented rollbacks of federal funding for and focus on climate change, but critics say a new proposed change could now be the most sweeping yet.

The administration is seeking to rescind a 2009 regulatory ruling known as the endangerment finding, the government's view that climate change is a danger to human health and wellbeing.

When Rebecca Lindsey received a layoff notice from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in February, it felt like an attack on the federal government's online science portal that she had helped run for a decade and a half.

The site, called Climate.gov, was a vast repository of research about climate change.

As President Donald Trump slows the federal government's support for clean energy, U.S. cities are pushing back with a few moves of their own.

Many cities are still boosting building efficiency, electrifying vehicles and neighbourhoods, training workers for new energy jobs and designing for the future, mayors say.

Kirk Watson leads a city in Texas, but these days he feels like he's stepping into a role vacated by Washington officials.

Weeks out from November's global U.N. COP30 climate talks in Belém, Brazil, Watson and other U.S. mayors say they want to use the summit to reaffirm their growing climate work – and to seek ideas and support.

U.S. President Donald Trump's administration has significantly ramped up efforts to halt the federal focus on climate change, with Trump himself dismissing climate change as a "con job" to the United Nations General Assembly last month.

Yet local governments have significant powers to reduce global-warming emissions, regardless of what happens in Washington.