Water & Oceans

"In a bid to boost the whale watching economy, a new law bars Greenlanders from taking humpback whales near the capital."

"A federal judge ordered an immediate halt on Thursday to plans to dredge a shipping channel on the Georgia coast, citing a threat to sea turtles nesting on nearby beaches."

"Negotiations between the White House and Senate Republicans over President Joe Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan are hitting a crucial stage ahead of talks Friday after the latest GOP offer left some dismay in the administration that there wasn’t more movement off the Republicans’ initial $568 billion proposal."

"Just months after the conclusion of the busiest Atlantic hurricane season on record, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has released its 2021 outlook, calling for another active season. The agency is the latest of several forecasting groups watching the upcoming hurricane season’s potential to overperform for the sixth year in a row."

"Storms, floods, wildfires — and to a lesser degree, conflict — uprooted 40.5 million people around the world in 2020. It was the largest number in more than a decade, according to figures published Thursday by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, a nonprofit group based in Geneva that tracks displacement data annually."

"Roughly a sixth of the planet’s land and freshwater area now lies within protected or conservation areas, according to a United Nations report released Wednesday."

"Over the last 25 years, the toxicity of 381 pesticides in the U.S. more than doubled for pollinators and aquatic invertebrates such as crustaceans, mayflies, and dragonflies, according to a new study."

"A state appeals court has upheld California’s cleanup standards for a cancer-causing chemical that was added to pesticides and has polluted groundwater in the Central Valley, rejecting challenges by manufacturers that may have to pay the costs."

"A significant part of the Greenland ice sheet is on the brink of a tipping point, after which accelerated melting would become inevitable even if global heating was halted, according to new research."

"In an expansion of the U.N.’s 1989 Basel Convention, amendments to the international protocol on the shipment of hazardous waste were revised to include plastics in 2021, with nations currently figuring out how to implement the agreement."