Posts tagged with 'air pollution'
West Oakland, a neighborhood of less than 30,000 people on the northwestern tip of Oakland, California, is encircled by three major highways. In the latter half of the 20th century, construction of a postal service distribution center, a Bay Area ...
Data centers are poised to consume land, water and power across the United States at an unprecedented rate. Driven by artificial intelligence, cloud computing and supportive government policies, U.S. data centers’ power capacity could reach 194 gigawatts (GW) by 2035, ...
As the federal government advances rollbacks of more than 100 environmental and climate policies and resources, it is redefining the U.S. government’s role in protecting communities disproportionately impacted by pollution — and diminishing opportunities for communities to make decisions that impact their ...
On a fair-weather day, one can often gauge the livability of a dense city neighborhood by a simple test: are children active outside? The new Guide to creating urban public SPACES for children takes that test seriously by turning it ...
Every day, millions of children ride to school in diesel buses that expose them to pollution linked to serious health issues. Replacing those buses with electric models has benefits that go far beyond a quieter ride and cleaner air. Electric ...
Air pollution is one of the most serious environmental threats to human health worldwide. In 2021, it caused 8.1 million deaths, an increase from 7 million recorded in previous studies. In Africa, Asia and Latin America, the infant mortality rate from ...
On a hot day in February 2024, volunteers dispersed across Cape Town, South Africa, with sensors affixed to their cars. Their aim was to measure heat differences across the city. In Cape Town’s dense, highly developed center, they recorded air temperatures ...
AI tools like ChatGPT, navigation apps and streaming platforms feel effortless, drawing information seemingly from thin air. Yet the infrastructure behind them is anything but invisible. Across the country, a surge of new data centers is reshaping local energy grids, ...
As we enter a new year, people around the world are grappling with rising costs for housing, energy and food. Most worry about the state of the economy. Job prospects feel uncertain in the face of widespread AI, automation and other disruptions. These concerns ...
Now is the time of year when everyone thinks about what they’d like to change about themselves. Despite the museum of abandoned aspirations behind us — the language-learning app that now just judges us in three different languages, the journal ...
Electric vehicle (EV) sales have been growing exponentially due to falling costs, improving technology and government support. Globally, 22% of passenger vehicles sold in 2024 were electric. That’s 8 times higher than it was just five years earlier. But which countries are ...
Ten years ago, we witnessed something akin to a miracle. Hundreds of leaders came together for the UN’s annual climate summit (COP21) in Paris. There, they forged what many thought impossible: a global agreement to curb climate change — one where virtually ...
Cities and states have aimed higher and moved faster on climate action than national governments. The reason is simple: To local leaders, climate problems and solutions matter because their constituencies are directly impacted by them. Extreme heat, flooding and air ...
Which neighborhoods are suffering the most from rising urban heat? Where is flooding the biggest challenge? What other cities around the world are struggling with air pollution, and what can we learn from those that have improved the quality of ...
Nestled in the Andes, Bogotá’s mountainous landscape traps air pollutants, sometimes cloaking the Colombian capital in a dusty smog. The consequences have been severe. The city’s poor air quality resulted in an estimated 2,300 excess deaths in 2019. In 2023, ...
