EcoWatch

By Olivia Rosane and Cristen Hemingway Jaynes Quick Key Facts Methane is the second most important greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide and is responsible for around one-third of current global heating.  Atmospheric methane concentrations have increased by 256 percent since pre-industrial times.  Methane is a more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide but lasts for far less time in the atmosphere; over a 20-year period, methane traps 86 times more heat per unit of mas

New York is now the first state in the U.S. to require new buildings to be built entirely electric, without hookups to fossil fuels including gas, the New York State Assembly reported. The rule was initially passed in 2023 as the All-Electric Buildings Act and was finalized with the State Fire Prevention and Building Code Council’s approval in late July 2025. According to the new mandate, residential buildings up to seven stories tall and commercial or industrial buildings up to 100,000 sq

A new peer-reviewed study has linked pesticides as a likely cause to a mass die-off of Western monarch butterflies that occurred in 2024. In January 2024, researchers found hundreds of dead or dying monarch butterflies near the Pacific Grove Monarch Sanctuary in California, where Western monarch butterflies typically overwinter. As The Guardian reported, researchers found the butterflies showing signs of neurotoxic pesticide poisoning, leading to further testing and analysis that has now b

Thousands of mollusks and worms have been discovered by a Chinese submersible in the Mariana Trench, almost six miles below sea level. The new study revealed it is the deepest colony of animals ever observed. “Hadal trenches, some of the Earth’s least explored and understood environments, have long been proposed to harbour chemosynthesis-based communities. Despite increasing attention, actual documentation of such communities has been exceptionally rare,” the authors wrote in the findings

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is home to many species of rare and endangered wildlife, such as mountain gorillas, eastern lowland gorillas and bonobos. But the country has plans to open more than half its land — including 306 million acres of intact tropical forest and vital gorilla habitat — to oil and gas drilling. DRC’s government began an auctioning round for 52 oil blocks — in addition to three that had been previously awarded — threatening 64 percent of the country’s pristi

World hunger fell overall last year, but continued to rise in most of Africa and western Asia, according to a new report — The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) — published by five specialized UN agencies and released Monday by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Roughly 8.2 percent of the world’s population — about 673 million people — suffered from hunger in 2024, a press release from FAO said. The number was down from 8.7 percent in 202

A beneficial bacterial probiotic is restoring hope for mitigating disease spread in corals off the coast of Florida. In a new study, scientists have investigated the effectiveness of a compound produced by the probiotic strain MCH1-7 for combating the deadly stony coral tissue loss disease. MCH1-7 was first uncovered by scientists from the Smithsonian Marine Station in 2018 and was found on a coral colony that had naturally resisted an outbreak of stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD). S

Earth Overshoot Day is the point in the year when human demand for materials obtained from nature exceeds what the Earth can naturally regenerate in one year. For 2025, Earth Overshoot Day fell on July 24, the earliest it has been since the event was first calculated in 2006. The Earth Overshoot Day was first launched in 2006 by Andrew Simms, an author, political economist and campaigner, in collaboration with Global Footprint Network, as reported by Sustainability Magazine. Since then, Earth

The underground fungi networks that help sustain Earth’s ecosystems are in need of urgent conservation action, according to researchers from the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN). The scientists found that 90 percent of mycorrhizal fungi biodiversity hotspots were located in unprotected ecosystems, the loss of which could lead to lower carbon emissions reduction rates, crop productivity and reduce the resilience of ecosystems to climate extremes. Mycorrhizal fungi “

In a landmark finding, the United Nations’ top court on Wednesday issued an advisory opinion stating that a “clean, healthy and sustainable environment” is a human right. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling supports the obligation of UN member states to tackle the climate crisis and outlines the consequences they could face if they fail to do so. “The consequences of climate change are severe and far-reaching: they affect both natural ecosystems and human populations. These con