NEWS

Home values could fall significantly. Banks could stop lending to flood-prone communities. Towns could lose the tax money they need to build sea walls and other protections.

ON THE MEKONG RIVER — When the Chinese came to the village of Lat Thahae, perched on a muddy bend of a Mekong River tributary, they scrawled a Chinese character on the walls of homes, schools and Buddhist temples. No one in this isolated hamlet in northern Laos could read what it said. But the...

MAPLE VALLEY, Wash. — Standing amid cottonwood trees and a thicket of other vegetation, Jon Hansen looks out over a sunlight-dappled ribbon of crystal water running over a rocky bed. He’s standing on a site that until recently was filled with houses and mobile homes — properties that flooded six times in 20 years when...

GONZALES, La. (AP) – The federal government has bought out an entire flood-prone neighborhood in Louisiana, prompting all its residents to move to higher ground. News outlets report the agency U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Emergency Watershed Protection Program financed the buyouts on along Silverleaf Street in Gonzales, which was carved out of a wetland in...

Louisiana’s top official for coastal issues says state and local officials must learn to live with the “new normal” of climate change. Chip Kline, chairman of the state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, acknowledged that not everyone agrees human activities are causing the climate to change. But regardless of the causes, the effects are undeniable,...

Since the global climate strike earlier this month and the impassioned speech by Greta Thunberg at the 2019 UN climate action summit sparking nationwide conversations, the fate of our planet is on everyone’s mind; and if it isn’t, it ought to be. We’re currently in the middle of a massive global extinction. In the midst...

Someday soon, analysts will determine that a city or county, or maybe a school district or utility, is so vulnerable to sea level rise, flooding, drought or wildfire that it is an investment risk. To be sure, no community has yet seen its credit rating downgraded because of climate forecasting. And no one has heard...

NEW YORK — Due to climate change, the world’s oceans are getting warmer, rising higher, losing oxygen and becoming more acidic at an ever-faster pace and melting even more ice and snow, a grim international science assessment concludes. But that’s nothing compared to what Wednesday’s special United Nations-affiliated oceans and ice report says is coming...

The four Gulf Coast states that produce oil offshore want a bigger cut of the royalties the federal government gets from drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf to be put toward hurricane protection and coastal restoration. Representatives from the four states — Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Texas — formed a coalition in August to take...

Miami Beach has been ahead of the curve in sea level rise adaptation for years. The city is spending half a billion dollars to pump and pipe rising seas off the island city, a move that has earned it international acclaim (and some local complaints). But a recent proposal by a city-paid consultant offered a...

Mass migration begins as coastal homes are bulldozed in the state facing the biggest threat from climate-driven inundation. Lori Rittel is stuck in her Florida Keys home, living in the wreckage left by Hurricane Irma two years ago, unable to rebuild or repair. Now her best hope for escape is to sell the little white...

As climate change spurs increasingly destructive wildfires in California, insurance companies have begun to deem certain parts of the state too risky to cover. But this particular offshoot of the climate crisis isn’t just a problem for residents of the Golden State. Climate experts warn that areas across the country are becoming more prone to...

This year’s flooding across the Midwest and South effected nearly 14 million people, yet the full scale of the slowly unfolding disaster has been difficult to fathom. See the interactive story here…

Report calls for massive boost in investment to avoid ‘climate apartheid,’ in which wealthy people can pay to protect themselves, but the rest of the world suffers. Images of devastating storm damage and droughts around the world this year have been drawing attention to the risks of global warming, particularly to the world’s poorest people....

Drastic increase in investment could create benefits that outweigh the costs nearly 4 to 1, new report states. mages of devastating storm damage and droughts around the world this year have been drawing attention to the risks of global warming, particularly to the world’s poorest people. Cutting emissions is critical to minimizing those risks, but...