Grist

This story was originally published by Stateline. New York Governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, issued an executive order Tuesday that puts a moratorium on the construction of large-scale data centers. The pause, which will last up to a year, is the nation’s first statewide ban on data centers, which have drawn increasing concern from lawmakers and citizens based on their impact on electricity prices and the energy grid.

More than 900 wildfires are burning throughout Canada, with devastating impacts for First Nations. Thirteen Nations remain under evacuation orders that have forced 2,182 people from their homes. The Namaygoosisagagun (Collins) First Nation watched one blaze largely destroy its entire community in less than an hour, forcing them to flee by boat.

The biggest game in soccer is set for Sunday, when Argentina and Spain will meet in the World Cup final, held just outside of New York City. There’s just one problem — wildfire smoke now threatens the match and FIFA, the sport’s governing body, doesn’t appear to have any plan in place to protect player or fan health.

If you wanted to save some money by learning how to check your home for air leaks, poor insulation, and power-hungry lightbulbs, the Department of Energy’s website was ready to help. And if you needed an expert, the site guided you to another page for help lining up a professional energy assessment, a well-established first step to cut utility bills and curb pollution at the same time.

This coverage is made possible through a partnership between Grist and Interlochen Public Radio in northern Michigan. ​​​ Michigan regulatory officials on Wednesday issued several key permits for the construction of a tunnel to replace an aging section of the Line 5 pipeline in the Straits of Mackinac, the waterways that straddle the state’s Upper and Lower peninsulas. Officials said that the necessity of the project in preventing an oil spill in the Great Lakes outweighed other public interests.

The Inflation Reduction Act, which became law in 2022, was the first and largest climate bill in the history of the United States. It was also the cornerstone of President Joe Biden’s economic agenda. The bill offered billions of dollars in tax credits for companies that built solar and wind farms or electric-vehicle battery factories, and to consumers who purchased electric cars and heat pumps.

The Aral Sea sits between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and was once the fourth-largest inland body of water on Earth. For the past 60 years, though, humans have bled it nearly dry irrigating cotton crops, leaving behind a salty plain the size of Ireland. Its loss has long been seen as an ecological and humanitarian problem, but new research shows that it has also been a significant driver of climate change. The Aral Sea is technically a lake.

This story is published through the Indigenous News Alliance. AI is the transformative technology of our time, with the potential to reshape our world on a global scale. And yet, underpinning its potential is the need for so-called hyperscale data centers that require vast amounts of land, energy, and water. As tech companies and governments continue to develop this infrastructure at a huge scale, Indigenous peoples around the world are responding to this threat in different ways.

A decade after climate activists’ emails were breached, a court case is shedding new light on who allegedly orchestrated the hacking.

Last summer, at the United Nations World Oceanʻs Conference, French Polynesia established the world’s largest contiguous marine protected area, reinforcing its 2022 ban on seabed mining. “The deep sea is not for sale,” France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, said at the time. A year later, that might not hold true for the waters just beyond French Polynesia’s maritime border.