Robin Blades

Electric vehicles have the potential to substantially reduce carbon emissions, but car companies are running out of materials to make batteries. One crucial component, nickel, is projected to cause supply shortages as early as the end of this year.

In the Madre de Dios region of Peru, a human-made wasteland brushes up against the border of the Amazonian rainforest. Over the past decade, small-scale illegal gold miners have transformed the landscape from tree-covered marshlands to a desert pockmarked with polluted ponds, leaking mercury into the local food web.

Could the answer to the longstanding mystery about what causes so much kidney disease among farmers and laborers in Central Latin America be that it is an effect of climate change? Over the last thirty years, countries like El Salvador, Honduras, and Mexico have had deaths due to chronic kidney disease increase 177 percent, according to the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study led by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). The global increase was only 66 percent over same period.