Seth Borenstein

Reporter for The Associated Press

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43 Articles

Wind turbines work in Livermore, Calif., on Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2022. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)

New climate bill pushes U.S. toward cheap, clean energy

After decades of inaction in the face of escalating natural disasters and sustained global warming, Congress hopes to make clean energy so cheap in all aspects of life that it’s nearly irresistible. The House is poised to pass a transformative bill on Friday, August 12, 2022, that would provide the most spending to fight climate change by any one nation ever in a single push.

News, US News, Politics | August 12th 2022

Passengers read information at King's Cross railway station where trains are canceled due to the heat in London, on July 19, 2022. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth, File)

Climate change likely upped the temperatures in UK heat wave

Human−caused climate change made last week’s deadly heat wave in England and Wales at least 10 times more likely and added a few degrees to how brutally hot it got, a study said.

News | July 29th 2022

A house sits in Rock Creek after floodwaters washed away a road and a bridge in Red Lodge, Mont., on June 16, 2022. AP Photo/David Goldman

How heavy snow and rain flooded Yellowstone

Rivers and creeks this week raged with water much higher and faster than even the rare benchmark 500-year flood. Weather-whiplashed residents and government officials raced to save homes, roads and businesses.

News, US News | June 17th 2022

Activists of the environment organization Greenpeace protest with CO2 letters illuminated with flames in front of the Brandenburg Gate against the climate change in Berlin, Germany, on May 6, 2021. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)

The ethics of tinkering with the Earth's atmosphere to tackle climate change

Tinkering with the planet’s air to cool Earth’s ever−warming climate is inching closer to reality enough so that two different high−powered groups — one of scientists and one of former world leaders — are trying to come up with ethics and governing guidelines.

News | June 7th 2022

A man takes pictures of the ruins of the old village of Vilar, submerged since 1954 when a hydropower dam flooded the valley, that have risen above the waters of the Zezere River due to drought, in Portugal, on Feb.17, 2022. (AP Photo/Sergio Azenha, File)

UN says climate disasters a harbinger of more to come

A disaster−weary globe will be hit harder in the coming years by even more catastrophes colliding in an interconnected world, a United Nations report issued on Monday, April 25, 2022 says.

News | April 26th 2022

truck, drops, garbage, South Kent Landfill, Byron Township, Mich.,

One of the world's worst greenhouse gases, methane increases at record rates

Global atmospheric levels of the potent but short-lived greenhouse gas methane increased a record amount last year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said on Thursday, February 7, 2022, worrying scientists because of the large role methane has in climate change.

News | April 8th 2022

A Karbi tribal woman whose agriculture land had been transfered to build a solar power plant grazes her cow near the plant in Mikir Bamuni village, Nagaon district, northeastern Assam on Feb. 8, 2022. Photo by The Canadian Press/AP/Anupam Nath

Newest IPCC climate report reveals 'a litany of broken climate promises': UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres

Ongoing investments in fossil fuel infrastructure and clearing large swaths of forest for agriculture undermine the massive curbs in emissions needed to meet the Paris goal, the report found.

News | April 4th 2022

Part of the sidewalk near the Jefferson Memorial is covered in water during high tide at the Tidal Basin in Washington, on Wednesday, April 3, 2019. File photo by The Associated Press/Ashraf Khalil

US coastline could experience a century's worth of sea rise in just 30 years

America's coastline will see sea levels rise in the next 30 years by as much as they did in the entire 20th century, with major Eastern cities hit regularly with costly floods even on sunny days, a government report warns.

News, US News | February 16th 2022

Floodwaters from Hurricane Katrina fill the streets near downtown New Orleans, La., on Aug. 30, 2005. File photo by The Associated Press/David J. Phillip

UN puts finishing touches on bleak climate change science report

Scientists and governments will meet on Monday, February 14, 2022, to finish a major United Nations report on how global warming disrupts people's lives, their natural environment and the Earth itself. Don’t expect a flowery valentine to the planet: instead an activist group predicted “a nightmare painted in the dry language of science.”

News | February 14th 2022

When measuring climate change, don’t forget about the humidity

A team of scientists in the U.S. and China decided to use an obscure weather measurement called equivalent potential temperature — or theta-e — that reflects “the moisture energy of the atmosphere.”

Race to a Safer World

News | January 31st 2022