The climate crisis demands action — and action is happening. This archive tracks real progress: policy wins, clean-energy milestones, community resilience, and scientific advances that show meaningful change is possible. Stories here come from every corner of the world.
Under the state Department of Environmental Protection’s “Advanced Clean Cars II” rule, manufacturers must ensure that 43% of new light-duty vehicles they make in 2027 are electric, with the percentage rising annually to 100% by 2035. Most consumer cars and pickup trucks are considered light-duty.
“The EU will finally assume responsibility for its plastic waste by banning its export to non-OECD countries,” said Pernille Weiss, a Danish member of the European parliament. “Once again, we follow our vision that waste is a resource when it is properly managed, but should not in any case be causing harm to the environment or human health.”
The world’s largest single-site solar plant just came online in the UAE, and it’s powering nearly 200,000 homes from a stretch of desert outside Abu Dhabi. Al Dhafra generates 2 gigawatts of clean electricity and is expected to cut 2.4 million tonnes of carbon emissions each year — roughly the equivalent of taking 470,000 cars off the road. What makes it really remarkable, though, is the price: the project locked in one of the cheapest utility-scale solar tariffs ever recorded, around 1.32 US cents per kilowatt-hour. That number sends a signal far beyond the Gulf, showing sun-rich countries everywhere that large-scale clean power is now genuinely affordable — and that even oil-producing nations can help lead the transition.
Direct air capture has gone commercial in the United States for the first time, with Heirloom Carbon Technologies opening a plant in Tracy, California that can pull 1,000 metric tons of CO2 straight from the sky each year. The company speeds up a natural process: heating limestone, then letting the mineral soak up atmospheric carbon on open-air trays in days rather than years. The captured CO2 is locked into concrete and stored underground, with companies like Microsoft and Shopify buying removal credits to fund operations. Heirloom went from capturing one kilogram to one million kilograms in just over two years, and hopes to keep copying the design. Tackling legacy emissions, not just new ones, may be essential to stabilizing the climate worldwide.
Ocean thermal energy conversion just crossed a threshold that has eluded engineers for nearly 140 years. UK-based Global OTEC Resources received independent certification for the cold-water riser pipe at the heart of its floating platform — the very component that has sunk previous attempts to turn ocean temperature gradients into electricity. The flagship vessel, Dominique, is a 1.5-MW system planned for deployment off São Tomé and Príncipe, an island nation of about 220,000 people that currently leans on imported fossil fuels. Because deep ocean temperatures stay constant, a working OTEC plant generates power around the clock, offering tropical island communities something solar and wind cannot: steady, locally produced baseload clean energy on the front lines of climate change.
In order to meet these goals, member nations must restore a minimum of 30% of the types of habitat covered by the Nature Restoration Law that are in “poor condition” to a “good condition” by the end of the decade, with an increase to 60% by the end of the following decade and 90% by 2050.
The government is making available about 150 million seedlings in public nurseries in an effort to combat climate change. The tree planting will be supported by an app that helps people match their location with an appropriate species and creates a communal record of tree-planting activities across the country.
It is expected that by 2050, half the land area of Tuvalu’s capital, Funafuti, will be flooded by tidal waters daily. Under the deal, Australia has committed to provide access to education, health care and income and family support instantly to Tuvaluans upon arrival.
Since taking power last year, leftist President Gustavo Petro has enacted a slate of new policies aimed at protecting Colombian forests, including paying locals to conserve woodland. The recent gains in Colombia mirror similar advances in the Brazilian Amazon, where leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has cracked down on forest clearing.
British Columbia’s new $1 billion nature agreement aims to more than double the share of the province protected from industrial activity, building on roughly 15 percent today. Signed by Canada’s federal government, the province, and First Nations leaders, it’s the first three-way conservation deal of its kind in the country — with Indigenous nations recognized as co-architects rather than consultees. The funding will go toward safeguarding old-growth forests, restoring degraded ecosystems, and supporting the salmon-bearing watersheds that communities have relied on for generations. As nearly 200 countries work toward the global goal of protecting 30 percent of lands and waters by 2030, this framework offers a hopeful template for how conservation and Indigenous leadership can move forward together.
