A report from the Environmental Protection Network, a nonprofit staffed by former EPA officials, warns that air pollution from gas-fired plants and diesel generators serving AI data centers could add at least $20 billion a year in US health care costs by 2028. The group cites modelling projecting roughly 600,000 asthma symptom cases and 1,300 premature deaths. More than 1,300 data centers already run in the United States, with over 2,000 more planned. The report lists 30 federal actions it says will raise pollution-related risks.
The Pentagon is again pushing back timelines for cleaning up PFAS contamination at military installations, this time changing schedules at 243 sites. It is the third such delay in a year. Earlier rounds shifted dates at nearly 200 installations, including 15 where the chemicals had reached nearby drinking water, and the New York Times reported some cleanups were postponed by as much as 19 years. A senior defence official said wider investigations and new regulatory standards explain the changes. Lawmakers from both parties have demanded answers.
Four out of five lakes in Turkey have disappeared, according to reporting by BBC Future, as drought and heavy water use drain the country's wetlands. Lakes including Burdur, Egirdir and Beysehir have shrunk or dried out entirely, damaged by over-extraction for industrial agriculture and by illegal wells dug to irrigate fields. About 88 percent of Turkey is at risk of desertification, and the country could face severe drought by 2030. The loss matters beyond Turkey's borders: its wetlands sit on a major migration route between Europe and Africa, and nearly two-thirds of the world's bird species are in decline.
Ecuadorian scientists warn that a stronger-than-normal El Nino could cut the Galapagos Islands' vertebrate population by at least 20% this year. NOAA's latest projection puts sea surface temperatures about 2.2 degrees Celsius, or 4 degrees Fahrenheit, above normal, above the threshold for a very strong event. Warmer water causes plankton, algae and small fish to disappear, the base of the marine food chain. Species at risk include Galapagos penguins, blue-footed boobies, flightless cormorants, albatrosses and sea lions. Heavy rain also favors invasive plants that threaten the islands' remaining Scalesia forests and shoreline cacti. Conservation groups are clearing invasive plants and building seed nurseries.
The U.S. Department of Energy has closed a loan of up to $1.9 billion to help restart the Duane Arnold Energy Center in Iowa, the state's only nuclear power plant. The plant in Palo shut down in August 2020 after a derecho with winds up to 140 mph damaged its cooling towers. Owner NextEra Energy aims to bring the 615-megawatt plant, which began operating in 1974, back online in 2029 pending Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval. The output would power about 500,000 homes. Google signed a 25-year deal in 2025 to buy electricity from the plant for its Iowa data centers. Duane Arnold is one of three major U.S. efforts to restart a shuttered reactor, a first-of-its-kind challenge.
A new federal report warns Canadians to prepare for decades of more severe wildfires, extreme heat, rising seas, thawing permafrost and shrinking water supplies as the country warms. The second edition of Canada's Changing Climate Report says average warming could reach up to 5 degrees Celsius by 2100 under current global policies, and it confirms with greater confidence that burning fossil fuels is driving the change. The summary was released days after flash floods swamped streets in Toronto, events that climate advocates linked to warming. The report says deeper emissions cuts would limit future warming, but adaptation will be needed no matter what, since some impacts are now locked in.
More than 600,000 hectares of land burned inside European Union countries in the first eight months of 2026, according to the European Forest Fire Information System. That figure is below the same period in 2025, the worst year on record, but it far exceeds the 20-year average of about 280,000 hectares. UN agencies are urging historically cooler and wetter countries to prepare, warning that wildfire risk is spreading to regions such as the Atlantic uplands of Ireland and Scotland and parts of northern and central Europe. Human activity starts most fires, but warmer, drier conditions driven by climate change make them spread faster and burn hotter.
Australia's Bureau of Meteorology said the current El Niño is likely to peak at levels above the warmest observed since reliable records began in 1950, which would make it the strongest event on record. Pacific Ocean temperature change has already exceeded 2 degrees Celsius in six months, breaking earlier records, and the event is forecast to keep strengthening into late spring and summer. Scientists say climate change has made record-strength events far more likely. For Australia, El Niño usually brings hotter and drier conditions to the south and east, raising the risk of heatwaves, drought and bushfires. The United Nations has warned that a record El Niño is approaching, with effects expected to ripple across the Pacific and beyond.
The Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of the Army announced a proposed rule on September 4 that would strip federal Clean Water Act protections from most wetlands in the United States. The measure goes further than an initial proposal from November and follows the Supreme Court's 2023 Sackett decision narrowing federal authority over waterways. Environmental groups said millions of acres that filter drinking water and buffer floods would lose protection, and the Environmental Defense Fund warned of higher flood risk. Farmers, ranchers and rural landowners welcomed the plan as a limit on federal intrusion. A 30-day public comment period opens once the rule is published in the Federal Register, and lawsuits are widely expected.
Children born in New York City scored higher on early thinking and learning tests as the air their mothers breathed during pregnancy became cleaner, according to a 20-year study from Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, published in the journal Environmental Health. Researchers followed more than 1,000 mother-child pairs in Northern Manhattan and the South Bronx from 1998 to 2020, tracking exposure to fine particles, nitrogen dioxide and other pollutants across three groups of participants. As pollution declined after the city adopted clean-air and climate policies, children's cognitive development scores at ages 1, 2 and 3 climbed. The team calls it the first study to link cleaner air policy with improved early brain development.