Other writing

The port city of Mariupol battles pollution from iron and steel plants decades out of date, but activists are making headway.

Even as the European Union rolls out aggressive plans for reducing plastic waste, countries are importing cheap ethane gas to fuel their plastics industries.

COVER STORY: Dirty air is a plague on our health, causing 7 million deaths and many more preventable illnesses worldwide each year. But the solutions are clear.

FIFTY YEARS AGO, a group of Democratic and Republican senators spent months working together to tackle a danger they all agreed was harming Americans’ health and lives. The bill they produced won unanimous Senate approval.

For decades, Europe has poured millions of tons of its trash into incinerators each year, often under the green-sounding label “waste to energy.” Now climate concerns are prompting the EU to ease its embrace of incineration.

As wildfires and storms raged, and even the Arctic broiled and burned, scientists’ dire climate warnings came to life in frighteningly vivid fashion in 2020. With political leaders and the public preoccupied by COVID-19, the world careened closer to the brink of environmental catastrophe.