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Plant hardiness zones are shifting north as the U.S. warms, affecting farmers and gardeners. These zones, based on the coldest temperatures of the year, determine which plants can grow and thrive in different parts of the country.

With continued heat-trapping pollution, 90% of locations are likely to shift to warmer planting zones by the middle of the century (2036-2065). The Upper Midwest is likely to be most affected. These shifts could force growers to select plants adapted to a wider and warmer range of temperatures.

Although such shifts could expand growing ranges for high-value crops such as almonds, oranges, and kiwis, they could also expand ranges for harmful weeds and pests. For example, Kudzu, a fast-growing invasive vine, is projected to continue to expand from the Southeast into the Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, and Northeast.

Climate Central analyzed past changes in the coldest temperatures of the year in 243 U.S. locations based on weather station data.

Tony Blair has called for the government to change course on climate, suggesting a strategy that limits fossil fuels in the short term or encourages people to limit consumption is “doomed to fail”.

In comments that have prompted a backlash within Labour, the former prime minister suggested the UK government should focus less on renewables and more on technological solutions such as carbon capture.

Blair said people were “being asked to make financial sacrifices and changes in lifestyle when they know that their impact on global emissions is minimal”. He said “any strategy based on either ‘phasing out’ fossil fuels in the short term or limiting consumption is a strategy doomed to fail”.

The paper itself, written by the TBI’s Lindy Fursman, said net zero policies were now “increasingly viewed as unaffordable, ineffective or politically toxic”.

https://archive.ph/K6RLl

For a more sane on this topic, see: Preparing for a New Cultural Paradigm with Jean-Marc Jancovici

Trump issued an executive order Thursday declaring that U.S. policy includes “creating a robust domestic supply chain for critical minerals derived from seabed resources to support economic growth, reindustrialization, and military preparedness.” He described seabed mining as both an economic and national security imperative necessary to counter China.

Increasingly, mining companies have been eager to scrape the ocean floor for cobalt, manganese, nickel and other metals that could help make batteries for cellphones and electric cars. But scientists have warned that the process could irreparably alter the seabed, kill extremely rare sea creatures that haven’t been named or studied, and — depending on how the metals are carried up to the surface — risk introducing metals into fisheries that many Pacific peoples rely upon.

The order aims to jump-start the industry that has been spearheaded by small Pacific nations like Nauru seeking economic growth, but has been facing growing pushback from Indigenous advocates who fear the lasting consequences of mining the deep sea.

“This extraction has no thought in mind about caring for resources,” said Solomon Kahoʻohalahala, who is Native Hawaiian and has been a vocal critic of the potential seabed industry at the United Nations. “It seems that there’s no vision for what we do in the long term,” he said. “It doesn’t speak to how we’re looking to take care of resources for the generations that are unborn. That’s a very different perspective that I hold as an Indigenous person.”

Trump officials are analyzing whether to remove federal protections for national monuments spanning millions of acres in the West, according to two people familiar with the matter and an internal Interior Department document, in order to spur energy development on public lands.

Interior Department aides are looking at whether to scale back at least six national monuments, said these individuals, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because no final decisions had been made. The list, they added, includes Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni-Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon, Ironwood Forest, Chuckwalla, Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante — national monuments spread across Arizona, California, New Mexico and Utah.

Interior Department officials are poring over geological maps to analyze the monuments’ potential for mining and oil production and assess whether to revise their boundaries, one individual said.

https://archive.ph/53hlu

At least 156 million Americans, about 46 percent of the population, live with unsafe levels of ozone, particulate pollution or both, according to the American Lung Association’s annual State of the Air report.

Air quality in the United States has been generally improving since the Clean Air Act was enacted in 1970, with levels of key pollutants dropping by nearly 80 percent. But millions of Americans still breathe polluted air every day, leading to both acute and chronic health conditions that, in some cases, increase the risk of early death.

Plans by the Trump administration to loosen environmental regulations and cut funding for air quality research would make matters worse, the report says.

“The biggest thing that has saved patients’ lives in regard to lung health and overall health is the Clean Air Act,” said Panagis Galiatsatos, a pulmonologist at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and spokesman for the lung association. “Clearly, legislation is needed because that’s what dictates the air quality you breathe.”

https://archive.ph/2VxzX

In the summer of 1982, seven heroin users were admitted to a California hospital paralyzed and mute. They were in their 20s, otherwise healthy — until a synthetic drug they had manufactured in makeshift labs left them frozen inside their own bodies. Doctors quickly discovered the cause: MPTP, a neurotoxic contaminant that had destroyed a small but critical part of the brain, the substantia nigra, which controls movement.

The patients had developed symptoms of late-stage Parkinson’s, almost overnight.

The cases shocked neurologists. Until then, Parkinson’s was thought to be a disease of aging, its origins slow and mysterious. But here was proof that a single chemical could reproduce the same devastating outcome. And more disturbing still: MPTP turned out to be chemically similar to paraquat, a widely used weedkiller that, for decades, had been sprayed on farms across the United States and Europe.

For a young Dutch doctor named Bas Bloem, the story would become formative. In 1989, shortly after finishing medical school, Bloem traveled to the United States to work with William Langston, the neurologist who had uncovered the MPTP-Parkinson’s link. What he saw there reshaped his understanding of the disease — and its causes.

https://archive.ph/DgsFC

For decades, farmers across America have been encouraged by the federal government to spread municipal sewage on millions of acres of farmland as fertilizer. It was rich in nutrients, and it helped keep the sludge out of landfills.

But a growing body of research shows that this black sludge, made from the sewage that flows from homes and factories, can contain heavy concentrations of chemicals thought to increase the risk of certain types of cancer and to cause birth defects and developmental delays in children.

Known as “forever chemicals” because of their longevity, these toxic contaminants are now being detected, sometimes at high levels, on farmland across the country, including in Texas, Maine, Michigan, New York and Tennessee. In some cases the chemicals are suspected of sickening or killing livestock and are turning up in produce. Farmers are beginning to fear for their own health.

The national scale of farmland contamination by these chemicals — which are used in everything from microwave popcorn bags and firefighting gear to nonstick pans and stain-resistant carpets — is only now starting to become apparent.

https://archive.ph/8rNG6

See also:

• Sludge Contaminated 10,000 Acres of Farmland. What Should Be Done?
• A Maker of Sewage-Based Fertilizer Leaves Town Amid a Toxic Crisis

The protected land includes a one-acre fish hatchery at Unicorn Lake in eastern Maryland and the sprawling Green Ridge State Forest in the west. It includes shorelines, farms and woods around Naval Air Station Patuxent River, and the Chesapeake Forest Lands, some 75,000 wooded acres that are home to species like bald eagles and the once-endangered Delmarva fox squirrel.

None of it can be developed, and all of it has helped Maryland reach a landmark conservation goal six years ahead of schedule, before any other state that’s joined an effort known as “30 by 30.”

The program is part of a global initiative to protect 30 percent of the Earth’s land and waters by 2030. In 2023, Maryland joined the effort and a year later, Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, announced that the goal had already been met. Nearly 1.9 million acres of land has been permanently protected from development, and the state has set a new target, to conserve 40 percent of its land by 2040.

https://archive.ph/iZcTr

Here at Ask NYT Climate, we usually dive into specific questions, from the greenest ways to dispose of pet waste to the most eco-friendly workout clothing. But because Tuesday is Earth Day, we’re tackling one of the big questions: What is the single best thing I can do for the planet?

We put this to half a dozen experts who shared their advice on how to be the best planetary citizen possible.

https://archive.ph/U3G0C

The Rangeley Lakes region can often feel like a forgotten corner of Maine, far from the state’s famed coasts or cities. This western stretch is remote, rugged woodland. Forests become impassable in spring’s muddy months and cool mountain streams teem with a trout population that draws legions of recreational fishers. It’s also a part of the state where logging and timber hauls have indelibly shaped the land and livelihoods of those who live there.

Now about 78,000 acres surrounding the Rangeley Lakes may soon be linked to 500,000 acres of protected land reaching across central Maine to New Hampshire. A project announced March 18 and agreed to by four leading conservation groups and a 70-year-old timber company aims to bolster a priority spawning ground for brook trout, broaden a migration corridor for wildlife and restrict future development in the woodlands.

The plan to permanently protect lands around Maine’s Magalloway River is the brainchild of the Rangeley Lakes Heritage Trust, the Forest Society of Maine, the Northeast Wilderness Trust, and The Nature Conservancy.

https://archive.ph/TDNHQ

For hundreds of millions of people living in India and Pakistan, the early arrival of summer heatwaves has become a terrifying reality that’s testing survivability limits and putting enormous strain on energy supplies, vital crops and livelihoods.

Both countries experience heatwaves during the summer months of May and June, but this year’s heatwave season has arrived sooner than usual and is predicted to last longer too.

Parts of Pakistan are likely to experience heat up to 8 degrees Celsius above normal between April 14-18, according to the country’s meteorological department. Maximum temperatures in Balochistan, in country’s southwest, could reach up to 49 degrees Celsius (120 Fahrenheit).

That’s like living in Death Valley – the hottest and driest place in North America – where summer daytime temperatures often climb to similar levels.

https://archive.ph/mmmT7

The world’s largest meat company, JBS, looks set to break its Amazon rainforest protection promises again, according to frontline workers.

Beef production is the primary driver of deforestation, as trees are cleared to raise cattle, and scientists warn this is pushing the Amazon close to a tipping point that would accelerate its shift from a carbon sink into a carbon emitter. JBS, the Brazil-headquartered multinational that dominates the Brazilian cattle market, promised to address this with a commitment to clean up its beef supply chain in the region by the end of 2025.

In a project to understand the barriers to progress on Amazon deforestation, a team of journalists from the Guardian, Unearthed and Repórter Brasil interviewed more than 35 people, including ranchers and ranching union leaders who represent thousands of farms in the states of Pará and Rondônia. The investigation found widespread disbelief that JBS would be able to complete the groundwork and hit its deforestation targets.

“They certainly have the will to do it, just as we have the will to do it,” said one rancher. But the goal that all the cattle they bought would be deforestation-free was unreachable, he said. “They say this is going to be implemented. I’d say straight away: that’s impossible.”

https://archive.ph/iS7pg