Environmental News

MPR News is your source for environment news from Minnesota and across the country.

Getting to Green: Minnesota’s energy future

Getting to Green is an MPR News series that shares stories about Minnesota’s clean energy transition, including what needs to be done to get there.

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Climate Cast

Listen to Climate Cast, the MPR News podcast all about our changing climate and its impact in Minnesota and worldwide.

How loss of historical lands makes Native Americans more vulnerable to climate change
Indigenous nations across the U.S. lost nearly 99 percent of their historical land base over time, new research shows. What little land they have left is especially vulnerable to climate change risks.
Biden proposes new rules to cut climate-warming methane emissions
In a major expansion, the new rules would apply not just to new operations but to older ones as well. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, and considered key to slowing global warming quickly.
Biden says he worries that cutting oil production too fast will hurt working people
"On the surface it seems like an irony," Biden said of calling on major producers to pump more oil even as he heads to the climate summit. "But the truth of the matter is ... everyone knows that idea that we're going to be able to move to renewable energy overnight ... it's just not rational."
G-20 make mild pledges on climate neutrality, coal financing
Leaders of the world’s biggest economies agreed Sunday to stop funding coal-fired power plants in poor countries and made a vague commitment to seek carbon neutrality “by or around mid-century” as they wrapped up a Rome summit before a much larger U.N. climate conference.
Minnesota moves closer to completing St. Louis River restoration
This month the Minnesota DNR completed one of its largest-ever habitat restoration projects, a three-year, $18 million project restoring 230 acres of coastal wetland habitat in the St. Louis River estuary near Duluth.
Northern lights this weekend? Yes, maybe
A strong geomagnetic storm will deliver the basic ingredients to produce aurora borealis sightings across Minnesota Saturday and Sunday. But don’t grab your camera just yet.
G-20 leaders to tackle energy prices, other economic woes
The presidents and prime ministers representing 80 percent of the global economy will confront a recovery hampered by an energy crunch that's spurring higher fuel and utility prices, new COVID-19 outbreaks and logjams in supply chains. President Joe Biden has said he wants to press other leaders on high oil prices.