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.

Here comes the sun: Solar schools project launches in central Minn.
A ribbon-cutting Thursday will mark the official opening of the project, which will use onsite solar energy to power schools in two different districts and a community college. Organizers hope the project will become a model for schools interested in cutting energy costs by investing in solar.
Activists say new laws to protect critical infrastructure aim to silence them
Climate activists protesting oil and gas are the first charged under a new critical infrastructure law in Texas. Supporters say the laws protect ports, pipelines and other sensitive places.
Earth's oceans are getting hotter and higher, and it's accelerating
The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has released its latest report on the oceans, and it's not good. The report also notes a relatively new phenomenon in the oceans: marine heat waves.
As personal challenge, writer makes climate change a mainstream literary topic
Writer Amitav Ghosh chided the literary world of writers, critics and readers to take climate change seriously and make it a central topic. While his new novel “Gun Island” does that, it’s also a page turner.
When we love our food so much that it goes extinct
A new book explores how overhunting and habitat destruction have left us with only a fraction of the foods that existed a century ago, and the changes that are needed to preserve our culinary variety.