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.

NW Minn. counties make innovative bet on recycling
A group of northwestern Minnesota counties is betting it will be cheaper in the long term to recycle and then burn the remaining trash they generate, rather than simply burying the trash.
Where will your plastic trash go now that China doesn't want it?
Last year, China drastically cut back its imports of plastic waste to recycle. Now the U.S. and other wealthy nations must figure out what to do with their discards.
In midst of an oil boom, New Mexico sets bold new climate goals
New Mexico lawmakers passed a bill this week mandating state utilities use 100 percent renewable energy by 2045. Meanwhile, oil production in the southeast corner of the state is breaking records.
UN: Environment is deadly, worsening mess, but not hopeless
The report concludes "unsustainable human activities globally have degraded the Earth's ecosystems, endangering the ecological foundations of society." But it also says changes in the way the world eats, buys things, gets its energy and handles its waste could help fix the problems.
How 3M plans to reach 100 percent renewable electricity
The company's headquarters recently went all-renewable for its electricity, but it's not stopping there.
President Trump's newly released budget calls for spending $75.3 million toward construction of a new Great Lakes shipping lock in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
DNR OKs 1 daily walleye keeper on Mille Lacs in May
It's a small but significant change after several seasons of a catch-and-release-only policy that had frustrated anglers and local resorts around the iconic central Minnesota lake.
How concerned should we be about climate change?
In September, the UN stated that climate change is the defining issue of our time and that global leaders have until 2020 to come up with solutions. In a recent New York Times op-ed, columnist David Wallace-Wells says it might be time to panic about climate change.
It's 2050 and this is how we stopped climate change
Let's imagine that we've ended global warming. Humans no longer are releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Here's what life is like in a zero-carbon world.