These | Environment.org

Earlier this month, scientists announced that humanity has kicked off the first major “tipping point” — in which an Earth system dramatically transforms, often permanently — as warm-water corals die en masse due to relentlessly rising temperatures. Think of such events like driving off a cliff: There’s no reversing back up to the edge, and the impact will be terrible.

For all the attention these disastrous milestones get from scientists and the media — and rightfully so — less discussed is the fact that they also work the other direction. Positive tipping points can unfold on a wide range of scales, from a community garden helping a neighborhood eat healthier, all the way up to the global energy system switching from fossil fuels to renewables. An individual person can even reach one, like if they decide to do more and …

These fishermen made peace with offshore wind. Then Trump came along.

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| Pollution

Gary Yerman, 75, sat nervously in a noisy ballroom in Virginia Beach, Virginia, counting down the minutes until he could shed his ill-fitting double-breasted suit for a sun shirt and blue jeans. He introduced himself as a fisherman of 50 years to a stranger seated next to him at the banquet table.

“That sounds really hard,” the other man replied.

“Not as hard as it’s going to be to go accept this award and talk to a room full of people,” joked Yerman. Moments later, his name was called, and he walked onto a professionally lit stage to accept a small crystal trophy from the Oceantic Network, a leading trade group for the burgeoning multibillion-dollar U.S. offshore wind industry.

It was an unlikely sight. America’s fishermen have long treated wind developers as their sworn enemies.

The conflict started in the early 2000s, when the first plans for New England’s offshore wind areas …

Methane leaks are a climate problem. These satellites could help find them.

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The vision

“It doesn’t matter how many thermographers we have, boots on the ground, satellites flying in the air, people with drones and airplanes and all the other technology, none of it matters if you don’t stop methane. None of it counts.”

— Sharon Wilson, “methane hunter” and director of Oilfield Witness

The spotlight

Back when I worked with satellites (my career before journalism), and I’d talk about my job with folks from outside the space industry, they often responded simply, “Oh, cool.” It always struck me that, though satellites in many ways enable modern life, many people still think about space tech in terms of astronauts and other worlds. But satellites are what make GPS, weather forecasting, long-distance communication, and even airplane Wi-Fi possible. And a growing fleet of precision satellites are now enabling climate solutions, too: helping us …

Hot? Hungry? Step inside these food forests.

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Below the red-tile roofs of the Catalina Foothills, an affluent area on the north end of Tucson, Arizona, lies a blanket of desert green: spiky cacti, sword-shaped yucca leaves, and the spindly limbs of palo verde and mesquite trees. Head south into the city, and the vegetation thins. Trees are especially scarce on the south side of town, where shops and schools and housing complexes sprawl across a land encrusted in concrete.

On hot summer days, you don’t just see but feel the difference. Tucson’s shadeless neighborhoods, which are predominantly low-income and Latino, soak up the heat. They swelter at summer temperatures that eclipse the city average by 8 degrees Fahrenheit and the Catalina Foothills by 12 degrees. That disparity can be deadly in a city that experienced 40 straight days above 100 degrees last year — heat that’s sure …