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      Connecticut Shell Recyclers Are Helping Oysters

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      Summer in New England means lobster rolls, fried seafood and, of course, freshly shucked oysters.But there’s a problem. Those empty shells usually end up in a dumpster instead of back in the water, where they play a key role in the oyster life cycle. Oyster larvae attach to shells, where they grow into adults and form reefs that improve water quality, prevent coastal erosion and create habitat for other marine life.Two men in Connecticut are working to fix that. They’ve started a statewide program to collect discarded shells from local restaurants, dry them and return them to Long Island Sound for restoration projects.50 States, 50 Fixes is a series about local solutions to environmental problems. More to come this year.“We fill that missing piece,” said Tim Macklin, a co-founder of Collective Oyster Recycling & Restoration, the nonprofit group leading the effort.It’s one of several shell recycling programs that have emerged to help reverse the steep decline in oyster populations along U.S. coastlines, a drop that experts largely attribute to overharvesting, habitat degradation and disease. Some of the largest programs process more than a million pounds of shell each year.Tell Us About Solutions Where You Live More

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      How Maryland Hit Its 30×30 Goal

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      Nine states have set goals to conserve 30 percent of their land by 2030. Maryland got there first.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. More

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      Indiana Evangelicals Are Focusing on Creation Care With Environmental Work

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      The solar panels on the churches were inspired by Scripture.So were the LED lights throughout the buildings, the electric-vehicle charging stations, the native pollinator gardens and organic food plots, the composting, the focus on consuming less and reusing more.The evangelical Christians behind these efforts in Indiana say that by taking on this planet-healing work, they are following the biblical mandate to care for God’s creation.50 States, 50 Fixes is a series about local solutions to environmental problems. More to come this year.“It’s a quiet movement,” said the Rev. Jeremy Summers, director of church and community engagement for the Evangelical Environmental Network, a nonprofit group with projects nationwide.In Central Indiana, a patchwork of evangelical churches and universities has been sharing ideas and lessons on how to expand these efforts, broadly known as creation care. Some have partnered on an Earth Day-like celebration they named Indy Creation Fest.Tell Us About Solutions Where You Live More

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      A Funeral Director Brought Wind Power to Rock Port, Missouri

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      Eric Chamberlain was at work, driving a hearse, when he first caught sight of the wind turbine that would set him on a path to change the fortunes of his hometown.It was the mid-2000s, and Mr. Chamberlain was leading a funeral procession in Iowa, across the border from his home in Atchison County in northwest Missouri, when giant white blades came into view. Mr. Chamberlain had heard of wind energy but not seen a commercial turbine before. He was intrigued, but obviously couldn’t pull over to take a closer look.“I didn’t stop,” said Mr. Chamberlain, whose family has operated Chamberlain Funeral Homes and Monuments since 1968. “I was polite.”Eric Chamberlain, a funeral director, grew up in Atchison, one of Missouri’s most rural counties.After the funeral, he visited a local newspaper in Iowa to ask people there about the wind energy project.Mr. Chamberlain, 70, grew up in Atchison, one of Missouri’s most rural counties, and over the years watched as waning opportunities and population decline steadily ate away at the place. Young people didn’t come back after college. School enrollment fell. Farms got bigger, and fewer farmers meant less tax revenue. Businesses on Main Street closed and the area went from having two grocery stores to one.Tell Us About Solutions Where You Live More

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      Trump Opens Marine National Monument to Commercial Fisheries

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      President Trump on Thursday said he was allowing commercial fishing in one of the world’s largest ocean reserves, introducing industrial operations for the first time in more than a decade to a vast area of the Pacific dotted with coral atolls and populated by endangered sea turtles and whales.Mr. Trump issued an executive order opening up the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument, which lies some 750 miles west of Hawaii. President George W. Bush established the monument in 2009 and President Barack Obama expanded it in 2014 to its current area of nearly 500,000 square miles.A second executive order directed the Commerce Department to loosen regulations that “overly burden America’s commercial fishing, aquaculture, and fish processing industries.” It also asks the Interior Department to conduct a review of all marine monuments and issue recommendations about any that should be opened to commercial fishing.“The United States should be the world’s dominant seafood leader,” Mr. Trump wrote.The marine monument, a chain of islands and atolls amid more than 160 seamounts, is a trove of marine biodiversity. Environmentalists said opening the area to commercial fishing would pose a serious threat to the area’s fragile ecosystems.Mr. Trump, accompanied in the Oval Office by a fisherman from American Samoa and Aumua Amata Coleman Radewagen, the territory’s delegate to the House of Representatives, said his predecessors had deprived Pacific island communities of “fertile grounds.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sandstorm Turns Iraq’s Skies Orange and Sends Thousands to Hospitals

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      Climate experts say such storms are becoming more frequent and severe in the country. This was its worst of the year so far.A severe sandstorm has swept across central and southern Iraq over the last two days, turning the sky a strange orange, reducing visibility in some places to less than a half mile and sending several thousand people to emergency rooms with respiratory problems.Two airports suspended flights because of poor visibility, and the usually crowded highways of Basra, the largest city in the country’s south, were nearly empty as high winds whipped through the palm trees and aboveground electrical lines.The spokesman for Iraq’s meteorology department, Amir al-Jabri, said that the “heavy waves of dust” had blown across the country after originating in eastern Saudi Arabia, a largely desert area, and picking up additional particles in southwestern Iraq, which is similarly arid.Although sandstorms have long been a feature of Iraq’s winter and early spring, climate experts say the storms are becoming more frequent and severe as the country and neighboring Syria experience longer and more frequent droughts and as desertification engulfs larger and larger areas of once-fertile land.The Shatt al-Arab waterway in Basra, Iraq. The city’s normally busy highways were emptied by the sandstorm.Hussein Faleh/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe storm was the worst so far in Iraq in 2025, but a similarly serious storm paralyzed Baghdad in December, and there were several severe sandstorms in 2022.The United Nations counts Iraq as the fifth most vulnerable country to some aspects of climate change, including extreme temperatures and the diminishing availability of water.Although the storm abated on Tuesday and temperatures were a bit lower, southern Iraq was experiencing daily highs of more than 100 degrees before the sandstorm obscured the sun, reducing the temperature.During the most recent storm, many people donned face masks for protection, especially police officers and emergency workers who were working outside, while others wrapped cloths around their mouths.Using a respiratory in an ambulance in Najaf, a central city where hospitals reported hundreds of patients with breathing difficulties.Qassem Al-Kaabi/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe sand and dust were so pervasive that they penetrated almost every house and vehicle, coming through the smallest cracks to coat every surface, making it difficult to work on computers and forcing almost all but emergency workers to stay indoors.Iraq’s health ministry spokesman, Saif al-Badr, said that emergency rooms across the south had received 3,747 cases of Iraqis suffering respiratory problems as a result of the storm. More than 1,000 of those were recorded in Basra, where the storm was especially severe on Monday, and 451 were in Najaf, a far smaller city, he said.Also badly affected were residents of Muthanna Province, which shares a long border with Saudi Arabia, he said, adding that most of the thousands who were treated for respiratory problems had been released.The Basra police department put out a list of storm instructions, including one directed at families: “Since the storm is accompanied by frightening sounds for young children, parents should explain what is happening so that their child can sleep soundly.”Visibility in Basra was severely limited.Hussein Faleh/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images More

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      New Pact Would Require Ships to Cut Emissions or Pay a Fee

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      A draft global agreement sets a fee for cargo ships, which carry the vast majority of world trade, to pay for their greenhouse gas emissions.Amid the turmoil over global trade, countries around the world reached a remarkable, though modest, agreement Friday to reduce the climate pollution that comes from shipping those goods worldwide — with what is essentially a tax, no less.A draft accord reached in London under the auspices of the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations agency, would require every ship that ferries goods across the oceans to lower their greenhouse gas emissions or pay a fee.The targets fall short of what many had hoped. Still, it’s the first time a global industry would face a price on its climate pollution no matter where in the world it operates. The proceeds would be used mainly to help the industry move to cleaner fuels. It would come into effect in 2028, pending approval by country representatives, which is widely expected.The agreement marks a rare bit of international cooperation that’s all the more remarkable because it was reached even after the United States pulled out of the talks earlier in the week. No other countries followed suit.“The U.S. is just one country and that one country cannot derail this entire process,” said Faig Abbasov, shipping director for Transport and Environment, a European advocacy group that has pushed for measures to clean up the maritime industry. “This will be first binding decision that will force shipping companies to decarbonize and switch to alternative fuels.”The agreement applies to all ships, no matter whose flag they fly, including ships registered in the United States, although the vast majority of ships are flagged in other countries. It remained unclear whether or how Washington might respond to the fee agreement.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Pension Funds Push Forward on Climate Goals Despite Backlash

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      At a time of resistance to environmental, social and governance goals, pension funds have become a bulwark against efforts to sideline climate risks.In the past few months, some of the largest banks and asset managers in the United States have quit net zero networks, the climate groups that encourage their members to set ambitious carbon reduction targets and collaborate internationally on sustainability efforts.But the week after Donald J. Trump won re-election in November, NYCERS, a pension fund for New York City employees, went in the opposite direction. It joined a United Nations-affiliated climate action group for long-term investors, the Net Zero Asset Owner Alliance.The timing wasn’t intentional, said Brad Lander, the comptroller who oversees the city’s finances, including the pension fund, and is now running for mayor. But, he added, “we were pleased that the timing sent an important signal.”“It is far more important than it was for pension funds and other big asset owners to take collective action at this moment,” Mr. Lander said.At a time of growing backlash to environmental, social and governance goals and investment strategies, pension funds, particularly in blue states and Europe, have emerged as a bulwark against efforts to sideline climate-related risks.The funds, which sit at the top of the investment chain, have stepped up engagement with asset managers and companies on climate goals and have kept public commitments to use their fiscal might to reduce carbon emissions. In some cases, that has meant shifting to European asset managers, which have not backed off on climate commitments as much as their American counterparts have.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More