The remnants of Hurricane Ida reached the New York City area on Wednesday, battering the region with record rainfall that flooded streets, subways, and basements. New York and New Jersey declared states of emergency, and officials in the Northeast had reported more than two dozen deaths as of Thursday afternoon. Ida, which made landfall in…

On Monday, the United Nations announced an environmental and public health milestone: the end of the use of leaded gasoline in automobiles and road vehicles worldwide. The last holdout was Algeria, which had large stockpiles of leaded gasoline; in July, those stockpiles ran out, and Algeria has now made the transition to unleaded gasoline. Lead…

During the pandemic, I’ve spent a lot of time alone. I live by myself. I work from home. At times, I experienced fits of fidgetiness and restlessness, contributing to feelings of burnout. Here’s what helped: reappraising the situation. What I was feeling was isolation, and the loneliness that comes with it. Instead of letting it…

The Covid-19 pandemic upended daily life so drastically that there was a moment when it seemed to be making a dent in the climate crisis. Rush-hour traffic disappeared, global travel slowed to a crawl, and the resulting economic tailspin sent energy-related pollution plummeting almost 6 percent globally. This kind of decline in pollution is unprecedented…

Medicare, the federal health insurance program that covers Americans over 65, is facing an impossible dilemma: Should it cover a new and expensive medication for Alzheimer’s disease, which afflicts 6 million Americans and for which there is no existing treatment, even though the drug might not actually work? It is an enormous question. Alzheimer’s patients…

Another Covid-19 vaccine, this one from the biotech firm Novavax, has posted superb results in a phase 3 clinical trial, the company announced on Monday. But with more than half of US adults now vaccinated against Covid-19, the biggest impact of these results may be in other countries. The Novavax vaccine stands out from other…

The world’s leading health organization, the WHO, repeatedly broke its own rules and spent millions of dollars on high-priced management consultants, according to a new independent audit — even as the United Nations agency has struggled to pay for lifesaving equipment and vaccines in its global Covid-19 response. An unnamed consulting company, which Vox has…

Tiny, wriggling horrors are hatching right now, under our feet, across the country. No, not the billions of Brood X cicadas emerging throughout the eastern US. I’m talking instead about baby invasive “crazy worms” that thrash through garden, farm, city, and forest soil, growing to 3 to 6 inches in length, sucking up nutrients, and…

Summer has not officially started yet, but wildfire season has already arrived in the US. Now an intense heat wave coupled with extreme drought is threatening to make things worse. Large wildfires have already burned 981,000 acres this year to date, more than the 766,000 acres burned by the same time last year, according to…

From his home in remote coastal British Columbia, Ernest Mason, a 77-year-old elder and hereditary chief of the Kitasoo/Xai’xais Nation, remembers. He remembers a childhood fishing trip with his father, when they packed sleeping bags but caught so many halibut they were home before dark. He remembers setting traps for pink Dungeness crab and floating…