Science & Technology Archives - The World from PRX

As the West continues to mass produce cheap clothes, a lot of it ends up barely worn, donated or in a landfill. In Ghana, the deluge of worn-out fashions has overwhelmed the West African country's infrastructure and poses huge environmental threats to its coastlines.

Ben Huynh, a researcher at Stanford University, joined The World's host Marco Werman from his home in California to discuss the potential disaster an oil spill could cause on the Red Sea coasts.

Debate ensues over environmental issues and the need for economic advancement as Democratic Republic of Congo lifts a moratorium on logging the Congo rainforest.

Healthy ecosystems tend to seek balance. In the highlands of Kenya, this dynamic plays out in a tacit agreement between giraffes and their leafy diet.

The World Health Organization is urging nations to adopt new air quality guidelines that could save 7 million lives a year worldwide. Fine particulates known as PM2.5 are the deadliest of six types of pollution that need tighter restrictions, WHO says.

The legislation is designed to help the US meet its targets set under the Paris climate accord to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by the end of the decade.

Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has announced approval for a $239 million recovery plan for La Palma during his third visit to the island since the volcano erupted.

The country anticipates a nearly 30% overall loss in output compared to 2020. The culprit: a severe late frost, followed by heavy rains which fueled mildew. These extreme weather conditions were made more likely by climate change, experts say.

The US House Oversight and Reform Committee is investigating the role of industry in the spread of disinformation about fossil fuel and its role in the climate crisis.

For the past 50 years, the US government has known about the problem of climate change but has continued to promote fossil fuel development and done little to avert a crisis. Lawyer James Gustave Speth chronicles this failure in his new book, “They Knew: The US Federal Government’s 50-Year Role in Causing the Climate Crisis.”