sustainability

Machine learning is helping chemists screen millions of candidate sorbents for direct air capture. Here is what the evidence shows, what plants cost today, and where the claims run ahead of the data.

AI weather models now produce 10-day global forecasts in under a minute. Climate projections are a harder problem, and the gap between the two is where the real science sits.

Solar and wind output swings with the weather, but a grid must balance supply and demand every second. Here is what machine learning actually does for grid operators, which claims are documented, and where the limits are.

Russia has the most desert and dryland by total area. But Australia has the highest percentage of desert territory at 35%. The Sahara covers 11 countries. Desertification is advancing at 12 million hectares per year — an area the size of England lost annually to spreading desert. Here's the full ranking and the crisis of expanding deserts.

Why kilometres of bike lanes cannot establish a global winner, and how connectivity, junctions, and design standards affect a network assessment.

The United States has the most agricultural land at about 421 million hectares, ahead of China and Australia. But India has the most cropland, Kazakhstan has the most arable land per person, and most of the world's farmland is pasture. Here is who has what, and what threatens it.

WRI's 2023 Aqueduct update puts 25 countries, home to about a quarter of humanity, in the extremely high water stress category. Here is who ranks worst, why the rankings disagree, and what Cape Town, Chennai, the Aral Sea, and Israel show about causes and fixes.

Australia wastes 312 kg of food per person per year — the most in the world. The US wastes 80 million tonnes annually. Globally, one-third of all food produced is lost or wasted — enough to feed every hungry person on Earth twice over. Here's the full picture of global food waste and what the most effective interventions are.

How to compare cycling trip shares, commute statistics, and national travel surveys without confusing cities with countries.

The United States generates more plastic waste per capita than any large nation — 130 kg per person per year. But the Philippines, Indonesia, and India contribute the most plastic to the ocean. How you rank countries on plastic pollution depends entirely on whether you measure production, per-capita waste, or ocean contribution.

Monaco packs about 18,500 people into each square kilometre of land, Singapore about 8,300 and Bangladesh about 1,330 — the densest country of any real size. World Bank 2024 data, ranked two ways, with what density does and does not tell you.

Ethiopia, DR Congo, and Niger have the worst access to clean drinking water — fewer than 50% of the population has access. 2.2 billion people lack safely managed drinking water globally. Waterborne diseases kill 1.5 million people annually. A child dies every 2 minutes from diarrheal disease linked to unsafe water.