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Over the past 40 years, the US has become a much more water efficient. Since water use peaked in the 1980s, the population has grown more than 45 percent. Yet the total water use has dropped by 20 percent. On a per person basis, water use is down about 40 percent. This progress has less…

Canada’s agricultural breadbasket has been racked by drought since 2020 – punctuated by floods. This, many scientists have predicted, is the troubling future of Canadian farming in a changing climate. But there’s a surprise. It’s not that the weather isn’t hotter and drier and more extreme. It is all that. It’s that crop yields are…

For the first time in its history, Mexico has more people in its middle class than those living in poverty. These are World Bank categories measuring multidimensional poverty for an upper middle income country. More important than the categories is the trend. World Bank data show the Mexican middle class grew by more than 12 percentage…

For the first time in a generation, no drought conditions or even unusual dryness are seen anywhere in California. Of the state’s 17 major reservoirs, 14 are over 70 percent of maximum capacity. Boat docks have refloated out of the mud. Towns and cities are getting bigger, cheaper water deliveries. Chinook salmon are getting higher…

Pessimism is not quite as pervasive as it can seem, according to surveys conducted over the past year by the Archbridge Institute, a think tank focused on human flourishing. Positive attitudes remain remarkably widespread across different aspects of American life. Approximately 70% of Americans report they have achieved, or are making progress toward achieving, the American Dream.…

The year saw fires in Los Angeles that flattened communities, a tragic flood in Texas, and cyclone-driven floods in southern Asia that were far more devastating. We had our share of extreme weather. But the record 2025 set is the lowest death rate from extreme weather events since records began. Commentator Roger Pielke Jr. notes…

After rising for most of two decades, the overall suicide rate in the US dropped a bit in 2024, the latest year for data. More encouragingly, suicide attempts among teens has dropped much more decidedly. Young people between ages 12 and 17 attempted suicide 25 percent fewer times in 2024 than in 2021. We don’t…

For all its political frustrations, the 2015 Paris Climate Accord has shaved 1.4∘C off the warming expected by the end of this century. That progress translates to reducing the projected number of extreme heat days from an average of 114 down to 57 per year. A team of scientists published research this fall finding that the emissions…

Affordability is a real issue these days. And everyone’s financial situation is unique. But every once in a while it’s useful to step way back and take a really long-lens at how far we’ve come. This two-century-plus chart shows how incomes have changed. It’s corrected for purchasing power by year and by country. Overall, income…

China is now 25 percent forested, up from only 10 percent under forest cover in 1949. In a decades-long effort to fight desertification in its vast western regions, and reduce sandstorms that reach as far as Beijing, China has just finished planting a 2,000-mile greenbelt around the Taklamakan, its largest desert. The sandstorms apparently continue…