Carbon markets incentivize companies to cut emissions but require high carbon prices

Carbon sinks absorb more greenhouse gases than they produce

The largest on Earth are oceans, which capture 25% of all carbon emissions and 90% of excess atmospheric thermal radiation while generating half of the world's oxygen. Wildfires and deforestation have reduced forests' net sink capacity, though fungi are believed to capture and store over a third of global carbon emissions.

How a black market for banned refrigerants still threatens ozone recovery and climate progress

Despite the Montreal Protocol's success, illegal trade in chlorofluorocarbons, hydrochlorofluorocarbons, and hydrofluorocarbons persists. Driven by high profits and weak enforcement, smugglers supply banned refrigerants, causing significant ozone depletion and greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to billions of tons of carbon dioxide.

What’s the best way to reduce climate impact of food?

Food is a big part of everyone’s carbon footprint, and it’s important to understand the impact of our personal food consumption. Individual food choices can emit as many greenhouse gases as personal electricity use. Plant-based diets generally...

How greenhouse gases and climate change impact the efficiency of photosynthesis

A review in the Journal of Experimental Botany found that higher temperatures reduce the efficiency of enzymes involved in photosynthesis and impair a plant's ability to control water loss and regulate carbon dioxide uptake. While increased carbon dioxide levels are understood to accelerate plant growth by boosting photosynthesis, researchers suggest these effects more than offset the potential gain.

The Supreme Court curbed the EPA's power to regulate carbon emissions in 2022

In West Virginia v. EPA, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the EPA exceeded its authority by requiring industrywide carbon cuts. Chief Justice Roberts' opinion invoked the "major questions" doctrine, which limits the ability of federal agencies to act without explicit congressional approval.

Methane leaks during natural gas processing reduce the gas's overall cleanliness

Natural gas is advertised as a cleaner fossil fuel because it emits 50% less carbon dioxide than oil and coal when burned. Supporting analysis only considers end-use combustion and excludes total emissions generated by extraction, shipping, and processing.

Understanding the 1.5 degree Celsius climate benchmark

As more parts of the world are facing extreme weather, from high temperatures to increased natural disasters, there is much debate about what can be done. MIT News explores and explains the 1.5-degree benchmark for limiting the effects of climate change. Read to understand where the planet stands in relation to this threshold and what can be done at the global, regional, and personal levels to “keep 1.5 alive.”

Artificial photosynthesis turns CO₂ into sustainable fuel

Carbon conversion focuses on a central perplexing question: if carbon dioxide is a leading driver of climate change, and fossil fuels are made of carbon-based molecules, can we devise a way to convert CO₂ into useful alternatives efficiently? This video breaks down a potential pathway using artificial photosynthesis, which uses sunlight to convert CO₂ into fuel.

Establishing the wind power grid required incentives, reliability, and affordability

Although wind was harnessed to generate electricity for individual buildings in the late 1800s, high costs, mechanical issues with turbines, and better fossil-fuel alternatives delayed wind power's widespread growth. After the oil crises of the 1970s, governments sought alternative energy sources and, in the decades that followed, provided tax credits to expand the wind power market.

Cryptocurrency and data center growth are expected to increase greenhouse gas emissions

An analysis from the Open Energy Outlook Initiative estimates a 30% increase in emissions through 2030, as growing energy demands in regions where data centers are being built (20%-30%) far exceed the traditional growth rate of utilities in those areas (1%-2%). The emissions spike is expected to equal France's annual carbon output.

Commodity trading is regulated by the CFTC to mitigate fraud and risk

Established in 1974, the CFTC regulates these markets (including swaps, futures, and certain types of options) to protect market participants from fraud, ensure fair trading conditions, and generally reduce financial risk.

Large oil companies knew about the impact of carbon emissions since the ’70s

PBS Frontline’s The Power of Big Oil reveals how industry giants like Exxon and Shell were researching climate change in the 1970s but then funded denial campaigns—using internal science to sow public doubt for decades.

Energy Star certifies efficiency to help Americans save energy and cut emissions

Launched by the EPA in 1992, the Energy Star program identifies appliances, buildings, and electronics that meet high efficiency standards. It has helped consumers save over $500B in energy costs and prevent 4 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions.

Tesla plans to eliminate the use of rare earth elements in future vehicles

At a 2023 Investor Day event, Elon Musk outlined steps to focus Tesla's efforts on climate action rather than new vehicle models. Musk estimates the transition to carbon-free, sustainable energy will cost $10T.

Contract prices on prediction markets are generally interpreted as implied probabilities

For example, if a contract trading is at $0.65, that could be read as the market assigning a 65% probability to that event occurring. The most common format for prediction markets is winner-take-all: The contract settles at $1 if the event occurs, or $0 if it doesn't.

The North American waste management market was worth $208B in 2019

Burning waste to generate energy is a $10B industry in the US alone. A growing number of major companies—including Amazon, Subaru, and American Airlines—are pursuing "zero landfill" sustainability goals.

Simulate the effects of government policies on climate projections

The En-ROADS tool lets you role-play as a global decision maker to explore the long-term effects of various policy ideas on climate. More than 341,000 people worldwide, including over 130 members of Congress, have used the simulation.

Understanding how non-profit entities manage electric grids to ensure supply-demand balance

Independent System Operators in smaller areas and Regional Transmission Organizations that operate across multiple states run wholesale electricity markets. Electricity suppliers can submit competitive bids to meet estimated demand in day-ahead markets while keeping consumer costs low. ISOs and RCOs also inform markets of deviations in these estimates so that suppliers can adjust how much power they generate, which is then bought and sold in real time.

What something costs is reflective of a balance in the market determined by the amount of demand relative to the supply of goods and services

Because economies are complex systems, a wide variety of issues influence this balance—including some things generally considered to be positive, like rising wages.

Companies sometimes issue corporate bonds to raise capital

These bonds offer investors regular interest payments in addition to the return of the principal amount at maturity. They allow companies to raise capital without losing ownership.

Tariffs once fueled the US economy

US tariffs peaked in 1930 with the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which slashed global trade by 65%. Once a key revenue source, tariffs gave way to income taxes in 1913, leading to decades of lower trade barriers. Today, US tariffs remain among the lowest worldwide.

Learn how tax credits are applied to income taxes

Tax credits are directly subtracted from the amount of money taxpayers owe on their annual income. Unlike tax deductions, credits reduce the owed amount while deductions reduce how much income is taxable. There are different types of tax credits that are either fully or partially paid out.

Patents arguably grant inventors monopolies for a short period of time

As a way to reward innovation, the government grants short-term monopolies on patented products. Patents block other companies from producing or selling that product, giving inventors the rights and opportunity to establish themselves in a market before other competitors enter.

Some policymakers take issue with long-term capital gains being taxed at a preferential rate compared to income from paid work

The concept of taxing unrealized capital gains—when an asset’s value increases but has yet to be sold—has been increasingly debated. Other policymakers in recent years have supported lowering the highest long-term capital gains tax rate and are generally opposed to levying taxes on unrealized capital gains.

BP only makes up about 1% of global oil production after many missteps

BP’s market cap has never recovered from the dive it took following the 2010 Deep Water Horizon oil spill. This video details some of BP’s corporate missteps along the way.

Hedge funds, the private investment firms that trade a wide swath of financial assets, make money by imposing steep fees on investors and from the fund's investment performance.

The price of gas is a composite made up of several different factors, with the federal gas tax making up less than 20% of what drivers pay at the pump.

Some renewable energy sources may weaken the resiliency of electric grids by removing outage buffers provided by coal- and natural gas-fired plants, which provide the system with more time to find a new power source if a plant goes down.

Scientists can determine Earth's past climate conditions by analyzing air trapped in microscopic bubbles within ice cores—columns of compressed snow layers that build up over hundreds of thousands of years.

Despite being favored by 87% of Americans, Congress does not have term limits.

The use of fungi to detoxify land and water—a process known as mycoremediation—has been used to clean up natural resources affected by the 2025 California wildfires.

Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency—a form of digital currency with a wide variety of uses—created around popular 'memes,' or viral internet jokes.

SpaceX's S-1 or 'prospectus' revealed many previously unknown details about the company, including its unprofitability despite doing $18.7B in revenue in 2025, exactly how many voting shares Elon Musk will have in the company (roughly 85%), and more.

When you complete a CAPTCHA on a website to prove you are human, you may be unknowingly training algorithms for self-driving cars, whose systems require training data to help identify crosswalks, bicycles, and other outdoor objects.

Art theft is the third-largest source of criminal revenues worldwide, thanks in part to the subjective nature of valuing a work of art.

The American Society of Civil Engineers' infrastructure report card gave the US a C in 2025, its highest grade since the project launched in 1998.

Up to a million Girl Scouts sell about 200 million cookie boxes every spring, generating $800 million, largely because refusing a child is frowned upon

The 1987 Nintendo video game 'Stadium Events' isn't known for being particularly fun, but its scarcity has made it a highly sought-after item that has sold for up to $35K at auction.

About 2,000 US babies are born annually without some portion of their limbs, potentially leading to a lifetime of pricey prosthetics.

'Silent' fireworks have gained more interest in recent years as a quieter celebratory option.

Shooting stars, or meteors, are fragments of asteroids and comets that burn up as they enter Earth's atmosphere, creating streaks in the sky called meteor showers.

When caught in the mouths of cardinal fish, seed shrimp release glowing, bioluminescent chemicals, which alert predators of the cardinal fish, prompting the shrimp's ejection.

Volcanic activity may have triggered the Black Death by spewing gases that led to crop failures in Europe, thus forcing the import of grain ships with plague-infested fleas.

Corals are themselves not coral reefs—the term refers to the tiny marine invertebrates that build the rigid reef.

The first steps to rebuilding your credit score include getting to know exactly what's on your credit report and figuring out how far you are from the '700 club,' or 'good score' range.

Domino's Pizza's 30-minute delivery guarantee was responsible for the chain's 1980s surge, but it was discontinued after the company was found liable for delivery driver accidents.

Jimmy Carter signed a 1978 bill that legalized home brewing, a move credited with kick-starting the craft beer industry.

Double world record holder Hunter Ewen helped conquer his fear of balloons, called globophobia, by training to win Guinness World Record titles for balloon inflation.

To reduce wrinkles in clothing, research recommends gentle wash cycles with more water and tumble drying with smaller loads and longer times.

One disco producer saw 'Star Wars' four times on its opening weekend and was so inspired that he recorded the album 'Star Wars and Other Intergalactic Funk,' which produced a chart-topping single.