Tourists shelter from the sun in front of the Sforzesco Castle in Milan, Italy, on Tuesday. Weather alerts, forest fires, melting pavement in cities: A sizzling heat wave has sent temperatures in parts of central and southern Europe soaring toward 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius) in some places. Luca Bruno/AP hide caption
Firefighters work against the advancing Lake Fire in Los Olivos, Calif., on Saturday, July 6, 2024. Eric Thayer/AP hide caption
Athletes dive into the Seine River from the Alexander III bridge on the start of the first leg of the women's triathlon test event for the 2024 Paris Olympics in Paris in August 2023. Michel Euler/AP hide caption
Mike Roberts, left, and Will Hammond Jr., right, sing about the virtues of heat pumps. Heat pumps are more efficient than gas furnaces and can significantly reduce a home's carbon pollution. Eduardo Lopez/The Switch Is On hide caption
Peter Nyongesa walks through the mangroves to monitor his beehives in the Bangladesh slums in Mombasa, Kenya, on May 30, 2024. The 69-year-old Nyongesa recalled how he would plead unsuccessfully with loggers to spare the mangroves or cut only the mature ones while leaving the younger ones intact. So he has turned to deterring the loggers with bees, hidden in the mangroves and ready to sting. Gideon Maundu/AP hide caption
Environmental activists rally in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 after it ruled against the Obama administration's plan to cut climate-warming emissions at the nation's power plants. The Supreme Court has since further limited the power of federal agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency. Drew Angerer/Getty Images hide caption
Google Vice President Majd Bakar speaks on-stage during an annual conference in San Francisco with the back drop of a massive data center. Josh Edelson/Getty Images hide caption
Some of the reusable items to avoid single use plastics. Zayrha Rodriguez/NPR hide caption
Pump jacks extract oil from beneath the ground in North Dakota on May 19, 2021. The federal government announced a $241.5 million settlement with Marathon Oil on Thursday for alleged air quality violations at the company's oil and gas operations in the Forth Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota. Matt Brown/AP hide caption
Palm Springs, Calif., is one of many U.S. cities seeing temperature records falling in recent days and weeks. Mario Tama/Getty Images North America hide caption
A macaque sits on a rock at Cayo Santiago as a rainbow stretches across the sky in February 2022. Lauren Brent hide caption
A home is surrounded by floodwater in Texas. Beryl hit the state as a Category-1 hurricane. The remnants of the storm are expected to move far from the ocean toward the Midwest, where they also pose risks of dangerous flooding. Brandon Bell/Getty Images hide caption
Sunland Park Fire Department firefighters and police officers roll a migrant woman, who was suffering from heat-related illness, on a gurney to be loaded into an ambulance in a residential area in Sunland Park, N.M., on Friday, June 28, 2024. Paul Ratje for NPR hide caption
A woman cools herself with a fan during a hot day in London on June 26, 2024. June 2024 was the hottest June on record, according to Europe's Copernicus climate service. Kin Cheung/AP hide caption
A worker adjusts his helmet on a construction site under the sun as southern California faces a heat wave, in Los Angeles, on Wednesday. Etienne Laurent/AFP via Getty Images hide caption
Marvin Cox, community outreach director with the Metropolitan Action Commission on June 25, in Nashville. As temperatures reached into the upper 90s, the Metro Action Commission was offering free window AC units to seniors, families with young children and people with medical conditions. Mark Humphrey/AP hide caption
Family members survey their home destroyed by Hurricane Beryl, in Ottley Hall, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, on Tuesday. Beryl is the most powerful storm to form this early in the Atlantic hurricane season. Lucanus Ollivierre/AP hide caption
A boat crosses Lake Oroville with a smoldering hillside behind as the Thompson Fire burns in Oroville, Calif., on Wednesday. An extended heatwave blanketing Northern California has resulted in red flag fire warnings and power shutoffs. Noah Berger/AP hide caption
People place plywood over windows as they make last-minute preparations for the arrival of Hurricane Beryl in Kingston, Jamaica, on Wednesday. Joe Raedle/Getty Images hide caption
A flare burns at Venture Global LNG in Cameron, La., April 21, 2022. What would be the nation's largest export terminal for liquified natural gas won approval from a federal commission on June 27, 2024, although when the southwest Louisiana project will be completed remains unclear. Martha Irvine/AP hide caption
Xin Li, a research and development associate, works at Ascend Elements in Westborough, Mass., on June 13. The company is one of several that are scrambling to build recycling plants that can recover minerals from electric vehicle batteries without using dirty techniques like burning them — or wasting energy by shipping them overseas. Amanda Andrade-Rhoades for NPR hide caption
Cows graze in a field in Luncavita, Romania, in this file photo. Denmark will impose cattle farmers with a tax on livestock carbon dioxide emissions starting in 2030, claiming it will be the first country to do so in a move to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from each of its cows. Vadim Ghirda/AP hide caption
President Joe Biden speaks at Prince William Forest Park on Earth Day, Monday, April 22, 2024, in Triangle, Va. Biden announced $7 billion in federal grants to provide residential solar projects serving low- and middle-income communities and an expansion of the American Climate Corps green jobs training program. Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP hide caption