Around the world, there’s a conjoined crisis of climate change and housing shortages ... Construction and buildings account for more than one-quarter of global greenhose gas emissions. Tile vaulting is a technique that flourished in the eastern Mediterranean after the 10th century. It involves constructing arched ceilings made of multiple layers of lightweight terra cotta tiles....In Cuba, From 1960 to 1965, a range of vault experiments and projects took place across the country... Cuba’s vaulted architecture reflects the relationship between necessity and invention, a process that many people mistakenly think of as automatic. It isn’t. It is a relationship based on perseverance, trial and error and, above all, passion.

A new study suggests that Himalayan glaciers may be melting even during winter, when they were previously believed to remain stable.

With dozens of new plastics manufacturing and recycling facilities in the works, the U.S. plastics industry will release more greenhouse gas emissions than coal-fired power plants by 2030, say the authors of a new report.

Emissions from the plastics sector equaled that of 116 coal-fired power plants last year, according to the report out Thursday from Bennington College’s Beyond Plastics project. Meanwhile, 42 plastics manufacturing and recycling facilities have opened, or are in the process of being built or permitted, since 2019.

“As the world transitions away from fossil fuels for electricity generation and for transportation, the petrochemical industry has found a new market for fossil fuels: plastics,” Judith Enck, president of Beyond Plastics, told reporters on Thursday.