From industrious sharks to the bird of the year, here’s what caught our attention this week on the climate and nature beat.

The fund will award grants in amounts ranging from $50,000 to $250,000 for projects, including energy efficiency upgrades, green infrastructure or the purchase of electric vehicles.

As the price of natural gas rises, it’s prompting some consumer and environmental advocates to call for homes to go all-electric.

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm announced a “major scientific breakthrough” Tuesday in the decadeslong quest to harness fusion, the energy that powers the sun and stars.

The federal government has just announced its most significant investment to date in nature-based projects aimed at creating "climate-ready" coastlines, and Chicago is among the communities that will benefit from this latest round of funding.

It’s been another wild week on the nature beat. The United Nations’ biodiversity conference kicked off Tuesday in Montreal with the UN Secretary-General calling humanity a “weapon of mass extinction.” Nowhere to go but up from there.

Every Friday, we’ll be rounding up some of the articles, videos, photos and social media posts that have caught our attention on the topics of climate change, the environment, wildlife, conservation and weather. 

It could have been worse, UN Executive Secretary for Climate Simon Stiell said in a seaside interview with The Associated Press. The talks did achieve the historic creation of a fund for poor nations that are victims of climate disasters, he said.

The president’s brief attendance at the United Nations climate conference, known as COP27, was largely a victory lap as he emphasized new spending on clean energy initiatives that will “change the paradigm” for the United States and the rest of the world.

Of the three main types of heat-trapping greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide — the biggest jump from 2020 to 2021 was in methane, whose concentrations in the air came in with the biggest year-on-year increase since regular measurements began four decades ago, WMO said.

Chicago bills itself as a world-class city, but when it comes to recycling, its performance has been less than first-rate. 

President Joe Biden, a self-described “car guy,” often promises to lead by example on climate change by moving swiftly to convert the sprawling U.S. government fleet to zero-emission electric vehicles. But efforts to eliminate gas-powered vehicles from the fleet have lagged.

As Puerto Rico is battling the devastation caused by Hurricane Fiona, Chicago-area residents of Puerto Rican descent say the storm calls attention to past wrongs and opportunities for change.

The swelling waters of the Indus, a major river in this part of the world, have wreaked havoc as heavy rains and massive flooding unleashed devastation across much of Pakistan. At least 1,343 people have been killed and millions have lost their homes, with many experts blaming the unusually heavy monsoon rains on climate change.

Zombie or doomed ice is ice that is still attached to thicker areas of ice, but is no longer getting fed by those larger glaciers. Meanwhile the doomed ice is melting from climate change, said study co-author William Colgan, a glaciologist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.

The decision by the California Air Resources Board came two years after Gov. Gavin Newsom first directed regulators to consider such a policy. If the goal is reached, California would cut emissions from cars in half by 2040.