5 Environmental Stories You Don’t Want To Miss

DEEP WATER: According to emails made public Wednesday, Michigan officials ignored and trivialized growing complaints and scientific evidence of contaminated drinking water in the city of Flint until late 2015. To cut expenses, officials had switched the city's water source to the Flint River, which corroded city pipes and leached lead into the drinking supply. 

HEATING UP: NASA and NOAA have confirmed that 2015 was officially the hottest year on record. The average global temperature of 2015 beat the previous record holder, 2014, by the widest margin ever. 

NIGHT SKY: For the first time in a decade all five planets visible to the naked eye will share the night sky. Early risers over the next two weeks should turn their gaze to the east. 

COUNTRY MICE RETURN: In the UK, the mouse species featured in children’s author Beatrix Potter’s books has come back to the Hampshire village where the critters were first identified. Local farmers came together to protect and enhance the habitats around their land for the mouse and other local wildlife. 

EMPTYING OCEANS: The fisheries of the world may be in worse shape than previously thought. A study published this week in Nature Communications found that former estimates were based on misrepresented or incomplete data and that the world’s fisheries have faced sharper declines than reported by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization.