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Trump Wants to Reverse Coal’s Long Decline. It Won’t be Easy.

NYT Global Warming Climate Change - April 14, 2025 - 05:02
Coal has been displaced by cheap and plentiful natural gas and the rapid growth of wind and solar energy — forces that President Trump will struggle to do away with.
Categories: Climate

Poof! There Goes America’s Competitive Advantage in a Warming World

NYT Global Warming Climate Change - April 14, 2025 - 05:01
The Trump administration’s governance — and the president’s unhinged trade war on the entire world — has hurt America’s ability to meet climate goals.
Categories: Climate

The rise of end times fascism | Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor

The Guardian Climate Change - April 13, 2025 - 07:00

The governing ideology of the far right has become a monstrous, supremacist survivalism. Our task is to build a movement strong enough to stop them

The movement for corporate city states cannot believe its good luck. For years, it has been pushing the extreme notion that wealthy, tax-averse people should up and start their own high-tech fiefdoms, whether new countries on artificial islands in international waters (“seasteading”) or pro-business “freedom cities” such as Próspera, a glorified gated community combined with a wild west med spa on a Honduran island.

Yet despite backing from the heavy-hitter venture capitalists Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen, their extreme libertarian dreams kept bogging down: it turns out most self-respecting rich people don’t actually want to live on floating oil rigs, even if it means lower taxes, and while Próspera might be nice for a holiday and some body “upgrades”, its extra-national status is currently being challenged in court.

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Categories: Climate

What I’ve learned after 40 years as the Observer’s science editor

The Guardian Climate Change - April 13, 2025 - 03:00

Almost as amazing as the knowledge we have gained in the past four decades is the fact that some people continue to deny the damage we are doing to our world

Earlier this year I received an email from a reader asking background questions about an article I had written more than four decades ago. Given the time gap, my recollection was hazy. To be honest, it was almost non-existent. So I was intrigued – and then astonished when I read the feature.

I had written about the British glaciologist John Mercer, author of a 1978 Nature paper in which he warned that continuing increases in fossil fuel consumption would cause amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide to soar. Global temperatures could rise by 2C by the mid-21st century, causing major ice loss at the poles and threatening a 5-metre rise in sea levels, he warned.

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Categories: Climate

Bees Are Under Threat from Climate Change, the Trade War and Doge

NYT Global Warming Climate Change - April 12, 2025 - 09:16
For beekeepers, the problem isn’t just climate change and extreme weather: It’s also DOGE, the trade war and the immigration crackdown.
Categories: Climate

Prepping for War With Russia on the Ice and Snow

NYT Global Warming Climate Change - April 12, 2025 - 08:03
President Trump may be turning relations with NATO and Russia inside out, but winter war games revealed that two militaries’ cooperation was unchanged.
Categories: Climate

Seeing Australia’s beloved gumtrees dying makes my insides knot. If they can’t survive, how can we? | Jess Harwood

The Guardian Climate Change - April 11, 2025 - 20:00

Even the hardy eucalypts are finding their limits as we experience more frequent bushfires, heatwaves and droughts

Last week I went to Adelaide to see a man about a tree. The man was Dr Dean Nicolle and the tree was actually 10,000 eucalypt trees and mallees, of over 800 species, which Dean has been planting on a block of land south of Adelaide since 1993.

Dean’s passion for eucalypts is incredible. It makes me realise that so much conservation happens purely because someone is just absolutely captivated by something. And thank goodness Dean is, because his love for the eucalypt made the Currency Creek Arboretum, which is designed to bring together all of Australia’s eucalypt species in one place for research.

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Categories: Climate

White House Plan Calls for NOAA Research Programs to Be Dismantled

NYT Global Warming Climate Change - April 11, 2025 - 16:44
A Trump administration budget proposal would essentially eliminate one of the world’s foremost Earth sciences research operations.
Categories: Climate

Ann Arbor Wants to Build Its Own Renewable-Energy Grid

NYT Global Warming Climate Change - April 11, 2025 - 14:07
Ann Arbor, Mich., moved forward with an ambitious plan to build its own utility that aims provide clean power outside the grid.
Categories: Climate

Trump’s New Way to Kill Regulations: Because I Say So

NYT Global Warming Climate Change - April 11, 2025 - 13:09
The president is trying new shortcuts to eliminate energy and environmental rules, but legal experts say the efforts could face high hurdles.
Categories: Climate

New Pact Would Require Ships to Cut Emissions or Pay a Fee

NYT Global Warming Climate Change - April 11, 2025 - 12:23
A draft global agreement sets a fee for cargo ships, which carry the vast majority of world trade, to pay for their greenhouse gas emissions.
Categories: Climate

Revealed: nearly 2m hectares of koala habitat bulldozed since 2011 – despite political promises to protect species

The Guardian Climate Change - April 11, 2025 - 11:00

Guardian Australia is highlighting the plight of our endangered native species during an election campaign that is ignoring broken environment laws and rapidly declining ecosystems

Nearly 2m hectares of forests suitable for endangered koalas have been destroyed since the iconic species was declared a threatened species in 2011, according to analysis for Guardian Australia.

The scale of habitat destruction in Queensland and New South Wales – states in which the koala is formally recognised as being at risk of extinction – has continued despite political promises it would be protected.

Get Guardian Australia environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as an email

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Categories: Climate

Will global climate action be a casualty of Trump’s tariffs?

The Guardian Climate Change - April 11, 2025 - 02:00

Clean energy investors likely to pull back from US, but other countries may seize opportunity to speed transition

Donald Trump’s upending of the global economy has raised fears that climate action could emerge as a casualty of the trade war.

In the week that has followed “liberation day”, economic experts have warned that the swathe of tariffs could trigger a global economic recession, with far-reaching consequences for investors – including those behind the green energy projects needed to meet climate goals.

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Categories: Climate

Hot weekend for south-east Australia, with Melbourne to get warmest April day in four years

The Guardian Climate Change - April 11, 2025 - 00:23

After hottest 12-month period on record, a high-pressure system brings above-average temperatures across WA, Victoria, SA and NSW

South-east Australia is in for a hot weekend, with temperatures up to 12C above average forecast in parts of Victoria and Melbourne expected to experience its warmest April days in four years.

The Bureau of Meteorology has forecast Melbourne will reach a maximum of 30C on Saturday and Sunday, while Sydney is forecast to reach a high of 26C on both days of the weekend.

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Categories: Climate

PR campaign may have fuelled food study backlash, leaked document shows

The Guardian Climate Change - April 11, 2025 - 00:00

Eat-Lancet report recommended shift to more plant-based, climate-friendly diet but was extensively attacked online

A leaked document shows that vested interests may have been behind a “mud-slinging” PR campaign to discredit a landmark environment study, according to an investigation.

The Eat-Lancet Commission study, published in 2019, set out to answer the question: how can we feed the world’s growing population without causing catastrophic climate breakdown?

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Categories: Climate

Australian voters are left in the dark on climate targets as they head to the ballot box | Tony Wood

The Guardian Climate Change - April 10, 2025 - 21:05

There has been little talk about how Australia’s economy will get to net zero. That’s a terrible reflection on the state of our politics

The Coalition has been forced to reassert its commitment to the Paris climate agreement after its energy spokesperson, Ted O’Brien, appeared to waver on the pledge on Thursday.

O’Brien faced off against the climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, at a debate in Canberra, weeks out from a federal election in which energy policy is emerging as a hot-button issue.

Labor, the Coalition, nobody in this country will be able to achieve the emission target set by Chris Bowen and Anthony Albanese. The difference between Peter Dutton and Anthony Albanese is that Peter Dutton has been honest and upfront about that.

… go against the spirit, if not the letter, of the Paris Agreement, and – in some circumstances – could constitute a breach of those obligations.

Tony Wood is the energy and climate change program director at the Grattan Institute. This article was originally published in the Conversation

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Categories: Climate

E.P.A. Is Said to Plan Deep Cuts to Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program

NYT Global Warming Climate Change - April 10, 2025 - 19:32
Officials are moving to eliminate requirements that most big polluters disclose how much carbon dioxide and other planet-warming gases they emit.
Categories: Climate

Climate at Your Door: The Climate and Housing Crisis in 11 Sobering Photos

I’ve had too many close calls with increased tornado activity here in Louisville, KY, and the summer heat seems more unbearable each year. After a winter that brought terrible storms, I’m bracing for “Danger Season,”—the period between May and October when North America experiences its worst climate impacts. It seems to be starting earlier and lasting longer.

Danger Season 2025 may bring even more extreme impacts as the climate crisis intensifies—this information makes me fear for the safety of my family and my loved ones. I allow myself to feel fear and grieve for what is lost. I think of the words in Frank Herbert’s Dune:

“Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me.”

This helps me remember that I won’t allow fear to keep me from finding courage and fighting for a safer world—for my son, for my community, for all of us.

When climate change comes knocking at our door, we need to be prepared. That is why we must tackle the climate crisis and the affordable housing crisis at the same time.

Home looks different for all of us, and because of that we must pursue equitable solutions to make people safer where they live.

From flooded trailers in KY

People clear out a trailer neighboring the Perez home at Ramsey Mobile Home Park following rain storms that caused flooding on February 17, 2025 in Pikeville, Kentucky. Jon Cherry/Getty Images

…to fallen trees in South Carolina when Hurricane Helene cut an 800 mile path across the southeast…

Photo provided by the author of her cousin’s home after Hurricane Helene.


and mobile homes destroyed by hurricanes.

FEMA search and rescue efforts in N. Carolina after Hurricane Helene. Sept. 2024. FEMA

When the lack of air conditioning behind prison doors makes extreme heat a death sentence,

Create Image/Getty Images

and when people who are experiencing homelessness must find relief where they can when a heat dome encompasses Portland.

A man who asked to not be named tries to stay cool near a misting station in Lents Park during an extreme heat wave August 13, 2021 in Portland, Oregon. Nathan Howard/Getty Images

When the sea has forced its way right through the doors of Summer Haven homes,

Drone view of homes in Summer Haven, Florida. Aerial_Views/Getty Images

and when fire consumes everything that a family has worked for.

Sisters Emilee and Natalee De Santiago sit together on the front porch of what remains of their home on January 19, 2025 in Altadena, California. Brandon Bell/Getty Images

When families must pack up what they can and evacuate,

People walk down a flooded street as they evacuate their homes after it the area was inundated with flooding from Hurricane Harvey on August 27, 2017 in Houston, Texas. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

and renters and public housing are hit particularly hard…

Diamond Dillahunt, 2-year-old Ta-Layah Koonce and Shkoel Collins survey the flooding at the Trent Court public housing apartments after the Neuse River topped its banks during Hurricane Florence September 13, 2018 in New Bern, N. Carolina. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

even if we’re safe in our doorway, we won’t thrive if our community is not prepared

A person walks past downed power lines as people deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Helene on October 05, 2024 in Greenwood, South Carolina. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

…because we can’t do this alone.

Volunteer rescuer workers help a woman from her home that was inundated with the flooding of Hurricane Harvey on August 30, 2017 in Port Arthur, Texas. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

“The measure of whether or not a community is resilient is how it protects people from the inevitable.” –Andreanecia Morris, Executive Director for Housing NOLA

Climate-driven risk will make the ongoing housing crisis worse and would have disproportionate impacts on low-income families and communities of color, including people who are incarcerated or experiencing homelessness.

Right now, we need elected officials and government agencies from the local to the federal level doing everything possible to ensure people have safe, affordable, climate-resilient housing and resources to recover from disasters. The US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is an essential agency for meeting our housing needs, yet Elon Musk is attempting to cut staff and render HUD inoperable in his illegal grab for power.

Thankfully, he’s facing pushback. The Government Accountability Office has committed to investigating the impact on fair housing enforcement in response to a petition led by Senator Elizabeth Warren, Ranking Member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee. We’ll need sustained action to keep Elon’s hands off HUD and to invest in affordable, climate-safe housing nationwide.

Call your Senators today and tell them to keep Elon’s hands off HUD and to invest in affordable, climate-safe housing.

For talking points, refer to this national letter signed by UCS and housing justice organizations.

Categories: Climate

Kathleen Sgamma Ends Bid to Lead the B.L.M.

NYT Global Warming Climate Change - April 10, 2025 - 15:24
Kathleen Sgamma abruptly withdrew from consideration days after a memo surfaced in which she sharply criticized President Trump.
Categories: Climate

Climate Change Could Become a Global Economic Disaster

NYT Global Warming Climate Change - April 10, 2025 - 14:52
New warnings from financial firms and insurers point to a future defined by profound risks to the global economy from heat, storms and other disasters.
Categories: Climate