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Around the globe, conflict and the climate crisis have caused 83.4m people – a record number – to become refugees within their own countries. Three people from Bangladesh, Sudan and Colombia tell their stories

In 2024, the number of internally displaced people around the world reached 83.4m, the highest figure ever recorded. Men, women, children, whole families and generations have been forced to flee their homes within their country as a result of conflict, violence, or natural disasters.

“Internal displacement rarely makes the headlines, but for those living it, the suffering can last for years,” says Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, commenting on the latest figures from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).

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Forests around the world disappeared at a rate of 18 soccer fields every minute, a global survey found. Fires accounted for nearly half of the losses.

If passed, a bill from the House of Representatives would sharply curtail the tax credits that have spurred a rise in clean energy investments.

In 50 years, California’s authority to set environmental rules that are tougher than national standards had never been challenged by Congress. Until now.

Legislation would dismantle regulations in farming, mining and energy, increasing risk of widespread destruction

Environmental activists in Brazil have decried a dramatic rollback of environmental safeguards after the senate approved a bill that would dismantle licensing processes and increase the risk of widespread destruction.

The upper house passed the so-called “devastation bill” with 54 votes to 13 late on Wednesday, paving the way for projects ranging from mining and infrastructure to energy and farming to receive regulatory approval with little to no environmental oversight.

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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast a range of 13 to 19 total named storms during the Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June 1 through November.

We can contest the dark dreams of those in power.

Scientists warn of profound impacts as sea temperatures rise by up to 4C above average for springtime

The sea off the coast of the UK and Ireland is experiencing an unprecedented marine heatwave with temperatures increasing by as much as 4C above average for the spring in some areas.

Marine biologists say the intensity and unprecedented nature of the rise in water temperatures off the coasts of Devon, Cornwall and the west coast of Ireland are very concerning. As human-induced climate breakdown continues to raise global temperatures, the frequency of marine heatwaves is increasing.

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Bill will unleash millions more tonnes of planet-heating pollution and couldn’t come at a worse time, say experts

A Republican push to dismantle clean energy incentives threatens to reverberate across the US by costing more than 830,000 jobs, raising energy bills for US households and threatening to unleash millions more tonnes of the planet-heating pollution that is causing the climate crisis, experts have warned.

A major tax bill passed by the Republican-held House of Representatives on Thursday morning will, as currently written, demolish key components of climate legislation signed by Joe Biden that has spurred a record torrent of renewable energy and electric vehicle investment in the US.

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Extreme weather costs the EU about €28.3bn in lost crops and livestock per year, more than half the losses stem from drought

When drought descended on Hendrik Jan ten Cate’s farm in 2018, slashing his onion yield to just 10% of a regular year, he slogged through days of heavy labour to draw water from canals and pump it to his crops. One day, overworked and anxious to extract as much as he could, Ten Cate fell into the canal and broke his arm.

This year, with plants already growing but a severe dearth of rain to nourish young crops, the Dutch farmer is once again watching the weather forecast with worry.

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The Inflation Reduction Act was once hailed as the biggest climate law in U.S. history. But as supporters try to save it, they’ve stopped talking about the environment altogether.

A Microsoft model can make accurate 10-day forecasts quickly, an analysis found. And, it’s designed to predict more than weather.

Over breakfast at Tom’s Restaurant, right below the historic Giss lab, James Hansen calls Doge’s decision a ‘big mistake’

Perched above the New York City diner made famous by the TV show Seinfeld, Tom’s Restaurant, a small research laboratory became, improbably, crucial to humanity’s understanding of our changing climate and of the universe itself.

Now, it is being shut down by Donald Trump’s administration.

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Across the scientific community, the threats and cuts coming from the Trump administration are already wreaking widespread havoc. With the peak of wildfire season approaching, the impacts of these cuts are top of mind, particularly the broad reduction in force and early retirements in the National Weather Service (NWS), which is now struggling to fill ‘critical’ vacancies, with some NWS offices no longer operating 24/7/365.  

I’ll break down what these cuts could mean for the upcoming and future fire seasons, how climate change has supercharged wildfire activity and conditions, and what we’re expecting in the 2025 wildfire season. 

Impacts of Budget and Personnel Cuts 

While the administration exempted wildland firefighters from personnel cuts, their actions to date have substantially reduced the number of federal workers who actively support firefighting efforts. These are personnel who ensure that front-line wildland firefighters have food, housing, and access to necessities like clean water during what can be long deployments to remote areas. These employees fall under UDSA and DOI, but one specific position, Incident Meteorologists could be affected by cuts at NOAA.   

Incident meteorologists (IMET) are specialized, highly trained professionals who deploy to large fires to provide forecasts to ensure that firefighters can prioritize values at risk (lingo for anything threatened by a fire) and stay safe themselves. During a wildfire, conditions can change rapidly. A sudden wind shift could redirect a fire toward an entirely different town; a nearby thunderstorm could ignite a new blaze; and some fires even generate their own weather. In each of these situations, IMETs provide critical information that keep communities and front-line personnel safe. What’s most worrisome about this situation is the lack of transparency: we don’t know if IMETs were impacted by layoffs, voluntary reductions in force, or budget cuts—or if there is a strategy to ensure sufficient staffing ahead of peak fire season. 

To make matters worse, defenders of the President’s cuts point to a plan to create a National Wildland Fire Fighting agency, but such an agency is proposed and therefore does not exist, making it of little use for anyone facing a wildfire in the coming months.   

On a longer-term basis, proposed cuts to satellite programs and scientific infrastructure could constrain our ability to maintain all sorts of critical functions like detecting fires remotely (VIIRS), accurately modeling fire spread, which is a key component of decision making when actioning a fire (MODIS), and monitoring smoke conditions and sending timely air quality alerts (GOES).  

Further, cuts are hamstringing innovative scientific programs that could enhance our ability to respond to wildfires, manage our forests for resilience, and adapt to the coming impacts of climate change.  

Wildfires and Climate Change  

The scope of these cuts, both proposed and actualized, is particularly difficult to stomach given the well-established science showing the myriad ways that climate change is super charging wildfires.  

Data shown are from John T. Abatzoglou and A. Park Williams, Impact of anthropogenic climate change on wildfire across western US forests, which models forest fire area as a function of fuel dryness both with and without climate change.

This is particularly true for western North America, given the large number of studies focused on the region. Between 1984 and 2015, climate change had nearly doubled burned area in forests in the western US. Other recent research shows that, relative to the mid 1980s, more wildfires are burning larger areas (fourfold by one analysis), at higher severity, growing with greater speed, at higher elevations, over longer fire seasons, and under more extreme fire weather conditions. Wildfires also are burning later into the night and ramping up earlier in the morning, due in part to increases in vapor pressure deficit, which has been attributed to climate change. 

At the same time, research illustrating the consequences of wildfire exposure continues to accumulate.  Recent research links short-term exposure to the smallest particles in wildfire smoke, PM2.5, to greater risk of mortality and pre-term birth for pregnant individuals.  

(If you’re wondering why wildfire researchers are obsessed with a start date of 1984, don’t fear! It’s not Orwellian, just an artifact of the start date of MTBS (Monitoring Trends in Burned Severity), a widely-used, publicly available fire perimeter and severity database for the entire US.)  

The Outlook 

All of this is against the backdrop of seasonal outlooks from both the US and Canadian governments, which show escalating wildfire risk across western North America beginning in June and continuing through the summer. Already, we’ve seen devastating fires in Manitoba and in the United States, we have already ahead of the 10 year average and number of fires to date.  

On the US front, the most recent update, released on May 1 shows above average wildfire potential in coastal Southeastern states, southwestern states, and northern Minnesota, where a dry April has constrained spring greening and elevated wildfire risk. In June, July, and August, the outlook forecasts above average wildfire potential for California, Pacific Northwest states, and large parts of Texas and Oklahoma.  

Natural Resources Canada’s seasonal outlook adds color to an already bleak picture of North America’s wildfire situation, with the area categorized as high fire risk forecasted to grow as the summer unfolds.  

Changes made by the Trump administration may damage our ability to detect, respond, and recover from wildfires, on top of cuts to research that limit our ability to adapt to future fires and improve our responses, on top of cuts to FEMA that will constrain our ability to help those affected. 

Although other factors like colonization, forest management, and misguided suppression policies have all played a role in getting us to this point, ignoring the impact of climate change and potential impacts of the Trump administration’s cuts sets us back even further.   

Conversations with Bob Gray contributed to this blog. 

Cocoa one of six commodities vulnerable to environmental threats in ‘extremely worrying picture’ for food resilience

Climate breakdown and wildlife loss are deepening the EU’s “chocolate crisis”, a report has argued, with cocoa one of six key commodities to come mostly from countries vulnerable to environmental threats.

More than two-thirds of the cocoa, coffee, soy, rice, wheat and maize brought into the EU in 2023 came from countries that are not well-prepared for climate change, according to the UK consultants Foresight Transitions.

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There is an opportunity staring centre-left parties in the face – if they reject the male gaze distorting our politics

‘The boys are alt-right.” This seems to be the new consensus on far-right politics propagated in numerous articles and podcasts. But the media’s obsessive focus on the young men allegedly fuelling the rise of the far right isn’t just empirically flawed – it misses a much more significant shift in public opinion among young people. While many surveys show a large gender gap in support of far-right parties and policies, it is young women who stand out as the more politically interesting demographic, as they are turning in ever greater numbers towards the left.

The idea that young people in general, and young men in particular, disproportionately support the far right has been around for a while. In a classic 2012 study, the German political scientist Kai Arzheimer characterised the “typical” voter of far-right parties in Europe as “male, young(ish), of moderate educational achievement and concerned about immigrants and immigration”. It is frequently used to explain the rise of Donald Trump, while in Europe there has been an explosion of articles claiming that young people, particularly young men, are “driving far-right support”. But is the recent rise of Europe’s far right truly due to the disproportionate support of young men? And are young people really becoming more rightwing?

Cas Mudde is the Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF professor of international affairs at the University of Georgia, and author of The Far Right Today

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Haunted by memories of the Dust Bowl, Oklahoma farmers have adopted conservation practices that have helped to revive about 100 streams.

Run by teenagers, for teenagers, the Green Crew helps students get their hands dirty with projects like tree planting, trail restoration and invasive species removal.

The Portland area is a hot spot for vegans, who have the most environmentally friendly diets. It has also yielded a game-changing dessert.

Climate Change Committee says original goal of a 75% emissions cut by 2030 will now be delayed by up to six years

The UK’s climate watchdog has warned that Scotland needs to take “immediate action at pace and scale” to cut its emissions after ministers axed a series of policy pledges.

The Climate Change Committee (CCC), an official advisory body, said ministers in Edinburgh needed to take urgent action to curb emissions from buildings and transport to cut Scotland’s overall emissions to nearly zero by 2045.

Abandoned a target to cut car miles by 20% by 2030.

Dropped a pledge to rapidly decarbonise homes by mandating low-carbon heating systems.

Cut funding for tree planting.

Missed targets to restore degraded peatland.

Ignored calls for a plan to cut meat and dairy consumption, and failed to use their powers to tax air travel more heavily.

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