Climate

It’s time to rethink how climate action succeeds. The key is to acknowledge that it’s never the sole force driving political decisions

We are witnessing the most devastating climate disasters on record: wildfires ravaging Los Angeles, deadly floods in North Carolina, and global temperature records shattered month after month. We have officially surpassed 1.5C of warming, a critical threshold scientists have long warned against. At the same time, the US is scaling back policies, freezing critical programs and shifting priorities away from climate action.

But now isn’t the time to give up on climate action. Instead, it is high time to rethink how it succeeds.

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Photographs from across the globe capture the impact of people on the climate – and of the climate on people

The word anthropocene has been proposed to denote an ongoing epoch in which human activity is a primary driving force of geological change. Although the word has caught on like wildfire in a colloquial sense, it was ultimately rejected as a descriptive scientific term, not so much because it was inaccurate but because of disagreements over when exactly it would have started – 1945, marking the unlocking of nuclear power; 1610, which may be the first time human activity affected the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; 1964, when the so-called Great Acceleration may have begun – or some other date altogether?

These questions point to deeper challenges in understanding just what the Anthropocene is: do we think of it in terms of nuclear fallout, the composition of the atmosphere, the size of the human population, or so many other worthy metrics? Hoping to help us better understand this substantial concept, the Cantor Arts Center’s new exhibition Second Nature: Photography in the Age of the Anthropocene brings together 44 photographic artists from across six continents, offering breathtaking and provocative looks at what humanity has wrought on this earth.

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Wildfires are devastating Patagonia. In response, Argentinian authorities are removing environmental protections and raiding Indigenous communities

Soraya Maicoñio lives in Mallín Ahogado, a rural area in the Comarca Andina,a region of sparkling rivers, mountains, lakes and lush forests in Argentinian Patagonia. It is an area well-known for its small-scale agriculture, forestry and tourism.

In recent weeks, however, the region, which spans the provinces of Rio Negro and Chubut, has been in the news for its large-scale wildfires – and the authorities’ crackdown on the local population.

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He said Peter Dutton was trying to kill everyone on Earth with his energy policy

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A new ‘golden passport’ scheme aims to raise funds to relocate people inland as climate change raises sea levels

The Pacific island nation of Nauru is selling citizenship to fund its retreat from rising seas, the country’s president, David Adeang, announced on Tuesday, opening a contentious “golden passport” scheme as climate financing runs dry.

The low-lying island nation of 13,000 residents is planning a mass inland relocation as the human-caused climate crisis raises global sea levels, eating away at the country’s fertile coastal fringe.

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Climate Change Committee issues advice to government on meeting carbon emissions target by 2050

• What would reaching net zero mean for life in 2040s Britain?

Giving up two doner kebabs’ worth of meat a week will be enough to keep the UK within safe climate limits by the end of the next decade, as more drastic changes in behaviour can be avoided if the government takes action on greenhouse gases from energy, transport and industry, the UK’s climate advisers have said.

People would need to change their behaviour in some ways, such as by eating about 260g less meat each week, but this was likely to happen gradually and in line with health trends. “We are absolutely not saying everyone needs to be vegan. But we do expect to see a shift in dietary habits,” said Emily Nurse, head of net zero at the Climate Change Committee, which on Wednesday published its official advice to the government on meeting the UK’s target of reaching net zero emissions by 2050.

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The Trump administration has set its sights on high speed rail in California and congestion pricing in New York, worrying transportation experts.

The Trump administration’s deep cuts to clean-energy programs are raising concerns about U.S. commitments to the lender.

More and more communities across the United States are being exposed to extreme weather and fossil-fueled climate disasters. In 2024 alone, 27 declared disasters caused over one billion dollars in damage. Growing physical risk from extreme weather is colliding with the nationwide shortage of affordable housing. A thoughtful and equitable reimagining of our disaster response and recovery system has never been more urgent. But the Trump administration’s dismantling of federal agencies and programs responsible for disaster response puts Americans everywhere at extraordinary risk and will hamper state and local government’s ability to prepare for and recover from disasters.  

Cuts to HUD will hurt disaster recovery and affordable housing 

The Trump administration has signaled that it plans to reduce the workforce at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) by half. One of the targets within HUD for layoffs is the Office of Community Planning and Development—a leaked document suggests 84% of the staff in the office will be terminated. Staff in that office run the Community Development Block Grants for Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) which support states and local governments to rebuild homes, public infrastructure, and fund economic development activities in areas where disaster has been declared. The Office of Community Planning and Development also administers the Continuum of Care program, which funds nonprofits and local governments in their response to homelessness—which is at a record high. Staff terminations will cause delays in these crucial programs.   

Within a week of HUD Secretary Scott Turner’s confirmation, details about climate-specific research and programs have disappeared from the HUD website. Advocates are raising concerns about the agency’s failure to disperse the most recent tranche of funding for the Green and Resilient Retrofit program, which supports improvements to federally-financed, affordable apartments.  

FEMA cuts harm communities pre- and post-disaster 

The Trump administration has also announced significant layoffs and cuts to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). FEMA has the sole mission to help people before, during, and after disasters. As my colleague Shana Udvardy notes, the agency needs both competent leadership and funding to accomplish its mission. Unfortunately, we are seeing the exact opposite right now.  

Currently, FEMA is operating under an interim head who has little experience in emergency management or disaster response. Adding to that, recent layoffs to an already understaffed agency means decreased capacity to respond to increasingly frequent disasters. In addition to disaster response, risk reduction and resilience efforts also seem to be on the chopping block. FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities and Flood Mitigation Assistance programs have obligated over 1.6 billion dollars nationwide in the last five years. Although both programs existed before the creation of the Biden administration’s Justice40 initiative, their designation as Justice40 programs in light of recent rollbacks raises questions about the continued funding despite enormous need for resilience investments.  

A pattern of politicizing disasters 

While the level of funding and personnel cuts may be unprecedented, the politicization of aid by President Trump is not. During his first term, Trump used the Office of Budget and Management (run then as now by Project 2025 architect Russell Vought) to delay obligated disaster recovery funding to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria in 2017. This weaponization of aid has continued into the second Trump administration, as evidenced by his threats to withhold aid to California after the January 2025 wildfires in Los Angeles, and FEMA acting administrator Cameron Hamilton’s refusal of Georgia Governor Brian Kemp’s request to extend the 100% federal cost share for continuing Hurricane Helene clean-up efforts. 

Ripple effects of uncertainty in federal disaster funding 

The politicization of disaster aid doesn’t just delay recovery and increase near-term risk, it poses longer-term threats to frontline communities. One such threat is the impact on municipal bond markets, which provide debt securities for state and local governments to finance everything from day-to-day operations to critical infrastructure investments needed for climate adaptation. Until recently, the municipal bond market has been slow to reflect climate risk, in part because of information gaps and in part because federal investments in disaster response and recovery can help reduce future risks and thereby ameliorate the negative impacts of these disasters on local communities’ creditworthiness.   

Federal aid to state and local governments both directly increases resilience through disaster recovery grants, and indirectly by reducing the riskiness of municipal bonds through reducing climate risks to communities. The worst thing that could happen to communities hit by a climate disaster would be to then find their credit rating hit too, through no fault of their own. Investments in climate resilience pay off—for communities and for their ability to raise money through bond funding. Slashing disaster aid and resilience programs based on political whims will inject uncertainty into municipal bond markets that state and local governments simply can’t afford.  

Rethinking local climate planning as defense 

Already, state and local governments are mounting legal challenges to this administration’s rollbacks. Outside of the courts, state and local governments will need to take a more expansive view of planning for climate change, beyond emissions reductions. These expanded goals should be pursued with all available financing options before investor confidence in municipal bonds wanes drastically.

Investments in meaningfully affordable housing—from the building of new homes in less risky places to weatherization and upgrades to existing single and multi-family housing—will increase resilience. Policy changes should co-occur with investment. For example, adopting stronger building codes will help homes withstand increasingly severe storms, and developing tenant protection policies will ensure that well-intentioned investments in housing won’t inadvertently spur displacement. As property insurance premiums increase and put greater strain on homeowners and affordable housing developers, regulators on the state level could compel insurers to report more thorough data on rate increases and policy cancellations with the goal of moving towards risk reduction partnerships.    

While state and local governments can play important defense against resilience policy and funding rollbacks at the federal level, they can do much more with the funding, strong standards, and technical assistance from the federal government. As the US Congress enters budget reconciliation, lawmakers should fight tooth and nail for agencies like HUD and FEMA, federal workers, and funding that communities across the country rely on.

Amid the Trump Administration’s illegal moves to freeze Congressionally-authorized funding, shutter Congressionally-authorized agencies, and fire civil servants for political reasons, budget reconciliation looms.

Does Congressional budget reconciliation even matter right now given our unfolding Constitutional crisis?

Yes, it does. Budget reconciliation is a legislative tool with the power to fundamentally reshape federal spending for a decade if Congress and the President manage to deploy it successfully. And unlike much of what the Trump administration has sought to do so far, it is allowed by law. As a result, even as President Trump and Elon Musk continue sowing dangerous, illegal chaos, it is important to spare some energy to crawl into the weeds on budget reconciliation and understand what awaits us in the months ahead.

Who is responsible for Congressional budget reconciliation?

While both the US House and White House play critical roles in budget reconciliation, this is really all about the Senate.

Most commonly, there are two ways to move legislation through the Senate: unanimous consent or a vote of three-fifths of the Senators (60 out of 100) called a supermajority. The history and legitimacy of the supermajority requirement in the Senate are topics for another day. For our purposes, the thing to know is that requiring a supermajority vote makes enacting sweeping, partisan legislation, especially when it comes to rearranging tax and spending priorities, exceedingly difficult.

What is budget reconciliation?

Enter the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 (CBA). Passed by the 93rd Congress and signed into law by President Ford, the CBA governs all aspects of the federal budget process. Among the law’s most important provisions is a rule that if the House and Senate can agree on a budget resolution, legislation implementing the spending levels in that resolutioncan pass the Senate by a simple majority vote (51 out of 100 senators). Such legislation is called a budget reconciliation bill because it is supposed to reconcile actual spending and revenues with the new budget resolution.

Reconciliation is unworkable when the two political parties share control of the federal government. During unified control of the Executive and Legislative branches, as is the situation currently with the Republicans controlling the White House, House of Representatives, and Senate, budget reconciliation offers a rare opportunity for the party in control to reshape the federal government for years to come.

Recent examples of budget reconciliation legislation include the Republican tax cuts in 2017 (the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act), the Democratic economic stimulus plan in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021 (the American Rescue Plan), and the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022.

Where does budget reconciliation happen?

The budget reconciliation process starts in the House and/or Senate Budget Committees. As of today, each chamber is moving its own, vastly different, budget resolution, each proposing different spending levels across the federal government.

The Senate is considering a narrower resolution that purports to increase energy production and invest in border security, with a second resolution focused on tax policy to come later. The House is resisting the two-step approach in favor of one massive package containing all of President Trump’s planned spending, including permanent extension of the 2017 tax cuts.

How will budget reconciliation happen?

Eventually, the House and Senate will have to agree on a single budget resolution or reconciliation will not be triggered (the budget resolution only requires a simple majority for passage and does not require approval by the President). The final budget will include instructions to a wide variety of Congressional committees with jurisdiction over different areas of spending.

For example, the final budget resolution could instruct the House Energy and Commerce Committee to find budget savings within its jurisdiction totaling a specific amount, or the Senate Armed Services Committee to identify provisions in its purview that would increase spending by a certain amount.

Each committee receiving instructions in the budget resolution will then write provisions to comply with its instructions. Finally, the budget committees package all the provisions in one legislative vehicle, which must pass the House and Senate and then be signed into law by the President. It remains to be seen whether the House approach (one big bill) or Senate approach (two smaller bills) will win out.

Senate rules prohibit the inclusion of “extraneous” matters in a budget reconciliation bill. This is enforced through the “Byrd rule,” named for the late Senator Robert C. Byrd. The Byrd rule says the Senate Parliamentarian is required to review budget reconciliation legislation and identify provisions unrelated to the budget. This review is called the “Byrd bath.” Provisions found to violate the Byrd rule are subject to removal from the bill. In other words, anything unrelated to the budget can’t be added to a reconciliation bill. (For a deep dive on the Byrd rule, please see this excellent report from the Congressional Research Service.)

To be clear, budget reconciliation legislation is required to be related to federal spending and revenues, but it is not required to actually save any money, and it rarely does. The current House budget resolution would specifically raise the debt ceiling by $4 trillion, which is strong evidence that the House majority expects reconciliation legislation to increase the debt, not lower it.

When will budget reconciliation start and be completed?

Great question! Who knows?

The Congressional Budget Act includes deadlines for this process, and the final budget resolution will include dates by which the committees receiving reconciliation instructions should comply, but there are no enforcement mechanisms. The Congressional Research Service summarizes the timing this way (emphasis, mine):

The record of experience with reconciliation legislation over the period since 1980 indicates considerable variation in the time needed to process such measures from the date the reconciliation instructions take effect (upon final adoption of the budget resolution) until the resultant reconciliation legislation is approved or vetoed by the President. The interval for the 24 reconciliation measures ranged from a low of 27 days (for the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990) to a high of 384 days (for the Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005). On average, completing the process took about five months (155 days) . . .

Assuming the House and Senate can come to agreement on a budget resolution this spring, a budget reconciliation bill could be expected in the fall.

But don’t forget that this 10-year budget reconciliation process is unfolding while annual spending legislation for the current fiscal year expires March 14. That’s right: Congress and the Administration are focused on a long-term budget plan while they cannot agree on a plan to keep the government open past next month. Ironic, eh?

Why is Congress using the budget reconciliation process?

President Trump and Congressional Republicans hope to use the budget reconciliation process to enact a partisan spending plan that could not pass the Senate under normal rules. Just how extreme that plan will be remains to be seen.

The current Senate budget resolution would pump $150 billion into the already-bloated Pentagon, and another combined $350 billion into law enforcement agencies within the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, ostensibly to curb unauthorized migration.

Meanwhile, the Senate plan claims to defray a tiny percentage of that spending by expanding fossil fuel production from federal lands and waters. Senate Republicans have also indicated they intend to use reconciliation to repeal much of the Inflation Reduction Act’s investments in renewable energy and clean transportation, while overturning the Biden Administration’s fee on methane.

The House budget blueprint is even more destructive. It would extend the Trump tax cuts from 2017, which exploded the deficit and were severely skewed in favor of the wealthy. To mask a small percentage of the cost of such a move, the House budget plan would allow cuts to Medicaid, federal student assistance, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

Both resolutions, and the reconciliation bill that will result, would redistribute trillions in taxpayer dollars to the already-wealthy, powerful, and politically connected, and away from poor and working-class families, while managing to grow the deficit and debt.

What can we do about this?

As this process unfolds, the Union of Concerned Scientists—working independently and in coalition with partners—will defend crucial spending priorities while highlighting the disastrous impacts of the current reconciliation plans. We will continue to provide policymakers who are willing to protect investments in a clean energy economy, respond to the climate crisis, protect programs vital to working families, pursue tax fairness, and right-size our defense spending with tools to engage in that defense using the best available science.

Enactment of a budget reconciliation plan is not a forgone conclusion. While the process does provide a crucial shortcut to Senate passage for the administration’s legislative priorities, it remains a heavy lift, made even harder by the historically narrow margin in the House and the tendency toward Congressional in-fighting.

Effective science advocacy can affect this outcome, and that is what we at UCS do. Please stay tuned.

The National Science Foundation has fired workers at the office that manages polar research, raising fears about a reduced U.S. presence in two strategic regions.

Appeal from officials, including two senior figures from Trump’s first term, comes amid reports National Science Foundation’s budget will be slashed

• US politics live – latest updates

Chuck Hagel, the former US defense secretary, and other former US national security officials, including two senior figures from Donald Trump’s first term, on Tuesday warned that China was outpacing the US in critical technology fields and urged Congress to increase funding for federal scientific research.

The appeal comes a week after the National Science Foundation (NSF), which funds science research, fired 170 people in response to Donald Trump’s order to reduce the federal workforce. An NSF spokesman declined comment on reports that hundreds more layoffs were possible and that the agency’s budget could be slashed by billions.

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Exclusive: The ‘deeply troubling’ move comes amid concerns US ignoring international climate ramifications

US officials have missed recent international climate forums sparking concerns about a potentially significant shift from Donald Trump’s first term, a review of meeting records and interviews with meeting attendees by the Centre for Climate Reporting and the Guardian show.

On his first day back as president, Trump signed an executive order on stage in front of supporters at an arena in Washington DC which he said was aimed at quitting what he called the “unfair one-sided Paris climate accord rip off”. Trump’s exit from the Paris agreement means the US will join Iran, Libya and Yemen as the only countries outside the international agreement adopted in 2015 to limit global warming.

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Protesters who tried to disrupt completion of Mountain Valley pipeline to defend themselves in Virginia court

Climate activists who tried to disrupt the completion of a fossil-fuel pipeline through Appalachian forests will appear in court in Virginia on Tuesday to face serious criminal charges that they vehemently deny.

The Mountain Valley pipeline (MVP) was pushed through by the Biden administration in mid-2023 – overriding court orders, regulatory blocks and widespread opposition to the 300-mile (480km) fossil fuel project. Biden’s decision triggered a wave of non-violent protests and civil disobedience against the pipeline in Virginia and West Virginia as work crews rushed to finish construction of the pipeline through sensitive waterways and protected forests.

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For more than 20 years, scientists have followed the animals in Norway’s Arctic archipelago to understand how they may adapt to changing threats as the ice they depend on melts

When Rolf-Arne Ølberg is hanging out of a helicopter with a gun, he needs to be able to assess from a distance of about 10 metres the sex and approximate weight of the moving animal he is aiming at, as well as how fat or muscular it is and whether it is in any distress. Only then can he dart it with the correct amount of sedative. Luckily, he says, polar bears are “quite good anaesthetic patients”.

Ølberg is a vet working with the Norwegian Polar Institute, the body responsible for the monitoring of polar bears in Svalbard, an archipelago that lies between mainland Norway and the north pole. Every year he and his colleagues track the bears by helicopter, collect blood, fat and hair samples from them and fit electronic tracking collars.

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El cambio climático está detrás de las ganancias inesperadas del café, y a los cultivadores les preocupa si podrán adaptarse.

The data, which disappeared from Agriculture Department sites in recent weeks, was useful to farmers for business planning, the lawsuit said.

There is an abundance of Native American imagery in the US imagination, and much of it is inaccurate: The Western films depicting cowboys winning against local Natives, Wild West TV shows, the classic tear rolling down the cheek of a man in a headdress as he looks at litter, or the picturesque images as Disney’s Pocahontas sang about all the colors the wind holds.

Some of the concepts about Native Americans that many non-Native people possess are rooted in stereotypical portrayals from the media. These concepts were crafted hundreds of years ago and codified in the Declaration of Independence, which calls us “merciless Indian savages.” Because of these propagandized portrayals routinely woven into the mainstream, the stereotypical imagery of Natives has been challenging and nearly impossible to correct.

This imagery has been exploited, propagandized, and weaponized regularly without responsibility or accountability, even as Native communities work tirelessly to continuously debunk falsehoods. These are not just old-school representations that don’t apply today. I was once asked by a judge in court how often I drank alcohol. When I responded that I don’t, he asked me, “Well, what kind of Indian ARE you?” I responded that I prefer to be outdoors, and be active. He replied, “Oh, so you’re that kind of Indian.”

It’s important to realize that there are no positive stereotypes; all stereotypes lead to a generalized assumption, and an unrealistic, erroneous expectation that leaves members of certain groups pressured and then villainized or persecuted for behaving unstereotypically—which is so harmful when the stereotypes were inaccurate in the first place. Stereotyping omits the possibility of variability and choice among the stereotyped group.  

The “Ecological Native” stereotype persists and harms

In my opinion, one of the worst and most exploited of all the stereotypes is that of the “Ecological Native”: This stereotype rests in the belief that Natives are connected to the land, inextricably and mysteriously—almost magically. To be fair, some of us are connected to our land, and it has nothing to do with magic. And others are not, which doesn’t mean they are any less a part of Native American communities. Each of us still make up the collective People; each of us contributes our talents, skills, and gifts.

Personally, I have been an outdoor-loving child ever since I can remember. I happened to understand and learn Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) without effort, and carry on sustainable practices that have been in our family since time immemorial. I also have family members who don’t like to go outside, who can’t tell what weather patterns are coming, when to gather, or when fishing season is. The danger of stereotyping resides when someone in a position of power, such as a government agent, business person, consultant, academic researcher, or nonprofit administrator, expects a Native person not skilled in environmental areas to offer information. Assuming that individuals are skilled in an area that they are not, based only on stereotypes, is dangerous. We don’t all know the same information, hold the same ideals, or have the skills and ability to produce information upon command. Situations like this become perilous when we are “asked” while expectation and pressure are embedded in the “request.”

Requests arrive from people or government agencies, and other places that want to validate information or prove inclusivity by incorporation of TEK, and by extension a Native individual. Even if someone who is contacted wishes to say no to such requests, our history of Native peoples across this land is rife with dangerous interactions and being punished to varying degrees for such refusals. Some people may even feel that if they refuse, or if they don’t live up to “Ecological Native” stereotypes, they could be fired or replaced.

Relying on false experts is dangerous

Increasingly, we’re seeing people who do not have specific TEK or Tribal knowledge—but claim to—promote themselves as “experts” to those who don’t have any information on how to carefully vet collaborators. These individuals then fall back onto tropes of land connection and meaningless verbiage while taking funding or influencing land management practices while excluding Tribal input. Often, we see non-vetted individuals be awarded contracts and funding over vetted TEK practitioners simply due to the reliance on a learned stereotype that has been exploited.

I receive emails weekly about someone who has contacted a colleague or Tribal member in search of any Native who is expected to then represent the community. This presents a difficult predicament, since some Natives are willing to give talks, but often don’t have the accurate information needed to address the topic at hand. That information is often recorded and presented as fact, and reused as being from a Native ‘expert.’ This leads to inaccurate data, unverifiable information when claiming the inclusion of TEK, and disbelief of and passing over of vetted Native researchers and specialists. This pattern also contributes to discounting Native scientists and scholars who have spent much lengthier periods of time than others specializing in TEK areas.

It is imperative that anyone who wants to include TEK or data from any discipline of Indigenous science be vetted within—and by—Tribal communities and their administrations, rather than by non-Native people who misunderstand who and what vetted Native scientists are and do.  

Additionally, the process of incorporation of Native data and select disciplines of Indigenous science must be carefully reviewed and include vetted Native scholars. Reliance on “someone who knows someone who works with a Native” or a Native who is self-proclaimed as a Native Indigenous scientist, is a dangerous, unethical practice.

Misusing TEK affects climate science

As scientists realized that Western science was failing to comprehensively address climate change, they began seeking out TEK as a method of combatting its effects. The Western science community began looking outside itself to alternative ways of knowing, and found that many Natives had been recognizing climate change in various ways while practicing their TEK. Some oral documentation of discussions of initial change goes back as far as the 1950s.

The new awareness of this perspective and our longstanding datasets offered new insight and filled the holes and gaps in the datasets based on siloed information that much Western science is based upon.

Ongoing TEK practices are carefully maintained and recognized through oral documentation by vetted practitioners. These practitioners are then at the mercy of belief systems that do not take into account the complexity of TEK, nor understand the phenology of the land and resources. 

Traditional burn systems provide a perfect example:

A common TEK practice along the West coast and other areas of the country was that of annual controlled burns to maintain vegetation, provide healthy systems, and encourage new growth. This encouraged game to return for the fresh shoots, and provided better basketry material. A detailed understanding of the forested areas, how the landscape moved and shifted, and how cool burn fires (with lower heat intensities than wildfires) would move, was common TEK knowledge.

My father can still recount a childhood memory of attending one of the last burns that was done in the Willamette Valley area of Oregon, stretching from just south of Portland through to Eugene. He recalls how those who started the fire had to then hide away for fear of being arrested for “arson.”

This kind of knowledge, and all its benefits, cannot be applied or used by Western science so long as false narratives about Native people, based on antiquated belief systems, are still the norm. This conflict remains, as Western scientists are interested in TEK but also want to cherry-pick topics to apply it to. This is problematic and ineffective because TEK is holistic in practice; understanding the system as a whole is an absolute necessity. Many non-Native scientists working on climate change don’t understand the premise of multi-generational understanding as it applies to scientific knowledge and consequently don’t take our TEK seriously .

And if at the same time they don’t understand TEK, climate scientists also subscribe to the stereotype of the Ecological Native, believing that all Natives hold the key to climate change, that faulty belief will perpetuate the issues of climate change that we all face. This is wasting time and when time is wasted it threatens our communities as well as verifiable science, both Western and Indigenous.

Painting the issue of climate change, or any other issue for that matter, as “solved by Indigenous science” is like calling John Wayne movies accurate.   

A cruel irony for TEK practitioners

On top of all of the intentional, irreparable, and ongoing harm done to Native peoples, for those of us who are blessed enough to retain and attempt to maintain our TEK, the cruel irony is that many of our homelands and natural resources—where we gained this knowledge— have been stolen, destroyed, and/or privatized. We are often barred from the areas where we hold U&A (usual and accustomed) rights to, and we are inundated with procedural blockades designed to keep us from access when we do seek to access homeland areas and resources. These obstructions come from federal, state, and local agents who gatekeep—often quite literally.

Left: a rock pile blockage on a road used for Tribal hunting. Right: a fence to keep people out and discourage hunting, with elk behind the fence. Photo credit: Samantha Chisholm Hatfield

Furthermore, the sustainability measures—like traditional burns, the ability to utilize sustainable methods of monitoring species health such as eels, salmon, or deer, or to ensure native plant species’ growth in traditional homeland areas—that we have fought for, reclaimed, and that have been left in our care to protect and be protected for at least seven generations into the future are often at risk of being blocked by some type of bias. As community members, we all know someone whose hunting, fishing, plant, medicinal, or other resource collections were confiscated, whose permit forms were “lost,” or who arrived to find the forest gates locked when they were assured they would be unlocked. This can result in missing the run, a failed hunt, or plants withering preventing harvest collections. This then throws off the sustainable TEK practices we work diligently to uphold and maintain.

Many of the follow-up conversations on situations like these and others that involve sustainability practices of TEK include responses from non-Natives in legal, agency, business, and community sectors who are clearly operating from stereotypical beliefs they hold against Natives. For example, my Tribal community members have told me they have heard inaccurate statements about themselves in these types of situations, such as that they only want to steal resources, or that Natives are “greedy,” that we don’t need natural resources since we have casinos, or that we don’t understand what it takes to manage the areas.

TEK and Western science can co-exist for the benefit of all

Indigenous and Western scientists can co-exist, but in order for this to happen, non-Natives must recognize and set aside their harmful stereotypes of Native peoples, including that we can magically solve climate change. Vetted Native practitioners of TEK must be given the freedom and trust to practice their resource management that contributes to climate change data, without the stereotyping that we will mismanage our lands, or that we don’t need our resources. Indigenous scientists, scholars, and practitioners of TEK cannot collaborate effectively with western science, when stereotypes of Natives persist and perpetuate a bias that interferes with TEK.

Non-natives in positions of power must stop viewing outreach to just one unvetted, non-expert Native person as a quick fix for their projects and initiatives, and instead seek input from Native communities, especially those that will be most affected by whatever policies or solutions they’re working on. And Native practitioners of TEK must be given the freedom and trust to practice their resource management, without the stereotypes that we will mismanage our lands, or that we don’t need our resources.

Result is further evidence that political conversation around the climate crisis has shifted

• German election live – latest updates

In the final days of an election campaign dominated by migration, the likely new chancellor of Europe’s biggest polluter sought to assure voters that its economy ministry would not be occupied by NGOs. Instead, the conservative lead candidate Friedrich Merz posted on social media that it would be led by “someone who understands that economic policy is more than being a representative for heat pumps”.

Climate action barely featured on the campaign trail before Germany’s federal elections on Sunday – except when right-leaning parties used it to swipe at the Greens. Merz’s jab was at the tamer end of attacks aimed at the Green party candidate, Robert Habeck, the economy and climate minister who pushed through an unpopular law to promote clean heating, but is a sign of how far the political conversation around climate action has shifted.

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Emissions estimated at 55m tonnes in 2024 and nearly 230m tonnes in three years of war

The burning of Ukraine’s forests at unprecedented rates over the past year has helped push the total greenhouse emissions from the war since Russia’s full-scale invasion to almost 230m tonnes, analysis shows.

The study, published on the third anniversary of the invasion, found the fighting and its consequences had led to 55m tonnes of emissions in the past 12 months.

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