Climate

Staff at the office, a branch of the U.S. housing department that Congress uses to address the worst catastrophes, would be reduced by 84 percent.

Residents battle food shortages and health issues after vast areas of forest and farmland burned last year

As she walks away from the house where she raised her family, Isabel Surubí pauses to point at the bed of a stream, now covered with dry leaves, that once supplied her entire community. “The water used to come from here,” she says.

In 2024, wildfires in Bolivia burned more than 10m hectares (about 39,000 sq miles) of forest, farmland and savannah – an area greater than the size of Portugal. After the fires, and the drought that preceded them, the spring feeding Surubí’s village of Los Ángeles in Bolivia’s tropical dry forest ran dry.

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Politicians have divorced the issue of global heating from soaring prices – Australians must take bold action at the ballot box

I love chocolate. It’s a staple of my diet. I don’t like that, at the best of times, it takes up maybe a fifth of my grocery budget.

I also don’t like that as a country, we’ve been all too quick to blame rising food prices on inflation. We’ve quickly made inflation a priority for our policymakers, while the cost of living is the key issue of the upcoming election.

Anjali Sharma was the lead litigant in Sharma v environment minister, the landmark court case against the then federal environment minister, Sussan Ley, which called for a duty of care to protect children against the impacts of the climate crisis

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Groups from Sierra Club to Greenpeace take aim at Trump’s drilling orders in term’s first environmental legal battles

Green advocacy groups filed two lawsuits against the Trump administration on Wednesday, marking the first environmental legal challenges against the president’s second administration.

Both focus on the Trump administration’s moves to open up more of US waters to oil and gas drilling, which the plaintiffs say are illegal.

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A provocative new book asks what we owe one another in a heating world.

The suit, filed in Alaska, is likely to be the first of many challenging the administration’s goal of expanding fossil fuel production.

Activists warn new designation for projects such as pipelines threatens US wetlands and waters

Environmentalists were outraged on Wednesday after the Trump administration moved to fast-track fossil fuel projects through the permitting process, with activists describing it as an attempt to sidestep environmental laws that could harm waterways and wetlands.

In recent days, the US Army Corps of Engineers created a new designation of “emergency” permits for infrastructure projects, citing a day one executive order signed by Donald Trump which claims the US is facing an “energy emergency” and must “unleash” already booming energy production.

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Decades-long research shows world’s glaciers collectively lost 6.542tn tonnes of ice between 2000 and 2023

Melting glaciers have caused almost 2cm of sea level rise this century alone, a decades-long study has revealed.

The research shows the world’s glaciers collectively lost 6.542tn tonnes of ice between 2000 and 2023, causing an 18mm (0.7in) rise in global sea levels.

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The report promises better pay and protections for farmers, but environmentalists say it will not help restore nature or assure food security

European farmers will face fewer rules and less foreign competition, a new vision for agriculture promises, as environmental campaigners warn that key green proposals have been ignored.

The EU’s new farming strategy will overhaul the sector with targeted financial support, stricter import standards and a shift from “conditions to incentives” in the green strings attached to its vast subsidy scheme, according to the report published on Wednesday.

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Poorer countries want rapid emission cuts and more financial help in face of US leader’s stance on global heating

Developing countries are calling on the rich world to defy the US president, Donald Trump, and bridge the global chasm over climate action, before the goal of limiting global temperatures to safe levels is irretrievably lost.

Diplomats from the developing world are rallying to support Brazil, which will host a crucial climate summit in November, after last year’s talks in Azerbaijan ended in disappointment and acrimony.

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Bank moves climate targets from 2030 to 2050 and waters down environmental goals in plan for Georges Elhedery

HSBC is delaying key parts of its climate goals by 20 years, while watering down environmental targets in a new long-term bonus plan for its chief executive, Georges Elhedery, that could be worth up to 600% of his salary.

The London-headquartered lender said it had launched a formal review of its net zero emissions policies and targets – which are split between its own operations and those of the clients it finances – after realising its clients and suppliers had “seen more challenges” in cutting their carbon footprint than expected.

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The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has cited President Trump’s claim of a national energy emergency to speed up permits for new gas pipelines and other projects.

Study found electric vehicles and batteries added largest amount to country’s clean-energy economy

Clean energy contributed a record 10% of China’s gross domestic product in 2024, an analysis has found.

With sales and investments worth 13.6tn yuan (£1.5tn; $1.9tn), the sector has now overtaken real estate sales in value.

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A new map shows where land movement is accelerating, buckling roads and collapsing homes.

A microbiologist, he popularized “vertical farming” — raising crops in tall buildings — to remediate climate change and feed more people.

Thousands of employees who helped oversee vast areas of wilderness have lost their jobs in President Trump’s moves to shrink the federal work force.

Denise Cheung resigns after Trump appointees demand she open grand jury investigation into EPA grants

A top federal prosecutor has quit after refusing to launch what she called a politically driven investigation into Biden-era climate spending, exposing deepening rifts in the US’s premier law enforcement agency.

Denise Cheung, head of criminal prosecutions in Washington, resigned on Tuesday after Trump appointees demanded she open a grand jury investigation into Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grants based largely on an undercover video, multiple people familiar with the matter told CNN.

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Heat, drought and floods are growing security risks, Western defense officials say, feeding instability and violence that could prove costly in the long term.

Among the many attacks in President Trump’s Day 1 Executive Order on “unleashing” American (fossil) energy, is a directive to EPA administrator Zeldin to reevaluate the agency’s bedrock 2009 scientific determination of the harms caused by heat-trapping emissions and submit recommendations within 30 days (i.e. this week). The ‘Endangerment Finding’ establishes that heat-trapping emissions harm people and the environment, and it forms a core legal basis for the agency’s subsequent actions to set standards to limit global warming pollution from vehicles and power plants, as well as methane pollution from oil and gas operations.

It’s no surprise that this anti-science, pro-fossil fuel administration wants to go after the Endangerment Finding. Of course, an honest assessment of the latest climate science will show that since 2009 the evidence has become even more compelling and dire. Climate change, driven by rising heat-trapping emissions, is already causing significant harm to people’s health and well-being and to vital ecosystems. Those harms will worsen rapidly as global warming emissions, primarily from burning fossil fuels, increase.

This blatant attempt to do an end-run around scientific evidence deserves to fail.

What is the Endangerment Finding?

Back in 2007, the Supreme Court reached a landmark judgment in Massachusetts et al. v. Environmental Protection Agency et al. establishing that heat-trapping emissions (or greenhouse gas emissions) are air pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act. The court further mandated that, under the Clean Air Act, the EPA must set protective standards for global warming pollutants if the agency found them to be harmful to human health and welfare.

The 2007 case was brought by petitioners (which included several state attorney generals and NGOs, including the Union of Concerned Scientists) in the context of greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles.

The EPA subsequently undertook an extensive process, including hearings and a public comment period, and concluded that a vast body of scientific evidence showed that heat-trapping pollutants do indeed harm public health and welfare and that motor vehicles contribute to that pollution.

In 2009, the agency issued the Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases, summarized below:

• Endangerment Finding: The Administrator finds that the current and projected concentrations of the six key well-mixed greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6)—in the atmosphere threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations.
• Cause or Contribute Finding: The Administrator finds that the combined emissions of these well-mixed greenhouse gases from new motor vehicles and new motor vehicle engines contribute to the greenhouse gas pollution that threatens public health and welfare.

The findings have subsequently been extended to other major sources of heat-trapping emissions, including power plants and oil and gas operations, and have been upheld in court.

For more on the legal and political twists and turns in the history of the Endangerment Finding, please check out this blogpost: Endangered Science: Why Global Warming Emissions Are Covered by the Clean Air Act.

What is Zeldin being directed to do?

President Trump’s Day 1 executive order directs the EPA administrator to work with other relevant agencies to submit recommendations, within 30 days, to the director of the OMB on the “legality and continuing applicability” of the agency’s Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases under the Clean Air Act.

Opponents of climate action have long understood the power of the Endangerment Finding and tried unsuccessfully to dismantle it during the first Trump administration. Project 2025 also includes a call to “Establish a system, with an appropriate deadline, to update the 2009 endangerment finding.”

With a new more dangerous Trump administration, thoroughly corrupted by fossil fuel interests—and with the architect of Project 2025, Russell Vought, now confirmed as OMB Director—this time the risk to the Endangerment Finding is definitely greater. Gutting the Endangerment Finding would completely undermine EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and put a stop to all of EPA’s regulations to limit global warming pollution, a gift to the fossil fuel industry.

But getting rid of the Endangerment Finding is not going to be easy and is by no means a foregone conclusion, as even Lee Zeldin knows. It would require such a brazen effort to lie about climate science evidence that it’s hard to imagine courts going along with that even if the EPA were to take that unwise route.

The latest climate science is clear and alarming

There’s no question that this is a bad faith effort to try to find ways to undercut EPA’s responsibility and authority to regulate heat-trapping emissions under the Clean Air Act. The fact remains that any science-based update to the Endangerment Finding would conclusively demonstrate that the actual harms and projected risks from climate change have only grown grimmer since the 2009 endangerment finding was issued.

As heat-trapping emissions, primarily from burning fossil fuels, continue to rise, global average temperatures too continue their relentless climb with 2024 once again the hottest year on record. Extreme climate-related disasters—including heatwaves, storms, droughts, wildfires and flooding—are worsening, taking a fearsome toll on people, the economy and ecosystems. Accelerating sea level rise, ocean acidification and loss of major ice sheets also continue apace, with profound consequences for the planet.

If Lee Zeldin is looking for a recent authoritative assessment of the science, he should turn to the 2023 Fifth US National Climate Assessment, produced under the direction of the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP). The Global Change Research Act of 1990 mandates that the USGCRP—which collaborates across 15 federal agencies—deliver a report to Congress and the President at least every four years.

Here’s the headline from the NCA5:

The effects of human-caused climate change are already far-reaching and worsening across every region of the United States. Rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions can limit future warming and associated increases in many risks. Across the country, efforts to adapt to climate change and reduce emissions have expanded since 2018, and US emissions have fallen since peaking in 2007. However, without deeper cuts in global net greenhouse gas emissions and accelerated adaptation efforts, severe climate risks to the United States will continue to grow.

Another valuable source is the IPCC sixth assessment report, which reflects the work of thousands of scientists around the world—including many from the United States—in assessing the latest climate science, impacts, and opportunities to cut heat-trapping emissions and adapt to climate change.

The National Academy of Sciences would also be a good source of information. Here, for example, is a handy booklet on the evidence for and causes of climate change.

NOAA and NASA, premier federal science agencies, also closely monitor and track global climate change and its impacts. (And hopefully will continue to do so—although recent attacks on NOAA, foreshadowed in the Project 2025 manifesto, do not bode well.)

An anti-science pro-fossil fuel administration

Barely a month into the term of this second Trump administration, it’s clear that the President and his cabinet are hell-bent on doing everything they can to boost fossil fuels and shred climate and clean energy policies, catering to deep-pocketed fossil fuel interests.

They clearly intend to use every means at their disposal (lawful or not) to roll back regulations to help address global warming pollution. Those actions will be rightfully challenged in court, and it takes time to undo regulations in a legal way. However, any delay in implementing strong standards is harmful when the climate crisis is so acute. If the Trump administration succeeds in weakening or stopping EPA’s efforts to cut heat-trapping emissions, that will just leave people bearing the costs while fossil fuel polluters rake in profits.

Revisiting the endangerment and cause or contribute findings is just one more backdoor way to try to advance that harmful agenda. This directive shouldn’t fool anyone. It’s not a genuine effort to engage with scientific facts and listen to climate scientists. After all, the President has called climate change a hoax and many of his cabinet are climate science deniers.

The question for Lee Zeldin is whether he will just pander to that destructive agenda, or will he actually defend the mission of the agency he leads, which is to protect public health and the environment. He has already overseen a series of harmful actions at the EPA—including firing staff, cutting budgets, gutting its environmental justice work, and illegally freezing already-allocated funds for clean energy. So, I doubt we can count on a courageous defense of the endangerment finding from him.

Regardless of how Zeldin responds to President Trump’s directive, this administration cannot hide the reality of climate change. Undoing the Endangerment Finding is such an extremist anti-science endeavor, it is hard to imagine how it could succeed.

But we live in a country today where many previously unimaginable things are happening.

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