International: United States
Environmental lawyers get ready to pounce on Trump’s energy deregulation moves
Thu 24 Apr 2025
U.S. environmental groups say they are hiring lawyers and preparing for a major legal showdown with President Donald Trump's administration over its rapid-fire and sweeping efforts to sidestep federal regulations on oil, gas and coal development.
Who could replace US climate financing?
Wed 23 Apr 2025
Lawsuits and political pressure may save a few projects here and there but the future of climate financing under the current US administration seems clear—there isn’t one.
Trump admin silent as UN deadline passes for reporting GHG emissions
Tue 22 Apr 2025
In nearly 30 years, the United States has never failed to send the United Nations its data on planet-warming pollution. This could be the first time.
Groups sue Trump admin for deleting climate information from federal websites
Tue 22 Apr 2025
“The removal of these websites and the critical data they hold is yet another direct attack on the communities already suffering under the weight of deadly air and water."
Why US oil production could even go into reverse
17 Apr 2025
The prospect of U.S. oil production growth not just stalling but going into reverse is edging into the picture.
Trump’s EPA plans to stop collecting greenhouse gas emissions data from most polluters
16 Apr 2025
The Environmental Protection Agency is planning to eliminate long-standing requirements for polluters to collect and report their emissions of the heat-trapping gases that cause climate change.
Terminations at US government agencies that monitor extreme weather events will have negative effects
15 Apr 2025
In February 2025, Donald Trump’s administration reduced the government’s size. The NOAA was severely affected, experiencing budget cuts and the termination of about 800 employees’ positions. NOAA is a critically important government organization, and includes the National Weather Service.
Trump signs orders to allow coal-fired power plants to remain open
14 Apr 2025
Donald Trump signed four executive orders on Tuesday aimed at reviving coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel that has long been in decline, and which substantially contributes to planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions and pollution.
US: New energy order puts states’ climate laws in the crosshairs of the Department of Justice
14 Apr 2025
A new executive order from President Donald Trump that’s part of his effort to invigorate energy production raises the possibility that his Department of Justice will go to court against state climate change laws aimed at slashing planet-warming greenhouse gas pollution from fossil fuels.
Trump tells countries to axe talks on shipping carbon tax, or else
11 Apr 2025
The attack on the shipping deal is part of a wider U.S. rejection of policies to fight climate change.
Chevron ordered to pay $744.6 million for destroying Louisiana’s coastal wetlands
10 Apr 2025
Oil giant Chevron has been ordered by a Louisiana civil court jury to pay $744.6 million to a parish government to help restore coastal wetlands destroyed by the company over a period of decades.
Trump’s tariff tantrum won’t stop the global energy transition
9 Apr 2025
Trump has such a passion for tariffs he even imposed them on Antarctic islands – home only to penguins, who presumably pose a grave threat to American industry.
Do climate goals matter in a bad economy?
8 Apr 2025
It would be understandable for a climate concerned person to fear that economic headwinds will be yet another force that slows climate action.
Rewilding death in the Appalachian mountains
4 Apr 2025
A growing conservation burial movement is challenging the funeral industry’s environmental footprint while healing the land.
More than 1,900 scientists write letter in ‘SOS’ over Trump’s attacks on science
2 Apr 2025
Members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine warned Americans of ‘real danger in this moment’.
Disaster as Trump’s energy policy totally disregards climate change
2 Apr 2025
COMMENT: Energy — where we get it, how we use it and what it costs — is fundamental to the quality and stability of modern life. It influences virtually everything we do and affects everything we hope to have in the future.
Trump administration cancels clean energy grants as it prioritises fossil fuels
1 Apr 2025
President Donald Trump’s administration is terminating grants for two clean energy projects and roughly 300 others funded by the Department of Energy are in jeopardy as the president prioritises fossil fuels.
Digging for minerals in the Pacific’s graveyard: The $20 trillion fight over who controls the seabed
31 Mar 2025
Today, the ocean that Kahoʻohalahala and so many other Indigenous peoples crossed, cared for, and survived on is on track to be mined for polymetallic nodules.
Climate investors see opportunity in Trump’s anti-climate push
28 Mar 2025
US President Donald Trump’s pro-fossil fuel policies spell opportunity for some climate investors.
Farmers are reeling from Trump’s attacks on agricultural research
27 Mar 2025
A "rollercoaster" of funding cuts and layoffs have gutted critical agricultural research projects across the nation.
NOAA cuts more key weather data gathering after layoffs
26 Mar 2025
The National Weather Service is reducing weather balloon launches at six more locations in the U.S. and temporarily suspending them at two more places due to staffing shortages, the agency announced Thursday afternoon.
US Supreme Court will not hear novel youth-led climate change case
26 Mar 2025
The Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal in the long-running case, known as Juliana, which helped spawn legal strategies widely adapted to other lawsuits over climate.
Climate groups could beat Trump in fight for $20B. It may be too late.
25 Mar 2025
The Trump administration is hitting legal roadblocks in its attempt to revoke $20 billion in climate grants, but its efforts are already achieving one of the president’s key aims: throttling a crucial part of Joe Biden’s clean energy agenda.
‘One-third’ of 2012 soya crop failure in the Americas was due to climate change
25 Mar 2025
Climate change was responsible for just over one-third of the simultaneous soya bean crop failures across Argentina, Brazil and the US in 2012, according to a new attribution study.
Trump is tackling every 'emergency' except the important one: climate change
21 Mar 2025
To hear President Trump describe it, the U.S. is beset by emergencies. We allegedly have an energy emergency, a government waste emergency and a foreign trade emergency.
Trump vows to immediately ramp up US production of 'beautiful, clean coal'
20 Mar 2025
President Trump this week continued to make his environmental priorities clear by vowing to open up hundreds of coal power plants in the United States in an effort to advance competition against China.
Some US scientists stick with the IPCC despite the administration pulling out of international climate work
19 Mar 2025
A handful of U.S. researchers joined a critical meeting on climate and cities this week in Japan. "For me, this process is so important that if I had to self-fund, I would," said one.
The unexpected knock-on effect of Trump's minerals 'deal of the century'
18 Mar 2025
Donald Trump's return to the White House is a "major blow to global climate action". So said Christiana Figueres, the former UN climate chief, after he was elected in November.
The true cost of Trump's cuts to NOAA and NASA
17 Mar 2025
EDITORIAL: Not only will the cuts hinder the agencies' abilities to track and warn about upcoming severe weather events, they also hamper basic research into climate change, carried out to help humanity better prepare for the sweeping environmental upheaval already evident in a steadily warming world.
Trump officials decimate climate protections and consider axeing key greenhouse gas finding
14 Mar 2025
EPA takes aim at almost every major pollution rule in what environmentalists call act of 'malice toward the planet.'
Tech giants are complicit in an anti-climate agenda. Employees should be speaking up
14 Mar 2025
OPINION: As Big Tech bows to Donald Trump, employees should use their influence to engage coworkers and press their leaders for action.
Despite everything, US EV sales are up 28% this year
14 Mar 2025
In the US, customers are buying while there are still incentives and no extra tariffs.
US government terminates $20B in climate grants
13 Mar 2025
The move comes just one day before a federal judge will hold a hearing in a lawsuit brought by one of the grant recipients seeking access to the funds the Trump administration had frozen while it probed the program.
US Supreme Court rejects Republican-led effort to halt climate lawsuits against oil firms
12 Mar 2025
The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a lawsuit from Republican attorneys general in 19 states aimed at blocking climate change suits against the oil and gas industry from Democratic-led states.
US withdraws from UN climate damage fund
11 Mar 2025
The Trump administration has withdrawn the United States from the United Nations climate damage fund that was established in 2023 to help developing countries most vulnerable to climate change when natural disasters strike.
US withdrawing from plan to help major polluters move from coal
7 Mar 2025
The United States is withdrawing from the Just Energy Transition Partnership, a collaboration between richer nations to help developing countries transition from coal to cleaner energy.
The fact that humans can only survive on Earth doesn't bother Trump - and I know why
7 Mar 2025
By George Monbiot | OPINION: He is surrounded by people who have grandiose plans and dreams beyond our planet. Vengeful nihilism is a big part of the Maga project.
Trump orders swathes of US forests to be cut down for timber
6 Mar 2025
President's move to expand tree cutting across 280m acres evades rules to protect endangered species.
US: EPA calls for watchdog to probe $20 billion climate fund
5 Mar 2025
The Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund is at the center of a fight between the Trump administration and environmental groups seeking access to the funds that Congress approved under its massive climate legislation.
Trump's firings at US weather agency will put lives at risk, scientists say
4 Mar 2025
"There will be people who die in extreme weather events and related disasters who would not have otherwise."
Trump's war on climate science is pushing us into a dystopian future
3 Mar 2025
US President Donald Trump's latest war on the climate includes withdrawing support for any research that mentions the word.
US officials absent from global climate forums during Trump 2.0
28 Feb 2025
US officials have missed recent international climate forums sparking concerns about a potentially significant shift from Donald Trump's first term.
America's "first car-free neighborhood" is going pretty good, actually?
28 Feb 2025
Since breaking ground in 2021, Culdesac Tempe has had its share of detractors and skeptics. But none of them live there.
RFK Jr., onetime environmentalist, kills climate change programs
27 Feb 2025
In 1999, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., then an environmental lawyer, was named by Time magazine as a "hero of the planet" for his pioneering work to clean up America's waterways. On February 14 of this year, his second day as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, he ended HHS funding for climate change and health programs at the National Institutes of Health, a move that will likely terminate this work.
Greenpeace risks bankruptcy at US pipeline trial
26 Feb 2025
Greenpeace has said that a lawsuit brought by an energy company over the Dakota Access Pipeline could wipe it out.
How Trump gutted climate policy in 30 days
25 Feb 2025
President Donald Trump's promised assault on federal climate policies is sweeping across Washington, state capitals and private industry with a speed that's surprising even some of his supporters and critics -- and could leave an impact on the planet's future well after his presidency.
US to pull delegation from UN climate science meeting
24 Feb 2025
State Department officials won't participate in next week's meeting of the top UN climate science panel, sources familiar with the matter told Axios.
US: Senior Department of Justice prosecutor quit after being told to investigate Biden climate spending
20 Feb 2025
The top criminal prosecutor in the Washington, DC, US Attorney's Office, Denise Cheung, resigned Tuesday after declining a request from her Trump-appointed superiors to open a grand jury investigation she viewed as premature.
There are many ways Trump could trigger a global collapse. Here's how to survive if that happens
20 Feb 2025
OPINION: It could be wildfires, a pandemic or a financial crisis. The super-rich will flee to their bunkers - the rest of us will have to fend for ourselves.
US Energy Secretary backs coal and attacks 'sinister' climate targets
19 Feb 2025
The Trump appointee and fossil fuel executive called the transition to renewable energy "lunacy" at an event packed with climate science deniers.
Australia: Coalition under fire for planning to scrap Labor climate policies
Tue 22 Apr 2025
With Peter Dutton’s views on climate change in the spotlight, the focus has turned onto whether there will be any policies to reduce emissions in the next decade.
China can greatly reduce its reliance on coal, but probably won’t
3 Apr 2025
Even though solar and wind power are growing at a blistering pace.
Europe's flagship carbon capture project a €200 per ton mirage?
Wed 23 Apr 2025
Northern Lights, Europe’s flagship cross-border carbon capture and storage project, is now ready to receive carbon dioxide for sequestration, with the first ships in the water and expected to start delivering waste gas from customers this year. It’s being celebrated as a triumph of climate leadership and engineering.
Extinction Rebellion co-founder loses appeal over Heathrow drone conspiracy
Wed 23 Apr 2025
The co-founder of environmental campaign group Extinction Rebellion has lost a Court of Appeal bid to have a conviction for conspiring to fly drones over Heathrow to close it, quashed.
Canada fossil fuel subsidies hit $30 billion amid pipeline push, study reveals
11 Apr 2025
Experts note that government funding goes to Big Oil shareholders and executives while Canadian taxpayers bear the brunt of living with climate change.
Philippines braces for extreme heat as index nears ‘danger’ level of 50C
Wed 23 Apr 2025
Nation weather agency warns heat-related illnesses more likely with prolonged exposure or outdoor activity.
Nauru sells citizenship to help fund relocations as sea levels rise
27 Feb 2025
A new 'golden passport' scheme aims to raise funds to relocate people inland as climate change raises sea levels.
Arctic ends winter with lowest sea ice cover on record – scientists
31 Mar 2025
The new record shows how Arctic sea ice has ‘fundamentally changed’ from earlier decades, scientists said.
Ethiopia’s bold EV ambitions hit bumps in rural areas
17 Apr 2025
After becoming the world’s first country to ban imports of fossil fuel vehicles last year, a patchy power grid and high EV purchase costs are slowing Ethiopia’s green transport revolution in the countryside
Honduras pays the climate cost as its forests disappear and storms rise
11 Apr 2025
Despite its high vulnerability to extreme weather events, Honduras continues to clear its forests, seen as one of its best protections against climate change and intensifying storms and hurricanes.
Nations agree on carbon-pricing system to steer shipping towards net-zero
14 Apr 2025
Nations have agreed to introduce a worldwide carbon-pricing system for international shipping to drive the sector towards net-zero emissions by 2050.
