Inside Climate News

The biggest funders of fossil fuel expansion are U.S. banks that, like those in other countries, are retreating on their climate commitments.

By Georgina Gustin

The world’s biggest banks continue to bankroll the expansion of the fossil fuel industry and have largely retreated from their climate commitments, even as the world heads toward breaching thresholds for a livable planet.

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A newly identified species is already in danger of extinction. A proposed massive data center in Alabama would “nuke” its habitat, scientists say. 

By Lee Hedgepeth, Lanier Isom

BESSEMER, Ala.—A newly identified species of fish in central Alabama is already endangered due to human development, experts say. Now, plans to build a massive hyperscale data center could turn an already dire situation into an extinction event.

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As another punishing summer edges into Karachi, a Stanford researcher and a former climate minister confront the same crisis—extreme heat—from opposite ends of Pakistan’s most populous city.

By Aman Azhar

KARACHI, Pakistan—Inside a sprawling estate in Karachi’s elite Defense neighborhood, air conditioning hummed in a low-frequency buzz. Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s former federal minister for climate change, walked into a chilled study room and clutched her shawl tighter around her. “Turn this down,” she told an aide. “It’s freezing in here.”

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Computing facilities require lots of water to operate, putting the burden of allocating resources on municipalities.

By Susan Cosier

Illinois is already a top destination for data centers, and more are coming. One small Chicago suburb alone has approved one large complex and has proposals for two more.

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Almost 8,000 acres of forest in Alabama’s Mobile-Tensaw Delta was in danger of becoming the site of a wood pellet mill. Instead it is now protected as the E.O. Wilson Land Between the Rivers Preserve, honoring the world-famous biologist and Alabama native.

By Dennis Pillion

Long before he was writing bestselling books that defined the understanding of biodiversity, Edward O. Wilson was a boy in Mobile, Ala., exploring the bayous and backwaters of the Mobile-Tensaw Delta and marveling at its wildlife.

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Former utility executive and amateur wrestler Mark Ellis is exposing the little-known factors that raise electricity bills and threaten the energy transition. People across the country are starting to listen.

By Dan Gearino

SAN DIEGO—On a walk near his house, with views of the ocean, Mark Ellis speaks with urgency about how the utility business—the industry that long employed him—is harming the public with unsustainable rate increases.

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Red Feather, which works to improve housing on the Navajo and Hopi reservations, is just one of hundreds of groups that have had grants meant to help disadvantaged communities terminated by the Trump administration.

By Wyatt Myskow

TUBA CITY, Ariz.—When Carol Parrish built her first fire using her new wood-burning stove, tears streamed down her face.

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Record heat and volatile storm patterns have pushed the Chesapeake Bay’s health score down, sparking debate over recovery efforts and the need for granular monitoring.

By Aman Azhar

The Chesapeake Bay’s health has taken a downturn, according to a new report card, with the estuary relegated from a “C+” to a “C” as climate extremes and runaway pollution limit restoration efforts.

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The secretaries of energy and the interior and the EPA administrator joined Gov. Mike Dunleavy at the Alaska Sustainable Energy Conference to encourage more extraction of oil and gas in the state.

By Kate Furby

The Department of the Interior announced a proposal last week to cancel its protections of 13 million acres of Alaskan landinside a previously created reserve**.**

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A proposal in the state Legislature that would require a steep drop in non-recyclable packaging faces fierce opposition from businesses that would have to meet new package and recycling demands.

By Lauren Dalban

New York City knows it has a waste management problem. The average city household generated 1,899 pounds of trash in 2023. Only around 17 percent of the city’s curbside waste is recycled, despite efforts to change, such as the city’s 2020 plastic bag ban.

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Natural history museum collections can help backfill environmental pollution data, a new study argues.

By Kiley Price

In the early 20th century, more than a million miners in Britain made a daily descent into the depths of the Earth to extract coal, the country’s main source of energy at the time. Joining them on their journey to the harsh, dark underground: bright yellow canaries, about the size of a coffee cup.

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If cuts mean there’s not enough money for the state to regulate mines, the federal government could end up on the hook to do the job, Alabama’s chief mining regulator said.

By Lee Hedgepeth

JASPER, Ala.—If federal funds designated for Alabama’s mining regulator dry up—there is a 16 percent cut in state grants now being debated in Congress—director Kathy Love believes she has a quick and compelling rebuttal.

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To learn about how polar ice sheets melted during an ancient era, scientists examined fossil coral reefs in the tropics.

By Bob Berwyn

A new set of detailed clues gleaned from ancient fossil reefs on the Seychelle Islands shows an increasing likelihood that human-caused warming will raise the global average sea level at least 3 feet by 2100, at the high end of the projections by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

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A longtime critic of U.S. biofuels says an expansion of biofuels policy under President Donald Trump would lead to more greenhouse gas emissions and fewer food crops.

By Georgina Gustin

The American Midwest is home to some of the richest, most productive farmland in the world, enabling its transformation into a vast corn- and soy-producing machine—a conversion spurred largely by decades-long policies that support the production of biofuels.

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As the Trump administration makes the economic case for the repeal of climate policies, sobering numbers emerge on health and energy costs.

By Marianne Lavelle

In a week when the Trump administration moved forward on multiple fronts to repeal U.S. climate policies, a new analysis quantified the potential costs for public health, households and the economy—including a stunning $1.1 trillion reduction in U.S. gross domestic product by 2035.

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The New Jersey city will see another power plant built, a resource the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission decided was necessary to prevent outages in the face of storms.

By Emilie Lounsberry

The Ironbound neighborhood in Newark, N.J., has two distinct sections: an immigrant-rich area of rowhouses, ethnic restaurants and shops, and a clogged industrial zone with three power plants, the state’s largest incinerator and biggest sewage facility, a slew of factories and a near-constant parade of diesel trucks.

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The debate over the failed bills showed how business interests beat out some conservative lawmakers’ efforts to limit the wind and solar industries now seen as pivotal to the state’s energy landscape.

By Arcelia Martin

Four bills aimed at limiting renewable energy projects in Texas failed during the last legislative session as lawmakers, facing increasing energy demands, found constituents and industry leaders alike turning up in Austin to describe wind and solar projects as now pivotal to the state’s economy and grid.

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Costa Rica has protected 30 percent of its marine territory, and the small Central American country wants more care for the ocean, including a moratorium on deep sea mining.

By Teresa Tomassoni

Costa Rica is helping to shape the global agenda on marine protection and ocean governance this week as co-host, with France, of the 2025 United Nations Ocean Conference in Nice.

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The state’s latest lawsuit charges the administration with illegally targeting its authority to set tougher vehicle-emission standards. Ten attorneys general from states that follow those rules joined the suit.

By Liza Gross

President Donald Trump signed congressional resolutions Thursday morning to repeal California’s pioneering vehicle emissions standards, which he called a “disaster for this country.”

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Critics say it’s an unwarranted centralization of power that sidelines local officials, and they worry it will increase new fossil-fuel power plants.

By Jon Hurdle

Pennsylvania lawmakers heard conflicting views this week over whether the state should set up a board that oversees the siting and operation of new electric-generating plants amid national fears that growing demand for electricity will exceed supply.

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Republicans tout public lands sales they’ve pushed in the budget reconciliation bill as a solution to the housing crisis. Critics say the homes would be unaffordable, dangerous and environmentally degrading.

By Zoë Rom

A years-long effort to sell public lands has gained steam in this year’s federal budget negotiations as a proposed solution to the housing crisis, but critics say it’s just the latest attempt to render an unpopular political proposition more palatable.

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An Alabama town is at risk of losing water access after it disputed rate rises and recent charges by a neighboring water board. The mayor says customers are being “bamboozled.”

By Lee Hedgepeth

CAMP HILL, Ala.—A dispute over soaring water bills for this town’s 1,000 residents has ended up in court this summer after Mayor Messiah Williams-Cole said that his town’s water contract has been violated by its neighbors in Dadeville, who control the flow.

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Toxic air spreads hundreds or even thousands of miles from where wildfires burn. Last week, Chicago felt the sting—and warnings weren’t enough to protect health.

By Leigh Giangreco

CHICAGO—As Canadian wildfire smoke moved south into the American Midwest last week, this city experienced not only some of the worst air quality in the United States, but in the entire world.

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Solar has been the fastest growing source of electricity in the U.S. Proposed federal cuts to tax credits could halt that progress.

By Carrie Klein

The loss of federal tax credits for rooftop solar could wreck the business that Allan O’Shea has built in Michigan. O’Shea, who runs his company along with his wife and sons, has been selling solar panels since the 1990s.

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President Trump said he will begin dismantling the Federal Emergency Management Agency this year: “We want to bring it down to the state level.” 

By Dylan Baddour

The Trump administration will begin dismantling the Federal Emergency Management Agency later this year, the president announced on Tuesday, setting a tight timeframe for a breakup that many experts warned would likely harm the nation’s ability to respond to disasters.

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